omw_68
6hr ago
It's trivially easy to show that you can't.
for x := 2 to infinity for y := 1 to 2x if y is 2x, then halt if isprime(y) and isprime(2x-y) then break
If you can tell whether this program will halt or not, Goldbach would like a word with you.
Very good point, thank you for posting this.
omw_68
8hr ago
I'm not convinced the human element definition is wrong, even if I wouldn't fully endorse it today either.
Ok, well suppose someone wants to go to a bar and have their drink served by a real human bartender. By definition, that's not a task which can be replaced by AI.
Demonstrably, together we got to where we are now. It'd be interesting to see how well AI could start from scratch.
I would guess that if you gave it hundreds of millions of years, it could do pretty well. I should probably note that this issue is kind of academic. I mean, if we stipulate for the sake of argument that development of AI is dependent on human input, it doesn't really say much about what AI could or couldn't do in the future -- standing on the shoulders of giants.
omw_68
8hr ago
All the subjective things? Enjoy a beautiful sunrise?
Well I think it depends on how you define the word "enjoy." In any event, in evaluating AI's capabilities, I think it's best to focus on inputs and outputs. There's really no way to objectively verify an AI's subjective feelings (actually there's no way to objectively verify other people's subjective feelings.)
Raise a child? Be a friend? Meaningful, not just aesthetic art?
I'm pretty confident that AI will absolutely be able to do all the tasks involved in these things. Unless of course you want to define these activities so as to require a human element.
Beyond that, all existent AI I'm aware of was trained on existing human knowledge. Without a human-derived training corpus, what is it capable of?
Without a human-derived training corpus, what is any of us capable of?
omw_68
8hr ago
Has any AI skeptic ever said "I was fundamentally wrong"?
That's an interesting question. As usual, people tend to be far more interested in treating their arguments like soldiers than developing an accurate map of reality.
Big Yud had an interesting point about these kinds of debates. He predicted that at the beginning, there is relatively little debate over what's around the corner in AI. Because what's happening is pretty clearly not human level intelligence. Next, those debates get more intense because AI is developing and the situation is more ambiguous. Finally, those debates reach a crescendo and start dropping off again as it becomes more and more clear that we are just about there.
My sense is that we are more or less over the hill. I feel that AI skeptics like Cal Newport are putting less and less energy into explaining away the achievements of AI and focusing more on general criticism of the technology.
omw_68
8hr ago
I think it's reasonable to point to those as bounds on "intelligence" (which is itself poorly defined): if your super intelligence model is effectively "omniscient", that part is provably not possible.
Yeah, some people seem to think that a smart human can, in general, analyze a computer program and reliably determine if it will halt or not. I'm almost certain that this is not the case.
I think people are used to looking at computer programs which are well organized and therefore it's possible to construct an accurate model of the program and use that model as a shortcut in determining whether the program will halt. So for example, you might study a program; realize that it outputs all prime numbers from 2 on up, and use your knowledge that there is an infinite number of primes to conclude that the program will not halt.
I won't be surprised if it's "less than Skynet" even if it still changes nearly everything.
Yeah, I think these arguments are pure cope. Even if there is something humans can do which AI fundamentally cannot do (doubtful) the technology will almost certainly be wildly transformative.
omw_68
12hr ago
We do not know what resources are required to scale intelligence further up. This is a known unknown.
As an illustration, look at airplane speed records over time. From 1900 to 1945, they rose linearly to the speed of sound. Then between 1955 and 1965, they exploded to 925 m/s. A decade later, the SR-71 offered a modest improvement to almost a kilometer a second. That was 50 years ago, and no new records have appeared since. (Yes, I am skipping rocket planes here, their fuel economy makes supersonic jets look efficient, which is why they remain a curiosity. As are scramjets.)
Well there's at least one thing we do know, which is that the fastest planes are far faster than birds. In other words, it's reasonable to assume that even in the absence of extraordinary progress, AI will end up way smarter than the smartest people.
It seems entirely plausible that the only gain from going from Claude 5.5 to Claude 20.2 will be in the confidence with which the latter will reject the practicality of this.
