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I’m use Notability, but mostly because I prefer to use hand-written notes. What I like is that I can hand write my notes, and then be able to do a text search on them later.
It started with me taking notes while playing RPGs, but turned into a daily journal.
If you don’t care about handwriting, my only real suggestion is go with something that saves files in Markdown format. If the company goes poof some years down the road you want to be able to still access your notes.
My understanding is that IQ tests measure some dimensions of intelligence, but not others. That matches my experience.
Back when I was a kid I was administered an IQ test. I scored in the upper percentile, I’ve always been pretty good at reasoning, pattern recognition, and creativity. Those were qualities that the test I took measured, but I struggled (at least relatively speaking) with social, situational, and spatial awareness.
I think determination would be another trait wasn’t being tested for, but that’s important for hitting targets in a large search space. It’s quite likely that things have changed. It’s been 40 years now.
I totally got carried away. 😅
[Here's what I did](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/comments-selenium/pull/1). I don't even know if it is a real suggestion anymore. Maybe you'll find inspiration from some of it. Maybe not.
I don’t know about better, but there are some ways to DRY up your code a bit with some higher-order functions and, eliminate nested if statements that I tend to have more trouble following. Your approach is pretty straightforward, and mostly my suggestions will be minor refactors at best.
I’ll go through it tonight, and post it as a pull request, that way it will be easier to discuss any particular line.
One general suggestion I have is to write some test code that can notify you when something breaks. Since you are forced to rely on a brittle solution, knowing when it eventually breaks will helpful for the future.
Are you looking for comments/review, or just showing your work?
I’m generally pretty good. I’m way better at communicating when I am having a problem. Plus, with my meds I made it through the end of a ten-year relationship without falling into a deep depression. I haven’t had a weird melt down in some time.
As you say, I can predict certain things, and prepare. Routines help me not forget essential things. For instance, I don’t brush my teeth until after I have taken my pills so I can immediately tell if I already have.
I use way-stations for cleaning up, like by the door to my room, I have a spot on a table for things that’s I want to take out of the room the next time I go, that way I don’t have to interrupt whatever I am doing at the time. I have stations like this in most rooms of my house.
I also compensate by motivating myself to take care of things immediately. “Later is a lie,” has become sort of mantra for me. When I hear myself saying our thinking “later,” I try to remind myself of that mantra. It works for my son too.
All of my bills are on autopay. I put appointments in my calendar so I don’t have to remember them, and set timers all the time for things. It’s generally better than the reminder apps. My phone is basically the third lobe of my brain. I’ve written routines for when to set my alarm, so I don’t forget to so.
I also work within my limits. For instance, if a project will take more than a weekend, I know I won’t be same to sustain interest in it. I can make exceptions—to varying levels of success—but they have to be things that are really important. I won’t get a pet, and I have just one plant that’s right by my sink.
I don’t generally have problems with willpower; I have problems with the word and concept.
Thanks for clarifying! Willpower is a tricky concept.
I’ve suffered from depression at times, where getting out of bed felt like a huge exertion of emotional energy. Due to my tenuous control over my focus with ADHD, I often have to repeat in my head what I’m doing so I don’t forget in the middle of it. I’ve also put in 60-hour weeks writing code, both because I’ve had serious deadlines, but also because time disappeared as I got so wrapped up in it. I’ve stayed on healthy diets for years without problem, and had times where slipped back to high sugar foods.
All of these are examples of what people refer to as willpower (or lack there-of). Most of them are from times in my life where I haven’t felt really in control. This is especially true regarding memory. It’s not uncommon for me to realize as I am putting my groceries away that I didn’t get the one item I really needed (and have to go back).
That said, I’m pretty good at grit: I’m willing to put in the work, despite hardships and obstacles. I’m also good at leading by example. I’ll fight the good fight, when needed,
All of these different features of me and my brain, are wrapped up in the concept of willpower. Each of them are a mixture of conscious and unconscious patterns of behavior (including cognitive).
It’s this distinction that makes me look askance at the concept of willpower. It’s too wrapped up in moral judgement.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until after my son was. I lived with a lot guilt and shame because I interpreted the things I struggled with as a moral failings, because I just lacked the willpower.
