busyant

7 ms·

1.
by busyant 3d ago
> Terence Tao (2026) lists many goals of mathematics beyond problem solving. These include developing new theories and techniques, understanding the world, sustaining a community, training the next generation of mathematicians, contribut
2.
by busyant 4d ago
If we (as a species) can genetically modify embryos to make our offspring more athletic, more intelligent, more <whatever>, is that human-RSI? That's not a gotcha question. I'm just genuinely curious if that would meet the d
3.
by busyant 4d ago
> We already knew we had to do that. But the people in charge of the economy don't wanna. I've often heard it said that <big corporations> often use consulting firms to recommend unpopular decisions they were already pla
4.
by busyant 6d ago
> All of this stuff is gated by experimental effort, not AI! My post said you still needed to run the experiments, but if you think AI can't help to improve bioweapons compared to humans alone, I disagree.
5.
by busyant 7d ago
As a biologist whose PhD research was on the genetics of microbial pathogens, I am far more concerned than the author. I think he trots out a lot of straw-man arguments (e.g., teenager making the weapon, "super"virus, etc.). Those
6.
by busyant 7d ago
> no LLM in the world can make them go faster You mean the microbes have to double n-times (to get sufficient numbers of microbes) before tests can be run on them. But maybe the LLMs figure out a way to run those tests on microbes that h
7.
by busyant 7d ago
bioweapons are probably easier. Killing each other is relatively straightforward. Keeping people alive (e.g., curing cancers) is considerably more difficult. I imagine that AI augments both our destructive and constructive powers.
8.
by busyant 8d ago
> But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? What if the models are good enough (maybe even now?) so that all you have to say is "come up with a list of interesting problems overlooked by humans in <insert math
9.
by busyant 9d ago
> The night of long knives could be a final step, far beyond the point of halting the inevitable momentum. I'm sure I sound nuts, but I told my wife about 20 years ago that governments will have a "benevolent" solution to
10.
by busyant 9d ago
> And without mathematicians to ask the right questions Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? > and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research
11.
by busyant 12d ago
> we should be putting this in the water supply... Talked to a physician last year who said the entire planet should be on GLP-1s.
12.
by busyant 14d ago
I worked at a pharmaceutical start-up years ago. * one of our medicinal chemists had studied nights to become a patent agent (this isn't the bad part). * he landed a pretty nice job at an IP firm with a considerable raise in his salary
13.
by busyant 20d ago
I'm waiting for the press release where both organizations merge.
14.
by busyant 21d ago
For my amusement, I recently asked ChatGPT whether OpenAI and Anthropic were worth their proposed valuations or whether they'd be "kneecapped" by the Chinese models etc. It gave me a long, detailed explanation which boiled do
15.
by busyant 21d ago
Identifying bird species from photos that I upload. To be clear, it depends on what your definition of "insanely bad" is. I'd say ChatGPT/Gemini make egregious mistakes on ~10% of my photo uploads. I recently uploaded a
16.
by busyant 24d ago
> He skips over understanding our world which is probably the reason most pure maths is done. I'm not sure I agree with this. I suppose it could be that we have different defintions of what "our world" means. You might lik
17.
by busyant 25d ago
I've mentioned that episode as an analogy to current affairs to anyone who will listen.
18.
by busyant 29d ago
> Whoever it is, that's always the case in government. It's not their money and any accountability like this is so rare The guy who sold me my last car at my Toyota dealership was in his late 50s. What's weird is that he t
19.
by busyant 1mo ago
> if you’re rich you don’t need to own a boat, you can spend more per day to rent if you want to use one. There's a bit by Bill Burr where he says something like "you don't want to be the guy that 'owns the boat'
20.
by busyant 1mo ago
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. In case it's the former, nobody in the corporate world is using Linux desktops. And let me know when your parents start using the Chinese LLMs on their own.
21.
by busyant 1mo ago
> the average worker can do most of their tasks with 5% of the api costs using an open source model from China and achieve the same results. Are you also going to tell me that everyone will be switching to their favorite Linux desktop di
22.
by busyant 1mo ago
> I'm a researcher in the field and I definitely take AGI seriously > I just think LLMs are a dead end for AGI. I have no background in CS, so apologies if this is a naive question, but what makes you take AGI seriously, but also
23.
by busyant 2mo ago
I don't have any shocking story, but I also was once made to participate in a day long group bonding exercise. one activity was for each member of our department to grade the overall "personality" of our department using seve
24.
by busyant 2mo ago
The substance of what you wrote is interesting on its own, but I wanted to compliment you on your writing style. It was an enjoyable read.
25.
by busyant 2mo ago
Reminds me of the decimal point scene in Office Space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGHaVn5rGo
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by busyant 2mo ago
1. I'd prefer to reveal letters ... each press of the hint button reveals the position of one random letter. 2. I don't have a preference. Very cool and well done.
27.
by busyant 3mo ago
you'll like this https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/due-to-a-clerical-error-...
28.
by busyant 3mo ago
> if you think that it's good to dilute the voice of people whose families have been here for a dozen generations by pretending that people who got here 15 minutes ago have the same values that's fine. That smacks of entitlemen
29.
by busyant 3mo ago
Explanation 1: You're lying / delusional about your success rate. Explanation 2: Your trading "theory" is sound, but your theory requires specific and rare conditions to be met before you trade, so your 95-99% success ra
30.
by busyant 3mo ago
Very cool. I'd like to explore it, but I'm getting a lot of "page unresponsive" and I can't tell if it's a back-end server being swamped, or if it's something else. My son just graduated with a double majo

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