It surprises most of us because we have been brain-washed to think that science is good, myths are bad, to think that we can ignore our biology, gender, nature etc. How does relativity matter to human life? Why is the world filled with nukes, plastics, global-warming gases, GM foods, confusion about gender and biological roles? It's time to realize that the progress we made is actually degenerate and regressive from the view point of biological adaptation which is the only goal for humans.
And I don't think that Scott Aaronson's comment makes philosophical sense - Why do we need to extend our senses to know the truths beyond our world? An ant doesn't care to know whether there is a coast line or mountain ahead at 100km distance. It has no business with those distances. There is nothing wrong in imagining Jupiter as a humanified god and its moon as his wife. This is basically tying back things which are outside of human reach to things that make sense in our world. That's how it should be, instead of saying that Jupiter is a big ball of gas or rock. That doesn't matter to our life and evolution on Earth. Speed of light doesn't matter too. 99.99% of the Science and progress we made is unnecessary and childish work done by people who have luxury of not needing to bother about their food and family. And the catastrophic results of such childish "inventions" by these rich kids (scientists) was imposed on global populations. These so called inventions are Oil, Plastics, industrialization, racial mix and related conflicts, urbanization, weaponry, weird social trends, climate changes, general degradation of human biological abilities, natural quality of food, biological diversity and so on. And what did Science achieve? We proudly announce that we busted the dangerous myths enjoyed by our ancestors!!
Oh, You discovered that Earth is not the center of the universe and Sun doesn't go around Earth? Please go a step further to realize that there is no absolute frame of reference that shows what goes around what. Earth going around the Sun is just as equally true as Sun going around Earth. And yes, there is nothing wrong in saying Earth is the center of universe as you can claim any place in the universe as "the center". And you spent countless amount human energy and money to establish the half-truths like this, and call it Science and progress?
Why separate noise from signal? Why isn't AI-generated stuff seen just as valuable as human-written one? When you fill the world with plastic, you need to evolve to eat plastic. When you surround yourself with AI-produced stuff, then you should learn to respect it.
First of all, evaluating someone based on what they wrote or said or did, is nonsense.
What's the objective of tests in education? to test human biological abilities of memorizing and analyzing? But in real life, these abilities are always augmented by tech. It is like testing your prospective employees for their running skills, though they don't really need running to commute.
Just another poetic essay sounding elite columnist style, more focused on making it an exciting reading and failing to make any point at all.
All of these new-age tech "innovations" boil down to making money from advertisements by attracting consumer crowds to the new town-squares filled with freebies (internet-search, photo-share etc). And you ragard these as great as someone who invented steam engine or electricity.
ChatGPT, like bitcoin, can only help bad things. AI would confuse people and throw the world into abyss of distrust, paranoa and fear.
These so-called inventors and great minds are childish and greedy fools, raised in peace-time affluence, never having an opportunity to mature, with no exposure to ethics or struggle, with no understanding of foundations of humanity and it survival needs.
There is a story in Pancha-tantra (Folklore stories of India), which talks about follish but genious brothers who brought a dead tiger to life using their skills, only to be killed by the tiger.
You award Nobel to science leading to nuclear weapons and the world is now gripped in more fear. You sing praising these money-hungry tech billionairs as if they give a shit to human progress. Crappy media.
The same crappy media makes people think it's a good foreign policy to put fires around the world, take sides in feuds between brothers and neighbors (dozens of cases), sell piles of weapons, claim victories etc. Shame on you, science, media and the childish voters.
One reason why it sucks as background is, you generally don't find purple as background color in a natural setting. White (snow), blue (water), green (landscape), grey (clouds) - are all good choices for background because they are associated with natural settings. A strong color such as purple distracts the attention from the foreground, defeating the purpose of the background.
You need to remember that the entire crypto crowd (dev, preachers, fans, intellectuals, philosophers, gamblers, ...) are all a tiny, tiny minority on this planet. Tokens?? Are they some round plastic pieces given at fun rides? If they are so damn well-known, why is not a house-hold name such as amazon, netflix, facebook etc? Come out of your silly crypto rabbit hole and experience the real world.
What's this fuss about parties and rules? If these are biggest issues you worry about, then your country is being run by some very good politicians who ensured that there are no other bigger problems for you to worry about.
I don't see any wrong in what he says. So, crypto is designed for a future where all the institutional banking fails and where political borders don't exist and where no transparency is required. All that it offers is less fee and speed. First of all such future dreamed by the cypto pundits doesn't exist. And many people don't mind paying a little commission to a bank doing my payment, so that they can call the bank and hold it accountable. All this is taken away in the crypto model just for the sake of avoiding a small fee and delay. How many times does an average person transacts across border for which their fiat currency doesn't work or too difficult to use? crypto has too little to offer at the cost of enabling crime and lack of transparency. Why all this is so difficult to understand for these crypto geniuses?
> Start with the User Experience and work backwards to the technology you need.
I have a counter example. Founder of a very successful startup (early 2000's) once told me that they first built the technology (adding tracing to Java apps at run-time) just because it was interesting, without any clue if it can be useful to someone. Later they showed it to everyone and they got their first customer who agreed to try it (it required modification to JRE).