3 ms·
I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :) That's funny abo
by andai 3mo ago
I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :)
That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that.
I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose, but I guess he was about half a century too early.
I guess in our age the more pressing question would be learning to figure out how to communicate with the machines. That's probably going to turn out to be more important in the long run.
[0] The bit that stayed with me is the one that he repeated in interviews. The physical body imposes definite limits. That always seemed a little arbitrary to me, from the point of view of pure consciousness, it's not clear to me why it should be that way. Or to flip it around, you can transcend the limits of the mind, but then what effect does that have on "external" reality? Does it just make you less bad at decision-making, or is there a deeper effect?
(And while I'm at it... Something that bugged me about simulation theory, if the outside is probably simulated, why wouldn't the inside be too? Sounds a lot cleaner than having a bunch of brains floating around in a data center.)
- pstuart 3mo agoHe was obviously a brilliant man but the hubris that comes from that often leads to folly. As to the dolphin communication -- it seems like LLMs would be the perfect tool to study that now. A search came up with these active projects (courtesy of Gemini): Scientists are actually using LLM architectures to decode animal communication right now. Here are the three main projects to explore: * DolphinGemma -- https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/ https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/): Google and the Wild Dolphin Project are training AI to predict dolphin sounds and attempt two-way communication using an underwater device. * Project CETI -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI: An initiative using machine learning to decode sperm whale clicks, recently discovering a phonetic alphabet and rudimentary syntax. * Earth Species Project -- https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-help-humans-understand-animals-earth-species-project-conservation https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-he...: A non-profit using generative AI to map the communication of multiple non-human species, searching for universal language structures.
- andai 3mo agoAll right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
- smalltorch 3mo agoNot sure why I find this unsettling! Relavant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mammal_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mamm...
- pstuart 3mo agoAs you should -- it's fucked up. I remember the movie made about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin
- eth0up 3mo agopstuart covered the cetacean bit better than I could have. On the simulation question... Not much, but we have a long way to go before any answers arise there. I could offer my insight on the subject, but aside from being sicker than usual today, it's a tough subject to speculate on and the environment here is not necessarily hospitable, so I'll just say fair question.