abeppu

49 ms·

631.
by abeppu 3y ago
Maybe a more constructive question is, do we agree on which countries are doing public education well? And what insights or practices can we learn from them?
632.
by abeppu 3y ago
Hmm, this reasoning is making a lot of really questionable assumptions: > We’ll use the estimates of 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses for this post. That’s 100 teraweights. ... or maybe actual synapses cannot be described wi
633.
by abeppu 3y ago
> Our descriptions of how we want the future to play out are our descriptions of how we expect the future to play out This doesn't seem right to me at all. I want a lot of things I don't expect: abolition of the electoral coll
634.
by abeppu 3y ago
> To the extent that partisan investors are trying to reshape the economy to align with their values, rather than betting on beliefs about the economy, they are going to pay for it. I guess, sure, you'll experience some cost if you&
635.
by abeppu 3y ago
Hmm, I think this criticism maybe has a kernel of truth, but - I think the "ergodicity" concept is kind of being abused. As I understand the term, ergodicity describes systems whose dynamics cause them to eventually visit all stat
636.
by abeppu 3y ago
I agree with much of this, but I think we also need to acknowledge our own ignorance over - how much of the complexity of mammalian neurons is "incidental" complexity, due to also needing to be living, functioning cells, etc as ve
637.
by abeppu 3y ago
> But that's not what you asked, and it's not what I claimed. I didn't say that philosophy is entirely devoid of value, only that a lot of it is. You claimed you can empirically observe "that the most effective method
638.
by abeppu 3y ago
> Ethics are instincts produced by evolution. I would also clarify: We have instincts about ethics. This does not imply that ethics are instincts, any more than having instincts about geometry implies that geometry is instincts or ha
639.
by abeppu 3y ago
I'm not an expert in these systems, and their announcement materials don't make a bunch of stuff clear, but my attempt at summarizing for a layperson would be: - Current computers represent values as patterns of binary values. Ana
640.
by abeppu 3y ago
> Just look around you. You have computers, GPS, mRNA vaccines, etc. etc. etc. Those things were not produced by philosophers. You're clearly not getting this. Yes, you can see the products of scientific progress. That's not th
641.
by abeppu 3y ago
According to this table [1] the 1.15B artificial neurons they're claiming is just at little below the estimate for raccoon dogs and Tanimbar corella / cockatoo. Even if it's a technically impressive system, "inspired by
642.
by abeppu 3y ago
... but the thing being mimicked is just as true of a mouse brain or (I think?) any vertebrate brain.
643.
by abeppu 3y ago
> I am making the empirical observation that the most effective method for expanding human knowledge is science. I think you're still basically begging the question here. Is it directly observable whether a belief is "knowledge
644.
by abeppu 3y ago
In 2022, a GPT-3 model fine-tuned on Dennett's writing was good enough that "Dennett experts" could only pick a real Dennett quote from a list of 5 quotes about 50% of the time. I don't know that anyone's tried on n
645.
by abeppu 3y ago
> There is a tiny minority of philosophers who are actually scientists pushing very hard on the boundaries of human knowledge. It sounds like you've already started with the assumption that the only way to expand human knowledge is
646.
by abeppu 3y ago
I really wish we could talk about new kinds of hardware without the comparison to the human brain. SNN models capture some characteristics of biological neurons ... but those attributes aren't at all specific to humans. Representing th
647.
by abeppu 3y ago
I find it interesting that there is such a convergence towards hubless wheels, which I think are challenging regardless of number. There are a handful that have hubs but if the passenger is on top they drift into unicycle territory, which f
648.
by abeppu 3y ago
Do some businesses exist which deal in old slabs? Sure. Though the large majority of results I see in your link are pretty small. But more importantly there are a lot of kitchen and bathroom renovations (and I _think_ renovations outnumber
649.
by abeppu 3y ago
... is that generally true? What are those other applications? Like, if I want to put in new stone counters, in general I'm picking a kind of stone I like, and the firm measures or makes a template of my use, and cuts from a slab, righ
650.
by abeppu 3y ago
... in fairness, there's not really any particular reason to believe that the organisms which contributed to limestone suffered any more than their peers who didn't. And insofar as all the elements that are components of life exis
651.
by abeppu 3y ago
> Some years ago, I found a way to explain how the Higgs field works that is non-technical and yet correct > But it did fit quite well in a course for non-experts, in which I had several hours to lay out the basics of particle physics
652.
by abeppu 3y ago
My understanding is that a bunch of cognitive psychology research related to risk-taking and motivation etc is funded by casinos and gambling-related businesses, which I vaguely remember as being an obligation created by some Nevada law? I
653.
by abeppu 3y ago
I'm curious though how much of the price we pay for power in CA is because of power generation, versus how much goes to power distribution infrastructure and maintenance. The CPUC seems on course to a pricing change in CA which will se
654.
by abeppu 3y ago
> First and foremost, if you use any services online that have two-factor authentication, be sure it is not SMS-based. Use an app like Google Authenticator or Authy for this purpose instead. It really disappointing that in 2024, this is
655.
by abeppu 3y ago
... but maybe healthy organizations should figure out how to let people doing challenging or prestigious projects have work-life balance and "leisure time" (or dependent care responsibilities, etc), and be appropriately compensate
656.
by abeppu 3y ago
> True inflation would measure the amount of prosperity achieved per hour worked. I think this isn't a measure of inflation per se, because productivity changes are big over the decades. But I do think looking at costs in terms of h
657.
by abeppu 3y ago
> “Alternative measures of inflation that include borrowing costs” account for most of the gap between the experts’ rosy pictures and Americans’ skeptical assessment. I think the article doesn't actually cover support for this (thou
658.
by abeppu 3y ago
> So if anything, we should only include interest rates in proportion to how many people are taking out major loans during the sampled period Is that right? What about people that didn't buy a home in 2023 because interest rates wer
659.
by abeppu 3y ago
No, it does not -- but it fixes at least one aspect of short-term rentals having a structural advantage supporting them undercutting hotels. Back when it seemed that AirBnBs were pretty consistently cheaper than hotels (esp when accounting
660.
by abeppu 3y ago
> The city also extended its 14-percent hotel tax to STR operators and made it illegal to operate them without a valid business license. According to one estimate, the ordinance has since dropped the city’s number of Airbnb listings by 6

More ›