5 ms·

> Gpt is the equivalent of the calculator but for words. Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. GPT is probabilistic and not necessarily correc

> Gpt is the equivalent of the calculator but for words. Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. GPT is probabilistic and not necessarily correct. Although I appreciate the comparison as it relates to the non-application of morality, I think it's a generally poor one.

hammock 4y ago
deleted
- mmh0000 4y ago
  I don't know why you're being down-voted. I can only assume people don't realize "racist math" is a thing various groups are pushing. A quick googling turn up these insane results: https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-university-illinois-professor/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-universit... https://www.foxnews.com/media/usa-today-mocked-asking-is-math-racist https://www.foxnews.com/media/usa-today-mocked-asking-is-mat...
  - jraph 4y ago
    The fact that some people got the idea that math is racist is interesting, I had never heard of this before, and it might be interesting to do some research on this topic. Now, I'm not at all convinced by the arguments present in the National Review article. I don't know what was Pythagore's color skin and I never thought about that. We also cannot change history and purposely hide the fact that some things in math are European and Greek. Such, we could call theorems by other names, but we'd better check that people feel oppressed / discriminated by this kind of stuff. And, above all, the fact that it is generally said that zero, some fundamental stuff, was invented by Arabs, and that we call the figures we use themselves the "Arabic numerals" is not at all mentioned. Arabs are not usually exactly considered white. Leaving out such obvious counter argument has to be deliberate or it shows a monumental lack of research or thinking on the matter. So… meh? And the Fox News article… Meh too? I guess I will let this article and its citation choices ridicule themselves.
    - dr_dshiv 4y ago
      Pythagoras was Syrian, fwiw. He was also inclusive AF. Female Pythagorean philosophers (Miya, Damo, etc), multiethnic Pythagorean philosophers (Abaris), plus, his whole thing was incorporating diverse wisdom from multiple cultural sources— Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Jews, Greeks, etc. He was even inclusive of animals, if you read his vegetarianism. So, the heart of western math is a pretty solid place to look for modern morality. Just saying. We can’t expect that of the ancients, but Pythagoras really delivers. In 530BC!
      - xupybd 4y ago
        https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/how-irrational-numbers-discovered-mathematician-killed-hippasus.html#why-did-they-kill-hippasus https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/how-irrational-numb... Maybe they had some ground to cover on the morality front.
        dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Not sourced. Wikipedia has sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus
      - yesenadam 4y ago
        > Pythagoras was Syrian, fwiw. Pythagoras of Samos?! Source? As far as I know, he was from Samos, a Greek island. Thus his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras
        dr_dshiv 4y ago
        His father, Mnesarchus, was a jeweler and trader from Tyre. Source: Neanthes of Cyzicus, historian, 3rd c. B.C referenced in Porphyry’s “Life of Pythagoras”
        yesenadam 4y ago
        Thanks. All the sources I've looked at say his ancestry is disputed and a great source of controversy, not surprisingly, so I guess it says different stories in different texts. I don't think your tone of certainty is at all justified. edit: Porphyry's book begins: "Many think that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus, but they differ as to the latter's race; some thinking him a Samian, while Neanthes, in the fifth book of his Fables states he was a Syrian, from the city of Tyre." Your source lacks your apparent certainty. https://archive.org/details/CompletePythagoras/page/n81/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/CompletePythagoras/page/n81/mode... Interestingly, in the same text, Iamblichus, who studied with Porphyry and seems to have been a devoted Pythagorean, says in his Life of Pythagoras: "From the family and alliance of this Ancaeus, founder of the colony [of Samos], were therefore descended Pythagoras's parents Mnesarchus and Pythais."
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Complaints around removing non-white names from theories or teachers pre-judging and sorting students seem valid to me. Are there specific examples that are crazy?
AnthonyMouse 4y ago
> Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. GPT is probabilistic and not necessarily correct. This isn't really relevant to the issue. We have a choice. (a) Technology is subject to the will of each user. If they want to make it do something bad, that's what it does. (b) Technology is subject to the will of some organization. They try to control what the technology will do. The first one is clearly better for multiple reasons. We already have systems (e.g. courts) for punishing people who do sufficiently bad things, which mitigates the harms of the first one. The alleged good from the second one often isn't realized, because the really bad people (e.g. adversarial foreign governments, major criminal organizations) aren't going to be subject to it or will hack the safeguards. The imposition of controls comes with a level of mass surveillance that isn't compatible with a free society. And putting anyone in charge of what everyone else can do or see is a dystopia because there is no one you can trust with that kind of power, for reasons of both incompetence and avarice. Technology should be designed to distribute power, not concentrate it.
98codes 4y ago
> Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. OK, GPT is a calculator written in JavaScript, but for words.