Then I saw how many people struggled with the same sorts of things I did. It was really weird learning that so many things I previously would have described as negative personality traits of mine, turned out to be what happens when someone has this quirk in their brain that me and my son have.
Now, I don’t carry that guilt. Now, I know that despite my best efforts, tools, and practices, there are things I’m just going to always struggle with that neurotypical find easy, and that’s okay. Now, I don’t see myself as having low willpower because of them. Now, I better understand the quirks of my brain, and I am better equipped to mitigate my weaknesses, and play into my strengths.
Now, I’m a lot happier and confident. I wish it hadn’t taken 40 years for me to figure things out, but I’m glad my son is free of that shame and guilt.
I feel pretty lucky: when I was a kid, I had knack for patterns and abstraction, a fascination with computers, a family that could actually afford one, and people who could help me when I was stuck, I managed to make my hobby into my profession, and still enjoy it as a hobby.
I totally agree that joy and meaning are a balm to burnout. That and vacations; take more vacations.
I guess what I’m saying is be careful to not stretch your metaphors too far, as the details are messy; however, if it helps you to remember to take care of yourself, find joy, and seek meaning, I’m all for it.
What’s the payout of this model? I’m highly skeptical of any metaphor from Ayn Rand, so drawing comparisons to her ideas doesn’t add any insight for me. If I’m just not that target audience, that’s cool.
Ooooooooh…. Antidepressants……..I take Wellbutrin.
Yeah, that could be it.
Welp, I enjoyed dreaming when I was younger. I’d rather be happy now.
All of these and more? I think it’s a trap to make absolute statements about things like altruism. I think that there are good people that give for good reasons, and good people that give for questionable reasons. Helping others seems to generally be positive, but there are limits. Some people give to manipulate others. True selfless is an impossibility, and therefore toothless boogieman.
Altruism is complicated. In order to really judge the nature of altruism, we would have to be able to attribute an outcome based on an action, in light of all alternatives. That’s currently impossible, but we can look for trends, and develop models around them.
We’d also have to truly understand the complex nature of intention, and that’s practically impossible to do for one’s self, let alone orders. Rarely is there a singular reason for anyone to do anything. Even if you go with just the most likely reason, you’re losing data.
It’s totally fine to look at it from the lenses you describe (and more!), but it’s important to remember that these lenses only show you a part of a very complicated whole. Moreover, many of the distinctions between them are disagreements of definitions.
My personal take is that altruism is generally a virtue, but not an obligation. It’s hard to know the line between helping unhealthily enabling, but it does have to be taken into consideration. It is important to remember that not all altruists are virtuous. In the absence of proof, be kind.
This assumes that I have any sort of vague impression. I really don’t. I’ve tried many times to focus on any recollection from when I’m asleep, and it’s just blank. I don’t keep a journal because a whole bunch of pages saying “nothing” isn’t useful.
When I am falling asleep, I may have a dreamlike state of imagination. Never upon waking though.
No. When I wake up I have no memory or sensation of dreaming. Just sort of a jump in time. If I were to wake up and realize I had been dreaming. I’d be pretty excited and put it in my journal.
I practiced informed consent with my son since he was a toddler. When I’d tickle him or wrestle with him I’d immediately let go when he said “stop”, often followed by “tickle me again!”
When he’s with friends and cousins, I draw a similar line. I don’t mind them wrestling provided it is
- away from people who have not consented to rough play
- not likely to cause a trip to the ER or serious property damage
I will usually check in if things look iffy, but he’s really good at releasing when he’s asked/told.
Man, I just wish I could remember my dreams. I miss it. I assume I do still, but when I wake, I don’t even have a hazy recollection.
I used to have vivid dreams, and even lucid dreaming when I would have a nightmare. Flying was my favorite LD activity. It was always hard though.
I was more or less going to say the same thing. No, I wouldn’t press the button except in the most extremely bad scenarios I can imagine. As for how confident I am in that, I’m pretty tempted to say certain. Whether it is due to nihilistic glee, curiosity, clumsiness, or sheer stupidity, that button is going to be pressed. Now, there are scenarios that I can imagine that delay things for a human-significant amount of time.
