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
Haffner’s books played a major role in my learning about the Nazis as a teenager growing up in Germany. Highly recommend his books.
If your application requires AGI but you haven’t built it, you haven’t succeeded.
That’s not to mention that AGI, like any other person, would need to consent to its “application.”
“Becoming better at pretending to think is not the same as coming closer to being able to think.“
What's needed is an explanation of how the human mind works—not an ever better imitation of any of humans' behaviors.
“[...] the ability to imitate a human imperfectly or in specialized functions is not a form of universality. It can exist in degrees. Hence, even if chatbots did at some point start becoming much better at imitating humans [...], that would still not be a path to AI."
GPT-3 has proven to be a jump to a much better chatbot than any previous chatbots. So, is it a step toward AGI? No. The explanation is in "The Beginning of Infinity," chapter 7:
“Those little smileys were a symptom of the social angst spawned by the introduction of e-mail” 😂
:-) :-) :-)
@heartbreak_sith
"Doesn't say sh!t" about owning guns? It says right there, in the image you posted, "[...] the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Even such evidence wouldn’t cut it. What would be needed is a good explanation of why coercion is morally superior to freedom in this case, and why what coercion “achieves” can’t be done through freedom.
Much of what Rand wrote about—the hatred against white people (and now also straight and male ones especially), the moral inversion of the fight for racial equality, etc—could all be written today. The recent rise of SJWs has caused a big moral regression.
She then quotes from the NYT again:
“If the individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and the Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses—those do not, in fact, exist, except as figures of speech.”
Indeed.
Later on, in the same vein:
“It is an ironic demonstration of the philosophical insanity and the [...] suicidal trend of our age, that the men who need the protection of individual rights most urgently—the Negroes—are now in the vanguard of the destruction of these rights.”
“That absurdly evil policy is destroying the moral base of the Negroes’ fight. Their case rested on the principle of individual rights. If they demand the violation of the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own.”
She points out the blatant irony:
“But that is the principle of the worst Southern racist who charges all Negroes with collective racial guilt for any crime committed by a [single] Negro, and who treats them all as inferiors on the ground that their ancestors were savages.”
“Since these questions are not to be considered, it means that that white laborer is to be charged with collective racial guilt, the guilt consisting merely of the color of his skin.”
I’ve been thinking this for a long time. It’s nice to read her putting it so well.
“It demands that a white laborer be refused a job because his grandfather may have practiced racial discrimination. But perhaps his grandfather had not practiced it. Or perhaps his grandfather had not even lived in this country.”
“Consider the implications of that statement. It does not merely demand special privileges on racial grounds—it demands that white men be penalized for the sins of their ancestors.”
According to Rand, some black leaders at the time went even further by claiming that if a white man and a black man are equally qualified for a position, the black man should be hired. She comments:
“This particular demand was too much even for the “liberals.” Many of them denounced it—properly—with shocked indignation.”
Alas, that part is different today. She quotes the NYT (!) as saying that quota systems are themselves discriminatory. No shocked indignation there today.
“They are demanding that racial quotas be established in regard to employment [...] Today [1963], it is not an oppressor, but an oppressed minority group that is demanding the establishment of racial quotas. (!)”
It’s very interesting to learn that the SJW meme of colorblindness being evil is not new, but was already around in the sixties. I suspect it originated through meme proxies and then stuck around largely dormant until recently.
“Instead of fighting for “color-blindness” in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming that “color-blindness” is evil and that “color” should be made a primary consideration. Instead of fighting for equal rights, they are demanding special race privileges.”
She continues further down: “[Negro leaders, instead] of fighting against racial discrimination, they are demanding that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. Instead of fighting against racism, they are demanding the establishment of racial quotas.”
“America has become race-conscious in a manner reminiscent of the worst days in the most backward countries of nineteenth-century Europe. The cause is the same: the growth of collectivism and statism.”
Rand wrote this in VoS in 1963. Thanks to SJWs it could be said of today.
Claiming "before money, there was no poverty" is like claiming "before doctors, there was no cancer."
So many have it the wrong way. It is okay to use (appropriate) force on violent people. It is not okay to use any force on peaceful people. But the latter happens in this video.
Antifa, China, large parts of the left, etc oppose both notions and want to invert them. Disgusting. twitter.com/liberty_deity/…
Yeah he sounded like tail tucked between legs. Very unlike him.
I’m guessing it was the mob, not Spotify.
@MaryLizThomson @AlexEpstein @robert_zubrin
What could I say to change your mind?
