SoulFire
a natural neural network
Politics is the continuation of drama by other means.
Programmer and mind upload enthusiast from Finland. Trying to become a better writer.
User ID: 529
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
bottom-straights
Ahah, could you elaborate on the characteristic of this supposed demographic, so people outside of yourself could derive meaning from this term?
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
The TV debates are what's really boring. His interesting discussion is in psychology. What I find most fascinating are his ideas of human perception, like such relating to the orienting reflex with error detection and novelty in the environment; how our value judgements shape our cognition not only in the decision making domain but in the very way that we perceive the world; and him likening such to modern AI where bottom-up approaches have triumphed over top-down manual programming of structure into ANNs because of the frame problem and such, where AI can't even see the toy environment without integrating an unexpectedly massive amount of information. I also find his ideas about the useful information narratives and archetypes to be interesting and gets me thinking about why humans find stories so entertaining in the first place.
As for going insane, that just sounds like more gossip by detractors. He did have his run-in with benzos, which seems more like an error with the medical establishment not properly advertising the risk of physical dependency that prescription use can induce. Then he tried to detox by putting himself into a coma in Russia which was also a pretty big error, and he seemed cognitively devastated for a little while, but his slump was nothing I'd say resembled insanity.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
The primordial desire to throw feces at one's enemies! Truly, the more we advance, the more humans stay the same. I can't help how much I giggle at the concept of literal shitflinging on an industrial scale.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
Jordan Peterson went downhill when he became weird lobster medicine man
Just when did JBP become this? This seems more like a caricature by ignorant detractors rather than an earnest condensation of what he espouses. JBP always used serotonin in lobsters to exemplify how despite 500 million years of divergent evolution, we still share a lot of psychological commonality in the function of serotonin in how we process defeat and dominance.
The only woo he pushes is that carnivore diet, but considering the historically unreliable and still indecisive state of nutrition science, I don't believe this and other theory about ketogenic diets have been proven to be ineffective.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
Considering the events which transpired, vanilla Stalinism appears to have been cannibalistic enough.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
10mo ago
If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot, this would make me very much disinclined to trust them with any power, as they have clearly not learned from the past.
I would instead be more inclined to trust them. Considering the typical handling with denial and apologia, leftoid humor at the expense of the genocidal tendencies of communist regimes would indicate that these atrocities at least occupy some mind share rather than ignorance and sweeping under the rug.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
That's farcical. If California made a state-owned housing corporation, they would build zero houses. The state is precisely the obstacle to house building. The reason we don't have houses is because if you try to build a house, they'll put you in jail.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
I propose that term be reserved for participants in animal roleplay.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
Incidentally, what's up with the utter absence of Japanese innovation?
What absence? Aren't all tech products adopted outside of Japan included as cases of Japanese innovation? Ranging from Toyota's seven Mudas to even the Nintendo Wii.
A pejorative for the inhabitants of the Russian Federation
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
hire people to make new training data
That doesn't seem viable for the amount of data required by ML training in the current paradigm. I feel like the clear future is improvements in automated induction of data or just observation from reality.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
As long as we kick the can hundreds of years down the road, that's plenty of time to transition toward renewable sources of energy. And then you can expand toward Mars, like Elon Musk wants.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
route memorization
I assume you mean 'rote memorization'. Unless there's studies about Chinese pathfinding ability.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
I'm certainly with you as well! This has been a frustrating debate to follow if not only for the satisfaction of reading someone else express my views on continuity of self identity almost exactly. I wish people would not sneer as much, but I suppose as an uploadist, one needs to have the humility to recognize their view is the more peculiar one.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
What do you mean by "incoherent"? Do you mean that the concept of a p-zombie is like the concept of a square triangle? - something that is obviously inconceivable or nonsensical.
Not him, but basically this. If you define consciousness functionally, then a p-zombie is conscious because it is functionally equivalent to a conscious entity. Whereas if you define consciousness non-functionally, then it becomes impossible to verify that even humans are conscious.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
Only on a narrow definition of ‘exist,’ and only if you exclude the empirical observation of your own qualia, which you’re observing right now as you read this.
I could be GPT-7, then by your definition I would not have qualia. Of course, I am a human and I have observed my qualia and decided that it does not exist on any higher level than my Minecraft house exists. Perhaps you could consider it an abstract object, but it is ultimately data interpreted by humans rather than a physical object that exists despite human interpretation.
It’s your world, man, and you’re denying it exists. Cogito ergo sum.
Your computer has an inner world. You can peek into it by going in spectator mode in a game or even the windows on your computer screen are objects in your computer's inner world. Of course, I would not argue that a computer is conscious, but that is because I think consciousness is a property of neural networks, natural or artificial.
Artificial neural networks appear analogous to natural ones. For example, they can break down visual data into its details similar to a human visual cortex. A powerful ANN trained to behave like a human would also have its inner world. It would claim to be conscious the same way you do and describe its qualia and experience. And these artificial consciousness and artificial qualia would exist at least on the level of data patterns. You might argue quasi-consciousness and quasi-qualia, but I would argue there is no difference.
