Windchaser

6 ms·

31.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
> "filth and crime" checks, it's "people selling untaxed marijuana" Yeahhhh, we have radically different ideas about what constitutes "they're terrorizing my city". Casual use of heavy-handed law e
32.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
The "goal" here, not in the sense of what AI scientists are shooting for, but in terms of "goal", "goalpost", and the idiom of "moving the goalposts", would be to invalidate the current argument. Typi
33.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
> this is not a research paper from a startup or a public frontier lab, it is just PR from a corporation If they're publishing the solutions to these 10 problems, then this is, essentially, the announcement of 10 research papers. Ye
34.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
And a lot of condensed matter physics. Type II superconductivity is a well-known one, but there are a lot of more less well-known ones
35.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
> If we didn't move the goalposts, then by definition we already knew exactly where we were headed at the beginning, and we very clearly did not. To me, the goalposts were already defined by the person you were responding to. "
36.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
The unified position which many folks deny is "AI is powerful" or, alternatively, "AI will be powerful soon". (I'm personally still skeptical about this, but I'm being pulled towards accepting it). "AI is
37.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
Reading both your comments, I don't see them suggest that only human brains are capable of experience. Not even "only animal brains", for that matter.
38.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
> The question of whether they reason is meaningless. I'd disagree. Reason is the most reliable way we currently have of drawing conclusions (fewest false negatives, at least), so if we want to build AI that can draw similarly stron
39.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
Recursive self-improvement only takes off when the improvements are large enough. We could set an LLM loose on itself now, self-improving its own code, but it's going to only make small improvements, and those will quickly peter out. I
40.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
I think it applies to non-biological Von Neumann probes as well. It'll apply to any system that can mutate, even if that mutation is just cosmic rays flipping the bits on a hard drive.
41.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
> It does zero good "for me" but hopefully someone thinks twice the next time before expressing such a dumb incorrect opinion. Well, I doubt it's going to change anyone's mind if it violates the community guidelines a
42.
by Windchaser 2mo ago
Not ethically better, though. At least in the US, 99% of all pork is factory-farmed, and in much of that the pigs live their whole lives in a stall too small to turn around in. Pigs are as smart as dogs, and have personalities and emotions.
43.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
You can view the guidelines here, at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't think you need to attack someone personally, even if you believe they are promoting products that harm people's mental
44.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
Hacker News guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, plea
45.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
The article hardly mentions "oppressed peoples" at all. Much of the focus is on the benefits gained to the empire by the diversity therein, with brief forays into the historical and geographical layout of different parts of the ea
46.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
It's still just "buy low, sell high". You make the money from the same folks you normally would, only the order of when you buy and sell is swapped.
47.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
So that adds some extra "benefits" (mutation and natural selection improves the probes over time) along with some extra difficulties - how do you keep the self-reproducing probes "on-task" from one generation to the next
48.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
We could have coffee made today by automated coffee vending machines, but many people still prefer to go to a coffee shop. Why is that? Sometimes we don’t choose the cheaper automated product, and instead opt for the “human experience”. I d
49.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases. That’s “as we advance it becomes more difficult to advance”. However, because of the prior advances, you also have more resources to throw at future advancements. So, then, the qu
50.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
tbf, they already had artillery pointed at 10 million people, enough to commit an atrocity. The nukes were just the frosting on the cake.
51.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
tbf, it's not like the toil and sweat wasn't partly the toil and sweat of the slaves.
52.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
Most of this isn't geographical determinism, though. The death of the indigenous americans (allowing settlers to come in and take over), the brain drain after WW2, the first modern democracy (even if the Constitution is a bit kludgy),
53.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
> It seems like they use obscure language (non-optimal, excess) on purpose to try to ... Huh. No, in the scientific literature, this isn't obscure language. This is normal language there. This... kinda comes across like going to Fra
54.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
Aye, but this will let us gradually work towards more and more basic cell forms, so that we can eventually figure out abiogenesis.
55.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
> It's the obligation of our elected officials to keep the American people safe, and our borders are one of our early lines of defense to do that. Against an invading army, sure. Against the cartel and drug-running, ok, I can see so
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by Windchaser 3mo ago
This then seems like an argument that the children of diplomats should be US citizens, not an argument against naturalized birth for immigrants.
57.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
> If you believed this, would you be against sterilizing third world populations to limit the overall population growth ( given those are the populations which continue to grow in this environment ) ? ...wow. Is this a serious question?
58.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
No, I don't advocate for open borders. I'm fine with keeping out criminals, people who don't value our democratic system, or people who aren't interested in being productive members of society (e.g., NEETs - people not e
59.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
And the addition of mixed-use rockets! That is going to make it a lot cheaper to easily kick up initial platforms.
60.
by Windchaser 3mo ago
> which will put a massive strain on our resources True, but again, scientists are saying that we're already putting massive strain on our ecological resources, and the strain is only increasing. Not just climate change, but ocean a

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