c_crank

20 ms·

211.
by c_crank 3y ago
Your comparison of mutable programming to the use of goto and unhygenic macros would suggest that mutation is a similar type of dinosaur to be culled. >You've never tried to compose multiple asynchronous event streams of complex dat
212.
by c_crank 3y ago
Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. Functional programming that introduces or models state requires more abstraction, and then complexity. >Imperative makes it easy to update state, but
213.
by c_crank 3y ago
Not mentioning any of the complexity in the abstractions needed to ensure purity makes one a dishonest salesman, much like the OO consultants of the past did with Java and the Java frameworks. The ills of goto and poor scoping were solved w
214.
by c_crank 3y ago
I have heard of these robots and auto driving cars. Both of these have pretty strong limitations regarding their ability to affect the environment as much as a human can. Typically these robots are heavily limited by battery usage and need
215.
by c_crank 3y ago
Functional languages have either converged on either just allowing mutable values or relying on Monads as the ways of handling state. I'm not aware of a third solution.
216.
by c_crank 3y ago
C# including LINQ or Javascript including Promises isn't done with the intent of having all functions handle state and pass around a state of the world parameter (trying to actually do this in Javascript will lead to a lot of boilerpla
217.
by c_crank 3y ago
The only time I hear about a mainstream language being immutable by default is from Rust people telling me that Rust is a mainstream language now. A Haskell program covered in piles of monads to abstract all state away still follows the fun
218.
by c_crank 3y ago
Most other functional languages don't enforce immutability to the degree Haskell does. So if you are trying to show off how pure and side effect free your code is...
219.
by c_crank 3y ago
The benefits of FP are typically described as "the more functional your program is, the better", and Haskell is the most functional turing complete language you can get.
220.
by c_crank 3y ago
The Java Enterprise style of over-abstraction that everyone hates does this, so plenty of imperative programmers will know of it and probably have implemented it to an extent.
221.
by c_crank 3y ago
Mainstream languages incorporating FP concepts don't do so with the intent of encouraging totally pure stateless programs. What they do allow is calling the occasional anonymous function or using Map() instead of ForEach() or for().
222.
by c_crank 3y ago
By what physical means do these AI 'goal directed agents' actually manipulate the physical world?
223.
by c_crank 3y ago
LLMs do have a very real threat of putting a lot of artists out of work. Their power of image generation is extensive and growing.
224.
by c_crank 3y ago
My smart TV lasts some tiny fractions of a second before it goes plink .
225.
by c_crank 3y ago
Why exactly would any person be a program on a laptop?
226.
by c_crank 3y ago
AI safety researchers are prone to making wild and spurious claims about what a superintelligent AI is capable of, often relying on scenarios from science fiction or very out there fields of physics to try and get people to pay heed to thei
227.
by c_crank 3y ago
The ability to convince a human of anything, using only words, would probably be limited as well without other methods of persuasion.
228.
by c_crank 3y ago
Those projects are useful for determining the actual capabilities of the AI for malice as they improve. Doomsdayers really tend to overestimate how much can actually be done with one laptop and an internet connection.
229.
by c_crank 3y ago
Most of them I would not call crazy, but relying on poor assumptions.
230.
by c_crank 3y ago
Currently, one of the problems AI developers are dealing with is that LLMs training on data that is 'polluted' by AI generated content get dumber at predicting their desired outcomes. Even if there was a way to gain efficiency thr
231.
by c_crank 3y ago
Hey man, I like my cubicle, don't try and take it from me.
232.
by c_crank 3y ago
This reality just looks very different from the scenarios proposed by AI doomsayers, as the current LLMs, instead of being quiet, deadly things poised to take over the world, are instead loud and ineffectual and prone to making up all kinds
233.
by c_crank 3y ago
The consequences of algorithmic radicalization have yet to hit the level of the radicalization in the 1930s that happened without any social media or computers at all. I think there is a deeper cause to that then just Facebook doing slimy t
234.
by c_crank 3y ago
The sheepdog doesn't know why it herds sheep, but it does understand that it has a certain relationship with the sheep farmer. The sheep farmer is the master, the dog is the servant who takes orders. When training dogs, one commonly ob
235.
by c_crank 3y ago
The power of a politician to persuade comes in part, in my opinion, from their ability to convince a voter that they represent the voter's interest. Some of this is done just through words, but a lot of it has to be represented via som
236.
by c_crank 3y ago
For however unpleasant those things may be, I wouldn't call them a Doomsday scenario. They're certainly nothing like the things you'll hear of on LessWrong.
237.
by c_crank 3y ago
Pyramid schemes are a nuisance. Covid-19 should have been a wake up call that most bio labs ought to be closely re-examined or closed down, regardless of whether an AI happens to be abusing them. The bio-lab scenario is the only one I see a
238.
by c_crank 3y ago
Paper clip optimizers always need a secondary (and often dubious) physical element to pose an actual threat, like grey goo or nanomachines or strange matter.
239.
by c_crank 3y ago
The evolutionary ancestor to chickens still exists, and there are probably some chickens here and there that have escaped and become wild again. So long as the environment allows. The evolution of chicken penning would have been gradual, as
240.
by c_crank 3y ago
The news states that America has a problem with significant groups of people not trusting the opinions of experts. These experts are, I assume, pretty smart. But their ability to persuade is limited.

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