4 ms·

I'm used to HN being sensible, and seeing your comment being downvoted makes me wonder what's happening? What's the reason for that optimism?

corethree 3y ago
Human nature. https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves I know this is a rando podcast and you most likely won't listen to it. But it's totally worth it, just 10 minutes. It's about the science of how and why we lie to ourselves.
- epcoa 3y ago
  Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Your trendline argument in DOA. “Use some common sense here.” As you are proving, it’s not very common.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Everytime you take an action you do so in anticipation of a predicted future. How did you predict that future? Using the past. Does your action always anticipate the correct future? No. There's no way we can "know" the future. We can only do the best possible prediction. And that is literally how all humans walk through life. We use the best possible predictor of the future to predict it. Right now the best possible predictor of the future points to one where AI will improve. That is a highly valid and highly likely outcome. It's literally part of what common sense is at a very fundamental level here. Your argument here is just wrong on every level. It's more akin to wishful thinking and deliberate self blindness or lying to oneself. When your career, when your mastery over programming, when your intelligence which you held in high regard along with your career is threatened to be toppled as a useless and replaceable skill. Of course you lie to yourself. Of course you blind yourself to the raw reality of what is most likely to occur. I mean the most realistic answer is that it's a probability. AI taking over may occur, it may not. That's a more neutral scientific answer. But this is not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people trying to bend the narrative into one where there's no problem and nothing to worry about. When these people talk about AI they can't remain neutral. They always have to turn the conversation into something personal and bend the conversation towards their own skillet relative to AI. Why? Because that is the fundamental thing that is driving their viewpoint. Their own personal role in society relative to AI. The truly neutral party views the whole situation impartially without bringing his own personal situation into the conversation. The parent is not a neutral party and he's acting cliche. The pattern is classic and repeated over and over again by multitudes of people, especially programmers who hold their career and intelligence in high regard. Don't believe me? Ask yourself. Are you proud of your career? Do you think of yourself as intelligent and good at programming? If so you fit the bill of what I described above. A biased person can never see his own bias but if I predict classic symptoms of bias without prompt maybe, just maybe he can move out of the zone of denial. But most likely this won't happen.
    - epcoa 3y ago
      Boy you (or whatever LLM you are using) are verbose and presumptuous. You can continue to state simple falsehoods surrounded with patronizing bloviation, but that doesn't magically make them true. I don't make my living from programming for one (which makes your rhetoric: "Are you proud of your career? Do you think of yourself as intelligent and good at programming?" retarded as a non-sequitur) and just highlights your own small minded points of view and lack of imagination. > Right now the best possible predictor of the future points to one where AI will improve. That is a highly valid and highly likely outcome. It's not valid because it is vacuous. Technology generally improves. But it is the specifics and details that matter, they are the only thing that matters. Saying "AI will improve" is saying nothing useful. I think global thermonuclear war is a more likely disruptor in the rest of my lifetime than some AI nerd rapture. > "Of course you lie to yourself. Of course you blind yourself to the raw reality of what is most likely to occur." I am sorry that whatever schooling or training you had did not manage to explain that this style of rhetoric does nothing more than portray you as a condescending asshole. > Their own personal role in society relative to AI. You're just being a condescending twatwaffle since you are arguing with individuals in a forum of which you know nothing about. You clearly have no respect for others' opinions and feel the need to write walls of text to rationalize it.
      - corethree 3y ago
