didericis

15 ms·

91.
by didericis 4y ago
You’re reiterating a point I acknowledged. There are subtleties you’re ignoring. Our conscious experience is in fact a unique phenomenon because it is all perceivable phenomenon . You can create as many self reflective machines as you like
92.
by didericis 4y ago
True, but those experiments are inevitably restricted to the aspects of consciousness available for indirect observation and comparison. There is no way to distinguish between an unconscious machine mimicking the functional aspects of consc
93.
by didericis 4y ago
The scientific method is about paying strict and close attention to what we can observe. The black boxes we can make sense of must have enough datapoints within the observable universe to be understood. We can almost definitely learn a lot
94.
by didericis 4y ago
Depending on what exactly you mean by “the nature of consciousness”, it’s fundamentally impossible to answer. The fact that we think we can observe and comprehend a mechanism doing the observation does not preclude things we cannot see. You
95.
by didericis 4y ago
Every functional organization throughout history has been some form of meritocratic system. Functional does not guarantee benevolence/a meritocratic system is neither utopian nor dystopian in and of itself, but some attempt at meritocr
96.
by didericis 4y ago
I'm flattered by the outreach, thank you. I just update my profile.
97.
by didericis 4y ago
This perfectly illustrates the problem. “Blessed self appointed teachers” should not and cannot exist in any functional actually meritocratic system. In order for mass civic education to be effective there needs to be a core set of criteria
98.
by didericis 4y ago
Aiming towards a legitimate meritocracy is the least dystopian aim possible. Aiming at anything else will simply be a less effective, more corrupt, more unjust, more arrogantly constructed system. True meritocracy requires aiming away from
99.
by didericis 4y ago
The main thing that gives me hope is that the type of knowledge generation environment in the western world still hasn’t been acquired by dictatorial powers like China. Given the exponentially increasing technological change we’re experienc
100.
by didericis 4y ago
Same. The question I’ve been finding more and more interesting over the years is “how do you tell when you have an interchangeable component/what are the implicit dependencies holding things together”. You run into an abstracted versio
101.
by didericis 4y ago
The best solution I’ve found is mooltipass: https://www.themooltipass.com/ Is a hardware device, password never leaves device except when filling in form, requires hardware confirmation, and works as usb/bluetooth keyb
102.
by didericis 4y ago
Some of us did expect that. The initial techno optimism about global connectivity that I think really picked up during the 90s (all of this was before my time, correct me if I'm wrong about timing) always seemed doomed to this particul
103.
by didericis 4y ago
I’ll back out then/leave the debate to those who have the time to sort through all of this. The gist about the enormous amount of space needed in that article seemed accurate/more than I thought.
104.
by didericis 4y ago
True, yes. It just seems to me like conventional battery farms are not going to make much sense in a lot of places, and hydro pumped storage will. Another user pointed out that the size inefficiency is severe enough with hydro pumped storag
105.
by didericis 4y ago
Good article. I stand corrected.
106.
by didericis 4y ago
Yep, I tried to acknowledge that in the original comment when I said it’s geographically dependent. It still seems like the only solution that currently exists and actually works on the scale required. I’m not sure what realistic solutions
107.
by didericis 4y ago
By “at scale” I mean building enough pumped storage facilities to meet current energy demands when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. It seems much more likely that we could build sufficient pumped storage facilities than the
108.
by didericis 4y ago
I forget what country was trying to build a bunch of these but an article popped up on here about this a while back and they cited lack of suitable locations as one of the main barriers for building more. The most ideal locations are natura
109.
by didericis 4y ago
This is highly geographically dependent, but water displacement “batteries” that pump water to an elevated basin when power is on and then let it run through turbines back down to a lowered basin seem like a really simple, effective solutio
110.
by didericis 4y ago
I have a vague memory of someone or some article saying there’s a way to get from lead to gold if you really wanted to with some combination of available nuclear tech, but it’d be completely absurd/ludicrously expensive (I think the
111.
by didericis 4y ago
https://youtu.be/Zmtc22uPLd4 I’m not a chemist/someone else can offer a more detailed explanation (just love the excuse to post that song), but with most of these kinds of things the energy and advanced equipment requi
112.
by didericis 4y ago
> The formal verification wasn't wrong, just incomplete, because modeling complex systems is inherently an intractable problem. I’m not involved in this kind of research or low level auditing, but I have some mathematical training a
113.
by didericis 4y ago
Yes, I’m sure there are many positive uses as well, I just have a hard time seeing how that’s not going to be outweighed by the bad given the current environment. There’s going to need to be some sort of social/cultural/technologi
114.
by didericis 4y ago
A galaxy scale exploration game on the scale of Elite Dangerous where you could have more complex and varied interaction would be pretty amazing. The way you could apply these new AI models to video games has some wild potential. I think
115.
by didericis 4y ago
I can't tell if I'm starting to get that old person "new things are scary" instinct or if my gut level of fear about the implications of these things is warranted. As impressive as a lot of these models are, I can't
116.
by didericis 4y ago
There is I think a large percentage of engineers like this that are insecure and like people having the reaction you are having and acknowledging how good they are at understanding complex code. The most effective way to handle this type of
117.
by didericis 4y ago
Agree, but I get the temptation if you want to be able to rapidly evolve your architecture early on to discover what works best. Removing that extra bit of documentation related friction and maintenance that keeps an ill suited architecture
118.
by didericis 4y ago
Top down federal strategic plans tend not to go so well. People forget the atmosphere that spawned the war on drugs, the war on poverty, affordable housing legislation/fannie and freddy, the native american reservation system, the demo
119.
by didericis 4y ago
The optimum middle is to try to figure out the most achievable pathway to help people to as much health as possible regardless of where they’re at, while accepting where they’re at, and encouraging persistence in searching for achievable st
120.
by didericis 4y ago
I’m a “biological optimist” and think a lot of what we consider “bad” can be and often is at least somewhat adaptive. Even things like aging and death; there are ways to age and die adaptively to give room to the next generation, to allow s

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