VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Kolmogorov complexity is, IMO, a "cute" definition, but it's not constructive like the Shannon limit, and is a bit fuzzy on the subject of existing domain knowledge. For lossy compression, there is a function of how much loss is reasonable, and it's possible to expect numerically great performance compressing, say, a Hallmark movie because all Hallmark movies are pretty similar, and with enough domain knowledge you can cobble together a "passable" reconstruction with a two sentence plot summary. You can highly compress a given Shakespeare play if your decompression algorithm has the entire text of the Bard to pull from: "Hamlet," is enough!
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I think the problem is that we still lack a fundamental theory about what intelligence is, and quantifiable ways to measure it and apply theoretical bounds. Personally, I have a few suspicions:
- "Human intelligence" will end up being poorly quantified by a single "IQ" value, even if such a model probably works as a simplest-possible linear fit. Modern "AI" does well on a couple new axes, but still is missing some parts of the puzzle. And I'm not quite sure what those are, either.
- Existing training techniques are tremendously inefficient: while they're fundamentally different, humans can be trained with less than 20 person-years of effort and less than "the entire available corpus of English literature." I mean, read the classics, man, but I doubt reading all of Gibbon is truly necessary for the average doctor or physicist, or that most of them have today.
- There are theoretical bounds to "intelligence": if the right model is, loosely, "next token predictor" (and of that I'm not very certain), I expect that naively increasing window size helps substantially up to a point, and at some point your inputs become "the state of butterfly wings in China" and are substantially less useful. How well can (generally) "the next token" be predicted from a given quantity (quality?) of data? Clearly five words won't beget the entirety of human knowledge, but neither am I convinced that even the best models are very bright as a function of how well read they are, even if they have read all of Gibbon.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
You could organize a conference for US residents, but that might exclude two thirds of the researchers.
I think it's worth noting that these conferences exist: for research close enough to ITAR and defense stuff, there really are "US persons only" academic conferences.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
To be a bit glib, we could establish a third branch of the federal government with a nebulously-defined capability to charge the other two branches (and their agents) and remove them from power as necessary when a sufficiently-large group of geographically-distributed representatives find their actions to be sufficiently out-of-line with the general consent of the governed.
As to how you'd get Congress to stop napping and actually become accountable for things again, that seems much harder. You'd think "do a bunch of questionable stuff to draw their ire" might work, but I've seen quite a bit of questionable stuff in my lifetime, and it hasn't yet.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I think the norms of this community strongly opposed copy-pasting the same response into multiple replies in the thread. Even if it is an apropos, relevant quote.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I'd question the precedent the other way too, for the courts to dictate specific international relations outcomes seems a pretty slippery slope as well. If the court orders "return them by any means necessary" then I suppose we're all in for judicially-mandated ground invasions. If only Cheney had been aware of this One Weird Trick.
If there was the executive will to actually get this man back it's plainly obvious a phone call could be made to El Salvador to put this man on a flight back tomorrow.
I think you're probably right at some level on the circumstances in this case, but the man is a Salvadoran citizen and international law generally provides a number of protections when one country requests something resembling extradition. If Australia asked the US to return an American who overstayed their visa there and was now imprisoned in the US (for whatever reason), I'm not sure we'd just hand them over either. "Why didn't the Judiciary just compel the Executive to make foreign nations release their own political prisoners?" reads very much as "one weird trick" that you wouldn't expect to work.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Without endorsing the idea, I have to wonder if the US is calling up Rwanda to see if they could get an agreement like the (unused) one they had with the previous UK government. "As legally required, this is not El Salvador."
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Roberts is rather pragmatic, and I'm somewhat inclined to believe that at least part of the motivation here is that the judiciary shouldn't be issuing orders that won't actually be followed. Better to issue a stay then find that his orders won't (or can't, given international relations) be followed, and fight a better battle some other day.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If you believe the FBI, there was that plot to kidnap governor Whitmer.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
With a level of charity that I would myself question the reason behind: "reasonable requests" get indefinitely referred to committees and yield "we'll see" (which means probably no in practice) responses. Witness that American presidents have been encouraging increased EU defense spending for decades, but it took the (IMO very questionable) announcements of the last few months to seemingly cause a change in mindset and priorities. It takes a (perceived) crisis to make people reconsider seemingly "forever" policies: "but we need our dairy tariff to protect our delicate cows and farmers and their ancestral cheese making practices" sounds so nice and reasonable, making it hard to ever get rid of. Neoliberalism is really bad at enacting policies that sound mean.