        I can admit to being condescending. But the point is I'm also generally right. You may not make your living from programming but you associate your self with "intelligence" and likely programming and you refuse to believe an AI can ever be superior to you. >It's not valid because it is vacuous. Technology generally improves. But it is the specifics and details that matter, they are the only thing that matters. Saying "AI will improve" is saying nothing useful. Exactly. When I repeat well known common sense facts, I've essentially stated nothing useful to people who HAVE common sense. Common sense is obvious. Everyone has common sense. You do too. The question is why are you constructing elaborate arguments to try to predict a future not inline with common sense? The answer is obvious, you can't face the truth. Pride and emotion make you turn away from common sense. >I think global thermonuclear war is a more likely disruptor in the rest of my lifetime than some AI nerd rapture. That's an intelligent statement. How many nuclear bombs were dropped on civilians in your lifetime versus how many AI break throughs happened in the last decade? Again. Common sense. >I am sorry that whatever schooling or training you had did not manage to explain that this style of rhetoric does nothing more than portray you as a condescending asshole. Remember that movie bird box where John Malkovich was a total ass hole? Well he not only was an ass hole, but he was pretty much right about everything while being an ass hole. If everyone listened to him they would've lived. That's what's going on here. I'm saying ass hole things, but those ass hole things are right. >You're just being a condescending twatwaffle since you are arguing with individuals in a forum of which you know nothing about. You clearly have no respect for others' opinions and feel the need to write walls of text to rationalize it. It's easy to prove me wrong. Put my condescending ass in it's place by proving me wrong. Every ass hole gets off at being completely and utterly right. You can pummel my ass into oblivion by taking me off my high horse. Or can you? You can't because I'm right and you're wrong.
girvo 3y ago
HN’s culture has changed somewhat and downvotes are now used more often to signal disagreement, sadly. But also “use common sense” and “but the trendline” are only partially compelling arguments as presented if you already believe what is being argued. They’re not compelling enough to those who aren’t convinced yet
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- corethree 3y ago
  The trendline is the only argument. What other predictor of the future is there? Given the available information there is no condition where one would bet against the trendline. Common sense is basically trendline following. It's the basis of our existence. You get out of bed without worrying about whether or not there is no ground under your feet because the trendline points to a reality where the ground is always there. The basis of AI tomorrow being better than today is common sense. chatGPT has improved since inception. Are we predicting improvement will suddenly stop? That AI technology will degrade? Such predictions as stated before, go against common sense. The big question here isn't about the future of AI. The future is as stated previously predictable by common sense. The big question here is why are so many people abandoning common sense?
  - RugnirViking 3y ago
    > What other predictor of the future is there? Typically, experts actually thinking about how technology works, on a deep level, does a pretty good job. Consider for example moore's law. A trendline everyone in the know knew couldn't continue long before it eventually failed. It wasn't a case of "well there are always some naysayers, they're right sometimes", it was anyone with any reasonable experience in building chips knew that each innovation is more hard won than the last, with physical barriers looming. Is AI like that? inevitably. There are invisible physical barriers to all fields and all technologies. The only way to find them is to try. But the discussion here is essentially hypothesising where and when they will show up. We may well be able to run an AGI. Using current techniques, it will need to be trained on a vastly more powerful compute stack than gpt4. Its difficult to impart to you just how big their current one is. They are going to have to mobilise non-trivial segments of entire industries and supply chains just to be big enough for gpt5. There will also be neat tricks that will be found to reduce requirements. But eventually, some wall will be hit, gains will slow. The bet is whether we get to AGI or whatever before then