I agree, there's really no way of knowing what technologies can be discovered and implemented with additional intelligence. Possibly all the low hanging fruit is gone; the middle hanging fruit is mostly gone; and there are a few more developments left before we plateau.
But even so, it's worth noting that AI which is smarter than people in the same way that a car is faster than a Cheetah would have a massive massive impact on the world.
omw_68
12hr ago
But it takes a higher IQ person to come up with superficially insightful but wrong/irrelevant points that leads to true AI denialism (as opposed to AI opposition). Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, explanations of why a trend has to stop. They've heard of P =! NP; surely that prevents AI!
Yeah, I've met people who insist that things like the Halting Problem and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem preclude the possibility of AI.
omw_68
14hr ago
So, I'm coming back to this late, and I'm a bit confused by all the multiple threads going on. I think what we're arguing about is basically this: is it racial discrimination if you set up some objective standard, which is going to inherently impact some races more than others? I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, it depends on the situation. It's OK for a business to charge high prices knowing that there's a racial wealth gap. It's not ok to charge a fee to vote, even $1, because voting is a human right. It's... questionable for schools to charge high tuition, and they're highly encouraged to give out scholarships to black kids to balance things out. Similiarly, while the big tech companies don't have to hire black people, they try really hard to balance things out so they don't look bad. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that this is a tricky subject, with lots of confusing court decisions all over the case. Is that fair?
I think you are muddling a lot of issues here, but I'm pretty confident that generally speaking if there's an objective standard, and that objective standard is bona fide and legitimate, there's no discrimination problem. So for example, if a private club genuinely needs a lot of money to operate, it's high fees won't be seen as discriminatory even if they have a disparate impact. Similarly, if a track team recruits only sprinters who can run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds, I highly doubt that it's going to be a problem, even if the requirement results in a racial disparity. To be clear, I am going strictly by common sense here.
omw_68
14hr ago
Some concepts are just too high IQ for most people.
I agree, but I think there's another issue here, which is that most people are very conventional in their thinking. They are told that they should be concerned about the Latest Thing and they follow suit with everyone else in their circles.
In any event, I agree that full on GAI (followed shortly by ASI) is just around the corner if it's not here already.
Another factor to keep in mind is that almost certainly there are multiple AI Manhattan Projects going on all over the world right now. Because defense planners are surely aware of the military implications of this technology. I would guess 2-3 in the US; 1-2 in Europe; 1-2 in China; and 1 in Israel.
So that's 5-8 AI projects which are well-funded, well-staffed, etc. and it seems to me that there is a good chance that at least one of these projects is ahead of the public performance of OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if GAI already exists in some lab in Maryland.
omw_68
17hr ago
Uh, people do pretend to be retarded to win sports competitions. Here you go.
I didn't have time to watch the whole video, but it seems to relate to the Paralympics, not the Special Olympics. Am I nitpicking here? I don't think so, because the video says right at the start (about 15 seconds in) that the Paralympics got a lot of attention: "The entire country [Spain] is, needless to say, thrilled."
And here's what the AI said:
Fernando Martín Vicente, president of the Spanish Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability (FEDDI), orchestrated the scheme to guarantee gold medals. Winning medals directly unlocked larger state grants, government subsidies, and private corporate sponsorships for the federation.
According to reports in The Smart Set and The Guardian, Vicente held immense power as both a Spanish sports executive and a member of the International Paralympic Committee's ruling board. Delivering consistent Paralympic podium finishes boosted his political standing and kept substantial public funds flowing into the organizations he controlled.
If wins in the Special Olympics produced this kind of attention, status, and money, then yeah, I'm pretty sure that people would pretend to be mentally retarded in order to compete. As far as I know, the Special Olympics doesn't get this level of attention, but feel free to correct me.
omw_68
17hr ago
It's somewhat true already: they get trophies and podium time and even press coverage in excess of much faster athletes who place outside of the top three (prize money may go a bit further, but not to say the 100th finisher). "Local athlete won the [not young] age group in [big marathon]" is a pretty regular headline in local news in my experience. The oldest finisher sometimes gets coverage too.
