Hacker News: alienicecream

New comment by alienicecream in "We gotta stop ignoring AI's hallucination problem"

alienicecream — Wed, 15 May 2024 13:32:22 +0000

Intelligence is the ability to comprehend a state of affairs. The input and the output are secondary. What LLMs do is take the input and the output as primary and skip over the middle part, which is the important bit.

New comment by alienicecream in "Why I doubt that AI can match the human mind"

alienicecream — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 13:40:24 +0000

> Even if there's some exotic whatsit we have somehow not been able to detect thus far, something that lives outside of our existing scientific theories, that would simply require updating those theories, and then figuring out how to follow the same steps biological systems do.

Assuming the whatsit could fit into the materialistic/mechanistic framework. But that's not necessarily the case.

> You similarly have no direct evidence that there isn't a bottle A&W root bear on Europa, but our understanding of the history of humanity (and root beer and space travel) makes it very unlikely.

I didn't make a claim, I asked you how you can be so sure of your claim.

New comment by alienicecream in "Why I doubt that AI can match the human mind"

alienicecream — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:08:47 +0000

So? Lack of evidence is not proof positive of the contrary position. Even if you accept that there is no evidence, which is doubtful in itself since the fact that only humans seem to be able to think the way humans think could be considered evidence.

New comment by alienicecream in "Why I doubt that AI can match the human mind"

alienicecream — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:41:50 +0000

> It's always important to remember that humans aren't made of fundamentally different stuff;

How do you know this?

New comment by alienicecream in "'Irresponsible' to ignore consciousness across animal world scientists argue"

alienicecream — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 02:46:32 +0000

Yes, that's part of it.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Irresponsible' to ignore consciousness across animal world scientists argue"

alienicecream — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 02:45:30 +0000

That's pattern recognition, any dog can do that, you don't need an abused dog for that.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Irresponsible' to ignore consciousness across animal world scientists argue"

alienicecream — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 11:57:50 +0000

Like do they worry about the future and think about the past? No.

New comment by alienicecream in "Tesla Cybertruck deliveries halted for 7 days"

alienicecream — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 13:54:50 +0000

The guys who've blown up a billion dollars of tax payer money because rather than carefully design it to work the first time, they slap something together and let it fail to 'iterate'? It sounds like it's same guys working at both companies.

New comment by alienicecream in "What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance"

alienicecream — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 13:37:55 +0000

They fight over who gets to teach the asian and white kids.

New comment by alienicecream in "Amazon increased US plastic packaging despite global phase-out"

alienicecream — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:41:34 +0000

Yeah, they could just hire some people for minimum wage to do it, but apparently that's too much to ask too, they would rather focus on vanity measures that will make things worse for the environment and more difficult for people to comply with, but will look good in a press release. This is the natural product of environmentalism and bureaucracy.

New comment by alienicecream in "Amazon increased US plastic packaging despite global phase-out"

alienicecream — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:19:46 +0000

In my county they banned the collection of any recycling that was bagged. So if you put your recycling in a bag to contain it, the garbage man won't pick it up. So now what happens is everyone puts their recycling loose in a blue bin and the wind blows all the bins over and scatters the recycling all over the neighborhood and eventually into the nearby ponds and ravines.

If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines. So in an age of automated assembly plants and advanced robotics the entire county here is at the mercy of a recycling plant that can't obtain a machine that can cut a bag open.

It just goes to show what a farce the whole program is. Now they're talking about making the rules even more restrictive, like using clear garbage bags so people won't put recycling in the garbage, even though that is going to increase the trash accumulating in the environment. It's a bureaucratic box-ticking and back-patting scheme.

New comment by alienicecream in "Is Economic Deprivation the Real Cause of the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis?"

alienicecream — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 21:12:16 +0000

No, there is no crisis, kids are posing like they always have and having anxiety is cool now because the jocks aren't allowed to clown on the nerds anymore and it makes you different, even though everyone is doing it. TV writers knew better than the eggheads a decade ago, watching 22 jump Street would tell you more than this article.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 21:16:48 +0000

I can see this conversation is leading to Hitler. But sometimes containment leads to a stupid quagmire which you should never have been in in the first place, like Vietnam, and security guarantees to backwards unstable countries leads to larger, more all consuming wars like WW1. Ukraine and Georgia are Russia's back yard, we have no business there.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:32:09 +0000

> How is Georgia any different from Finland in that regard?

Basically there's isn't a difference, Finland shouldn't be in NATO either. Americans have no business defending Finland of all places. Georgia is even less of a concern, it might as well be on the moon for all the national interest we have in Georgia.

> When we surround them with hostile powers they have to spend more on defending their homeland and have less for building nuclear weapons or launching invasions.

Right, the cornered dog theory. Maybe he'll bark himself to sleep before he bites you.

> And anyway you haven't even proposed a viable alternative.

The alternative is that countries negotiate with regional powers and try to maintain friendly relations. The US is not world policeman and we can't afford to play one on TV, because it invites situations like the Ukrainian one.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 19:08:15 +0000

It can work, or it might not, in which case you or your children will be dying for some town in Eastern Ukraine you've never heard of and you can't pronounce.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 19:05:31 +0000

How the heck is putting Ukraine or Georgia in NATO going to protect us from Russia's nucleus weapons?? If anything it will make the threat more immediate.

> The Ukrainians are still willing to fight for their own soil so your point is illogical and irrelevant.

This thread is about bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means we would be obligated to fight on the ground to defend those countries. I don't know what you're arguing against, but it seems you didn't read the thread.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 18:47:27 +0000

Yeah, thanks for the boilerplate. Exactly what mutual defense of the United States or Western Europe is Ukraine or Georgia going to provide? Western Europe and the United States is not under any outside threat, let alone one that these countries could meaningfully assist with. This is nothing more than "containment" policy, an attempt to restrict another power's freedom of action, which only works as long as they're weak enough to be imposed on. When they're strong enough to contest it, you're going to be over there fighting for Ukranian soil, and if you care that much, you should just volunteer and leave the rest of us out of it.

New comment by alienicecream in "'Is monetary policy even working?'"

alienicecream — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 18:10:43 +0000

Why would Ukraine and Georgia belong in NATO for any reason other than to piss off the Russians? Should we put Uganda and Congo in NATO? I hear Rwanda has territorial ambitions. Why don't we just stick to places we belong instead of trying to control every part of the world. Would you like to fight in Ukraine? Because I hear they take volunteers.

Guaranteeing the security of volatile third rate countries you don't really care about is a sure fire way of avoiding war, as we saw in WW1.

New comment by alienicecream in "Kids are not okay. New data shows Canadians under-30 'unhappy'"

alienicecream — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 03:46:38 +0000

Trudeau embodies the kindergarten Kumbaya view that so many Canadians of his generation were raised on, and he was voted in for it, and these are the consequences of that. Why complain? This is what we deserve.

New comment by alienicecream in "Memories from when you were a baby might not be gone"

alienicecream — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 01:59:15 +0000

You don't really remember a childhood memory unless you can bring back the feeling you had at the time, and that only happens sometimes, on its own. If you could remember your childhood as it really was you'd think adult life is hollow and fake by comparison.