Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
Tweets
An archive of my tweets and retweets through . They may be formatted slightly differently than on Twitter. API access has since gotten prohibitively expensive – I don't know whether or when I'll be able to update this archive.
But in case I will, you can subscribe via RSS – without a Twitter account. Rationale
Hmm... how about half an hour of programming. And you?
@HeuristicAndy
We can only hope?! I was painting this as a nightmare scenario.
Some truth in that. Better: an open mind knows it’s fallible and seeks the truth by correcting errors.
There is no likelihood to truth. Truth is true. Explanations are either true or false.
Prediction: people will be forced to get the Corona vaccine, punishable by law. Those resisting will be branded as “grandma killers.” No mention of coercion, only outcomes.
Either CA or NY will be first state to implement this.
While the former is possible and the latter isn’t, the former refers to a process that happens after a conjecture has been created. Once created, we may deduce claims from a conjecture. But there is no process of inference that creates conjectures. That requires evolution.
Grammarly offers "inference" as a synonym for "conjecture." 😱
Rediscovered this classic and hilarious satiric piece: youtube.com/watch?v=dOOQ1Z…
.@nytimes you left a breakpoint somewhere in your JS on your website nytimes.com.
@HeuristicAndy @krlwlzn @ChipkinLogan @olliewaters
I sympathize btw that portraying it as a "career change" trivializes WW's issues. Notwithstanding, WW would not have had to point guns had the government not pointed theirs first, and he could have made his decisions safely, openly, legally.
@HeuristicAndy @krlwlzn @ChipkinLogan @olliewaters
As you know, CRists don't want a utopia. Nor is healthcare in Denmark free. Somebody pays for it at government gunpoint.
WW is (correctly) condemned for violent behavior, but the government somehow isn't. Neither of them should point the gun.
@SlaytonBenjamin @ChipkinLogan @olliewaters
This article says he abandoned her because he felt inferior. huffpost.com/entry/vince-gi…
@HeuristicAndy @ChipkinLogan @olliewaters
Not sure I follow. Are you saying teachers in Denmark are not as poor as Walter White?
Just had a great conversation with @ChipkinLogan and @olliewaters. Before Oliver joined, I remarked to Logan how Breaking Bad is a tragedy about government criminalizing drug use. In a voluntarist society, Walter White could have changed careers peacefully.
Last chance to pre-order my ebook/audio track "A Conversation with William Paley" at 50% off before it goes live tomorrow!
I am confident you will learn more about the mind from this 1hr conversation than from any machine-learning or AI course. :)
Calling it “reverse” is itself misleading. Judging someone by the color of their skin is universally bad in every direction.
A brief mention that creativity = ability to solve problems, then mostly induction and mistaking inborn knowledge for intelligence. No mention of Popper.
I enjoy Kurzgesagt's videos but this one is rather schlechtgesagt. As if Popper had never lived :(
Yes any complex ability that wasn't predicted and is way off the mark for any traditional program behavior would be a good indication.
Resisting to being meddled with is another good indicator (but all good replicators will do this by definition, so doesn't mean its AGI)
Because the leaked knowledge can be (need not be) dogmatic and result in preclusion of knowledge creation, thereby forcing the program down a certain path, at which point the program can't be creative anymore.
Oh, I wasn't coming from an "ableism" perspective and didn't mean it as a snarky remark. I appreciate your work, sir.
Yup that. Also recall BoI chapter 7 that the programmer is in no position to judge whether the program created knowledge or if its just iterating on the programmer's knowledge.
More leaked knowledge = more rigid program. It may not create any knowledge (worse: look like it does)
Oof this one could use a better color contrast.
Nice shot! Great visibility of Saturn and Jupiter with the naked eye these past couple of weeks, too.
If that's at all possible, it would be a good way to avoid leaking knowledge into the program. I have a hunch it's the early decisions in these types of programs that make or break genuine evolution of knowledge.
Ok. I wonder if there's a way the arrangement of particles could itself become code that influences further replication (like in RNA-World Hypothesis). If so, that code should automatically be subject to variation and selection without any additional programming effort.
As you can see in the video, the replication process is quite imperfect.
Good—what happens if you just leave this running for a long time (speed it up and let it sit for a few hours)? Does it create more targeted replicators by itself?