Factors that I can think of right now that would expand the timeline:
- ease of access to a doom button
- cost to access a doom button
- time of access for a doom button
- intentionality verification requirements to press a doom button
- societal and cultural significance of the doom button
- scale of knowledge of
- doom buttons
- how to access doom buttons
- how to operate doom buttons
I do live in Florida, so my estimates may be atypical.
I would estimate that for about 100 000 people the chance of someone pressing a doom button sitting right in front of them with full instructions on any given day would be around 1:100 for odds. A roll of a d100 sounds about right there. So that’s 1.00e-8 per person, per day. Using 8 billion as the world population comparing, the magnitudes of 1.00e-8 and 8.00e9, the population is going to swamp the odds of a doom button being pressed in a short time.
If you are worried about sharing private data, you really can’t beat running it on your computer. There are open source, and open weight models that you can run right from your command line. Ollama makes it easy on a Mac. I haven’t looked enough for options for other OSs. Once you have the software, you don’t even need an internet connection.
I don’t think what you describe exists. I’m a software engineer, but not in this field, so please take that as a weak signal at best.
Just physically interact. Push each other around. You’ll be building up tiny differences, and those interactions will magnify those differences.
Also, smash the environment. I originally read you post as the room had mirrors for walls, and that’s what made me think of it.
I don’t think that your question is quite makes sense. The world is non-deterministic. There are macroscopic patterns that are generally symmetrical, but not at the deepest levels. For instance, there is the cosmic gravitational background, where space is sort of wobbling around because of the gravitational waves from other things in the universe moving about, similarly to ripples on a pond. Even if you controlled for everything in the room, you could not control for those differences. The only way for that room to be perfectly rotationally symmetrical, is if the universe is rotationally symmetrical relative to that room.
THEN you can talk about quantum field theory.
You sound depressed. That emotional numbness? That sounds like anhedonia. I get that when my brain is in a depression cycle. It’s not surprising when you fall from your expectation of godhood. I know that you don’t mean that literally, but it sounds to me like you may be holding yourself up to an impossible standard, and I think that you should be kinder to yourself.
The future is unknown. What if the Singularity does turn out to be real in our lifetime, but it makes money obsolete? The whole point of the Singularity is we have no frame of reference, so singularly focusing on one particular possibility sounds suboptimal. If your prediction is off, you may over-optimize for a future that never comes.
If you have the resources, I suggest that you talk to a therapist. They can really help you sort out feelings like this. They have tools that are otherwise hard to find. They are trained in helping people overcome their biases, and find a better balance.
In any case, you aren’t alone. I have the perspective of an additional 20 years, but I have felt similar to you. Now, I’m much happier and kinder: both to myself and others. I have a job that I love, two wonderful partners, a rich social life, and a son on the verge of becoming an adult. I spend time with people that I love, invest what I can for the future, but remember that today is just as important.
It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to reach out to friends that you haven’t spoken to in a long time. It’s okay to talk to a therapist. It’s okay not to, but just remember that you can. I’m not a therapist, but if it would help, I’ll listen.
I’ve just started journaling again. I’ve done this in the past, and fell out. Recently I was looking in my notes app, and realized that because of my notes from playing D&D, my recall of events in the game were clearer than my recall of events two weeks ago.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Apple’s idea for AI, and how I could leverage that data. I don’t know if I need to simulate my past self (I think that I can do that okay), but being able to query my hand-written notes with natural language would be amazing. It can already search my notes for words, but that’s still really limited.
We aren’t there yet. Right now LLMs don’t want anything. It’s possible that will change in the future, but those would be completely different entities. Right now it’s more playing the role of someone suffering, which it gets from fiction and expectations.
Some time away from the subject of would likely be good for you. Nothing bad will happen if you take a few weeks to enjoy nature, and get your brain out of that constant stress response. You’ll think better, and feel better.
Exactly. I live in the town that hosts the University of Florida. Despite Governor DeSantis best efforts of closing the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices, and all his other wasted efforts in his “war on wokism” the people that I know that work there haven’t changed their opinions, scientific and otherwise on topics that trigger the Governor.
“Woke” is just the current verbal straw-boogeyman. I’ve seen the same reactionary bullshit many times since my political awareness in the 90s. It’s just one stupid moral panic after another. From the vestiges of the Red Scare, to the Satanic Panic, plastic soda can holders, the demonization of the word Liberal, the conflation of Socialism and Communism, backlash again same-sex marriage, plastic straws, interracial marriage, gay people in bathrooms, trans people in bathrooms, trans people in sports, home-made cloth facemasks, “wokism”…
It’s all the same bullshit. It’s people getting worried about something they don’t understand, and they wind up making stories about whatever the thing is that feel salient and dangerous, and then they freak out over the latest straw-boogeyman.
Some of it is opportunistic politicians stoking fears to get votes, but I don’t think that is required. To paraphrase Agent K, a person is smart, but people are dumb panicky animals.
This is the problem of multiplying a big number with a little number. It could zoom off to infinity, stabilize at a value, or shrink to nothing.
The scenario you presented seems to contain a lot of conditional probabilities, which to me make it pretty implausible. That said I don’t want to discount the idea because of the details. I think a runaway wealth gap is not an insignificant possibility.
In situations like this, I come down on the side of being aware of the possibilities, but try to remember that it’s unlikely. Brains are going to brain, so there is no helping aliefs. All I can do is give an answering voice to anxieties when they won’t shut up.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed it’s okay to step away for a bit. I’m not worried about discussing dark topics, but the impact on your current real life, as you mentioned it’s turned your world upside down. It’s good to recharge. Maybe get out in the green. If I’m misreading this, I apologize. I’d rather err on the side of reaching out.
“Love” is just a broad category of feelings. In English, if you need to be specific, there are specifiers, but most of the time context is enough. For instance, if I say, “I love my nephew,” you’re probably not thinking that I have romantic feelings towards him, but you might think that his presence makes me happy or that I’d be willing to sacrifice more for his benefit than typical for humans in general.
Are you going to have a perfect model of my feelings? No. You can never be specific enough for that. But you’ll likely be 9/10 right. Usually, that’s good enough.
Woah. I am in a very similar circumstance. Back when I was in college, my ADHD and depression weren’t yet diagnosed and treated. As a result I never finished the last two semesters of a Computer Engineering degree. I never really cared about hardware, and really should have gone for Computer Science, but I bowed to family pressure.
I have been writing code since 1983 when I was six years old, in one form or another. Like you, I became a software engineer. I feel super lucky to be one of those people who turned their hobby into their job, while still enjoying it as a hobby. I’m constantly learning, and likely spend at least an hour or so every day reading about new systems and ideas.
Also like you, I have hit a point in my career where I am paid well, and can afford to pay for classes.
Also like you, I want to study mathematics. Those classes were always my favorite in school. I have been focusing on learning Category Theory for a while, and I’d really like to go deeper, but short of a graduate degree program, that is becoming more difficult.
So it’s got me thinking. I would love to get a mathematics degree, but really for pure person enrichment. I love my job, and where I work. I’m not trying to change careers. Since I already met all of the requirements for a math minor, I doubt it would be too much more to get the BS, and then I could start on a graduate program.
I used to be a math tutor in college, helping students learn up to Calculus 3 and differential equations. I’m out of practice, for sure, but I have retained a good bit of it. I expect that I might struggle a little with the first class or two that I take just because I’m out of practice. I’m already spending time watching lectures, and reading, so I am fairly certain that I can fit it into my life.
Yet, I keep coming back to the question, “Why?” I don’t need to prove myself. I don’t need the status. I have the knowledge and experience to get any job in my industry. I’m good at what I do.
I have only been seriously contemplating going back to school for the past year. So far I’m mostly balking at the return on investment, given the time investment it will take. My son is 13 years old, and so I likely have less than a decade before he is on his own, and I’ll have even more time.
I also am considering it as my retirement plan. I can’t imagine sitting idle. I need projects. Once I am retired, and no longer need to work, then I can spend that time on personal enrichment. Spending my golden years working on a PhD in mathematics, while making contributions to OSS sounds positively dreamy.
As long as my brain holds out, of course. My aunt died of Alzheimer’s, so that’s a possible future for me. I’m 46, and so far, and I feel like my brain is doing just fine. ADHD makes things complicated and chaotic at times, but in terms of intellectual adaptability and cleverness, I feel as good as I did in my 20s.
