RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
I've seen Musk and others doing I/O. I/O is not read/write. The difference is one involves with a widget and your mind that you could otherwise do with your hand and your mind, and the other involves directly reading or changing your mind. When Musk has a working, rigorously accurate lie detector, let me know.
That's like saying you need to have admin access to truly read/write. Just because we can't inspect every part of the memory of a computer, doesn't mean we can't read. You can't go from 'show me even weakly possible' to 'show me a rigorously accurate lie detector'. We can't make a rigorously accurate malware detector for a computer even with admin access!
But in fact, we do not know how to make significant positive changes to the human brain, and we have no idea if significant positive changes to the human mind are possible even in principle.
It's obvious that significant positive changes to the human mind are possible, you can prevent down's syndrome for instance. Or you can find genes that induce aggression and remove them. The Mao-a warrior gene for instance could be altered. That's not a silver bullet but it is something. Genes do things!
The simplest way to improve minds is not to be incestuous, that's a good start. If your benchmark for superior minds is 'everyone being supremely good people out of some morality fable' then sure we don't know how to do that, it would require very sophisticated understanding and practice of genetic alteration. But there's no qualitative difference between simple changes like 'make people less retarded' and 'human perfection', only quantitative differences in understanding and sophistication of approach.
Maybe those things will exist in the future, and alternatively, maybe Jesus Christ will appear in the sky tomorrow to judge the quick and the dead.
You shouldn't compare technologies grounded in progressive realized development to 2000-year old Jewish schizobabble. Wait a few centuries and if there's been no progress whatsoever on the interpretability of the brain (as with the return of Christ), then it might be time to reconsider how realistic these predictions are.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
Shame sure can enforce anti-social norms but the problem then is the norms, not the shaming. Every society does shaming in one way or another.
For instance, consider the complex built up in Britain that it was racist to look too closely into Pakistani grooming gangs or consider what exactly was going on with these naked, drunk 12-13 year old girl 'prostitutes' spending all this time with much older men, despite an otherwise powerful feminist apparatus. Shame works both ways. It can support cover-ups and abuse just as it can produce clean, cities full of orderly and considerate people.
Easy paths are all well and good but sometimes one has to do things that are hard, that's where shame comes in. 'Hard' can be doing very good or very bad deeds.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
Well we can be pretty sure genetics is the substance behind heredity. I see no reason to give up on mechanistic models when good progress has been made. It's just difficult. Certainly not helped by the amount of fear and politics involved. Gene-editing is functionally illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui
Reading the above wikipedia article is soul-destroying given the context of what we now know about other genetic bioresearch in China in the late 2010s.
To me, this assertion is evidence of the glaring blindspot which materialist rationalists such as Alexander have - they assume that materialism / genetic determinism is right, and then reason backward in order to make their fundamental assumptions fit the data. While the genetic framework is clearly helpful and has had some limited success in new medical breakthroughs, it's beyond obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that compared to the hype in the early 2000s, the new branches of genetic science have been a massive let down.
Just because the train is late, it doesn't follow that it will never come or that trains don't work at all. There is a lot of trackwork and bad weather plus the conductor has been derailing it!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
Genetics is just really complicated. It is not at all simple like the 'blue eye gene recessive, brown eye gene dominant' charts you might have studied in school. It is not designed to be comprehensible, it's a giant mess that somehow works most of the time.
Why don't everyone's kids look like models? Why are some people born retarded goblin-creatures with gruesome, deformed faces? Why are people dying of old age? Because we don't have a good understanding of genetics, because it's just very difficult. Nobody even knows what 98% of the genome does, it was thought to be 'junk'. We know about as much about genetics as we know about the high-level structure of the universe, nothing of any significance. There too, 95% is 'dark'.
Not to mention that measuring intelligence is complicated, whether it's people or AI. Intelligence is a vibe, a fuzzy, qualitative thing. You can tell the difference between smart and dumb, that is immediately obvious. But quantifying it is very hard.