I'd like to see examples of 60+ runners demanding social status, respect, and/or money commensurate with that of top runners overall. And those demands being taken seriously.
omw_68
17hr ago
There's men's college football and basketball. Why should these get the respect and money they do when at least 60% of the athletes involved couldn't crack a CFL or NBA Europe roster?
Because there is a lot of organic grass roots interest. People will genuinely invest significant time and money to watch these sports. To put it another way, these sports EARNED respect and money.
One can contrast that with (most) women's sports, where respect and money comes from pressuring lawmakers and other elites into putting a big thumb on the scale.
Why do I occasionally hear equally ridiculous things like the idea that the college championship team could beat the Browns or whatever the consensus-worst NFL team is?
What would be (almost) equally as absurd is if a commentator seriously proposed that a particular college team was the best football team ever, including NFL teams. If a commentator proposed that Serena Williams could beat the lowest ranked male players on the Tour, that commentator would probably be wrong but it wouldn't be absurd, not absurd like suggesting that Serena Williams was the best tennis player ever including men.
omw_68
1d ago
It means "anyone other than men who, when asked for their sex or gender (which is the same in German), call themselves men". Really, that's it. If you say you're a man, then you can't join the "womens+". If you give literally any other answer, you can. As simple as that.
Ok, thank you for clarifying.
omw_68
1d ago
I'm not a huge fan of how they're portrayed as "just as good" as men's/open sports, but to defend women-only sports, all sports are arbitrary to begin with. Women's sports are just as much of a carveout for people who couldn't hack it at the top level as "normal" sports are compared to a hypothetical league or sports organisation that explicitely allowed PED, mechanical aids, etc.
Well in my view, the "just as good" issue is the key point. Of course there is wheelchair basketball; road races for people over 60; and so on. But none of them demand (and are granted) unearned respect and money as do women's sports. I mean, what is wrong with our society that a news reporter can seriously propose that Serena Williams is the greatest tennis player ever and not get laughed out of the room?
omw_68
1d ago
Reminds me of how in tennis the female players are often complaining about equal pay relative to men, but I imagine they’d seethe hardcore if they had to take a paycut to achieve equal pay with wheelchair tennis players.
Well of course. At the end of the day, feminism is a grift. Nothing more and nothing less.
omw_68
1d ago
If you ran a business like that today, you'd be sued out of oblivion and widely decried as racist.
That's incorrect. There are plenty of private clubs, restaurants, hotels, etc. which charge very high rates. And the racial makeup of their customers and guests doesn't reflect that of the community.
I'm really not much of an expert on basketball, but my impression from reading Steve Sailer for years is: yes. The NBA blatantly discriminates against whites and Asians.
That's not quite the answer to my question. But let me ask a slightly different question. Can we agree that by your standard, the US Olympic track and field team discriminates on the basis of race, at least in short distances?
Sure, I agree completely with you on this. But the current mainstream society opinion seems to be to force men and women to appear equal, so that they can give equal status, respect, and money to the female athletes, even though objectively they're far below male athletes.
Ok, so it seems you don't particularly disagree with the position I had expressed.
omw_68
1d ago
In practice, the "open league" is all boys, with girls being so rare as to merit a newspaper article whenever they make an appearance. In common sense, everyone knows that there's a boy's league and a girl's league. In fact, I'm pretty sure most girls would be surprised to find out that they're even allowed to try out for the boys' league.
That may be, but my point was about nomenclature. I think that "boy's tennis" (or whatever) should be called "open tennis." Because people need to be reminded that women's sports = Special Olympics.
This sounds like the sort of argument that a 1950's southern pro-segregationist lawyer would make. "Oh ho ho, my dear boy, as you well know, the colored folks are perfectly free to apply for membership at our country club. They just choose not to do so, and the few that do, do not meet our requirements
It may remind you of such an argument, but in practice it's extremely different. In one case the discrimination is being perpetrated by men, in the other, the discrimination was perpetrated by the Almighty Creator.
A better analogy would be if the country club had objective, bona fide standards for admission, e.g. everyone has to pay $10,000 a year membership fees and that money is truly necessary to maintain the grounds, and it just so happened that very few blacks could afford (or were willing to pay) the annual fee.
