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qantravon @ qantravon @startrek.website
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16
Joined
5 mo. ago

  • Have you ever cried because of a video game?

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  • Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, right near the end. I don't want to spoil too much, but I never thought a game mechanic would make me emotional.

  • Have you ever cried because of a video game?

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  • Me too. But I'll just note, I think you have to have played the first Spiderman game and Miles Morales to really get it. It needs that emotional build up over time.

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    What are your favorite or known Zen koans?

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  • If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

  • What's your favorite thing that anyone has done out of pure spite?

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  • Stuart Semple hates Anish Kapoor. He hates him so much that he requires those who purchase his paints to sign that they are not Anish Kapoor, are not buying them for Anish Kapoor, and will do everything they can to make sure they do not end up in the possession of Anish Kapoor.

  • Do you ever get phantom vibrations on your phone?

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  • I used to, but oddly it's stopped. I think it may be around the time I stopped having the ringer on by default, which is odd as the phone still vibrates.

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    What will replace digital era?

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  • At this rate, Bronze Age 2: (non) Electric Boogaloo

  • How much data do you require before you accept something as "fact"?

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  • You have 2 apples. I give you 2 more. How many apples do you have? Unless you redefine what the numbers or the operators mean, then you now have 4 apples. That's a truth that is evident in the world and can be verified. That's what a fact is.

    He didn't suggest we could never determine the age of the moon. He said that science refines it's methods and gathers new information, and so we may change our estimate of its age based on new evidence.

  • How much data do you require before you accept something as "fact"?

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  • Only if you completely redefine some aspect of the equation. You'd have to define "5" to actually mean "4" or change the meaning of "+" or "=" in some way that changes the operation. 2+2=4 isn't just an abstract statement, it's based on the way the physical world works. If you have 2 apples, and then I give you 2 more, you don't suddenly have 5 apples because we all decided 2+2=5.

    Orwell's meaning in 1984 wasn't about belief changing the world, it was about the power of brainwashing and how fascism demands obedience.

  • Which of your favorite sci-fi tech seems achievable in a reasonable timeframe, say 100 years?

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  • ...you mean phones?

  • Which of your favorite sci-fi tech seems achievable in a reasonable timeframe, say 100 years?

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  • Basically, physics says that nothing, not even information can actually travel faster than the speed of light. It's a universal limit that shows up when you do the math on relativity. This concept is called "causality".

    Because of this, FTL communication is probably impossible. Quantum entanglement seems like it could provide a loophole, but it doesn't actually work that way. To actually use quantum entanglement for communication, it actually needs a confirmation message, which would have to be delivered by a different means (every quantum message needs a non-quantum confirmation). That confirmation would be bound by the speed of light, thus preserving causality.

    This is a very very rough description based on my memory, so some details may be a little off, but it should cover the gist. This article goes into more detail:

    https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-entanglement-faster-than-light/

    Edit: After reading, the answer is more that attempting to impart information onto the entangled particles to send a message necessarily breaks the entanglement and thus does not transmit the information to the other side. Entangling the particles makes their states related to each other, but only at the time of entanglement, and anything that changes either particle (including measuring it) will break the entanglement going forward.

  • What do you think about reaching AGI?

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  • I agree with most of the other comments here. Is actual AGI something to be worried about? I'm not sure. I don't know if it's even possible on our current technology path.

    Based on what I know, it's almost certainly not going to come from the current crop of LLMs and related research. Despite many claims, they don't actually think or reason. They're just really complicated statistical models. And while they can do some interesting and impressive things, I don't think there is any path of progression that will make them jump beyond what they currently are to actual intelligence.

    Could we develop something in my lifetime (the next 50-ish years or so for me)? Maybe. I think slim chances without a major shift, and I think it would take a public effort akin to the Manhattan Project and the Internet to achieve, but it's possible. In the next 5 years? Definitely not, some random, massive, lucky break notwithstanding.

    As others have said here, even without AGI, current capitalist practices are already using the limited capabilities of LLMs to upend the labor market and put lots of people out of a job. Even when the LLMs can't really replace the people effectively. But that's not a problem with AI, it's a problem with capitalism that happens with any kind of advancement. They'll take literally any excuse to extract extra value.

    In summary, I wouldn't worry about AGI. There's so many other things that are problems now, and are already existential threats, that worrying about this big old "maybe in 50 years" isn't really worth your time and energy.

  • Is there a song in a foreign language you like the melody to but didnt know the lyrics?

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  • Except, it is mostly scat/nonsense! Just in Finnish! Most of the song is nonsense lyrics.

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  • But...why? Popping the cork is fun and festive, and considering most people only have that experience a handful of times in their lives, why try to stifle that little joy?

  • What's your method of enjoying (or at least tolerating) physical exercise?

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  • I like exercise that is also something else and isn't purely exercise for its own sake. Things like hiking, where I get to see scenery and animals, or biking, which serves as a mode of transportation. Currently, I do renaissance fencing, which is fun and social in its own right, and I get to master a skill.

  • How long is a meter? (Only weird answers/definitions allowed)

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  • "The length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of ⁠1/299792458⁠ of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium."

    This is the actual definition, but it's also pretty weird.