thomascountz

6 ms·

1.
by thomascountz 5d ago
Why are people using petrol-powered lawnmowers in 2035... But anyway, these scenarios assume the agent's actions are accurately observable and logged. Something I wouldn't put much faith in based on what we've been seeing so
2.
by thomascountz 7d ago
There's an analogous (albeit, far less existential) problem in software development. If the answer to, "what should we build next?" is simply, "yes" (so to speak), then the real value is in the discernment of "
3.
by thomascountz 8d ago
I am pivoting from the literal "extinct," taken as meaning the eradication of the human species, to the concept of "the collapse of civilization," as I find the step from one to the other insignificant compared to the le
4.
by thomascountz 8d ago
Not to be completely pedantic, but the fact that one, and only one, individual in the United States of America can deploy any of their 5000+ nuclear weapons undermines this argument. Furthermore, LLMs (as they are today) which pose the tr
5.
by thomascountz 8d ago
This is a fair distinction: extinction vs collapse of civilization. I was using "extinction" too broadly by including the disintegration of the systems that make human survival (as we know it today) possible. That said, I can&#x27
6.
by thomascountz 8d ago
I'm not sure. There's a lot of incentive to not "snap out of it": money, peer pressure, etc. Removing these incentives take a long time. See other socially harmful behaviors with real incentives: anti-vaccination, air an
7.
by thomascountz 8d ago
As a technologist, I can use my imagination. There are incentives in both directions, but I am less afraid of being overly cautious and preparing for the potential harms.
8.
by thomascountz 8d ago
Admittedly, that point of my argument is purposefully obtuse. In a literal sense, of course this is about computers in LLMs. The delineation is to highlight that the underlying issues: human incentives, power, and institutional failure, ex
9.
by thomascountz 8d ago
My delineation is an argument for greater caution and agency, which it appears you are also arguing for. I also mean to say that "LLMs" carry no inherent harm to humans. To make an LLM dangerous, humans must make it so. Is that th
10.
by thomascountz 8d ago
I agree these dangers are connected. The danger comes from human institutions and incentive structures which (having existed long before now) are being exploited and exacerbated by LLMs, making them harder to ignore.
11.
by thomascountz 8d ago
...people to move to the poles/into caves/beneath the ocean/whatever Cooperation required for the purported mass migration of civilization. Admittedly, I assumed you meant it would be civil, but perhaps that should b
12.
by thomascountz 8d ago
Perhaps I have a bit more imagination—or a bit more humility towards our humanity—such that I believe this is not "either/or". In the vast search space of potential future outcomes, of course even I can see humanity survive n
13.
by thomascountz 8d ago
See: nuclear weapon development and climate change. See: supply chain shortages and war. See: disinformation against vaccines.
14.
by thomascountz 8d ago
There's little evidence that humans are able or willing to cooperate at this scale. See: the past century of climate change.
15.
by thomascountz 8d ago
Citation needed for evidence of human cooperation at this scale. As you say, climate change is slow moving, and there's no real evidence across the last 60 years of knowing about it suggesting humans are willing to do what it takes to
16.
by thomascountz 8d ago
There's a lot to unpack with this, and I am not an expert, but: crop failure across industrial monocrops leads to food shortages, wild fires destroy significant areas which support pollinator ecologies, fresh water become contaminated
17.
by thomascountz 8d ago
This is not correct. Please go through each one again, taking special note of global warming and nuclear weapon development .
18.
by thomascountz 8d ago
I think you misunderstand what is meant by 'wealth inequality.' Wealth inequality is about the imbalance of influence and the concentration of power; where influence and power refer to the ability to effect change in other people&
19.
by thomascountz 8d ago
No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, thi
20.
by thomascountz 8d ago
Huh. Why would anyone think to make such accusations?
21.
by thomascountz 8d ago
At all times we maintained the same strict safeguards that we apply to all our frontier model evaluations, including monitoring and isolation. Maybe just don't mention that bit, OpenAI.
22.
by thomascountz 10d ago
Being in the EU, VEVOR looks like they have a 400mm x 600mm 60W CO2 laser for ~1600 EUR* (somehow with free delivery to Denmark). I've never bought anything from VEVOR though. *Back to School special, since everyone has to get a new 50
23.
by thomascountz 10d ago
Can anyone recommend a home CO2 or high-wattage diode laser cutter which can cut 3-4mm ply? We run an Epilog machine at my local makerspace, but I wonder if consumer machines have gotten reasonably good recently?
24.
by thomascountz 11d ago
Pilots aren't expected to be design engineers and SREs aren't expected to be software developers. At least in my experience, operators and on-call engineers aren't necessarily responsible for remediation and validation. Befor
25.
by thomascountz 23d ago
...but it's a choice... That's the indignity: really believing you must have chosen this—really believing everyone is free to improve upon their circumstances as freely as anyone else. You wanted cheaper prices for food,
26.
by thomascountz 24d ago
Being an American is so undignified—humiliating, even. I lived in what's known as a food desert. It was a place which required a car to get food. We drove on roads which crumbled and destroyed our car. The insurance (which we paid
27.
by thomascountz 24d ago
More like, "Statue of Litigancy ", am I right? /s
28.
by thomascountz 26d ago
I think their bet is that 8M is what it will take to go from a repo of dotfiles to Linux on the Desktop.
29.
by thomascountz 26d ago
Read TigerBeetle's own * A Database Without Dynamic Memory Allocation[1] * A Programmer-Friendly I/O Abstraction Over io_uring and kqueue[2] * Writing High-Performance Clients for Tigerbeetle[3] [1]: https://tigerbeetle
30.
by thomascountz 26d ago
What does an "exclusive sponsorship" of Hyperland mean?[1] Sorry for the rhetorical question. I think I mean, why does a foundation need to be the exclusive sponsor of a project? [1]: https://omarchy.org/news/

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