@MaryLizThomson @AlexEpstein @robert_zubrin
Only more evidence of our extraordinary ability to cope with it then, isn’t it?
Good. Please take this all the way to the supreme court if you have to, and get a ruling as beautiful as the recent one for Pennsylvania. twitter.com/KevinKileyCA/s…
For clarity, people would be mistaken to conclude that this was caused by Covid, without a good explanation of how and why that happened.
Warum dürfen Schüler nicht zuhause bleiben, wenn sie nicht in die Schule gehen wollen? (Mit oder ohne Corona)
RT @iamdevloper:
the "must be willing to relocate to SF" stipulation just got a whole lot more laughable during COVID than it already was
@kayleighmcenany @pnjaban @JoeBiden
Will the PA government be held accountable and reimburse businesses for the damages and lost revenues?
@opti__mystic
I address Bostrom's arguments regarding "superintelligence" and the related ideas behind the "control problem" & "value-alignment problem," "common-good principle," etc, in chapter 8 of my book "A Window on Intelligence."
@opti__mystic
[There] can be only one type of person: universal explainers and constructors. The idea that there could be beings that are to us as we are to animals is a belief in the supernatural.
Deutsch addresses Bostrom's simulation argument in chapter 18.
@opti__mystic
Bostrom's "Superintelligence" came out after Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity," but in chapter 9, Deutsch writes:
Agreed. But did you know that you now spend a quarter of your time working for a man who makes investment decisions based on race?
RT @PessimistsArc:
Oh no Tristan honey... #TheSocialDilemma https://t.co/MHeyuOYywp
Very interesting case of (presumably fatal) buggy animal programming. twitter.com/biolocousb/sta…
RT @Bunny_Godfather:
Someone put Blade Runner 2049 music to drone footage of San Francisco on 9/09/20 credit to Terry Tsai (YouTube) #BayA…
It should be no forced taxation. They’re stealing from you.
RT @DouglasKMurray:
‘What we all know.’ This is the UN on ‘social justice’ theory. Some people still pretend such theory has only corrupted…
Neo-Darwinism is about the non-random differential reproduction of replicators (i.e., genes in biological evolution), not about competition between individual organisms.
@MagnetThatcher @DavidDeutschOxf
But for a general-purpose application, it may be difficult, because there is no special-purpose brain region for pink elephants floating in space (or summoning one's Tesla).
@MagnetThatcher @DavidDeutschOxf
For the case of driving, that may be okay, since, judging by the article, the corresponding nerve signals go through brain regions dedicated to movement.
@MagnetThatcher @DavidDeutschOxf
Then there's the issue that different people can have denotationally equal but structurally different ideas, and because of their different structure, they'd result in different neuronal patterns despite being qualitatively the same thoughts.
@MagnetThatcher @DavidDeutschOxf
Yes, but maybe the same neuronal patterns correspond not only to specific thoughts of that chair, but also to thoughts of pink elephants floating in space. And anything “in between.”
@MagnetThatcher @DavidDeutschOxf
Very interesting article. I wonder if different (unrelated or even contradictory thoughts) can sometimes result in the same neuronal patterns (I'm guessing those are what you mean by "thought pattern"). I guess there are infinitely many of those for every thought.
Disgusting. Big problem that the government there even has the power to enact and enforce these restrictions in the first place. twitter.com/VictoriaPolice…
@TahaElGabroun @DavidDeutschOxf
Yes, of course. No permission required to reference ideas!
RT @Mlaoliwolf:
“the mind contains an arena of self-replicating ideas.”
An interesting foray in Neo-Darwinism theory of the mind, inspired…
An evaluation of Neuralink's latest presentation with the help of some of Popper's and @DavidDeutschOxf's ideas. Errors mine.
In short: Neuralink could save time and make more money and progress using Popperian ideas! How? Listen in:
@p_dinheiro @andrewdoyle_com @WatchRatio
this one is either completely nuts or parody
Good. The political system is correcting errors.
RT @dvassallo:
Rehash: Forms of self-employment income 👇
🟢 info products: volatile, potential for extreme ROI.
🔴 product as a service: sl…
They deleted the tweet. Luckily, somebody archived it: archive.is/IImBY
How much did you need to spend on advertising for your products to really pick up?
@clairlemon @Quillette @jonkay
Those memes even spread into Germany and Austria. Makes no sense.
Bezos? Building companies. Making money. Delivering products people need. Making people around him rich. Staving off financial ruin after a divorce. Changing/expanding business models. Etc.
