fasterik

25 ms·

391.
by fasterik 3y ago
I've never actually watched or listened to anything by Sabine Hossenfelder, so I don't have a particular opinion on her work. But... >If you're promoting research into quantum gravity that doesn't respect special rel
392.
by fasterik 3y ago
Every human has roughly the same nervous system, with the same structure and functional properties. Unless consciousness is some magical non-physical thing (which we have no reason to believe), it would be absurd to believe that that a heal
393.
by fasterik 3y ago
We should be wary of nostalgia for an idealized past that never existed. If you look at the semiconductor industry in the 1960s, the personal computer revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and the dot-com boom in the 1990s, there was always a
394.
by fasterik 3y ago
I don't think "article of faith" is the right phrase. For every possible hypothesis, we attach a prior probability and then we update those probabilities when new evidence comes in. If accepting a given hypothesis would requi
395.
by fasterik 3y ago
As I understand it, the major candidates for dark matter are new elementary particles, so they would still fall under quantum field theory. Of course, there is always the possibility that another revolution in physics happens, but even then
396.
by fasterik 3y ago
That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neurosc
397.
by fasterik 3y ago
Agreed. Everything Everywhere had a lot of style and the potential to be a great film, but it got bogged down in unfunny gags and sentimental cliches. Tár deserved to win best picture, in my opinion.
398.
by fasterik 3y ago
This is similar to David Lewis's modal realism, which says that every possible world is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism There isn't really much of a connection between this and Bostrom'
399.
by fasterik 3y ago
Yeah, it appears that in the original benchmark an off the shelf C parser outperformed an off the shelf Ruby parser. Then they wrote their own parser in Ruby, which was faster. But for a fair comparison, you should also write the same parse
400.
by fasterik 3y ago
It's absolutely a question worth asking. You identified two senses of the word "good": financial gain and the approval of others. But that's not what we mean when we say that a work of art is good. There is an intrinsic
401.
by fasterik 3y ago
You're right, I explicitly went out of my way to find movies that are widely considered to be classics, but were not loved by critics. It's not an "analysis" of any kind, as I made clear in my post. I think the critics a
402.
by fasterik 3y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with this as a rule of thumb, but I thought it would be fun to come up with a few counter-examples. Most of these I would consider "artsy-fartsy" or "artsy-fartsy lite" movies that are p
403.
by fasterik 3y ago
I would say "moving the goalposts" is an understatement. Requiring that a system's state must not be describable with a string of fixed length is an absurd definition of intelligence. By that definition, anything composed o
404.
by fasterik 3y ago
Agreed. That comment doesn't seem to break any rules. Is "flagged" something that just means enough people downvoted it, or does it require moderator intervention?
405.
by fasterik 3y ago
It's a lot more obvious in academic writing and other non-fiction. Using a lot of big words to make a simple point is often a sign that the writer is trying to signal intelligence rather than convey information. In literature the goals
406.
by fasterik 3y ago
>What about "by continue using this site you agree to this TOS"? Terms of service determine when a provider will refuse to service a user's requests. If the website responded to the request with the requested content, TO
407.
by fasterik 3y ago
Along similar lines, there is Rich Hickey's talk "Hammock Driven Development": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc Also Polya's How to Solve It, referenced in that talk: https://en.wik
408.
by fasterik 3y ago
If you publish something on the open web, you're making that content available to anyone who can send a GET request or use the Internet Archive. On the other hand, if you're making a private application where users create an accou
409.
by fasterik 3y ago
Reminder that Johann Hari has been guilty in the past of plagiarism, fabricating stories, and maliciously editing the Wikipedia pages of his critics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari Stolen Focus, like his oth
410.
by fasterik 3y ago
I think this is true for any domain of knowledge in ChatGPT. Its knowledge is shallow in a certain sense, but a lot of things don't require deep knowledge. Shallow knowledge generated very quickly can still be useful. I find ChatGPT to
411.
by fasterik 3y ago
>"For all x, if x is a marble and x is in the bag, then x is white". The statement is more "For all x in the bag, is x white?" They're the same, just quantifying over different sets. I can quantify over objects
412.
by fasterik 3y ago
According to the rules of logic, we can always replace (P -> Q) with (~P v Q). In other words, if P is false then (P -> Q) is always true. This is known as a vacuous truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_tr
413.
by fasterik 3y ago
Your proposal would break all of logic and mathematics. "All marbles in the bag are black" is equivalent to "For all x, if x is a marble and x is in the bag, then x is black". Since the antecedent is false if the bag is
414.
by fasterik 3y ago
Your proposal would break all of logic and mathematics. "All marbles in the bag are white" is equivalent to "For all x, if x is a marble and x is in the bag, then x is white". Since the antecedent is false if the bag is
415.
by fasterik 3y ago
>Let’s look at what Microsoft is doing right now, as an example. In the last couple of weeks, Microsoft updated its general terms of use to prohibit scraping, harvesting, or similar extraction methods of its AI services. Also in the cou
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by fasterik 3y ago
Well, the closest potentially habitable planets outside the solar system are lightyears away. Even if we master space travel, I don't see a reason why at least some humans wouldn't stay on Earth, unless it becomes truly uninhabi
417.
by fasterik 3y ago
I think the main advantage of radio for music is human curation. Spotify is still far from being able to give me a high quality playlist of music I'm likely to enjoy but would be unlikely to find on my own. However, podcasts and DJ mix
418.
by fasterik 3y ago
What makes you say we "probably" won't be here on Earth in 100,000 years? We were here for the past 2,000,000 years. This also ignores the possibility that someone other than "us" will discover what we leave behind.
419.
by fasterik 3y ago
Not "better", but for a different target audience. Also written by the author of said mod, who was hired to work on the expansion.
420.
by fasterik 3y ago
Factorio is basically a sandbox game that generates logistical puzzles for the player. If you get bored of solving logistical puzzles, including those that self-imposed challenges and mods are able to offer, then I think what you really wan

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