Even with all that said, I still am not convinced it's worth it. Or even that close to being worth it.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I have it on good authority that the professionals also value "logistics" (warehouses, trucks, trains). Which isn't to say that the factory isn't useful, but the ability to ship it's outputs to where they are needed is important too. I'd be watching for investments in navy transport abilities there too.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I have assumed the TikTok ban was at least in part retaliation for China's bans of Western tech companies, delayed until they had one worth banning. Which still fits the definition but feels different as a policy choice because we can say we didn't start it
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Acquisitions often take the form of shareholder propositions for [party] to buy the stock for a given price, which is usually higher than the current price. They don't often occur purely as market orders, which would be vulnerable to price changes, that I've seen, although the buyer often has a decent ownership position to start with. Maybe the SEC requires or strongly incentivises the shareholder vote structure, though.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I always manage to kill everything I've planted (including an indoor succulent a friend gifted that I keep forgetting to water even occasionally). Any recommendations on getting started gardening as someone with no discernable green thumb, and who lives somewhere with dry, sweltering summers, and the yearly bout with a hard freeze or two?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Could you elaborate on the distinction here? I don't immediately see a difference in the simple case: if I import a widget for $1 completely manufactured from scratch in [country], I'd pay a percentage of that value as a tariff. Or I'd pay a (similar) percentage in a VAT regime, because it seems to me that in both cases all of the "value added" comes from one place. I guess there is a distinction for supply chains that go back and forth across the border in question to produce final products, but is that the modal case?
Would a tariff carve out for reimported intermediate products (excluding the value of American-made semiconductors used in iPhones, for example) meet your goals?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I don't think our philosophy of science has a good way to handle non-repeatable results. If you look at something like the Oh-My-God particle detected exactly once in 1991, I'm not sure how I'd distinguish from a miracle. Sure, a scientific instrument saw it, but those aren't immune to weird things, like the faster-than-light observed neutrinos a decade ago. As a one-off observation, it's a bit more believable than, say, a coherent message, but if we instead observed the alien equivalent of the Arecibo message (sent exactly once in 1974), we'd be talking about something that would look, to me at least, rather miraculous.
What self-correction have religions done, in the last 100 years?
Religion is hardly a static target here, nor is it a unified concept like "science" (although maybe science is more fragmented than advertised: ask some physicists if they "trust the science" in a random economics or psychology paper). There are huge religious changes in the last century, often to the point of causing minor schisms or schism-like breaks. Vatican II, a whole bunch of discourse on the role of the church around moral issues from WWII to Vietnam, rules on who can be church leadership (women, gays), and so forth. And some have disagreed with these changes being "self-corrections".
Or is this an isolated demand for rigor, because the pro-belief case is simply that some religion is inerrant, even if we don't know which (if any!) presently-practiced religion is inerrant, therefore, no religion needs to self-correct?
Somewhat uncharitably, I'd ask the physicists how they feel about the replication crisis, and then use that questionable inerrancy to decide that the entire edifice of science should be thrown out with the bathwater. Analogously, I think religion can bring decent value to how humans behave and interact that isn't dependent on its absolute inerrancy.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
The plug will 99% be SMA
WiFi antennas, at least in the US, are typically RP-SMA, which swaps the polarity of the pin and the socket from standard SMA. It's still a 1/4"-ish threaded connection, but it's explicitly not compatible with standard SMA RF equipment.
But this is just being fairly pedantic: it's the only flavor of SMA most consumers see. But it is a pain in the rear buying RF parts to make sure you get compatible ones.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
tequila
You can't make tequila in America because "tequila" has to be produced in specific regions in Mexico, rather like Champagne from France. You can get American agave spirits, which may be made similarly but has looser rules like the "sparkling wine" moniker. Agave can be grown in a couple of southwestern states.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If cocoa beans do not grow in a country, its citizens should go without chocolate.
The US grows a small amount of cocoa (and coffee) in Hawaii. Both can also be grown indoors, which is a function of capital costs (and energy, I suppose) in ways that aren't economically competitive today because cheaper (import) alternatives exist.
Note: I am not suggesting that this is a good trade policy, only that "go without" is maybe a bit overstated.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
As far as I can tell it's only her lawyer making the claim that the op-ed is the only reason she's being deported.
If I had a nickel for every time I saw "Client innocent, defense lawyer alleges" as a headline or article premise, I'd probably be able to retire. Which is weird, because it's what lawyers on that side are paid to do, and seems the most dog-bites-man story available. But it works great if you're a journalist trying to muckrake.
I think "due process" has come to be a Russell's Conjugation: "I am a peacefully requesting my due process rights recognized by law, you are raising procedural hurdles to ensure the law is respected, and that guy over there is claiming 'due process' to indefinitely forestall judgement against himself."
And I can see why some are frustrated this only seems to apply in some directions: some legal decisions can get handed down quickly and hamfistedly (vaccine mandates, forcing closed houses of worship), while others (asylum claims, death penalty appeals, cashless bail) can get backlogged indefinitely to the clear benefit of the party claiming "due process."
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I do think that's quite possible, but we lived through a bunch of supply chain snafus in the last five years (toilet paper, unloading at Long Beach, the Ever Given fiasco, Houthis, chip shortages) and I will admit those weren't great times but we did make it through them, and systems (capitalism?) were more robust than at least I expected.
Does a pretrained, static LLM really measure up to your "actually von Neumann" model? Real humans are capable of on-line learning, and I haven't seen that done practically for LLM-type systems. Without that, you're stuck with whatever novel information you keep in your context window, which is finite. It seems like something a real human could take advantage of against today's models.
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