It is completely understandable for the genetic basis of intelligence to be very murky and unclear. Meanwhile, heritability is possibly the oldest branch of biology. Animals were being bred millennia ago, we know it works, few things have a stronger basis in fact.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
If this were even weakly possible
Mind reading is weakly possible. Elon Musk is doing it right now, amongst others. It's just that it's very difficult to extract useful information against someone's will.
Not to mention that some human actions can be predicted before they're made by reading the brain: https://qz.com/1569158/neuroscientists-read-unconscious-brain-activity-to-predict-decisions
There is no mind-equivalent of a programming language, a compiler, a BIOS, a chip die, etc. Maybe those things will exist in the future, and alternatively, maybe Jesus Christ will appear in the sky tomorrow to judge the quick and the dead.
The chip die for the human mind is encased in a woman's uterus. The BIOS is encased in the human genome. It's just that the production process is insanely complicated.
The resurrection of Christ is a totally different kind of matter.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
I refuse to believe that the human suffering cost of being fat-shamed, over and above just being unnecessarily ugly and physically weak, is worse than millions and millions of deaths.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8d ago
The cost of obesity is enormously high economically, medically and aesthetically. Investing in shaming might well pay great dividends. Japan has quite strong shaming of the fat and the country is very thin. Diet also plays a part in this but the shaming likely has a strong effect.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
I've seen enough of ao3, what great sin have we committed? Would a just deity unleash ao4 on the world?
More seriously though, it's bad for society if people aren't in stable, happy relationships. What is shame for? Why do we have it? To bully people into doing things that are pro-social. There's a reason why fat people are shamed and it's not just because of cruelty for cruelty's sake, there's value in it as well.
Some people just aren't relationship material and have qualities in other domains. Montgomery would doubtless be bullied for rizzing up the baddies with how he'd lay out his tanks in future wars.
Nixon told girls about his autistic alt-history scenarios where the Persians conquered the Greeks and this impeded his love life somewhat.
But society was structured in such a way that these men didn't end up loners because they were weird or gave women the ick, they married and had kids. What are we doing if the most erudite and civilized men are devoting their lives to B2B SAAS and not having kids?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
Interesting, never knew that.
He seems to be rather like the Mule in terms of charisma, which is to be expected if such a simple clip of him can get 16 million views on youtube, forever memorable:
A number of commentators have remarked upon Rajneesh's charisma. Comparing Rajneesh with Gurdjieff, Anthony Storr wrote that Rajneesh was "personally extremely impressive", noting that "many of those who visited him for the first time felt that their most intimate feelings were instantly understood, that they were accepted and unequivocally welcomed rather than judged. [Rajneesh] seemed to radiate energy and to awaken hidden possibilities in those who came into contact with him".[286] Many sannyasins have stated that hearing Rajneesh speak, they "fell in love with him".[287][288] Susan J. Palmer noted that even critics attested to the power of his presence.[287] James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist and researcher, recalls inexplicably finding himself laughing like a child, hugging strangers and having tears of gratitude in his eyes after a glance by Rajneesh from within his passing Rolls-Royce.[289] Frances FitzGerald concluded upon listening to Rajneesh in person that he was a brilliant lecturer, and expressed surprise at his talent as a comedian, which had not been apparent from reading his books, as well as the hypnotic quality of his talks, which had a profound effect on his audience.[290] Hugh Milne (Swami Shivamurti), an ex-devotee who between 1973 and 1982 worked closely with Rajneesh as leader of the Poona Ashram Guard[291] and as his personal bodyguard,[292][293] noted that their first meeting left him with a sense that far more than words had passed between them: "There is no invasion of privacy, no alarm, but it is as if his soul is slowly slipping inside mine, and in a split second transferring vital information."[294] Milne also observed another facet of Rajneesh's charismatic ability in stating that he was "a brilliant manipulator of the unquestioning disciple".[295]
It reminds me of the sage, soft-speaking Islamic cleric speaking with profound meaning "democracy means government by the people, of the people, for the people... but the people are retarded"
It's the same with economics. It's known how to do economics to increase prosperity. You need to do capital deepening and R&D. The more the better. It's a little more complicated than that but only a little!
