>So obviously, error correction with inputs/outputs is not the way we get to intelligence.
This doesn't seem to follow at all let alone obviously? Humans are able to reason through code without having to become a completely discrete computer, but probably can't reason through any length of assembly code, so why is that requirement necessary and how have you shown LLMs can't achieve human levels of competence on this kind of task?
Yes, this absolutely appears to be the main reason. Both in practical terms through birth control, but also through cultural terms in that it's now seen as a choice rather than as an obvious thing you do. To change this course, we probably need to change the culture first so that a birth control ban will be supported. That's currently not looking likely, so population collapse it is
Well you see that take over and over because that's what people actually believe in and feel and it's almost weird it has to be repeated over and over. Most protestors are not solidarity protestors. Most protestors show up when they're angry, when they feel like there's something obvious that can be changed and when people around you refuse to do the obvious thing. If you don't have these factors, you don't really get big protests.
For example I don't believe the US saw particularly large scale anti Germany protests surrounding WW2. Before the US joined the war people didn't really know what to do, while after they joined the war there was little disagreement. The Vietnam protests were much larger, because you have the internal conflict and something obvious to do: stop fighting.
People showed up for Gaza protests because they were angry and because they felt people around them, and particularly their governments were complicit in events. People do not show up for Iran because everyone agrees it's terrible but no one really knows what to do, so who are you going to be yelling at on the streets and what would you yell? Additionally events in Iran, relatively speaking probably triggers more hopelessness/confusion than anger, these are not exactly the best emotions to inspire protest
Advanced intelligence may have evolve multiple times, but wouldn't the origins of simpler intelligence lie much deeper in the evolutionary tree? If Octopi use neurons too, it seems obvious to me that rudimentary intelligence must have originated in or before the common ancestor of vertebrates, octopi and squids: flatworms. Or going back even further, perhaps even all the way to single cellular life which often seems to be able to react in complex ways to stimuli. Even our brains seem to still make use of forms of processing within the cell, isn't there intelligence in those cells? Or do we have some agreed on definition of intelligence that excludes these simpler forms?
You probably also need at least:
- Y does not appear when X does not
- We need an overwhelming sample size containing examples of both X and not X
- The experiment and data collection and trivially repeatable (so that we don't need to rely on trust)
- The experiment, data collection and analysis must be easy to understand and sensible in every way without leaving room for error
And as another commenter already pointed out: You can't really eradicate the existence of an unknown Z
And even if you do know there's causality (eg: the input variable X is part of software that provides some output Y), the exact nature of the causality can be too complex to analyze due to emergent and chaotic effects. It's seldom as simple as: an increase in X will result in an increase in Y
I'm curious if we'll see a world where computers could solve math problems so easily, that we'll be overwhelmed by all the results and stop caring. The role of humans might change to asking the computer interesting questions that we care about.
I'd like to recommend the author mentioned briefly in the article on this topic: Joel Mokyr. Unlike how this article paints him, Joel doesn't really point to a sole cause for the industrial revolution, but highlights a broad range of contributing factors, I thought it was very insightful.
While it's certainly not the only cause, high wages as a contributing factor to innovation in productivity does still seem like a plausible factor behind the industrial revolution. I suspect that these days in the west, labor is relatively so cheap compared to how much capital is around, that capital ends up being rather inefficiently used. Or at least, capital doesn't primarily go to production increases anymore. Perhaps there's avenues for gains here today
There's so much ambiguous context that goes into your average '=', even when just talking about your standard functions on real numbers. You'll see it being used for anything from:
- We've found these to be equal
- We're hypothesizing this to be equal
- These are approximately equal
- These are defined to be equal
- This is a way to calculate something else, whether it's equal is up to your philosophy (a^2+b^2=c^2)
- I'm transforming my function into something else that looks different but is exactly the same
- I'm transforming my function into something else that is the same for some of the stuff I care about (but for example does not work anymore for negative numbers, complex nrs, etc.)
- I'm transforming my function into something else, but it's actually a trapdoor, and you can't convert it back.
- This is kind of on average true within an extremely simplified context or we know it's not true at all, but we'll pretend for simplification (looking at you physics)
- We are trying to check if these two are equal
- This is equal, but only within a context where these variables follow some constraints mentioned somewhere else entirely
- This is equal, but, we're not going to say whether you can or can't replace the variables with functions or whether it supports complex nrs, negative nrs, non-integers, etc.
A lot of this is usually kind of clear from context, but some of these differences are a nightmare if you want to code it out
I wonder if there'd be any good way to confirm or rule out an ancient Martian civilization. Would Martian surface structures be able to last a few billion years? Or would Martian processes be able to make all of them disappear? And how about underground structures?
It's just a preference thing, I loathe the small program chaining style and cannot work with it at all. Give me a python script and I'm good though. I can't for the life of me imagine why people would want to do pseudo programming through piping magic when chaining is so limited compared to actual programming
Malnutrition is common in the west too, though it more often takes the form of unhealthy overeating. Lack of physical exercise and lives lived inside also contribute to poor every day health. You're right that sanitation and maternal health are better in the west, but those are things that tend to outright kill you if they get to you. The western style health issues are more constant and boring, leading to a different type of suffering.
Likewise with the institutional access and class system, the west has a more sort of guaranteed based level of societal support. But in India, chances are larger that you'll have a more local social support group of family and friends. In comparison the west is often much more isolated and lonely
Obviously I'd still prefer being poor in the west, but I think it's reasonable to say we also have forms of suffering here that are different in kind and sometimes worse than in India
Poverty in the west is often of a different kind than in India. Deep poverty in India can look living in self build house in a slum, with no or low and irregular income most of which goes straight into food and necessities.
Deep poverty in the west often looks like having a stable income and roof, but being completely overwhelmed by high unavoidable static costs such as rent, health insurance, loan paybacks, etc. Of course this style of poverty is also present in India
They're different kinds of experience. I suspect the former is more dangerous, scary and unpleasant, but the latter is more depressing and suffocating.
That's great for those already there. For those of us still partially stuck on .Net Framework it is anything but trivial.
And sure, upgrading from .Net 5 to 6 was trivial, but do you really anticipate it will now finally remain stable for eternity? Give it two or three minor versions and they'll have come up with something else to break 90% of your dependencies.
>I agree. It's like when MS tell everyone just to "upgrade to dotnet 6" or 7 or whatever!
The amount of global manhours MS is throwing down the drain by constantly ending support for their versions must be absolutely staggering. Updates are often far from trivial, and they expect everyone to keep up with their fast upgrades and tiny support windows? Long term support is only 3 years, are you kidding me?
This doesn't seem to follow at all let alone obviously? Humans are able to reason through code without having to become a completely discrete computer, but probably can't reason through any length of assembly code, so why is that requirement necessary and how have you shown LLMs can't achieve human levels of competence on this kind of task?