Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
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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
One of the better articles I’ve read on the lockdown issue.
One minor note: even if there were evidence that lockdowns work in terms of controlling the virus (the lack of which is rightly bemoaned), we’d still need a good moral explanation for why it’s okay to lock people down twitter.com/MichaelPSenger…
@mgoldingmd @ReachChristofer @Crit_Rat
Yes, although I'm not sure I'd put it in terms of a lack of careful thinking. I wonder if sometimes bad ideas can evolve in minds undetected, and so careful thinking couldn't always help. Then some of them may be bad enough they lead to what we call "illness." What do you think?
In that book, Deutsch gives a refutation of a similar idea which says that people acquire new behaviors by imitating them, which can't work because you need the idea/explanation of the behaviors to enact them in the first place. It has to happen in that order. Same with AGI.
Well, AGI is a creative process. But overall, yes, I think so. + I'd add emphasis on not imitating humans. explanation > imitation
A useful rule of thumb from Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity": If we can already build it, it has nothing to do with intelligence.
Without such an answer, advocating neural nets over some other arbitrary "learning" algorithm is irrational, because any of them might lead us to AGI.
The difference is that evolution is creative, neural nets aren't. And before we dump millions into neural-net-based AGI research, shouldn't we first have an answer to the question: why and how would AGI arise from neural nets?
There are self-replicating ideas in our minds as well, and all they "want" to do is spread, too, yet that's how we come up with solutions to problems. In evolution (mental or biological), solutions are always created without regard for the problem situation.
Because an explanation of the human mind is the program that's needed.
It's very rare to stumble upon an explanation by accident/by doing something completely different.
Instead of asking yourself, “how do I know if I’m choosing the right thing?”, ask yourself, “how can I make it as easy as possible to detect when I haven’t chosen the right thing, and then change paths accordingly?”
@mgoldingmd @ReachChristofer @Crit_Rat
Got it, but... in the case of earthquakes, ideas seem to have nothing to do with it, whereas in the case of mental issues, it makes sense to me that they'd have something to do with it.
If ideas are software, couldn't bugs lead to symptoms we associate with mental illness?
Is there a no-go theorem à la Balinski and Young that mathematically proves that there can be no perfect representation in groups of people using a sufficient number of dimensions such as gender, race, age, etc?
Ein grosser Verlust im Kampf gegen Verfechter der "sozialen Gerechtigkeit" war der Tag, an dem der Duden das Wort "cisgender" uebernahm.
I don’t think so, because the greater the danger, the easier it is to persuade people, and so no force is needed.
I think there are parallels there to the weakness of character of the people acquiescing in or even eagerly accepting government-enforced lockdowns.
@ReachChristofer @Crit_Rat @mgoldingmd
Why is that a worse explanation, and of what?
No, problems are, and in a broader sense creativity.
@ReachChristofer @Crit_Rat
I think what you’re describing would also be a software issue. Also, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “fear center” and “object recognition center”—it’s all ideas about what to fear and what objects to recognize.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Erfolg, die, wenn sie ernst genommen wird und wie aus der Geschichte nur allzu gut bekannt ist, nur zu Zwangsenteignung und Gewalt fuehren kann.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Daher haengt die urspruengliche Frage “Koennen wir uns die Reichen noch leisten” nicht nur vom angeblichen (und nicht existenten) Nullsummenspiel der Wirtschaft ab, sondern hat eine ganz ueble Grundeinstellung gegenueber wirtschaftlicher Taetigkeit und dem wirtschaftlichen...
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Die Vorstellung, dass die Wirtschaft angeblich ein Nullsummenspiel ist, hat schon zu viel Intoleranz und Leid gefuehrt, weil dann die Frage ist, auf wessen Kosten Fortschritt gemacht werden soll, und wem man Geld wegnehmen darf (den Reichen).
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Er ist das Resultat kreativer Arbeit und Zusammenarbeit und erfordert keine Kosten anderer. Die Wirtschaft ist kein Nullsummenspiel – da wird staendig etwas Neues erschaffen.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Es kann deshalb nicht stimmen, weil Reichtum nicht durch Umverteilung (von zukuenftig Armen zu zuekuenftig Reichen oder wie auch immer) erschaffen werden kann. Reichtum entsteht durch kreatives Schaffen ex nihilo.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Damit Ihr Zweifel stimmt, muesste man also irgendwie zeigen, dass Reichtum nicht erlangt werden koennte, ohne dass das auf Kosten anderer geschieht. Das kann aber nicht stimmen.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Um zu diesem Zweifel zu gelangen, muessen Sie also irgendeine Erklaerung gehabt haben (die ueber bloße Postulate aus der Literatur hinausgeht), von der Sie zu wissen meinen, dass Reichtum nur auf Kosten anderer erlangt werden kann.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Dass Sie kein Fachmann sind, macht uebrigens ueberhaupt nichts. Ich will mal versuchen, die Lage zu erklaeren. Sie zweifelten urspruenglich an meiner Aussage, dass der Reichtum eines anderen einen nichts koste.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Auch Bauarbeiter koennen sich ein Haus bauen, wenn sie den dafuer notwendigen Wohlstand erreicht haben (oder es finanziert kriegen). Und auch dieses Beispiel erklaert nicht, inwiefern Reichtum nur auf Kosten anderer erreicht werden koennte.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Angenommen, es ginge nicht ohne diese Mechanismen (was die auch immer sein moegen). Dann stellt sich erneut die Frage: Wieso muesste der eine arm werden, damit der andere reich werden kann?
Das ist uebrigens keine rhetorische Frage, sondern sie wendet sich direkt an Sie.
@michaelerich5 @b_hasanni
Naja, das ist ja nur die gleiche Behauptung, nur anders ausgedrückt. Also bleibt die Frage: warum ist das angeblich so, dass einer nur auf Kosten anderer reich werden kann?
Yes, instead of "kids," I should have said "kids and teens" or something along those lines. Basically everyone living at home having to bend to the will of their parent(s).
@mgoldingmd @Crit_Rat
I wonder if perhaps it's a bit like peacock tails in the biosphere—they bog the animal down in some ways, but the adaption managed to spread anyway. If an idea triggering a hallucination can spread through a mind, it will do just that.
@b_hasanni @michaelerich5
Ja, und das konnte man schon immer, denn der Reichtum eines anderen kostet einen nichts.
RT @ChipkinLogan:
As part of my constructor theory interview series, here's my chat with David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf about Constructor T…
Aren’t you a martyr! You’re lying. It’s clear this is at least in part about you.
Only problem is, C++ code is scarier looking than the monsters in the game ;-)
Kidding, of course—this is awesome.
Yes, and the need for certainty is what discourages many from ever starting a business.
I think you're right, calling it the main reason might be too much.
Conjecture: the main reason so many adults have trouble sleeping is because of trauma from forced bedtimes when they were kids.
Any refutations?
@MichaelPSenger @WillowWyse
The oldest tweet I could find with this text is this one: twitter.com/mhdksafa/statu…
Maybe that tweet started it? Is it a coincidence that the tweet's author, @mhdksafa, seems to work for the UN?
I’m guessing he’s somewhat widely read there. It wasn’t required reading for me—I think I first found one of his books in my mom’s bookshelf, then bought more later.
The opposite question seems more puzzling to me: how could one possibly raise happy, moral children with religion?!
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!