Capital deepening and R&D isn't even a topic of discussion in politics, outside of maybe Singapore, China or the UAE. Instead it's 'how much money can we take from productive people and give to old people?' Or 'how can we make things more expensive, can it take longer to build out any capital?' Could we make irritating popups appear on all the world's websites? Let's cap the number of doctors we train for zero rational reason, while lawyers proliferate beyond all control. How about invading and conquering an incredibly low-value, poor country and spending huge amounts on it? How about demolishing our industrial base and offshoring it? How about making medicine 'free' (funded by taxes)?
'Let's build some infrastructure at ludicrously uncompetitive prices' is at least capital deepening but it's not very good.
The closest they come to R&D is more spending on education which is 90% unrelated to capital deepening or R&D, it's Ipads or laptops in schools or making low value university degrees cheaper (funded by taxes) - or just administrative bloat.
I think the ceasefire is fake, like the Russia-Ukraine ceasefires. Both sides are just manoeuvring to look like they want peace when they really want victory. They'll say 'oh they broke the ceasefire' and continue on. Israel has broken no small number of ceasefires throughout the years and the Iranians do similar things with their proxies.
Trump's powers are not that great. He can produce drama and break things but he cannot mend or create to any significant extent. He can rugpull Ukraine for instance but he cannot actually achieve peace with honour like he promised. He can rugpull the NASDAQ with tariffs but he cannot actually reorder the world economic system to spur sustained manufacturing growth in America per his goals, let alone abolish the income tax per his musings. Note that both of these are very difficult tasks!
The prospects of him using diplomacy effectively on Iran of all countries is very slim. Firstly, Trump does not know how to do diplomacy in general. Secondly, his entire Iran policy consists of being as untrustworthy as possible, reneging on treaties, issuing ultimatums and bombing the country.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Sucks so much when people you have normal relationships come up with the most basic, one-sided, emotionally driven opinions about politics.
I had a friend, a serious thinker, works close with govt and has seen/worked in the sausage factory with politicians and really ought to be credulous, come up to me and talk about how she read about how Kamala was just really smart and incisive and kept everyone on their toes with her reading of documents and questions to staffers... You can (and my friend certainly does) hate Donald Trump with a burning passion but this is a bridge too far.
Neither of us are American! Where is this stuff even coming from? So many are living in a totally closed media environment.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Assassinating Bin Laden and other leaders is not why Al-Qaeda isn't a major threat to the US right now, that has more to do with improved security and intelligence operations preventing major attacks and ISIS stealing their thunder in the Islamist world. Right now they're focused on building up and developing with their return to Afghanistan.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Well it is a much bigger airstrike than the others. One hellfire from a drone represents maybe 100,000th of the resources invested in this one.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Do you mean special forces or regular ground troops?
Because it takes ages and ages for the latter to even arrive. Back in 1990-1991 it took about 6 months for the US and Coalition ground forces to get ready to go and in many respects America had a much freer hand back then, along with more naval transport capacity. Airmobile assets won't cut it for a ground campaign in such a large country, you'd need the bulk of the US army.
Whereas I could believe that there are already special forces on the ground, just like in Ukraine.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
The Houthis say they'll renew their anti US shipping campaign with the current strikes on Iran. And they have continued their anti-Israel missile/drone attacks throughout.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
They're projecting force into Tel Aviv right now. You can see videos of missiles coming down and discourse about who gets let into the bomb shelters.
This is just like the campaign with the Houthis. The US drops bombs, blows things up. Who can say if they're hitting real targets or dummy targets or whatever. Yet the Houthis retain the ability to strike shipping, it's a stalemate. The US doesn't achieve the goal of 'stopping attacks on shipping' and the Houthis don't achieve the goal of 'stopping the Israeli campaign in Gaza'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
Highly doubt that Ukraine could inflict significant civilian casualties in Russia with drones. It takes thousands of tonnes of incendiaries to ignite a big city-killing firestorm. Plus modern buildings are harder to burn down.