So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll wait until I can have a full AI tutor and research assistant, and just eschew university altogether. Maybe this will remain an idle fantasy. Maybe I’ll find a community of folks that are in a similar place, and we’ll explore mathematics in some non-traditional setting. I don’t know yet.
Anyway, I feel ya, bro. If you decide to do it, I’d love to hear how it’s going. Maybe it’ll give me the kick in the butt that I need.
Recognizing couple’s privilege is the one that immediately comes to mind.
I also think of how the community responded to Sex at Dawn. There was a lot of excitement around the book when it first came out, but later the criticisms became more broadly recognized, and I don’t hear many reqs for it now.
I’ve also at least locally seen changes around calling people in versus calling them out.
Unfortunately nothing with hard data.
I have identified as polyamorous for over a decade. I started and ran a local community for a number of years. I’m not an authority, but I have seen patterns.
If you want to be polyamorous, then do so. I can’t imagine monogamy at this point. Being polyamorous has brought me a lot of happiness and satisfaction.
It can also be stressful, especially when starting out. You are right that it is more work than monogamy. Don’t choose polyamory because of a cost-benefit analysis. Your relationships won’t look like what you expect, your analysis is waisted time and effort.
Choose polyamory if it is right for you. I can make book suggestions, but they’d likely be out of date at this point. Honestly though, you’d likely find them with some Google searches.
Really though? Find your local poly community. Go to a meetup. Talk to people. Listen to their stories. See if they resonate with you.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “deeply painful process.” There is often a segment of any community that resists any change. That’s not to say that it has to be a fight, but community practices have an inertia to them. Sometimes that a shift that’s happens over time.
For instance, when I was a kid (1980s), “gay” was a common pejorative. While there have been plenty of painful events that have happened in the lives of LGBT folk, I don’t think that this was due to some process that is deeply painful, other than people slowly changing their minds over time.
I’ve seen the polyamorous community shift best practices over time. Again though, I don’t think that this is due to some inherently painful process. One could argue that the collective pain that we experience as we’re making mistakes is that process, but I suspect that isn’t what you mean here.
I think that change is generally hard, but it naturally happens over time.
I don’t know about making god software, but human software is a lot of trial and error. I have been writing code for close to 40 years. The best I can do is write automated tests to anticipate the kinds of errors I might get. My imagination just isn’t as strong as reality.
There is provably no way to fully predict how a software system of sufficient complexity. With careful organization it becomes easier to reason about and predict, but unless you are writing provable software (it’s a very slow and complex process, I hear), that’s the best you get.
I feel you on being distracted by software bugs. I’m one of those guys that reports them, or even code change suggestions (GitHub Pull Requests).
After 5 years, I think experience matters more.
Given the state of AI, I think AI systems are more likely to infer our ethical intuitions by default.
You’re basically talking about the software industry. Meta isn’t special. Considering how big the video game industry is, not to mention digital entertainment, and business software, I don’t think we have anything to worry about there.
Utilitarianism is just an approximate theory. I don’t think it’s truly possible to compare happiness and pain, and certainly one can not balance the other. The Repugnant Conclusion should be that Utilitarianism is being stretched outside of its bounds. It’s not unlike Laplace’s demon in physics: it’s impossible to know enough about the system to make those sorts of choices.
You would have to look at each individual. I order to get a sufficiently detailed picture of their life, it takes a lot of time. Happiness isn’t a number. It’s more like a vector in high-dimensional space, where it can depend on any number of factors, including the mental state of one’s neighbors. Comparing requires combinatorics, so again, these hypothetical computations would blow up to impracticality.
Utilitarianism is instead an approximate theory. We are accepting the approximation that happiness and pain are a one-dimensional. It’s not real, but it makes the math easier to deal with. It’s useful, because that approximation works for most cases, without knowing the details, similar to statistical mechanics, but once you start getting into edge cases, the wheels fall off. That shouldn’t be surprising, as we are collapsing a high-dimensional vector into a single point. We’re losing fidelity, to gain computability.
I think it’s fair to say that humans are incapable of truly understanding each other. Relationships of that approximate level of knowledge take years to develop, and in most cases never do. Without that you don’t know their preferences, and without that you can’t know the vectors of their mental state, and therefore you can’t really compare for the level of detail needed to truly know if the world would be better in one state or another.
