chronofar · HackerTrans

2 maanden geledendiscuss

More interesting than arguing a jumble of electrochemical reactions have taste? That may seem more readily familiar but is no less strange if you prod at it. Nonetheless it’s difficult to argue either don’t produce output that has qualities of discernment (ie taste).

chronofar

3 maanden geledendiscuss

Perhaps you answered your own question. I think our confusion sometimes stems from assuming those in charge must want to benefit that which they are charged with stewarding.

chronofar

2 jaar geledendiscuss

> And yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that?

Easily: there are far more non-employee owned companies than employee owned. Thus this isn’t a preference at all, it’s merely the availability of the market.

Now you could say that entrepreneurs who start companies have a preference for non-employee owned, thus explaining the aforementioned market allotment. Again that’s pretty easy to explain, because of course such an entrepreneur would give up ownership in an employee-owned arrangement. It’s also just the de facto paradigm most are aware of in news cycles and business schools, and is easier to setup and support.

chronofar

2 jaar geledendiscuss

I think the evidence is that, on the whole (since we’re broadly referring to “people” and obviously there is tremendous diversity contained within), people do not hate each other, they hate the “other” team (whatever that may be). We’re wired for in/out group think to such a high degree that it’s incredibly easy to dial in division and purpose it to some end.

Two individuals in a room are more likely to find common ground than hate until you bring up the right sport they happen to be on opposing teams for.

chronofar

2 jaar geledendiscuss

> but regulation and liability has made it impractical to develop a modern engine.

Can you go into more detail about this? What regulation/liability specifically has stifled modern engine development? And is the answer deregulation? Or more carefully applied regulation of a different sort?

I think specifics are critically important for this kind of thing. General rhetoric is often “too much regulation” or “not enough regulation,” but what we usually want is “the correct regulation to align incentives,” which is often different for different cases.

chronofar

2 jaar geledendiscuss

I’m at the other end, I think the show suffered due to its insistence on querulous characters as a means to pathos, but was kept afloat by its wit and humor (much of it indeed “wacky”). That is of course very much a personal preference thing, but I couldn’t connect with much of the darker side of the show, even while I admired much of its execution.

As others have said though, it definitely gets better as the seasons roll on, along both the humor and drama fronts. The final season has many of the funniest and most poignant moments of the show.

chronofar

2 jaar geledendiscuss

I believe this was likely referencing your topic of confusion there to at least some degree:

> Historically I think Svelte went too far into magic territory, where it's not 100% clear why things work a certain way, and that's something that we're rectifying with Svelte 5.

Svelte 5 uses a different approach to reactivity using runes: https://svelte.dev/blog/runes

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Yes I noted it doesn't answer the "hard" problem explicitly in both of my replies here on this thread. Indeed, the very reason it is called the "hard" problem is b/c it very well seems perhaps unsolvable (though this is certainly debatable, but this is the very etymology of the term).

Your actual stated questions (why am I me and not someone else, etc) are in no way part of the "hard" problem's formulation, and are indeed easily answered by materialism as I noted.

Perhaps take a look at the wiki article on the hard problem: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Sure, none of what you said there would lead to the conclusion that the "experience is not something that really happens," though it's also possible there's a just a failure of communication here and I'm not understanding what you meant.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Completely sidesteps which question?

It answers very clearly these questions posed by the person I was responding to:

> why I am currently occupying the body that I am as an observer, and not another one, or perhaps even none.

It definitely does not answer the "hard" problem of consciousness, which is what you're alluding to and which I specifically and explicitly said it didn't answer.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

The experience is internal, the body (the limb that's missing) is external to the experience. The confabulatory experience of "I don't want to move" is an internal experience and cannot itself be an illusion, it's simply an incorrect assessment of the actual state of the body.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Materialism, which by my reading has the most evidence going for it, solves these particular questions rather easily. Your experience as an observer is the result of your brain. It's not another one or none b/c those aren't your particular brains.

This doesn't solve the "hard" problem, it's still quite mysterious how exactly and at what point neuronal mappings become sentient, but it does leave you without having to wonder the particular questions you asked there.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

> So, they think they are having one experience, but they are wrong about their own internal experience: in fact, they are not moving that limb because they can't.

I think it's rather the opposite, they aren't wrong about their internal experience, it's just that their internal experience doesn't match the objective reality of their body (which in this sense is external).

I think it is indeed entirely possible that our self-model can fool us about the realities of various situations, even those with our own body/emotions/etc, but I'm not sure how one could then derive the conclusion that the experience doesn't exist. It would just be instead that the experience is rather inaccurate/confabulated.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

> not because it "thinks" but because the way it's wired it's (nearly - barring solar radiation, I suppose, which incidentally also goes for cells) inevitable that it will react to a stimulus in a predefined way (even though the way cells react to stimuli is far more advanced than a CPU)

I think these are likely different only by way of their level of complexity. We simply substitute a word like "think" when the reactions to stimuli are far too complex and numerous for us to track fully. But ultimately said "thinking" is made up to many, many cells following those same stimulus/reaction patterns.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

I don't think they're as small as you're saying. There have been multiple well documented incidents with 737 MAX that have not been with the A320. Maybe you think it's small enough to not worry about, said incidents are enough for me to want to avoid that aircraft entirely. Absolute risk is certainly still low, but I'll take the safer in comparative risk any day there.