They were basically dropping nuclear weapon's worth of conventional explosives on Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden in 1943 and 1945, especially when you account for how much nuke energy is lost going up into the sky, many smaller bombs are more efficient in energy terms.
But obviously Russia has the upper hand here, as you say.
Because that has never worked, not even once, in the history of humanity?
Wars simply cannot be won by assassinations. This has been tried again and again. It doesn't work. It didn't work on Al-Qaeda. US blows up their leaders all the time (Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, who nobody has heard of) and they're still around, doing their thing, building camps in Afghanistan... It didn't work on ISIS. US blew up Al Baghdadi to no effect. What defeated ISIS was losing their territory and army, even then they're still lurking underground.
Israel tried this on Hamas. They blow up Hamas leaders all the time. It has no effect, Hamas is still fighting.
To win a war, there are no sneaky tricks, you have to actually achieve your military goals on the battlefield, in service of a broad political goal. Assassination is a tactic to achieve some kind of short-term, minor advantage - like sniper fire. It's not a strategy and cannot substitute for victory. Until recent counter-insurgency wars nobody was even silly enough to try this and for good reason.
If Iran blew up Donald Trump and Hegseth plus some generals what effect would this have on America? Would the country collapse? Would there even be any significant impairment to capabilities? No, it wouldn't do anything beyond sparking lots of discourse and cause some stock market shenanigans.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
'the far right nazis'
No such person, there are variations. There's lots of anger about muslim rape gangs and demographic replacement.
I would say that the lawyer is prestigious but the consultant is not, as mentioned above. Nobody is making songs about how they want to fuck a McKinsey consultant (not in that sense, anyway)!
Plus there are gradations. There's a certain type of 'dodgy real-estate developer phenotype' lawyer that would raise alarm bells.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
I heard that if you ask Deepseek R1 about the Ukraine war in English, it'll give you the US story. If you ask in Russian, it puts on it's Z-armband and give the Russian story. But then R1 is not AGI.
Also, consider historiography. There is no way to turn an enormous depth of known facts into a narrative without simplifying or taking some kind of perspective. You can't give 'what actually happened' without boring your audience senseless, you need to identify the salient facts. There can be more or less true narratives of course but a universal narrative is very, very hard to swallow.
Does anyone actually look up to middle managers in HR departments, girlboss or otherwise? How is that prestigious? Lots of people look down on HR as useless do-nothing wreckers, yourself included. HR are villains in popular culture: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ADWb4gM7cDM
Or McKinsey? Consultants are also reviled and blamed for so many problems. Quite right too IMO.
Academia is prestigious (letters before and after your name!), being a lawyer is prestigious, working in finance, working in some human-rights NGO is prestigious/virtuous, being a doctor is prestigious. All of these have some tangible pull factor, ranging from power, wealth, high academic requirements or virtue. There might be hostility but they're not despised like HR is.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-l0HFgfDWec&t=13
I'm looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6'5, blue eyes
HR only has a lack of negatives (you don't have to deal with the general public grubbily asking for fries, you work sitting down all day).
I think the issue is that there's a default track in that you're supposed to go to university (you are smart aren't you?) and then people feel like they need to use their uni degree, so they go into HR or some similar low-value public service job. It's a smooth progression.
Nobody ever dreamed of working at McKinsey, they just end up there after going to uni and studying 'business'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
14d ago
Particularly bizarre given that Jews don't believe that Jesus was the messiah. Why would any Christian be so passionately devoted to people who dispute one of their most fundamental beliefs?
I agree, one can also see elements of the pre-WW1 crisis slide ('22 war in Ukraine, '23 Israel war, '25 Iran-Israel conflict), a gradually heightening sense of hysteria about foreign threats and this looming drama of '27 being the year when it all kicks off: AI and China-Taiwan.
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