etangent

6 ms·

1.
by etangent 1mo ago
suspecting that star explosions are caused by nefarious super-intelligences is just Greek mythology with more steps.
2.
by etangent 10mo ago
Okay, I disagree with a lot of views expressed in this piece, but still found it worth reading. It's well written. In particular, a lot of people here may agree with what the author wrote on housing.
3.
by etangent 10mo ago
100% correct.
4.
by etangent 10mo ago
> a lot of the points felt more like learning how to charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious a
5.
by etangent 10mo ago
there is no such thing as a scanner for undeveloped film nor will there ever be.
6.
by etangent 1y ago
> A complex society or a natural disaster (a la dinosaurs) wiping out megafauna sounds much more plausible than the equivalent of the primitive societies we see today. The problem with your argument is best illustrated with that famous p
7.
by etangent 2y ago
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? This is a very strange criticism. Why is it wrong to try to make impact on the envir
8.
by etangent 2y ago
Read Mearsheimer's paper again. Nuclear deterrent is far cheaper than equivalent conventional deterrent. A country under existential threat will find means, one way or another, to fund it.
9.
by etangent 2y ago
The episode starts with a strawman (that Ukraine never had nukes) and proceeds to beat it up. It's a strawman for reasons I will not go into for long, but ones that should be obvious to a fourth grader: physical possession of an object
10.
by etangent 2y ago
It seems to me that the selection task is tricky because it concerns interpretation of language. "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other" makes a claim: that there is a directional dependency "D => 3&quot
11.
by etangent 2y ago
It could also be that the numbers/assumptions input into the equations are incorrect but :)
12.
by etangent 2y ago
Your calculation is interesting, but I beg you to go outside and look at how Godwits actually fly. Godwits fly in a straight line using rapid powerful nonstop flaps. They are relatively heavy birds with high "wing loading ratio" a
13.
by etangent 2y ago
Godwit does not glide at all. Its wings are physically too small to support any kind of gliding flight. It must flap constantly to stay aloft.
14.
by etangent 2y ago
> My understanding is that these incredible distances are achievable less by "flapping" and more by leveraging small adjustments to harness the incredibly powerful forces That is not correct. This particular bird (Bar-tailed Go
15.
by etangent 4y ago
I would argue that it does not matter. The AI could even be "smarter" on pure IQ/reasoning, but in terms of practical reasoning that humans need that depends on exposure to real world, the AIs will still take decades to cat
16.
by etangent 4y ago
Unconvinced. Europe simultaneously exists and does not exist, depending on whether one uses the term pejoratively or not, which makes it impossible to subject anything in it to criticism. It's like a Schrodinger continent.
17.
by etangent 4y ago
if you read the article, it also talks about outsourcing software production. In the broad sense, if one outsources both hardware and software production, what is one even left with? Does one produce anything besides putting one's na
18.
by etangent 4y ago
This comment does not quite make sense: "The new trend here is very strongly Large Language Models (LLM)." Is every problem a language problem? No, of course. Is every problem going to be solved by an LLM? What about problems that
19.
by etangent 4y ago
Of course they are artifacts -- everything in that picture is an artifact, by definition of how it is produced. But these artifacts are produced under specific conditions, which presents a certain window into the structure of what is being
20.
by etangent 4y ago
rwerwrwerw
21.
by etangent 4y ago
I discovered a "color-scheme paradox": Every color scheme I enjoy using avoids using color red for anything except error messages -- which seems to be objectively a good thing -- yet such color schemes are rarely the most popular
22.
by etangent 5y ago
Well, neither am I, considering that the Western governments have been using the term "democracy" to launder a specific flavor of apparatchik authoritarianism.
23.
by etangent 5y ago
Insane take, especially considering that over the past 10 years we have observed a steady creep of authoritarianism here in the West.
24.
by etangent 5y ago
Even so, there are procedures, protocols, and best practices for working with (and validating) black boxes, acquiring which may require time, skill, and patience.
25.
by etangent 5y ago
One might as well write an article claiming that "UI design is still too hard for software engineers" or "controlling a nuclear power plant is still too hard for software engineers" -- which are true (and it is equally t
26.
by etangent 5y ago
You know, I started out thinking that very bad language should indeed be censored. But considering what I see -- how eagerly language is used to eliminate one's political opponents from the public sphere, and how expansive definition
27.
by etangent 5y ago
You make an excellent point. Let's wait until people are actually beaten to death and imprisoned (and not just one, like a good few thousands of them!), and only then start complaining.
28.
by etangent 5y ago
See also: https://github.com/souring001/makefile-visualizer
29.
by etangent 5y ago
Cases when experts propose something and then elites disagree with the experts are not surprising. It is the default state of affairs everywhere in the world. That's a "dog bites man" situation---essentially a non-story. What
30.
by etangent 5y ago
> And no, being jailed for anything you can name does not mean we are on a path to following the USSR (or any similar trajectory) Ex-USSR person here. It absolutely does mean that.

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