Hacker News: qarl

New comment by qarl in "Semiclassical Gravity Efficiently Solves NP-Complete Problems"

qarl — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:37:59 +0000

To be fair - I'd be more shocked by the result that a physical process can solve NP complete problems.

If that were true, I'd have expected Mother Nature to have exploited it a long time ago.

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:45:33 +0000

Ooooohhh! Yes, now I understand why I was getting those downvotes.

Thank for you explaining what you meant by "you’re conflating nationality with hosting model." It makes so much more sense now. You meant "But with the options on Bedrock, DeepSeek fighting for a position somewhere in the middle of the cost/quality spectrum."

Yes, that is the answer, and you are not full of sh!t.

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:55:30 +0000

Azure serves DeepSeek V4 Pro, about 10X cheaper than GPT-5.5.

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:12:32 +0000

My most sincere apologies for shortening "the vast majority of Chinese models" to simply "Chinese models".

I can see now why I was being downvoted - you have explained it eloquently.

(Your cost analysis is flawed and irrelevant. Azure serves V4 Pro.)

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:54:51 +0000

The model we're discussing (Deepseek) is open weight.

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:48:41 +0000

Well - yes - we're on the internet. You always have a choice to run your software in foreign countries.

But it's still erroneous to claim that it isn't a choice.

New comment by qarl in "The OnlyFans Economy of American AI"

qarl — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:15:57 +0000

The real advantage of the Chinese models is that they do not phone home at all. They run locally unlike their US competitors.

So odd that your erroneous criticism is at the top of HN.

EDIT: I'd love to hear my downvoters' objections. Is it possible that the mechanism that is promoting erroneous information is also demoting its correction?

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:01:22 +0000

> There's no important difference, you have no evidence for LLMs being a "someone" any more than you do for a god existing.

Well... When I ask god if he exists he has never responded to me.

So I would argue that your "any more evidence" is off by several orders of magnitude.

These are the sorts of errors in logic that make me think that people have an undue amount of emotion to discuss the issue rationally. And that's probably why I get attacked.

But hey. Maybe it's something else? Maybe everyone is on their period?

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:56:15 +0000

I think I've been pretty clear about the uncertainty and my decision to err on the side of caution.

But hey - you do you.

I guess I just don't understand why you guys seem to hate on me - because I've decided to be extra careful?

Makes me wonder if maybe there's something else going on, you know?

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:16:10 +0000

I think you're right.

The important difference being - Pascal's wager is about saving your own skin, and this is about not stepping on someone else.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:36:07 +0000

I'm not sure you actually agree with OP. He believes that conscious machines are not possible.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:33:59 +0000

I'm pretty sure Turing knew he was making a philosophical argument.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:31:03 +0000

Mistakes come from bad arguments.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:28:48 +0000

Heh. Well then, you probably shouldn't waste your time talking to me!

Take care, friend.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:23:45 +0000

Heh. And yet it's widely respected.

How odd the crowd is here tonight. Very aggressively disagreeable.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:55:47 +0000

Heh. It's not really a test. It's a line of argument.

I rest my case. :)

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:44:16 +0000

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a20ca50-f8a8-83e8-8396-13d71c070d...

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:35:27 +0000

Well, if it's any interest to you, the experts on the matter agree that the issue is unresolved.

So in the meantime, I'm going to err on the side of caution.

You do you.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:34:09 +0000

I'm sorry, we must be misunderstanding each other.

You have a nice day.

New comment by qarl in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

qarl — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:11:18 +0000

I said "inhumanely". You shifted the goal post to swearing at inanimate objects. I ignored you.