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teiferer

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teiferer
·5 dni temu·discuss
Easy. Let f be a continuous real function that is not differentiable somewhere. Let H be the truth value of the Riemann hypothesis. Define g(x) as "f(x) if not H else 0". Boom.

Reminds me of a homework exercise in theory of computation back in my uni days. Is the function "f(x) is 0 if H else 1" computable? Of course it is. It is either constant 0 or constant 1. We don't know which at this point, but f is a constant function in either case, so it is surely computable.
teiferer
·5 dni temu·discuss
But maybe it shouldn't.

I visit a friend in Sweden the other day. Her house was built in the 80s, nothing fancy, a simple one family house. There is a ventilation system integrated. Every room has an inlet and the air is sucked out of the bathrooms and kitchen. Even has a heat exchanger. It's a pretty simple system: no cooling and it's not really used for heating except for pre-heating the incoming outside air with the energy in the exhaust air. But it exchanges the houses air multiple times a day. She told me this has been standard there for decades. A few ventilation pipes integrated into the houses construction and that's it. It's even mandatory in multi tenant houses to check air flow every few years.

It's not just the AC crazy US where HVAC is standard. It's just common sense to have such a system if you care about your health.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
Unfortunately it will be hard for you to know how much of that effect is placebo. Unless you tested this with some kind of double-blind setup.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
That article's message is spot on.

If your CO2 levels are that high then you should fix the HVAC system and get it up to code or lobby for fixing the code. In many countries, a full air exchange in any office space every X hours is mandatory. In other countries that's optional and they need to get their act together.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
> The semantics (or lack thereof) of C and C++ can make this difficult to actually test for because the compiler is allowed to say "test passed" to any input leading to UB.

I get what you are saying but does this actually apply to a test? If the code under test is in one compilation unit and the test harness in another and they are linked together then the UB optimization issue ends at the API boundary and can't possibly make the test pass ..?
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
The point I was waiting for but never came, so I'll make it here, is: Will LLMs be able to synthesize? Sure they can learn calculi. Lambda, differential, whatnot. But will Claude eventually be able to come up with a genuinely new formalism? A new calculus? Sth that allows us to do things we couldn't do before?
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
But it's quite straight forward to identify that too.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
Though some people will train LLMs on it and if it's wrong then it will bias the training outcome towards that incorrectness.

But it's not the purpose of a blog post to ensure LLM training data has high quality.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
P vs NP all over again.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
Though this action drive (and the means he has) could be used for so much better. Humankind's top 10 problems don't include the issue of being confined to a single planet. That far down the list. The actual stuff gets you less attention from the tech crowd. Hunger. Poverty. Wars. Droughts. Mass extinctions. Climate change. Transmittable diseases. Cancer. Alzheimers. It's beyond me how one can reasonably argue (or defend somebody who does) that we really ought to focus on becoming multi-planetary.
teiferer
·7 dni temu·discuss
A charitable response would be the desire to push the boundaries of what is (or is considered) possible.

A less charitable response would be the desire for attention and approval to fill some kind of deeply rooted inferiority complext.

The latter view would also illustrate a similarity to Trump.
teiferer
·8 dni temu·discuss
I hope you are planning for a rotating base as a core feature.
teiferer
·8 dni temu·discuss
> The defense is of course that some people can do that - Musk did it, so why not?

If you think that Musk did his endeavors in order to become rich, you are likely mistaken.
teiferer
·8 dni temu·discuss
Depends what kind of market you are going after. Mass market for end users, sure, your argument applies. But there are lots of other types too.
teiferer
·10 dni temu·discuss
> representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either.

Truthful public debate is a central ingredient to democracy. If you don't have that then you are severely lacking in democratic qualities.

In other words, your statement is akin to saying "democracy can't work in an undemocratic environment", which is obvious.

If anything then the Brexit vote shows that democracy is lacking in the UK. Not having asked the people would not have made that better though.
teiferer
·10 dni temu·discuss
> For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions).

And that is an argument for agreeing to give more ways to go after you to that supposedly evil government?

I'd understand if people have high trust in government and argued "Yeah it could be misused, but I trust the government not to do that". That still misses the part that governments can change, but at least it's somewhat consistent.
teiferer
·10 dni temu·discuss
If you ask me personally, then no, we don't need to have such a vote.

But if the point is that country wide referendums should only be held for important questions but then exclude Brexit because "it's stupid" then that's an inconsistent argument. Surely the question whether the UK should leave the EU was a very important decision to make. That the vote went a certain way which you don't like does not make it less important of a decision.

Unless the actual point is "referendums should only be held for questions that are important and will go the way I like". You can have that opinion but then please be honest about it instead of disguising it with supposedly neutral musings about democracy. (Hint: Democracy does not mean that only what you want will happen.)
teiferer
·10 dni temu·discuss
> I've never required a backup, but it's good to be safe.

Indeed. And if you never test your recovery then you don't actually have a workable backup.
teiferer
·10 dni temu·discuss
That makes little sense in a highly competitive market where your competitive edge is waning by the minute. Tey dumped billions into creating the new models. Just letting them sit there just to see what the Chineee do makes no sense.
teiferer
·12 dni temu·discuss
> Mathematically, as lim temperature->0, the distribution gets spikier and spikier, the most likely sample goes to almost-but-not-quite infinity and the rest go to almost-but-not-quite 0.

That's not how limits work. As the temperature goes to 0, the rest goes to 0. That's it. The "almost-but-not-quite" is part of the "goes to".

Let's say f(x) = 3x+1. It's a continuous function. If we let x go to 10, f(x) goes to 31. Not "almost-but-not-quite 31". No, to 31. (If you don't have a continuous function then it's the same argument, but less intuitive to illustrate.)