It's actually even more generalizable than that. There's a meme among lawyers: the "Airbud rule" where the movie says "ain't no rule a dog can't play basketball!" That makes for a great movie plot, but it doesn't work at all in real life. Just because there's no specific rule against it, doesn't mean that it's allowed.
I have no idea what your point is here.
#4: Disparate impact. You don't just look at the letter of the law, you look at what the results are. In this case, the results are clear: the "open" league is 99.99% boys (or at least, as much "boy" as can be determined with our current vague definisions and lack of testing).
I'm not sure how this relates to my point, but it does raise a question for me. Can we agree that by this standard, the NBA discriminates against white people and Asian people?
Practically, historically, legally, and in impact, the current situation is to segregate sports into two sexes, with anyone trans or intersex caught in an awkward middle. It's disengenious to talk about how the boys' league is "technically open to all" when we all know darn well that will never happen.
Well can we agree that it's dishonest to pretend that men and women are equal in athletic ability? Do you think it's reasonable for women in women only sports to demand equal status, respect and money compared to the open (or men's) version of those sports?
omw_68
1d ago
IMO even individual sports benefit from a clear basis of comparison. I can be impressed at masters runners putting up solid times even well behind the elite winners. I think it'd be disheartening and disappointing if a 25 year old could win the 60+ division just because he "felt old"
What would also be disheartening (IMO) is if top runners in the 60+ age category demanded the same level of social status, respect, and money received by top runners in their 20s. And if those demands were taken seriously.
omw_68
1d ago
pro-Israeli (probably would be fair to call most of them "genociding all the Arabs supporters" and most "pro-Israelis fall into this category).
I would have to disagree with this. Unless of course you choose a special definition of the word "genocide" designed to tar Israel.
imputing your opponents with the worst possible interpretation of their views isn't very productive)
Doing so automatically is unproductive. However it can be very useful to understand a movement's true goals and motivations as a collective. And sometimes those true goals and motivations are, in fact, pretty bad.
omw_68
1d ago
It's natural to attack your enemies
I actually agree with this. From the point of view of an anti-Israel activist (probably it would be fair to call most of them "Hamas supporters" and most "pro-Palestinian" activists fall into this category), Biden is a bad person for leading a country which sides with evil (Israel and Jews) over good (Hamas and Palestinian Arabs).
But I think the real question being posed is whether terrorism-lite is effective. I would say that within Ireland, it probably is. When people strike a symbolic blow for Hamas (and there is little or no pushback), it creates the impression of consensus which then can become a reality.
As mentioned elsewhere though, anti-Israel activists do face pushback in the United States. Moreover, based on the political situation within Israel, it's unlikely that Israel would throw in the towel even it were a total pariah along the lines of North Korea. So I think it's pretty unlikely that this sort of terrorism-lite will ultimately be effective.
Is literally nothing safe from woke entryists?
As a side note, this is a question I've wondered about a lot.
Here's my thinking so far:
If your activity or institution has very little social capital or money, chances are woke entryists will set their eyes elsewhere. So for example, I was reading about a group of men who enjoy digging up and collecting old beer cans. Probably they don't have to worry so much. (But if for some reason, collecting old beer cans became cool, you can bet there would be claims that women had been systematically excluded from the community.)
If your activity or institution has social capital or money, then you've got a much bigger problem, although the situation is not hopeless. I think a pretty good model of keeping out wokies has been set by ultra-Orthodox Jews through the following steps:
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Leadership is limited to men;
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There is very little turnover in leadership and senior positions;
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It's very difficult for new people to join the community; as a practical matter you have to be born and raised in the community to join, let alone get a position of leadership;
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Members of the community are encouraged to isolate themselves from outside influences.
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The daily life of a member of the community is not all that fun or exciting, especially for someone who is not in a position of authority. Indeed, junior members of the community are expected to follow the lead of the leadership.
One can contrast this with the Skull & Bones society at Yale, which fell to wokies over the course of just a few years. It had new leadership every year; joining was just a matter of being selected by the previous members; and being a member is probably pretty fun, kind of like being in a fraternity.
