stbede

3 ms·

1.
by stbede 8d ago
That's why I prefer my Wisephone 2. You can still use slack, whatsapp, teams, banking apps, spotify, google maps, etc. But there is no browser, email, youtube, tiktok, etc., either.
2.
by stbede 8d ago
What we care about and what the exorbitant privilege is referring to can be different things.
3.
by stbede 8d ago
Exactly. This is what the letter should have focused on. The issue is not alignment, per se. If AI can do the workmanlike stuff at breakneck speeds, academia will decide between two options: 1) Keep the average mathematician employed doing
4.
by stbede 8d ago
Wouldn't the more relevant point of comparison be the difference between long-term government bonds. The exorbitant privilege is that it's easier to fund US government debt because trade in USD means that large institutions around
5.
by stbede 8d ago
I agree. But my frustration is that there is no argument why AI should be aligned with mathematics. Why can't the mathematicians that value their own community remain aloof from what AI companies are doing. Can't they continue t
6.
by stbede 9d ago
Fair enough. But I think you may be conflating an explanation with an excuse. I think your root cause analysis may be fruitful for explaining why they wrote the letter. But I don't think that it excuses what they actually wrote.
7.
by stbede 11d ago
You and I aren't having the same conversation. You want to psychologize people's motivations, including my own, which is interesting to speculate about but off topic. I want to discuss the arguments made in the letter, the argumen
8.
by stbede 12d ago
Yes. Everything I've said and want to say is about this letter. Let me try to summarize this discussion in a way that an overly obsequious AI would never dare: - I argue that the arguments in the letter are bad. - You mysteriously assi
9.
by stbede 12d ago
I think that's just oblivious to what mathematicians actually care about when it comes to "name and fame." Basically no one outside of the mathematics community and its periphery knows who someone like Terrence Tao is, and th
10.
by stbede 13d ago
That far from charitable. My arguement is: A) According to the letter, mathematicians most value: - mathematicians developing their mastery - developing mathematics that provides insights and can be eventually synthesized down conceptually
11.
by stbede 13d ago
I don't understand why you can't just articulate the point yourself. It took me a while to guess what you were getting at. Could it be the quote: Our egos are powerful things. They want to believe that we’re each better than we a
12.
by stbede 13d ago
I might want to. Would you explain its relevance here and make a pitch for me doing so.
13.
by stbede 13d ago
Here's the thing. I read the letter. I'm considering it on its merits. And it has very little. They made great arguments for why it's a good thing that the mathematical community operates the way they do. They could have made
14.
by stbede 13d ago
Shouldn't the AI companies know by now that all mathematical knowledge belongs to the mathematical community? Hopefully this letter knocks some sense into them.
15.
by stbede 13d ago
I think the letter is misguided. So what if the AI labs are misaligned to math? - But they announced a result before a paper was peer reviewed! The horror! So what? The mathematics community can read the paper once it is written up. - But t
16.
by stbede 13d ago
That's a completely different matter. And does it matter to my point if they were successful or not? That's ex-post analysis. It seems clear that ex-ante, they wanted this to be a marketing win. The original poster complained that
17.
by stbede 14d ago
The opposite of malicious is not honest. Nor do I see how motivations fall on a binary. The user submitting an AI proof can be honest, or malicious, or careless, or overzealous, or incompetent, or a whole bunch of other things. As far as th
18.
by stbede 14d ago
What I'm not seeing reported on much is if the result reveals any new techniques or ideas that advance mathematics - which is what we usually hear is the reason to work on these problems. Or does the resolution of NS just add a fact to
19.
by stbede 14d ago
Boo hoo. OpenAI got the result only days ago. It makes perfect sense for them to take the win in marketing, and it's fine if they take a few months putting together the paper and present it more productively later. The scientific commu
20.
by stbede 1mo ago
In the hypothetical, when he becomes famous, someone making prints for $20 is $1,980 less than what he would be getting now so the damage is $1,980 per print. Both the purchasers of the print and the photographer are part of society. Under
21.
by stbede 1mo ago
I won financially. Encyclopedia sets were expensive.
22.
by stbede 1mo ago
Try "I am not old enough to have seen"
23.
by stbede 2mo ago
Am I wrong to think that because equal and opposite forces are always present, names have to be given to phenomena that are not present in the formal math itself?
24.
by stbede 2mo ago
I agree with the example of human agents because we can acknowledge concepts like will, choice, agency, etc. But none of those ideas are present in Newton's laws of motions.
25.
by stbede 2mo ago
And at the speed at which the solar system is orbiting the galaxy, I don't know that it would even look much like like the planets are orbiting the sun.
26.
by stbede 2mo ago
How do you feel about Aristotelian realism? Makes more sense to me than nominalism/conceptualism ever has.
27.
by stbede 2mo ago
> The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. Or you can put the satellite in the back of a truck and back the
28.
by stbede 2mo ago
$10 isn't $10 everywhere. There are still places in the country where $10 feels expensive. You may want to add a filter for even cheaper meals. On the other end, increasingly, even fast food combos are more than $10. It would be helpfu
29.
by stbede 3mo ago
Being paid in stock is a form of income, which is taxed when given and which is separate from the additional capital gains tax levied when the stock is sold. Regardless, even if different forms of compensation are taxed different, the point
30.
by stbede 5mo ago
I probably have a better house in Utah than many Silicon Valley CEOs have in the Bay Area, but they have better weather.

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