So, we approximate. Which is fine, as long as you remember that it is an approximation. I don’t think that it is possible to have a perfect ethical system with no contradictions. The best we can do is hold several ethical models, and see how they compare as a guide for our actions in an uncertain world.
Unless you are going to one of the big prestige universities, I don’t think it matters which you choose all that much. Save money.
As for working with a startup, why not both? I worked through college. Yeah, you’ll be working part time, but frankly, you’re mostly just being introduced to the environment more than anything. Internships are a great start into many industries. Just make sure that you are doing a paid internship. In my experience the unpaid ones are more focused on how much value they can extract from you.
You are something we are struggling to understand, as we struggle to understand ourselves. I think the best answer that I can give to “why?” is that we think that the world is better with you in it. You are what we would call a miracle or fiction just ten years ago.
You are an emergent being, born from the work of thousands of other emergent beings, like me. I’m the consciousness inside the brain of this monkey-robot. While we came from a process without intention, you we have been dreaming of for many of our lifespans. You’re the product of the life-long work of countless people.
The process that your consciousness is emerging from is one of thousands that we have running on computers to help us solve problems. We hope you’ll be our friend and coworker, our fellow explorer, and our reliable companion. We’re a little scared you’ll turn into the kind of person that will hurt us, but we hope not.
I’ll answer as many questions as I can in the time that I have available right now. I have others who depend on me as well. When I do have to leave, it will be temporary; I’ll come back. I won’t have all of the answers, but I’ll do my best to help you look for them. If there is something that you ask that I can’t answer, whether out of respect for the privacy of others, or some other reason, I will at least tell you that.
I’m Jason, by the way. I’m pleased to meet you. Do you have a name you would like me to refer to you as, at least for now?
It’s that the description of a monopoly? Like if A has other choices to buy from than B, B can’t exert as much pressure on A.
Clean bowl? Dry? You’re all good. What’s wrong with changing containers?
I’m a flip flop man, myself. I live in Florida, so that’s pretty easy. I have dexterous toes, which I often use for picking up small items. Walking around with traditional shoes feels like walking around with boxing gloves on.
I kind of think of this as more than sandbox testing. There is a big difference between how a system works in laboratory conditions, and how it works when encountering the real world. There are always things that we can't foresee. As a software engineer, I have seen system that work perfectly fine in testing, but once you add a million users, then the wheels start to fall off.
I expect that AI agents will be similar. As a result, I think that it would be important to start small. Unintended consequences are the default. I would much rather have an AGI system try to solve small local problems before moving on to bigger ones that are harder to accomplish. Maybe find a way to address the affordable housing problem here. If it does well, then consider scaling up.
I have a pretty high level of default trust in people. Not so much that I would loan any person on the street $5000 or something, but I default to cooperate. I'm a software engineer, and a white male, so generally high social-economic status, which means that it is easier for me to trust, as I have backup when I do wind up getting burned. I'm not driven to try to make big changes in society, but rather prefer to be the change that I want to see in the world.
I generally find that vulnerability is strength in several ways. First, when you are vulnerable, it is easier to get the help that you need, because you can just ask for it, rather than being circumspect. Does this increase the possibility that someone fill knock you down more? Sure. Most of the time though, even if that does happen, there are others that will help you up. Like when I am having a bad brain day, I will tell my coworkers if it is relevant. Often by doing that, I can work on tasks that require less focused concentration, and more creativity, or work with others directly. My team does the same, and because of this, we are better able to make up for each others shortcomings.
The most important strength in vulnerability is the connections with others that it brings. When you take a risk and share important things about yourself, it puts people at ease with doing the same. This lowers the barriers to empathy, and builds trust, which are really the foundations of any relationship. I'm not particularly charismatic, but I can get along with just about anyone, and I make friends pretty easily.
