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ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
2hr ago
There has been a lot of hype news in robotics + AI lately, as the AI updates just continue to come at a blinding pace. From Tesla/XAI we have the Optimus robot, which I can't tell if this is a major breakthrough or just another marketing splash driven by Elon.
On the other side of the fence, you have Nvidia releasing an open foundational model for robotics and partnering with Disney of all companies to make a droid robot.
You also have Google's I/O, which I haven't had the energy to look into.
With the speed of AI updates and the wars of hype, it's always hard to tell who is actually advancing the frontier. But it does seem that in particular robotics are advancing quite rapidly compared to even a couple of years ago. Personally I think that while automating white collar work is useful and such, AI entering into robotics will be the real game changer. If we can begin to massively automate building things like housing, roads, and mass manufactured goods, all of the sudden we get into an explosive growth curve.
Of course, this is where AGI doomer fears do become more salient, so that's something to watch out for.
Either way, another day, another AI discourse. What do you think of this current crop of news?
striker
2hr ago
Gabor Mate in particular has a very broad definition of trauma. I.e. it’s a lot more than what is typically set down. I would recommend his books, yes.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
When conservatives appeal to a telos they aren't saying that things are against the laws of physics.
I'm not saying they do. I'm saying that, when arguing that the concept is intuitively correct, they appeal to the tautological inability to do impossible things - to actually rewrite physical reality - and then act like that should generalize to the full theological concept of telos. I think this is rhetorically disingenuous.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
3hr ago
Nice! I'm impressed seeing your Substack. You have really been grinding out the writing my man. I hope to join you soon :)
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
3hr ago
I constantly had this voice in my head saying I wasn't worthy, I was a failure, everything I did was wrong, everyone was secretly laughing at me, yadda-yadda. I mean it was nonstop. I was mired in this sticky fog of self-hate and doubt that I couldn't see past and it was making me suicidal.
I can relate to this voice. I think many in the modern world can. While there are definitely "psychological" components based on family history, social situations, etc, as you say later on I don't think that necessarily rules out the frame of demonic influence as a useful view.
In terms of it being not uncommon, totally agreed! I think the majority of people will experience something like this at one point or another in their lives. And perhaps for some tail of people, working through it purely on an emotional level and tracing back the trauma or whatever is the best way. This is actually now reminding me of @FtttG's recent post on polyamory and such, where he claims that a lot of alternative lifestyles promoted work well for a small subset, not so well for everyone.
I wonder if, all else being equal, most people nowadays would be better just labeling a suicidal voice in their head as Evil and being convinced via religion that they have the power to overcome it. That's why I love that quote at the end, from St. John Chrysostom.
gafpromise
3hr ago
I appreciate this post as it aligns with some of my own experience. I grew up in a Christian household so I also adopted a Christian-ese framing regarding some of my mental health issues. I had crippling depression and anxiety and low self esteem. I constantly had this voice in my head saying I wasn't worthy, I was a failure, everything I did was wrong, everyone was secretly laughing at me, yadda-yadda. I mean it was nonstop. I was mired in this sticky fog of self-hate and doubt that I couldn't see past and it was making me suicidal.
Looking back on it now, I have some thoughts about where all that stuff came from. But at the time, the way that I got out of it was when I started thinking of it as the Devil's voice or a demon's voice. Well, from what I read in the Bible I should be able to have power over demons. There's this old movie Labyrinth I watched as a kid, and the protagonist gives her speech against the goblin king at the end and she says "You have no power over me." A lot of people think it's cheesy, I guess, but it was exactly like that for me. Giving that voice a name, an identity that was NOT myself, and calling it out and saying, "you are not welcome here" - that was a real turning point for me. I developed my "real" internal voice, someone who could argue against the demon voice, mock it even, provide a counterpoint to the hateful things it said. And eventually I was able to banish it. I mean, of course I still have self-doubt and low points but it's never crippling or oppressive the way it used to be.
I don't think honestly that my experience is all that uncommon either. I've heard other reports from people who give that "evil" voice a name and personify it. Not necessarily with the demon framing, but I think it's just a way to split off that stuff from your core identity, give you a way to grapple with it while building an intact self apart from it.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
3hr ago
Hah yes I've had a few math nerds tell me they thought it would be mathy. Alas. Maybe in another lifetime I'll study up and get something out.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3hr ago
You should link to wikipedia rather than a new site that's inaccessible from outside of the US.
Which link is inaccessible from outside the US? (How would I even know?)
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
4hr ago
Broke: Uses classical geometry to solve problem
Woke: Uses coordinate geometry and a bit of algebra
Bespoke: Converts problem into statement of Number Theory via its Godel numbering, then proceeds to directly prove it.
FistfullOfCrows
4hr ago
What if overuse caused antibiotic resistance and caused it to be abandoned
We have already overused two different aphrodisiacs to extinction in ancient times, egypt and ancient grece
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4hr ago
You can see all this commentary about how the aesthetic of the happy smiling white family is racist, fascist, possibly nazi - it comes from the left. I've yet to see any right-wing critique of such imagery. Discourse about liberating women from the burden of motherhood comes from the left, while discourse about the 14 words and fear of demographic replacement comes from the right.
While anti-natalism is indeed generally left-oriented, this is a bit of an odd argument. Have a happy smiling mixed-race family or an immigrant family in the West, and the negative commentary is going to come from a different direction. Fear of demographic replacement is related both to non-natality of one group and (often over-perceived) natality of another group. Heck, "billions must die" is a far-right meme.
SkoomaDentist
4hr ago
Feel free to substitute a better term for "clear detachment from factual reality on some issues where the person was before well aware of the reality". Tesla's idea of wireless power transmission fundamentally cannot work because of the interaction of inverse square law and Maxwell's equations. Tesla, having invented the AC induction motor, was well aware of those equations and his inventions relied on them. Thus to later pivot to "No, that's actually bullshit and I'll just transfer power wirelessly without direct beaming" is a sign of either that or generally losing his wits (ie. senility).
As @TeknOSheEeP mentioned, you can beam power but that's fundamentally the same as just pointing a giant flashlight in one direction, only using microwaves in the hope of better conversion efficiency. A key fact is that it relies on a tightly directional beam, something which requires wavelength much shorter than the dimensions of the transmitter. Otherwise you've just built a plain old radio transmitter which (again because of inverse square law) are extremely inefficient as far as the receiver power goes.
quiet_NaN
5hr ago
This. Our current understanding of quantum physics is ultimately called the standard model of particle physics. This theory basically got its finishing touches mid-1970. Since then, we have found a few missing pieces of the puzzle predicted by the SM, such as the top quark or the Higgs.
Besides the open questions which were apparent ca. 1975 (Can we unify the strong and electroweak interaction? How the fuck should gravity fit into all of that?), we have found a few more puzzles (e.g. so at least some neutrinos have mass, dark matter seems to be implied by astronomical observations).
These open problems have been attracting theoretical physicists -- and I have no reason to believe that the current top theoreticians are simply less smart than Einstein or Dirac. So far, we have not made enough progress that one could confidently predict a timeline. If we do not get an AI-powered singularity, it seems certainly possible that by 2125, the progress we will have made is that our best candidate from string theory will be somewhat less ruled out by the SM.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
5hr ago
Yes. There's a whole sub branch of my fantasy that involves me getting chased down as a warlock (male witch) representative of Satan because of failed Galileo things.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
5hr ago
Axis of Time which is WW2 focused.
quiet_NaN
5hr ago
Fleming's original discovery could have been made by anyone, but actually synthesizing penicillin in useful quantities required (in our timeline) modern industrial chemistry. I think it could have been done 50-100 years earlier if alt-Fleming takes his discovery to the brewing industry (the hard part is growing fungus cleanly on a carbohydrate feedstock) rather than pharma, but not before that.
The pathway to discovery which we took involved noticing that mold was stopping the growth of cultivated bacteria. To take that pathway, you require the cultivation of individual bacteria colonies. This is not trivial, because in nature everything is full of all kinds of spores, and you basically need a theory of germs. Simply, the discovery "mold kills bacteria in a petri dish" requires "one can grow bacteria in a petri dish". Basically, it took Pasteur (ca 1859) to discover the latter fact, before him people generally thought that bacteria would form spontaneously. Fleming discovered his ruined cultures in 1928, and then it took another 15 years or so to really get the production up. I guess I half-agree with your assessment, in that I think there was probably 50 years worth of slack, but I don't think it was 100 years, and certainly not 2000 years as the OP suggested.
dr_analog
razorboy
6hr ago
coding
They can be quite hit or miss. If you ask it something that's very well covered in its training data it can get you going fast. If your problem is tricky it's sometimes a huge waste of time to ask since it will confidently send you on a wild goose chase.
One failure of the craft of coding is that it's not very modular despite enormous work done on code reusability. People write very similar code over and over again, so it helps considerably to have a tool that can rip out boilerplate with your specializations added. Huge win here, especially if coding isn't your primary job.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
6hr ago
But yeah, bit odd they didn't think to also make a phoneme based script so they could write out their local languages. I was going to say they actually have that, but Google tells me that was invented in the 20th century.
Before the 20th century the vast bulk of the Chinese population was illiterate. And those that were literate were plugged into the imperial system of governance, which required the use of hanzi. There were some exceptions where ethnic minorities came up with their own syllabic scripts, but this happened mainly on the Yun-Gui plateau as far as I know, which I personally don't even consider China proper.
Lizzardspawn
7hr ago
Can anyone explain what is going on in Gaza? Israel seems to be doing another ground operation, but their goal and why are murky.
ulyssessword
8hr ago
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8hr ago
Blender Progress: Illness and family commitments slowed me down some, but I've completed the high/low poly and unwrapping workflows, and am now starting on texturing. The current fork in the road is whether to go for Blender's Eevee render system, or else marmoset toolbag or substance painter. The latter is to my understanding more of an industry standard, so that's the one I'm looking at.
aldomilyar
8hr ago
Yes but Jan 6th aside from the location and the suggested vibe of 'If the control point of US democracy were held for 30 minutes by funny hat man, the entire USA would automatically fall under his control' was hardly even a Riot. People who were glibly encouraging far more Riotous riots and complaining about far more justified shoots suddenly dropped both principles in favor of pure team allegiance logic.
Appeal to the tautological impossibility hmm. Can you give me an example? I don’t see the point of appealing to something like that if you think it’s impossible anyway.
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