corethree 3y ago

Human nature. https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves https://radiolab.org/podcast/91618-lying-to-ourselves I know this is a rando podcast and you most likely won't listen to it. But it's totally worth it, just 10 minutes. It's about the science of how and why we lie to ourselves.

epcoa 3y ago
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Your trendline argument in DOA. “Use some common sense here.” As you are proving, it’s not very common.
- corethree 3y ago
  Everytime you take an action you do so in anticipation of a predicted future. How did you predict that future? Using the past. Does your action always anticipate the correct future? No. There's no way we can "know" the future. We can only do the best possible prediction. And that is literally how all humans walk through life. We use the best possible predictor of the future to predict it. Right now the best possible predictor of the future points to one where AI will improve. That is a highly valid and highly likely outcome. It's literally part of what common sense is at a very fundamental level here. Your argument here is just wrong on every level. It's more akin to wishful thinking and deliberate self blindness or lying to oneself. When your career, when your mastery over programming, when your intelligence which you held in high regard along with your career is threatened to be toppled as a useless and replaceable skill. Of course you lie to yourself. Of course you blind yourself to the raw reality of what is most likely to occur. I mean the most realistic answer is that it's a probability. AI taking over may occur, it may not. That's a more neutral scientific answer. But this is not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people trying to bend the narrative into one where there's no problem and nothing to worry about. When these people talk about AI they can't remain neutral. They always have to turn the conversation into something personal and bend the conversation towards their own skillet relative to AI. Why? Because that is the fundamental thing that is driving their viewpoint. Their own personal role in society relative to AI. The truly neutral party views the whole situation impartially without bringing his own personal situation into the conversation. The parent is not a neutral party and he's acting cliche. The pattern is classic and repeated over and over again by multitudes of people, especially programmers who hold their career and intelligence in high regard. Don't believe me? Ask yourself. Are you proud of your career? Do you think of yourself as intelligent and good at programming? If so you fit the bill of what I described above. A biased person can never see his own bias but if I predict classic symptoms of bias without prompt maybe, just maybe he can move out of the zone of denial. But most likely this won't happen.
  - epcoa 3y ago
    Boy you (or whatever LLM you are using) are verbose and presumptuous. You can continue to state simple falsehoods surrounded with patronizing bloviation, but that doesn't magically make them true. I don't make my living from programming for one (which makes your rhetoric: "Are you proud of your career? Do you think of yourself as intelligent and good at programming?" retarded as a non-sequitur) and just highlights your own small minded points of view and lack of imagination. > Right now the best possible predictor of the future points to one where AI will improve. That is a highly valid and highly likely outcome. It's not valid because it is vacuous. Technology generally improves. But it is the specifics and details that matter, they are the only thing that matters. Saying "AI will improve" is saying nothing useful. I think global thermonuclear war is a more likely disruptor in the rest of my lifetime than some AI nerd rapture. > "Of course you lie to yourself. Of course you blind yourself to the raw reality of what is most likely to occur." I am sorry that whatever schooling or training you had did not manage to explain that this style of rhetoric does nothing more than portray you as a condescending asshole. > Their own personal role in society relative to AI. You're just being a condescending twatwaffle since you are arguing with individuals in a forum of which you know nothing about. You clearly have no respect for others' opinions and feel the need to write walls of text to rationalize it.
    - corethree 3y ago
      I can admit to being condescending. But the point is I'm also generally right. You may not make your living from programming but you associate your self with "intelligence" and likely programming and you refuse to believe an AI can ever be superior to you. >It's not valid because it is vacuous. Technology generally improves. But it is the specifics and details that matter, they are the only thing that matters. Saying "AI will improve" is saying nothing useful. Exactly. When I repeat well known common sense facts, I've essentially stated nothing useful to people who HAVE common sense. Common sense is obvious. Everyone has common sense. You do too. The question is why are you constructing elaborate arguments to try to predict a future not inline with common sense? The answer is obvious, you can't face the truth. Pride and emotion make you turn away from common sense. >I think global thermonuclear war is a more likely disruptor in the rest of my lifetime than some AI nerd rapture. That's an intelligent statement. How many nuclear bombs were dropped on civilians in your lifetime versus how many AI break throughs happened in the last decade? Again. Common sense. >I am sorry that whatever schooling or training you had did not manage to explain that this style of rhetoric does nothing more than portray you as a condescending asshole. Remember that movie bird box where John Malkovich was a total ass hole? Well he not only was an ass hole, but he was pretty much right about everything while being an ass hole. If everyone listened to him they would've lived. That's what's going on here. I'm saying ass hole things, but those ass hole things are right. >You're just being a condescending twatwaffle since you are arguing with individuals in a forum of which you know nothing about. You clearly have no respect for others' opinions and feel the need to write walls of text to rationalize it. It's easy to prove me wrong. Put my condescending ass in it's place by proving me wrong. Every ass hole gets off at being completely and utterly right. You can pummel my ass into oblivion by taking me off my high horse. Or can you? You can't because I'm right and you're wrong.

girvo 3y ago

HN’s culture has changed somewhat and downvotes are now used more often to signal disagreement, sadly. But also “use common sense” and “but the trendline” are only partially compelling arguments as presented if you already believe what is being argued. They’re not compelling enough to those who aren’t convinced yet

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
corethree 3y ago
The trendline is the only argument. What other predictor of the future is there? Given the available information there is no condition where one would bet against the trendline. Common sense is basically trendline following. It's the basis of our existence. You get out of bed without worrying about whether or not there is no ground under your feet because the trendline points to a reality where the ground is always there. The basis of AI tomorrow being better than today is common sense. chatGPT has improved since inception. Are we predicting improvement will suddenly stop? That AI technology will degrade? Such predictions as stated before, go against common sense. The big question here isn't about the future of AI. The future is as stated previously predictable by common sense. The big question here is why are so many people abandoning common sense?
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  > What other predictor of the future is there? Typically, experts actually thinking about how technology works, on a deep level, does a pretty good job. Consider for example moore's law. A trendline everyone in the know knew couldn't continue long before it eventually failed. It wasn't a case of "well there are always some naysayers, they're right sometimes", it was anyone with any reasonable experience in building chips knew that each innovation is more hard won than the last, with physical barriers looming. Is AI like that? inevitably. There are invisible physical barriers to all fields and all technologies. The only way to find them is to try. But the discussion here is essentially hypothesising where and when they will show up. We may well be able to run an AGI. Using current techniques, it will need to be trained on a vastly more powerful compute stack than gpt4. Its difficult to impart to you just how big their current one is. They are going to have to mobilise non-trivial segments of entire industries and supply chains just to be big enough for gpt5. There will also be neat tricks that will be found to reduce requirements. But eventually, some wall will be hit, gains will slow. The bet is whether we get to AGI or whatever before then