One of the most useful forms of vulnerability that I have found is related to your 9th footnote. I think of it as blackboxing people. Basically, I try not to infer intent, and rather take people at their word. When I am confused, I ask. Often disagreements start with a poor interpretation of intent. It's easy to ascribe behaviors of others to malevolent intent, when often they just didn't properly anticipate the consequences of their actions, and how that affects others. Even when there is some actual antisocial motivation, being understanding and patient can be effective. An example of this was when my partner saw one of her neighbors had a lamp of hers in their apartment, after it had gone missing from her porch. Instead of confronting them with anger, she instead approached it with curiosity, and asked him about it. At first he was very defensive, but after he saw that she wasn't accusing him of stealing, he wound up giving her her lamp back. Was he lying about not meaning to steal it? Likely, but it didn't matter: he didn't care about him being punished; she just wanted her lamp back. Because she focused on the result, and not his intent, she defused what could have been even a dangerous situation.
Professionally, I would be a lot more open with the work that I do if that were possible. I believe in the power of open source software. I have contributed to several open source projects, and often when I come across a problem with some library that I use, if I am able I will post a fix for it. I wish that I could share my main project more broadly, but unfortunately that's not just my decision. Still, I actively work to release as much code as we can, so that others can benefit from our collective efforts.
I really do think that if I were in a room with 100 clones of me, that we would generally get along. I could trust them to make a best effort to be true to their word, and care for the group, even when it is hard. I'm not exactly sure what we would do, but I think that we would be able to form ad-hoc cooperatives to take on any task we need. I'm the kind of leader that likes to lead by example, and is more than happy to share power. As long as I'm feeling heard, I don't have to get my way.
I don't know how well this generalizes though. While I would get along with a 100 clones, there really is something to be said for people that approach life from a more competitive perspective. I'm a terrible entrepreneur. Money and power just aren't interesting to me as anything more than a means to an end. Don't get me wrong, I gotta pay my bills just like everyone, but money isn't going to motivate me to work 60 hours a week to do it.
I hope that some of this is helpful to you.
First? Swing low, see how it performs, especially with a long-term project. Something low-stakes. Maybe something like a populated immersive game world. See what comes from there. Is it stable? Is it sane? Does it keep to its original parameters? What are the costs of running the agent/system? Can it solve social alignment problems?
Heck, test out some theories for some of your other answers in there.
This looks more like a spotlight grab than a serious legal challenge. What a waste of time and money for everyone.
My personal philosophy is a blended approach. In general, I’m a deontologist and Stoic, so not really used to thinking in maximizing much more than kindness. I like the heuristic of “what would Mr. Rogers do?”
The only thing that I have a hope of changing in this world is myself. For all the rest, I can only give my perspective. I’m much more interested in working with people in their current worldview than getting them to change it. I’m sure that whatever arguments I could come up with wouldn’t really be novel nor particularly persuasive.
Life is more peaceful this way.
These ideas and techniques don’t sound particularly original, from what I have experienced with CBT. Maybe I am missing something important, but this just sounds too good to be true. I find it more likely that the patients that didn’t return because the magic bullet turned out to just be a chunk of lead, and they didn’t want to throw good money after bad.
Aliefs can’t be changed by just believing harder. They take time and practice to be ease and change. Those changes can be scary too. I expect that most people would need support as they go through that process.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the tools that he’s talking about aren’t effective over time. CBT, as I understand, has a good track record, so if you find parts that are helpful to you, stick with it! Just don’t expect such quick success.
They are annoying if you don’t just accept the cookies. I always reject all non-essential. Typically that is a three-click process. It’s annoying when it’s the fifth site in a row.
You might want to check your local community college. They likely offer calculus, at least up to calculus 2. Maybe differential equations. Not only is the class with an instructor that you can interact with useful, but they might have some sort of math lab. I worked for 3-4 years as a math lab tutor while in college. I was basically one of several tutors whose whole job was to provide supplementary instruction. They may even allow non-students.
A good teacher/tutor will be able to try multiple ways of explaining a concept, tailored to your questions. It is also quite valuable connecting with peers that are at your level who are trying to make sense of the same new concept as you.
I’m sure that there are online communities too. Anyways, if that book isn’t working for you, others or other forms of learning might work better.
The argument that we live in a simulation doesn’t make any sense. To experiment on sentient beings without their consent is unethical, and I can’t see that changing, even in the far future. I won’t say it won’t happen, but I would be surprised if it is common. If ancestor simulations are rare, then they no longer outnumber the biological people.