My thesis: simulated consciousness is consciousness, and simulated qualia is qualia.
More precisely, qualia are synaptic patterns and associations in a artificial or natural neural network. Consciousness is the abstract process and functionality of an active neural network that is similar to human cognition. Consciousness is much harder to define precisely because people have not agreed whether animals are conscious or even whether hyper-cerebral psychopaths are conscious (if they really even exist outside fiction).
I do start doubting when I read about behaviorists who don’t believe qualia exist or are important, though.
I think qualia does not exist per se. However, I do think qualia is important on the level that it does exist. We have entered such a low level of metaphysics that it is difficult to put the ideas into words.
Although I’m not certain, I extend the same recognition of some kind of qualia to most animals because they are like us, and from a similar origin and evince similar behavior
With AI, though, this goes out the window: computers are not the same sort of thing as you and me or as animals, and thus I have no reason to suspect it will have the same sort of consciousness as I do. It’s a fundamentally different beast, not even a beast, but a machine.
But why make the distinction? If you recognize animals as conscious, I think if you spent three days with an android equipped with an ANN that perfectly mimicked human consciousness and emotion, then your lizard brain would inevitably recognize it as a fellow conscious being. And once your lizard brain accepts that the android is conscious, then your rational mind would begin to reconsider its beliefs as well.
Hence, I think the conception of a philosophical zombie cannot survive contact with an AI that behaves like a human. We can only discuss with this level of detachment because such an AI does not exist and thus cannot evoke our empathy.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
One key point in the definition of qualia is that there need not be any external factors that correspond to whether or not an entity possesses qualia.
I disagree with this definition. If a phenomenon cannot be empirically observed, then it does not exist. If a universe where every human being is a philosophical zombie does not differ, then why not Occam's razor away the whole concept of a philosophical zombie?
I consider it much more reasonable to define consciousness and qualia by function. This eliminates philosophical black holes like the hard problem of consciousness or philosophical zombies. I doubt the concept of a philosophical zombie can survive contact with human empathy either. Humans empathize with video game characters, with simple animals, or even a rock with a smiley face painted on it. I suspect people would overwhelmingly consider an AI conscious if it emulates a human even on the basic level of a dating sim character.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
As someone who peaked slightly higher than stick figures, meds definitely make it easier to practice lots of repetitive wrist movements. My daydreaming also becomes more vivid, and I can write more words. Meds tend to drive me more to the execution side of things and maybe terminate my endless tangents of information gathering.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
Wait, Yudkowsky doesn't believe in the scaling hypothesis? That's super interesting to me! Has he written about this? That could put a hamper on any kind of FOOM scenario. Rather than crack some kind of grand theory of intelligence, a super intelligence would need to hijack trillions of dollars worth of computing resources to gain a competitive advantage and a correspondingly huge amount of training data.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
I don't see how it would follow that in order for African immigrants to be more intelligent than Europeans and Europeans to be more intelligent than ADOS that African immigrants should have a greater overall genetic distance to ADOS than Europeans do. Only the intelligence related genes would need to be different. And suppose that the African elites and the unfortunates who were shipped off diverged only centuries before they were enslaved, two distinct populations could have evolved where one is more intelligent and one is less than the median European.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
I started splitting my tabs into different windows for different contexts, then I started just bookmarking all the tabs into a bookmark folder when I was done with the subject.
For example, I would sort all Blender related or specific university course related tabs in a single window. Or my EVE or Stellaris related searches. It's a lot easier to bookmark and close a window when it's all related to one topic, and you have some trigger to reopen the bookmark folder once you come back to the topic. Makes it feel less like it's lost to the void.
I also started separating my tabs based on type even if it's not strictly not one subject. Like separating forum posts from YouTube videos from Wikipedia rabbit holes. Every bit of organization also helps to spot things you plainly don't have interest in anymore. At some point I just give up on an old video essay and put it in the watch later folder because I never check the watch later YouTube page (I don't check the folder either). I also use Tree Style Tabs, which makes it easier to rip out some recursive new tab spree onto its own context.
I can't say I've fully beaten the tab addiction though. Now I've just got a lot of windows littering my taskbar as well. I started doing things like putting my video windows or language stuff on another monitor as well as putting my study related things to another desktop (as in Win + Tab). It's certainly more organized, and I've got the satisfaction of knowing I could close these windows if I really wanted to.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
3yr ago
Really? 90 minutes would be a disappointingly short session for me. Mine are closer to 7-11 hours but only every other week. But I don't feel like my life is particularly 'blown up'. Surely, it's not that big of a time commitment compared to a relationship? I still have time for university, parties, and other hobbies. I do, however, regret that the dopamine frenzy could have been used for more productive ends, like a programming project.
And, like, what would distinguish a straight man as a bottom?
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