jrowen

5 ms·

1.
by jrowen 4d ago
To expand EVEN further, look at the history of the written word. Being a scribe was a high class position in service of the church. The printing press was invented to print the bible. These were the information-theory projects of the hegemo
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by jrowen 4d ago
To expand further, I think it's interesting that both replies to my comments in this thread sort of alluded to the idea that I might be a corporate shill or at best a patsy. I feel like that couldn't be farther from the truth, I w
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by jrowen 4d ago
Thank you for this response, and I will clarify. I would roughly lump all of those into "social issues," whereas I would put "using AI to advance math" under "technological progress." That's why one articl
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by jrowen 5d ago
The thing is, very little of the outrage is directed at those things.
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by jrowen 5d ago
This kinda reminds me of the documentary about the top Go master that got beaten by a computer in dramatic fashion and had an existential crisis. Man confronting his own limitations in the realm he previously ruled unchallenged, what a time
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by jrowen 5d ago
Everyones outraged all the time. It doesn't mean anything anymore. Everything is sensationalized, every super niche happenstance is sold as earth-shattering drama, the outrage arms race is so tiresome.
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by jrowen 1mo ago
Yes, are there any data points to suggest that this arms race is balanced any differently than it ever has been throughout history? The cops will find a way, the criminals will find a way. It's ultimately people v. people with access t
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by jrowen 1mo ago
The result of this bias is that virtually every movie that has ever been made about the future contains a dystopia, with very few exceptions. It's somewhat sad to me that this phenomenon is borne out in the comments (of this thread a
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by jrowen 1mo ago
It blows my mind that (my fellow) Americans are so averse to taxation that they don't even consider that option. Whether you're worried about jobs or faraway tech elites or resource usage....just go straight to the source and use
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by jrowen 2mo ago
> scale is a necessary ingredient and running things at a physics sim level is just too taxing. I once had an idea for a system that basically took in multiple video inputs and produced video output. Individuals would then run instance
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Makes sense, thanks. Even attempting to go for something that could span all those layers of complexity would be such an ambitious project. I doubt any projects in this field have access to MMO-level resources but I feel like it would take
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by jrowen 2mo ago
And maybe that just isn't really your area of work, I get that it would be a totally different project (like saying to a C++ guy "have you tried JavaScript?"), but that's why I think it's interesting to ask, because
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by jrowen 2mo ago
> UBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise. I don't
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Yes, that's the other thing -- starting from a soup, it takes a very long time to know if the parameters that have been chosen are conducive to evolving something we would consider intelligent. The gif in vicgalle's github is larg
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by jrowen 2mo ago
What I said was meant to apply at the societal level. I wasn't meaning to speak to personal responsibility. The fact that it's become standard practice for employers to require OTP or MDM is a reflection of how society chooses to
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by jrowen 2mo ago
I did look that up and took out a line about voter turnout because of it. He definitely has rallied people. He does tap into an energy that the DNC has been blind to. But if you look at the tenor of it, it really does seem to be about anger
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by jrowen 2mo ago
I tried to be clever and succinct and it backfired. I was more referring to "everyone else" as apathetic. Generally, I don't think voting is itself considered an act of activism. Somebody will always win the election regardle
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Sadly if they were smart they would push for UBI rather than jobs or stopping data centers. Zero-sum scarcity mentality needs to end. Don't push back on prosperity. Push to have those gains distributed more evenly. Push for a ridiculou
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by jrowen 2mo ago
> And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason. I don't follow. What I said is in alignment with the idea that activism is out of vogue. The c
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Smart phones are fine though. Technology is just what we make it. It's a reflection. It is, and always has been, the people that need to change.
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by jrowen 2mo ago
> They did. They elected Trump. I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism. > Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government th
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it? Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put
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by jrowen 2mo ago
I've long felt that Artificial Life or an approach rooted in that is the best way to get a novel and interesting machine intelligence. The breakthrough with more conventional methods was surprising, but it still seems like it might hit
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Did that comment indicate any condemnation of the west? What I'm tired of is zero-sum jingoistic nationalism of any kind. Can we just be happy for all of the world to prosper? edit: I didn't downvote you but it's probably the
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by jrowen 2mo ago
FWIW, I took the Jesus stuff to be "part of the joke."
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by jrowen 2mo ago
You said I was on a high horse, I said I was just having fun. Now you're just agreeing with my original assessment? What do you want me to do? They seem like they've got a handle on it.
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by jrowen 2mo ago
Sure it’s a tall order but we’re not even trying (in a broader collective sense, I know there are people doing good work). We’re still voting for billionaires rights.
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by jrowen 2mo ago
And many of them have the pleasure of working on projects that will never see the light of day and have roughly epsilon chance of positively impacting anyone! One golden goose that changed the world and legions of people spinning wheels. Wh
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by jrowen 2mo ago
It’s all in good fun, brother. One has to have some awareness of how unhinged they are (and yes it does take one to know one).
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by jrowen 2mo ago
That is a good point. I’m not old enough to care too much about physical media but I do take pride in “my collection” which I would guess is less prevalent in Gen Z. Everything is on demand in the cloud now.

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