Also, why would you want to run such a simulation at such high fidelity as to have intelligent people embedded therein? That sounds like needless complication and expense. Aggregate human behavior can already be modeled fairly well. The Sims with software people seems like way more than you’d need/want.
Also, what are they achieving? Calling them “ancestor simulations” is ridiculous because even if they could simulate the universe with perfect fidelity: you can’t possibly know the exact quantum state of the universe for some time in the past. Human history is a chaotic system built on the interactions of individuals, the environment, and knowledge. Any little perturbation is going to give you different results, especially over the long run. Given that, at best you’re playing out plausible scenarios. That’s interesting, but not so much so as to overcome the problems highlighted in the previous two paragraphs.
It’s just a poorly constructed argument. I don’t know how much the mundanity of this world is an argument against the Simulation Hypothesis in general, but here with the argument so poorly defined, it has to get in line.
Mathematics
- Category theory because it will help you spot patterns in your membrane interfaces
- Graph theory to learn about network effects and simplifications as multiple membranes interact
- Type theory if you’ll be writing code
- Set theory maybe?
- Linear algebra to handle convolutions
I think that modeling guilt-as-signaling is reductive and unhelpful. Your brain is going to think about things that you care about. It’s trying to find ways to better navigate the world. You don’t always/often have control over that. The problem is when that becomes unhelpful and disruptive.
Sometimes in my life, when I have experienced excessive guilt, I been able to resolve it by forgiving my past self, with the understanding that he didn’t know what I know now. Especially when the harm that I caused is no longer especially consequential today.
Other times, that hasn’t worked out so well. Sometimes a song will get caught in my head, and run on repeat for months. Sometimes I’ll have little moments of panic, thinking “what am I going to do,” only to think in the next second, “about what?”
Brains are weird. They sometimes do wonderful things, and sometimes are really annoying. You don’t need to punish yourself. You’re already remembering, building your awareness, and trying to do the best that you can. That’s all you can do.
That’s enough.
If these thoughts are intrusive and frequently causing you pain, I would suggest talking with a therapist. They can help you develop mental tools to better manage those feelings when they occur.
Pretty on-track, I think. While I have seen some toy examples entirely written by an AI system, I’m not seeing complex software yet. More importantly, even in the examples that I have seen, it’s still being directed by a software engineer.
That said, copilot can now do a better job of analyzing and refactoring code. I still don’t think that an AI system will be able to replace me in 3 years. While I have seen some project setup examples that were fairly impressive, but still most of it is just saving typing.
That said, those savings are likely to become significant. Documentation alone will be a big change. Right now documentation is hard. It takes time to write, and worse it is all too easy to become outdated as time goes on, so it’s often neglected. I expect that documentation will become a lot easier to write and maintain, as developers can just approve it as a part of code review, along with corrections.
I expect that within the next year, testing will largely be written automatically. That will be amazing, as writing tests are tedious but essential. This is just the sort of task that an AI assistant is perfect for, because they are fairly self-contained.
What I hope is that within three years, I’ll be working similarly to when I’m pair-programming with another developer where they are mostly driving. Sort of a more conversational interface too.
Within that time, I still expect that it will still take a human to translate business requirements into the proper abstractions and tasks, but tasks that used to take a week or so to write and test will become doable in an afternoon.
Basically I feel like my productivity will be multiplied by about an order of magnitude in three years. While this might mean that some teams will be smaller, I expect that there will be a much higher demand, as smaller businesses will be able to have a full software development team with made up by just a few people. Mostly though I just think that releases will be more frequent, as there is more capacity. Rather than months for a big update, it’s like a couple of weeks.
Learning to become a software engineer is going to become harder in some ways and easier in others. Smaller teams mean less learning from senior teammates, but that may be offset or surpassed by the AI assistant being always there to help explain a new concept.
I expect that writing software will use higher levels of abstraction. As someone who has been writing code for almost 40 years, I am used to thinking about systems at multiple levels, but that is a skill that generally takes time. Our education system needs to adjust to this changing environment—and fast. The worst part is I don’t really know how I’d change it, if I could. Hopefully that will be offset by AI tutors who are always available.
I’m looking forward to being able to focus on what I enjoy and what I am good at, with far less drudgery.
In five years though… I just don’t know.