Paying attention to planes and risks of other forms of transport are not mutually exclusive.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

I played Cyberpunk 2077 after BG3, and though the production values and story are very strong it feels a bit like a walking simulator after the gameplay richness BG3 offered. The RPG elements feel more or less meaningless in comparison, as though I could make most any dialogue or leveling choice and it'd scarcely matter. As a result I feel very much like a passenger in a very long and mildly interactive movie.

It's an interesting experience, a situation where I can acutely detect the bar getting moved for what I expect a game to be. I hope recent progressions in AI will bring us more interactive stories a la BG3 in glossy and well-funded packages a la Cyberpunk 2077.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

> My point is it has no more depth than "I will earn money and give it to causes that make the most good", which is just "do good" with a materialistic twist.

This is just one particular angle some folks take. It's not by any means the only, or even primary, path EA advocates for. It is of course the one you'll find high earners parading around as an ostensible reason for their wealth creation given it allows self-interest to appear altruistic (which is not wholly unreasonable, those are not opposites and have some overlap, but it also is likely touted far more than exercised).

> If every member of EA has different approaches and opinions, and some of its biggest proponents are scammers, what is EA really bringing to the table?

Its biggest proponents are not scammers, there are just scammers who happened to have claimed to be part of EA. The biggest proponents are probably William Macaskill, Toby Ord, and Peter Singer, none of whom I've ever heard called anything close to a scammer (given how they live their lives that'd be a hard claim to make).

What it brings to the table is framing a more methodical and deliberate way to help others. People generally gravitate towards bleeding-heart altruism when they feel called to (disaster response, someone you know, etc), and various charities and causes are wildly different in the efficiency with which they use the resources given to them. This is to say nothing of careers one might choose for a multitude of reasons. This is all well and fine, but the point is one can also approach these things using informed objectivity to maximize contributions (by giving to charities where dollars go the furthest, to causes that are neglected, etc) rather than relying on subjective compulsion (which is going to be scattershot in efficiency).

Of course EA doesn't have a patent on this, it's just a label, but its one that helped popularize a mode of giving that would've largely remained hidden without it. The problem, as I've mentioned, is group mechanics end up co-opting the label which distorts the intent it originally carried. I truly mean no offense, but it seems from your comments you're just aware of the scandals of SBF or similar, not of the tenets of the actual founders of EA or its various missions outside of the aforementioned "earn to give." Perhaps peruse their site a bit: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

> And what evidence can one really collect of how to do the most good?

This is indeed a central question to EA, one various proponents attempt to answer in various ways.

> Someone claims (let's say to simplify they are not lying) to want to maximize their good in the world, for that to be accomplished they need to do something that somebody does not approve of (only caring about money, being rude to you, whatever it is).

Your assumption here appears to be that anyone subscribing to an evidence-based approach to do the most good (ie EA) must also inherently subscribe to the "ends justify the means." These aren't inextricably linked, it's quite possible to have one and not the other. One can quite rationally seek to maximize their altruistic effectiveness without sacrificing general decency in their day to day life. Morals usually have some nuance.

> This is a model. If the model is wrong you might cause more harm than good.

I'm not sure what your point is. This is true of most any practical application of a moral framework. EA is more about providing a methodology than providing answers.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Well I don't think that's really an interpretation so much as it is a strategy certain people may take, and as you're alluding to a very fallible one at that. It certainly could be a reasonable strategy to amass wealth and power and wield that for altruistic reasons, such a person does indeed stand to be much more effective than most. But of course people are quite corruptible and intentions can be fuzzy, so there's no guarantees that person will follow through, or that whatever they had to do to amass that money/wealth was worth it for the ultimate good.

Again one can look at the underlying tenets of such a creed and evaluate them for their conceptual merit without blasting the entire enterprise because some people abuse them for personal gain.

chronofar

3 jaar geledendiscuss

I find 2 (dangerous) scenarios to be most likely, one easier to reason about than the other:

1. Access is not uniformly distributed, thus some entity uses it to create immense inequality.

2. The AI becomes sufficiently intelligent and powerful that it looks at humans the same way we look at monkeys and treats us similarly (in other words, not overly concerned with human flourishing or even survival while commanding resources humans need to survive and flourish).

Neither of these necessarily mean "destroy" humans, and neither are by any means guaranteed (though #1 seems almost a foregone conclusion) but it could very well lead to an existential threat.

It's also possible we get a combination of the 2, wherein a subsect of humans can merge with AI but it is inaccessible to all.

There are other less existential concerns as well though, such as at what point does such a system become conscious and deserve rights? I'm not confident we really have any idea how to ascertain that, and bumbling into it could be tantamount to torture.