Anyway, I think those are the keys. Don't be a juicy target for wokies; put a lot of barriers in place to joining the community and getting into a position of leadership; and limit leadership to men.
omw_68
1d ago
In HEMA, we call it "open" and "womens+", where the latter category is "anyone other than men who identify as men". And yes, we spell it "womens+".
I'm not sure I understand this. Does "womens+" mean biological women + trans-identifying men?
omw_68
1d ago
I know you are sort of kidding around here, but I do think that at a minimum, we should stop calling men's sports "men's sports." Rather, we should have "open" and "women only."
Because yeah, people need to be reminded that women's sports are fundamentally no different from the Special Olympics: It's not an open competition but instead it's a restricted competition so that the participants can feel good about themselves. If winners at the Special Olympics started complaining that they don't get the same lucrative sponsorship deals as actual Olympic champions, nobody would take them seriously. That's the attitude society needs to have towards women's sports.
Why is it that nobody pretends to be mentally retarded so that they can participate in the Special Olympics? Because there's nothing to be gained from it. So yeah, in the same way, there shouldn't be scholarships or similar benefits offered to those who succeed in women's sports. If women want to compete for scholarships, they can compete in open sports.
As far as self-esteem and over-promotion of women goes, I think that's a more complicated and wide-ranging issue. I agree it's a problem that women are encouraged and over-promoted into high-flying careers, that they are constantly told they are superior to men, etc., but I don't think you are going to fix this problem by fixing sports.
omw_68
1d ago
By "the current form", I mean mass activism by affluent educated Westerners who should not have any personal stake in the conflict. I am vaguely aware that there were some instances of tourists before (wasn't there some Japanese lady who actually fought as a guerrilla on the Palestinian side in the '70s?), but I'd be surprised if it turned out many people before 2000 or so.
There were numerous anti-Israel protests on American college campuses during the 1960s and 1970s. To be sure, most student activism at the time was directed against the Vietnam War, but it's not like progressive opposition to Israel is something new under the sun. Bertrand Russel jumped on the anti-Israel bandwagon after the 1967 war.
Surely the Arab boycott (which would have been people fighting against the expulsion of their coreligionists and often coethnics) is in a different class.
"fighting against the expulsion," of course, is a mischaracterization.
I don't know about the existentiality of the threat, if the threat is merely being forced into a two-state solution with clear borders, division of Jerusalem and full surrender of the West Bank and Gaza
The anti-Israel movement has made pretty clear that part of what they are seeking is what they call the "right of return." The idea that everyone in the world who is a "Palestinian Refugee" gets to move to Israel with full voting rights and citizenship. Of course every Jew in Israel knows what that would mean. Moreover, it's also pretty widely perceived in Israel that if there were an Arab state in J & S, it would inevitably lead to a super-Gaza type of situation, i.e. J & S would be used as a staging ground for relentless terrorism against Israel; that if Israel defended itself it would result in more approbation against Israel and so on. In short, a withdrawal from J & S is widely seen as something that (1) would not end widespread anti-Israel activity; and (2) would be a big step on a slippery slope.
Of course people there might believe that such a setup is untenable for them; but I would be skeptical
Based on the situation in Gaza, you'd be wrong. But in any event, the point is moot for a couple reasons: First, in terms of Israel's actions, it's the perception of the leadership that's what matters; and second, the anti-Israel movement is not merely looking for an independent Palestinian Arab state anywhere -- they want their "right of return."
Long before the current AI race, the NSA was the biggest employer of mathematicians and the biggest consumer of computer equipment in the United States. Probably they have thousands of computer programmers. From what I understand, NSA employees are allowed only to tell their spouses who their employer is. According to AI, the total NSA workforce is about 30,000 people which is far larger than Anthropic.
To be sure, not everyone at the NSA is working on AI, but at the same time I'm pretty confident that the NSA has the manpower to have a Manhattan AI Project going on right now.
Even Unit 8200 in Israel has a much larger workforce than Anthropic.
Presumably there are equivalent organizations in China and Europe.
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