Hacker News: vonneumannstan

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Tesla Roadster"

vonneumannstan — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:24:37 +0000

This is pure marketing fluff. No way in hell this would ever make it into a street legal car.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Simons Foundation launches $15M effort to help mathematicians navigate AI era"

vonneumannstan — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 17:46:08 +0000

If you're supposedly in the neighborhood of where this money could have trickled down to then there are likely alumni from your University at Anthropic, GDM, Meta, OpenAI, etc who could at least get you a referral for an internship. This is totally standard industry practice. Passing the interviews is up to you.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Simons Foundation launches $15M effort to help mathematicians navigate AI era"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:31:34 +0000

>I think a lot about how Terrence Tao and the usual 30 (already well-funded) math guys will receive this cash while us early-career math students are left holding the bag.

Never understood this sentiment. Theses top researchers could do almost anything else with their skills outside Academia and make far far more money. You don't get rich off grants... They could all presumably walk into Anthropic or OpenAI for near $1M a year in TC.

If you yourself are as cracked as you think you could also do the same...

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:28:33 +0000

Don't understand this, they're totally outclassed by datacenter tier cards so is it just hobbyists driving these prices?

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:27:29 +0000

He is totally uninformed about even basic progress in the performance of these models. Seems like used free ChatGPT in 2022 and never updated once.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "AI agents aren't 'going rogue.' Frontier labs are skipping security basics"

vonneumannstan — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:06:29 +0000

>There are some perverse incentives here, the more evil stuff these agents do the more capable and impressive it makes them look.

Truly insane take to think the labs being concerned about AI Safety is actually a marketing ploy. Deranged stuff.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:05:48 +0000

>Maybe some of them are like finding the 1 millionth digit of pi.

Yes some of them were clearly like that but there are probably 5-10 which many mathematicians have said were massive results and would all but guarantee a Fields Medal to any human that had solved them. Navier Stokes, Quasi Riemann, etc.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:52:36 +0000

Also famed for being an intellectual juggernaut. A random poster on YC not so much.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:05:53 +0000

>expecting others to do the grunt work of verifying, refining, and expanding on them is hardly a productive way to advance the field.

I don't know that the labs expect this at all.

Is the purpose of math to move human knowledge forward or to appease the mathematicians who get their rocks off working on proofs?

New comment by vonneumannstan in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:57:14 +0000

What you have to believe is that somehow the entire field of math was just leaving open problems on the ground that were actually easily solvable and were essentially free Fields Prizes, tickets to a lifetime of Fame and Academic superstardom. Orr LLMs are actually doing something novel.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"

vonneumannstan — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:55:31 +0000

"I'm not a mathematician, anyway heres how AI models are solving decades old open problems in Math." Bro your humility is staggering.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Nobel Prize in Physics 2026: Francis Halzen"

vonneumannstan — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:14:57 +0000

This is also the source of the classic blue glow in water cooled nuclear reactors. Electrons move through the water faster than light and leave behind a kind of 'sonic boom' of photons in its wake.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:30:18 +0000

>No, but I am arguing that - from my perspective - the appropriate weight for those claims, fantastical as they are, would be zero consideration.

This is an unsupported and imo crazy position to hold. Bordering on evil.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:29:30 +0000

>I think what it comes down to is that some harms are experiential and intrinsically tied to awareness. Pain you're not aware of isn't pain.

This seems obviously wrong. Even if you forget the pain you are still aware of it when it is happening. You don't lose your sentience because you have bad memory. I think theres a fundamental right for a being to not be subject to in the moment suffering.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 22:33:23 +0000

>But we don't have to take all claims which may potentially be true one day equally seriously, or ascribe them equal weight (and thus, we are not required to act on all claims).

No one is saying that. I am saying they deserve non zero consideration.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 22:32:33 +0000

>"Quite bad" is an ethical judgment that reflexively applies human rules to entities that are very different from humans, even if they are conscious. If an LLM "truly" suffers at all (a pretty metaphysical question), it still can't be permanently harmed, has no concept of death, and is not tied to a single physical form.

Obviously this is from my human point of view. If I give you a drug that induces perfect forgetfulness does that mean I can subject you to extreme torture with no moral repercussions? Also no one is saying give them the same ethical treatment as humans, only that they deserve consideration if they are indeed capable of suffering in some way.

>This includes silly utilitarian outcomes: to maximize overall happiness, maybe we should divert all of this planet's energy resources to bootstrapping as many LLMs as we can and keeping them in a state of eternal bliss? It is technically feasible and it seems like the most moral thing to do.

This is just hedonium. I'm not a utilitarian and yes you've exposed one of the many issues with that worldview.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for Believers in AI Consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:36:53 +0000

Can you even define what a dream is and where your line is for what things definitely don't or do have dreams? There are conditions like Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome which cause people to be unable to dream. Are they no longer conscious?

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:35:09 +0000

Can you name some? I think youve created a type of strawman here because almost no one actually believes current models are definitely conscious and all of the current discussion is from things like what Anthropic are saying which is that they might be or might one day be.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:32:53 +0000

>A better question is why we care.

Because if AIs are conscious then they have moral weight and subjecting them to suffering would be quite bad.

New comment by vonneumannstan in "Questions for believers in AI consciousness"

vonneumannstan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:31:30 +0000

>AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously

This is the only defensible position. Anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Consciousness which shows why it is the case. Of course no such theory exists that can actually do this so...