ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
ulyssessword
5hr ago
No experimental data is overstating it, but he didn't need to collect any fresh data tailored to his ideas. Someone else (presumably) would have eventually gotten to relativity if they ran a series of experiments narrowing down what the heck is happening with time and lightspeed.
He simply figured it out with the data from experiment N-1 (or maybe N-2 or N-3), where a "normal" researcher would need the data from experiment N. If a future AI can pull off the same trick but better, then researchers will need to stay more than one dataset ahead of the public releases if they want to make a discovery first.
ulyssessword
8hr ago
I suppose one option available to physicists (but not available to mathematicians) is to keep their experimental data to themselves for a year or two so that they have a chance to analyze it with their own AI in a proprietary way.
I'm not sure if that would be enough. Einstein famously didn't need experimental data to come up with relativity, he just thought about it really hard.
ulyssessword
8hr ago
You can eliminate delays are current levels of traffic with current infrastructure.
People are willing to spend a roughly constant amount of time driving to things. If you're willing to drive 30 minutes to a fancy restaurant for a night out in a congested (10 km/hr) city, you can choose from the nearest 10 places, and the averages say it'll be about 7 km away. If you're making the same decision in a fast (50 km/hr) city, you can choose from the nearest 250 places, and the averages say it'll be about 35 km away.
The second city draws five times as much traffic from you going to dinner, and the trip durations are identical. The improved traffic flow shows up in your restaurant choice instead of the time you spend driving.
(There's probably a limit to this somewhere, but we haven't seen it much).
ulyssessword
8hr ago
I read that as human-error misfires, not equipment failure ones. Similar to the "sudden unintended acceleration" crashes in some cars a while ago (people didn't mean to press the gas pedal, but ergonomics problems paired with shit awareness led to that anyways).
ulyssessword
9hr ago
Locally, they are desperate for large-animal veterinarians. The graduate pool is overwhelmingly (80%+) women, and disproportionately (relative to demand) focused on cute pets instead of agricultural animals.
Of course, there are no efforts to reduce this lack of diversity.
ulyssessword
3d ago
Meh. A "crazy con artist" has got nothing on mainstream media and academia.
Sure, something's wrong, but this is something on the scale of getting rear-ended at a red light. ProPublica misrepresenting a fair system as biased, or CBC repeatedly failing to mention that Elon Musk is, as a matter of fact, Canadian when he wades into Canadian politics (IIRC, they "could not confirm" claims he was Canadian in one story, but I've lost that link. They should get better researchers.) are more serious.
I don't give them any credit for technically sticking to the verifiable facts, and I also don't give extra demerits for blatant falsehoods. It's all deceptive and corrosive to good discourse.
I've stopped listening to news on the radio and watching it on TV. The only time I trust them to give a positive expected value is when I can pause in the middle of a story and fact-check them and find additional context at-will. Without that check, they can (and have) mislead me with slick narratives and selective reporting. (Are they still succeeding despite my precautions? Who knows!)
ulyssessword
3d ago
What's the attrition rate over time for consumer firearms? I would think it's pretty low on average.
I remember running the numbers once, and estimating 80++ years life for modern guns. It was a dead-simple production rate vs. existing stock calculation, and I don't think I even corrected for changes over time.
I assumed modern AI could do better, but Claude Sonnet doesn't improve much. It reports 0.1-1% per year from the literature, with weak evidence.
Tech advancements account for some new sales, but what new tech is going to come out of the industry at this point?
Look at the last fifty years to predict the next fifty, and we might get...slightly better metallurgy, machining, ergonomics, and style? Maybe some different cartridge geometries like the Winchester Short Magnum line and better bullet construction like bonded jackets. Gun design isn't quite as solved as knives are, but they're a very mature technology by this point.
ulyssessword
4d ago
had to run under the ride
I'd hope that it's at least a bit more remote than that!
ulyssessword
6d ago
If.
Is there any precedent for SWAT raids on generally-law-abiding gun owners? If there isn't, what are the signs that the next administration will break new ground?
ulyssessword
7d ago
Well, all except the 50 million silencers.
Even if they are re-restricted, I don't think the government has the guts to pull off a mass confiscation. Is there precedent for that?
ulyssessword
8d ago
Now that is a gun-rights idea I hadn't thought of before: subsidize/promote silencers (or anything else) that are only legal in some jurisdictions, get the courts to recognize it as "common use", and enshrine it as s right for everyone forever.