I'm guessing this is the profound evil that can be committed by good intentions.
@HeatherEHeying @HHMusicOfficial
How about letting him sleep?
A teacher’s union explicitly supports the (symbolic?) murder of the most successful man in history. twitter.com/CTULocal1/stat…
We see Howard getting back at Jimmy, Jimmy and Kim in his new office with the pillars, and Kim worrying about going to jail... season 6 foreshadowings? 😳
Comrade Newsom is like a totalitarian parent. “The better your grades, the more screen time you’ll get.”
Not to mention that businesses are just going to LOVE opening, closing, re-opening etc in rapid succession as the data change. twitter.com/GavinNewsom/st…
@MagnetThatcher @RichardDawkins
As for the last point, I guess the "amounts" of evolution compare roughly as follows:
"intra-ideas" >>>> memes >> genes
@MagnetThatcher @RichardDawkins
Here are some reasons:
- Vast majority of "intra-ideas" never become memes
- I don't think memes are essential to explaining how the mind works (only its biol. evolution)
- Vast majority of the evolution occurring on Earth is that of "intra-ideas," not memes or genes
@RJsnda @ks445599 @ella_hoeppner
I think spreading better epistemology and Popperian ideas is a good start.
@MagnetThatcher @RichardDawkins
It's a good idea, but I think I'd prefer not to use the term "meme" so there is no risk of confusion.
@tjaulow @RichardDawkins
They are not necessarily unconscious. Don't know what you mean by "commuting."
@ks445599 @RJsnda @ella_hoeppner
Yes, I'm saying that it's not obvious. Maybe it's true—maybe it's not—but either way, it's not obvious (because nothing is).
@RJsnda @ks445599 @ella_hoeppner
Ok. Popper wrote about the dangers of labeling something as "obvious." The truth is hard to come by. And once found—though we can never know we have found it—it can easily be lost again.
@RJsnda @ks445599 @ella_hoeppner
Are you familiar with Popper's work on manifest truth?
Has anyone explained how and why head trauma leads to depression, or have they merely pointed out correlations of proxies they labeled "depression"?
My overall intention is to draw attention to the fact that reductionism of the sort "it's ALL hardware/neurons/chemicals" are dehumanizing because they disregard creativity, and presumably they miss the vast majority of the causes of mental issues: software/bad ideas.
For some cases, that may be so. I don't deny that hardware issues can sometimes lead to mental issues—though I think even in those cases, the mental issues are ideas meant to interpret one's hardware problems.
@ella_hoeppner @moreisdifferent @bnielson01
Not to mention that induction is impossible.
It can help if that increased processing speed is accompanied by an increased error-correction rate for faster knowledge creation. Also, the mind may conjecture ideas with bad performance characteristics.
But yes, making a month's worth of progress in a day is possible!
But depression and anxiety are themselves states of mind.
Maybe if a hardware issue impedes one's problem-solving ability.
It's not trendy not to force "the right" ideas onto kids.
My conclusion for now: look to Musk for engineering insight, look elsewhere for philosophical insight (particularly Deutsch and Popper). This presentation is a good example of how much money and time Musk could save and how much more money he could make with better philosophy :)
Unfortunately, I doubt Musk is available to discuss any of this. I think the best thing that could happen is if by some chance he reads David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity" and takes the ideas in the book seriously.
Software is an emergent phenomenon that can be explained independently of the hardware. Perhaps it's not surprising that a neuroscience company has a hardware bias, but these are important errors that could be fixed by—you guessed it—philosophy.
The quote is also evidence that Musk is definitely a reductionist, because he throws together concepts like AI (which is software) and the limbic system and cortices (which are hardware), which doesn't make sense.
In the wannabe-AGI-slaveholder department Musk is heavily influenced by Bostrom.
Do you see how much pessimistic prophecy suddenly found its way into a meeting of otherwise optimistic celebration of engineering progress? Existential threats? Society-wide planning? Etc.
"And so I think it's going to be important from an existential-threat standpoint to achieve a good AI symbiosis, and that's what I think might be the most important thing that a device like this achieves."
"...and having that symbiosis be good such that the future of the world is controlled by the combined will of the people of Earth. That's obviously going to be the future that we want, presumably, if it's the sum of our collective will..."
"On a species-level basis I think it's going to be important for us to figure out how we coexist with advanced artificial intelligence [and] achieving some kind of AI symbiosis where you have an AI extension of yourself, like a tertiary layer above the limbic system and cortex.."
Okay the live stream is over so I can now rewind to the corresponding passage and quote him properly: