Hacker News: alexilliamson

New comment by alexilliamson in "'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level"

alexilliamson — Tue, 05 May 2026 02:29:15 +0000

Perhaps you misundestand the Tennessee Williams quote. He's not saying that Miami is literally in Ohio, just that is has no character.

New comment by alexilliamson in "U.S. Formally Withdraws from World Health Organization"

alexilliamson — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 03:28:03 +0000

The current guy is nothing if not a documented professional wrestling fan

New comment by alexilliamson in "Show HN: Piano Trainer – Learn piano scales, chords and more using MIDI"

alexilliamson — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:13:16 +0000

I have a decent grasp of theory and have seen the value of grinding scales on other instruments. With piano, I'm never sure which fingers I'm supposed to be using or when to move my fingers up the keys. Do you have any guidance?

New comment by alexilliamson in "Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working"

alexilliamson — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 17:26:21 +0000

Most likely is that the side with the army and guns turns the blue areas into an occupied police state, and sells it to the constituency as a "civil war", despite it being completely one-sided.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B"

alexilliamson — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 22:50:29 +0000

Well-defined goal is the big one. We wanted a big bomb.

What does AGI do? AGI is up against a philosophical barrier, not a technical one. We'll continue improving AI's ability to automate and assist human decisions, but how does it become something more? Something more "general"?

New comment by alexilliamson in "Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B"

alexilliamson — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 22:34:51 +0000

It would still need an objective to guide the evolution that was originally given by humans. Humans have the drive for survival and reproduction... what about AGI?

How do we go from a really good algorithm to an independently motivated, autonomous super intelligence with free reign in the physical world? Perhaps we should worry once we have robot heads of state and robot CEOs. Something tells me the current, human heads of state, and human CEOs would never let it get that far.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Spotify: Droppin' Some Fake Beats"

alexilliamson — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 11:18:07 +0000

Do you have examples?

New comment by alexilliamson in "How to Be Obscene (1927)"

alexilliamson — Fri, 24 May 2024 17:18:52 +0000

I didn't mean for it to be inflammatory, but it's certainly not unnecessary to the conversation. We can both-sides it all day, but the fact is that one side has a militia proudly ready to use force. Like other commenters have suggested, this isn't necessarily a concern with a functioning civil society. But if we descend into populist mob violence, the side that has eschewed firearms will be at a distinct disadvantage. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it's not so improbable as to be irrelevant here.

New comment by alexilliamson in "How to Be Obscene (1927)"

alexilliamson — Fri, 24 May 2024 11:39:20 +0000

Yes, but only one side has the guns.

New comment by alexilliamson in "US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana"

alexilliamson — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:57:53 +0000

This is the "limiting harm" part of 2.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Lifelong Disadvantage: How Socioeconomics Affect Brain Function"

alexilliamson — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 18:45:40 +0000

Congrats on having good parents! However, I believe that most of this discussion applies to those less fortunate poor kids with shitty parents.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Lifelong Disadvantage: How Socioeconomics Affect Brain Function"

alexilliamson — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:32:19 +0000

I'm very skeptical of the claim that most of the kids with good parents in your poor neighborhood ended up in the 1%. Even with good parents, kids can grow up to be dumb and poorly socialized.

Also, "poor" as you're using it here might be too broad a term. The amount of brain cycles that parents can spare for their kid's academic performance is inversely related to how much time they're worrying about food, whether or not the utilities will be shut off, how to work overtime and keep the kid safe, etc.

New comment by alexilliamson in "A nostalgic look back at when the Internet still felt joyful"

alexilliamson — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:45:31 +0000

What happens more often, MSM doing culture war gymnastics? Or people accusing MSM of culture war gymnastics (an accusation which is, itself, culture war gymnastics)?

New comment by alexilliamson in "Neuralink patient controls games by thinking during interview"

alexilliamson — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 03:34:42 +0000

I was sort of with you until the FSD

New comment by alexilliamson in "The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have been released and we have questions"

alexilliamson — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:26:40 +0000

I read all three and had enough hope at the beginning to push through. I really hated the second person, the stream of consciousness prose, the random all-caps, and the relentlessly bleak tone. I think NK Jimison may be a talented writer but the style drove me nuts and the story went nowhere.

Reading the replies is making me rethink my initial comment. There a lot of people rushing to defend the books, so maybe it's just not for me. Perhaps I overestimated the impact of the social context on the outcome.

New comment by alexilliamson in "The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have been released and we have questions"

alexilliamson — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 05:11:02 +0000

Ok fine... these replies are making me feel like I should read some more NK Jimison. Broken Earth did not land for me at all, but I hear all the enthusiasm and I'll keep an open mind.

New comment by alexilliamson in "The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have been released and we have questions"

alexilliamson — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:06:26 +0000

I did not initially realize the Hugos worked this way, so I really felt compelled to check out the Broken Earth trilogy.

Now, I'm one of the last people to cry "woke", but those books were awful IMO. There is no way the award went to those books based on quality (again IMO). It's not hard to imagine what other factors might have affected the outcome.

New comment by alexilliamson in "How Monopolists drive the power and wealth divide"

alexilliamson — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 23:50:56 +0000

With the exception of abortion - which I think is the hardest ideological gap to bridge - I agree that the media and government keep the focus on trivial culture war issues to create the illusion of having multiple options in the voting booth. Sure you can pick a side on book banning, mask wearing, etc. But if you care about class and the distribution of wealth, you only have one option. Republicans and Democrats are the same party when it comes to class, wealth, and power. Both parties demonstrably work for the ruling class.

But I don't think you need a conspiracy hat to see that.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Bayesians moving from defense to offense"

alexilliamson — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 04:15:23 +0000

The end results of any statistical exercise (frequentist or Bayesian) depend on something assumed.

New comment by alexilliamson in "Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board"

alexilliamson — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:04:02 +0000

Why would anyone give control of air traffic or weapons to AI? That's the key step in AGI, not some tech development. By what social process exactly would we give control of nukes to a chatbot? I can't see it happening.