Of course, that requires the courts to cooperate, which hasn't been a good option in the past.
ulyssessword
8d ago
Rhyming becomes a lot easier when you aren't picky about the details. For example (corrected to make it rhyme, somehow):
Cameron Whitcomb "Kingdom Of Fear"
I'll show you what you need to see and nothing more
At least I got the decency to shut the door
You said that you want all of me, but I know you're a liar
Every time I let you in, I start to hear them tire
In the middle of the night, in the back of my mind
Like a chill running down my neck
So I bite my tongue and lie in self-defense
Ask me how I've bin, I'll say I'm grey
But under my skin, I'm not okay
Honey, I've been scared to death, looking in the mere
Just another day in the kingdom of fear
Ask me how it go, I'll say I'm fine
But if you look clo, I ain't doing alrigh
Honey, I've been scared to death, wipe away the tear
Just another day in the kingdom of fear
The kingdom of fear
Maybe I've been building wall too high to cline
I hope you know it's not your fall, it's by design
I know I've been a lot of things, but I won't be your burden
I won't be that person that calls you when I'm hurden
In the middle of the night, in the back of my mind
Like a chill running down my neck
So I bite my tongue and lie in self-defense
[Chorus]
Oh, I've been hurting worse than bad
I need someone who's got my back
Oh, I've been hurting worse than bad
I need someone, but if you
[Chorus]
As far as I can tell, the *only two true pairs are right at the start, see/decency, and more/door. The other ten are just a bit off, but I didn't notice until one was pointed out to me.
ulyssessword
8d ago
The top picture in this article suggests an awesome story. In reality, he used a gun.
ulyssessword
8d ago
I was getting the garden key probably every 2nd or 3rd run...
That's a bit higher than I remember, but not too far off.
, and then when I incidentally got the other stuff I went for it.
Let's call it a 1/3 chance for the key and 1/3 for the rest, for a 1/9 chance of it being available in a given run. Running six theories at once (of the same difficulty and assuming independence) gives you (1 - 1/9) ^ 6 = 49.3% chance of a wasted run assuming sufficiently-good play, which feels about right. Add in a few missed opportunities and a run of bad luck, and I dropped the game.
(again to Testing123, just to emphasize: most people play fully through the part of the game most people natually and satisfiedly stop at, without had having an unfun problem about this)
Yeah, it's good up to Room 46.
ulyssessword
8d ago
As a general thing you should be keeping a priority queue of theories and start each run flexibly, but also there are RNG mitigations that should eventually let you get just about whatever you want on most runs.
I was running about half a dozen theories by the time I quit, and had only managed to check (not progress or confirm) a couple of them in my last few runs. The problem with the coat check (and other mitigations, IIRC) is that they help you with one theory, and not always all that well. Using the above example, I could either save the garden key (a rare item), or combine and save the power hammer. That reduces the requirements to garden key/coat check/room placement, or to sledgehammer/metal detector/work shop/coat check/room placement, which still isn't that easy.
ulyssessword
8d ago
Probably 15-20 hours to beat the part of the game that most people will stop at (having greatly enjoyed their time with it)
Absolutely. It's a great game until you're trying to get the sledgehammer, metal detector, garden key, workshop, AND a bit of luck on room placement (IIRC that was a real challenge I beat once...then my computer crashed and lost it and I couldn't repeat it).
ulyssessword
10d ago
datacenters are fragile and require constant inputs from outside that we can just cut off.
Same with humans. It didn't go so well when we tried to do that to Hitler because he had persuaded millions of people to help him in his goals.
I find AI-driven WWII-scale disasters completely plausible once AIs become more persuasive than politicians are (they passed the bar for redditors two years ago).
I also find it plausible that some AI will go off half-cocked and easily get put down by a military (or even just court orders and workers unplugging things). Based on what I've seen so far, we would do a patch-job like moving the battery backups offsite so they can be disconnected easily, rather than considering why an AI wanted to go to war, or if they might learn from that failure.
ulyssessword
11d ago
I think supporting a foreign government at war with America is perfectly fine grounds to deport someone.
I think so too. Too bad the last war the US has been involved in was WWII.
If you want to lean on the procedural fairness of the result, your have to actually follow the procedure first. If the government doesn't want to do their part and actually declare war, then they don't get wartime powers.
ulyssessword
12d ago
You can get much better odds on Kalshi. All you're "offering" is an opportunity for you to dutch-book and make free money (ignoring counterparty risks and work, of course).
ulyssessword
13d ago
Since reality is boring,
Was 2022 a one-time bump from COVID? I know it was well and truly done by then, but habits can take a long time to break.
ulyssessword
14d ago
I don't know if this is idiomatic in American English.
It's as American as baguettes or chow mein: definitely not native, but recognizable nonetheless.
ulyssessword
16d ago
In old English law, truth was an aggravating factor in libel because it makes the statements more damaging. Maybe it's time Belgium joined the 19th century.
ulyssessword
21d ago
I know. Things which "may well not be" crimes can A) match him to the description more exactly, or B) provide justification on their own, which is what I was pointing out.
If the detention were initiated based on his seeing the gun,
That was my assumption. He didn't mention the gun until after he initiated the detention, but it reads like he noticed it after the contact but before the detention.
My (admittedly baseless) theory is that they went "Here's a $10k budget for each of the problems, have at it". Many runs ran out of tokens and failed, and the ones that succeeded did so early in their runs and cost an average of $3k.
They're presenting it as an average cost of $3k during a successful run, but that isn't the same thing as the cost to find a successful result. If I'm right, their statements all pass the "very seldom lie" test.
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