hammock 4y ago

deleted

mmh0000 4y ago
I don't know why you're being down-voted. I can only assume people don't realize "racist math" is a thing various groups are pushing. A quick googling turn up these insane results: https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-university-illinois-professor/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-universit... https://www.foxnews.com/media/usa-today-mocked-asking-is-math-racist https://www.foxnews.com/media/usa-today-mocked-asking-is-mat...
- jraph 4y ago
  The fact that some people got the idea that math is racist is interesting, I had never heard of this before, and it might be interesting to do some research on this topic. Now, I'm not at all convinced by the arguments present in the National Review article. I don't know what was Pythagore's color skin and I never thought about that. We also cannot change history and purposely hide the fact that some things in math are European and Greek. Such, we could call theorems by other names, but we'd better check that people feel oppressed / discriminated by this kind of stuff. And, above all, the fact that it is generally said that zero, some fundamental stuff, was invented by Arabs, and that we call the figures we use themselves the "Arabic numerals" is not at all mentioned. Arabs are not usually exactly considered white. Leaving out such obvious counter argument has to be deliberate or it shows a monumental lack of research or thinking on the matter. So… meh? And the Fox News article… Meh too? I guess I will let this article and its citation choices ridicule themselves.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Pythagoras was Syrian, fwiw. He was also inclusive AF. Female Pythagorean philosophers (Miya, Damo, etc), multiethnic Pythagorean philosophers (Abaris), plus, his whole thing was incorporating diverse wisdom from multiple cultural sources— Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Jews, Greeks, etc. He was even inclusive of animals, if you read his vegetarianism. So, the heart of western math is a pretty solid place to look for modern morality. Just saying. We can’t expect that of the ancients, but Pythagoras really delivers. In 530BC!
    - xupybd 4y ago
      https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/how-irrational-numbers-discovered-mathematician-killed-hippasus.html#why-did-they-kill-hippasus https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/how-irrational-numb... Maybe they had some ground to cover on the morality front.
      - dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Not sourced. Wikipedia has sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus
    - yesenadam 4y ago
      > Pythagoras was Syrian, fwiw. Pythagoras of Samos?! Source? As far as I know, he was from Samos, a Greek island. Thus his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras
      - dr_dshiv 4y ago
        His father, Mnesarchus, was a jeweler and trader from Tyre. Source: Neanthes of Cyzicus, historian, 3rd c. B.C referenced in Porphyry’s “Life of Pythagoras”
        yesenadam 4y ago
        Thanks. All the sources I've looked at say his ancestry is disputed and a great source of controversy, not surprisingly, so I guess it says different stories in different texts. I don't think your tone of certainty is at all justified. edit: Porphyry's book begins: "Many think that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus, but they differ as to the latter's race; some thinking him a Samian, while Neanthes, in the fifth book of his Fables states he was a Syrian, from the city of Tyre." Your source lacks your apparent certainty. https://archive.org/details/CompletePythagoras/page/n81/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/CompletePythagoras/page/n81/mode... Interestingly, in the same text, Iamblichus, who studied with Porphyry and seems to have been a devoted Pythagorean, says in his Life of Pythagoras: "From the family and alliance of this Ancaeus, founder of the colony [of Samos], were therefore descended Pythagoras's parents Mnesarchus and Pythais."
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Complaints around removing non-white names from theories or teachers pre-judging and sorting students seem valid to me. Are there specific examples that are crazy?

AnthonyMouse 4y ago

> Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. GPT is probabilistic and not necessarily correct. This isn't really relevant to the issue. We have a choice. (a) Technology is subject to the will of each user. If they want to make it do something bad, that's what it does. (b) Technology is subject to the will of some organization. They try to control what the technology will do. The first one is clearly better for multiple reasons. We already have systems (e.g. courts) for punishing people who do sufficiently bad things, which mitigates the harms of the first one. The alleged good from the second one often isn't realized, because the really bad people (e.g. adversarial foreign governments, major criminal organizations) aren't going to be subject to it or will hack the safeguards. The imposition of controls comes with a level of mass surveillance that isn't compatible with a free society. And putting anyone in charge of what everyone else can do or see is a dystopia because there is no one you can trust with that kind of power, for reasons of both incompetence and avarice. Technology should be designed to distribute power, not concentrate it.

98codes 4y ago

> Calculators are deterministic and necessarily correct. OK, GPT is a calculator written in JavaScript, but for words.