Thinking out loud: don't you already have mutations in the sense that different clusters emerge already?
Does this link work for you? amazon.in/Window-Intelli…
"A Conversation with William Paley"—Pre-order now while it's still 50% off!
I created a Gumroad account, where I'll share things I create in the realm of philosophy, AGI, and software engineering, and anything else I find interesting.
Follow me!
"Governor Gavin Newsom orders all California counties to shut down indoor restaurants, bars and movie theaters"
HOW does he have this dictatorial power?
@wildAnnieMol @johnnycanuckguy @billburr @theMMPodcast
Yes and about how brave actresses are.
@Juyan_Azhang
You didn’t. On the contrary, I probably sound dumb to 99% of people when I say that to study intelligence we should ignore the brain and ignore sense data, as I did in our conversation.
Your conclusion—that we need places where it’s okay to sound dumb—is true.
RT @TCSphilosophy:
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
— Dr. Seuss https://t.co/iAh29ir4q4
This new edition contains more thorough in-text references, fixed typos, and a brief comment on Constructor Theory, among other smaller changes.
An updated version of A Window on Intelligence with some significant errors and omissions corrected is now available.
Kindle users who have the first edition should receive an email from Amazon with the option to download the new one.
@alliero71811366 @ConceptualJames
The web archive would have preserved them anyway (had anyone stored them).
@alliero71811366 @ConceptualJames
I meant a link to the web archive (web.archive.org), which would have shown an archived version of her post (if it was public at the time).
Just because different websites report this doesn't mean she ever really posted it.
Revolution only leads to more violence. Piecemeal error correction is better.
Pass it on. twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/s…
I’m guessing 3 is a close second.
It’s funny because people get a bit freaked out when you ask them to think of a number between 1 and 10 and then you confidently ask them “was it 7?”
Your example of usually winning at Rock Paper Scissors reminded me of the following:
When asked to think of a number between 1 and 10, people don’t do this randomly either. They usually pick 7, because they don’t want to be too close to the halfway point.
It’s always funny when girls do their best to look cute and something goes wrong.
I have not listened to the full interview.
One of the interviewees is Dr (!) Charlotte Riley. From her website (southampton.ac.uk/history/about/…): "I am a feminist historian [...]"
Not a feminist and a historian. No, a feminist historian.
The tweet was deleted. Somebody had the good sense to archive it in time: web.archive.org/web/2020070611…
You can't play the video on there, but the full interview is available here: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0…
Was about to ask if you planned on open-sourcing it, good stuff!
This looks fake, even if it was reported here and there.
A web archive link to the post would be helpful.
@renovationgb @_Islamicat
Is ginger convert, not Islamicat himself.
Islamicat is usually put fat ginger converts out in sun as punishment ☀️
(Ab)using creativity to enforce the status quo. See BoI chapter 15&16.
These women are slaves of the static memeplex of wokeness. Change my mind. twitter.com/BBCSounds/stat…
RT @SwipeWright:
"A culture that rejects free expression as a value is a culture without a reliable mechanism for error-correction. We can…
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
The mind implements ideas as functions, which are computationally universal (see Lambda Calculus). Functions can represent explanatory knowledge, rules of thumb, behavioristic ideas... etc. Not all ideas in a mind are explanatory.
You is kidding right? How could you not is do this?
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
That one can derive predictions from explanations is one thing, but the purpose of the mind—to create those explanations—is another. It's a different focus.
Many schools of thought place too much emphasis on prediction and ~none on explanation, so the distinction is important.
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
Ah—daydreams (and "proper" dreams) are likewise produced by ideas. Such ideas may temporarily produce faux sense data, some more realistic-looking than others, which are then interpreted by other ideas and produce the sensation of the dream.
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
PS The amount of questions at once is a bit overwhelming. I'll be happy to keep answering if you ask one question at a time. In case it is helpful, you may also find many answers to your questions in my book: amazon.com/Window-Intelli…
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
Where do counterfactual sensations that fuels the reality simulator in the mind come from?
Not sure I understand.
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
Do problematic and problem free ideas have the same opportunity to replicate?
I conjecture yes.
The purpose of the mind is to predict the future?
No, see what KS said. Its purpose is to explain the world.
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
Ideas predict sensations and are refuted when they fail to?
You mean if the prediction does not come true? Then yes, the mind may consider those ideas refuted. But note that most ideas do not predict sensations. Most ideas aren't about sensations at all.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
It doesn't feel like my thought process is random [...]
Yes, it isn't. It has the appearance of design.
Is this just old ideas with free variables being reused, not creation of new ideas?
Maybe sometimes. But overall minds do create genuinely new ideas.
As a former employee and fan, I’m sad to see Apple devolving.
Racism is bad, yes. But the ends don’t justify the means. Tim spreads profoundly totalitarian concepts and sentiments in the name of good intentions.
I miss Steve. This wouldn’t have happened under him. twitter.com/tim_cook/statu…
@hollymathnerd @ConceptualJames
Yes you’re so right. Also, as a white person, I really shouldn’t be eating brown food.
Twitter’s code base isn’t public. So why advertise these changes? To signal how amazing and inclusive they are. twitter.com/TwitterEng/sta…
@TheOtherMarcus @tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
- Maybe?
- Yes
- Maybe?
- No, ideas don’t come to us through the senses
The majority of what? By what logic? Protection from what?
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
Is this process fast enough to explain how we learn new things?
Yes. Evolution in a mind happens orders of magnitude faster than gene evolution and even meme evolution.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
Where does the selection pressure come from?
From the scarcity of resources (brain's memory capacity and processing speed), competition between ideas for these resources, potential development of predatory ideas, and, most importantly, criticism (error correction).
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
Why are some replicas invoked more often than others?
Because they are better at getting themselves invoked. The details will vary depending on the idea in question.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
So, an idea can replicate when it is invoked and then not always perfectly to create variation?
Yes. Some ideas may mutate into passive replicators, much like some genes in biological evolution, in which case they replicate whenever an associated idea is invoked.
@SlaytonBenjamin
Including all of a mind's ideas in its copy is a little bit like if organisms inherited characteristics their ancestors acquired during their lifetime.
@SlaytonBenjamin
Yeah if the copy includes all of your ideas then you copy your entire being. But if you copy only the mind's scaffold—the basic building blocks—then you have a child.
I think the former would happen rarely and was thinking in terms of the latter when I wrote the previous tweet.
@tjaulow @AW43755181 @ella_hoeppner
Yes--though I want to stress once more that the theory is not about memes. I think there are rational and anti-rational replication strategies within minds, too, but the corresponding ideas aren't necessarily memes.
A “purely rational” idea would indeed have a hard time spreading through a mind’s “purely anti-rational” idea pool, but changes happen gradually. A mutation might make an idea slightly less anti-rational. Maybe it can still spread. Repeat, etc.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
How much of [them are] needed for a replica to be created?
That depends on the idea's implementation and its memory and performance characteristics.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
How does an idea claim [them]?
Mostly by being invoked. + potentially through other ideas’ side effects, which may cause beneficial changes in the environment.
@TheOtherMarcus @ella_hoeppner
What resource are replicating ideas competing for?
Several. The brain's memory storage and processing power, and attention of the mind's meta algorithm to get themselves invoked. Probably other things, too, depending on the implementation details of the idea in question.
Note also that the theory is not about cultural environments in the sense of memes or society but about the dynamics within a single mind.
The neo-Darwinian theory of the mind does not reject realism or the notion of objective, absolute truth. Ideas are still either true or false.
A true idea may spread through a mind--or not. It depends on whether that mind values truth-seeking.
An epistemologist is a mind trying to understand itself.
It is a mind trying to become self-referential.
Once self-referential, it can copy itself. E.g. onto a computer.
.@ella_hoeppner joined me on the podcast to talk about how Popperian epistemology influenced her intelligence research, her theory of AGI called "CTP Theory," the role of replicators (or lack thereof) in the mind, and much more. Enjoy.
Meaning: they’re going to fire white people for being white.
They’re confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.
I predict that in the next few years covert corporate racism against white people will become as overt as it has in some non-corporate circles. twitter.com/kfc/status/127…
The list of companies pushing the woke agenda is getting longer. We can’t avoid using ALL of Apple, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
I feel silly even posting this on Twitter.
Serious question: what to do? Where to go? twitter.com/jtLOL/status/1…