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glial commented on We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism   democracyjournal.org/maga... · Posted by u/nobet
nis0s · 4 days ago
As noted in the article, this thesis isn’t exactly new. Human reasoning is what ultimately makes humans exceptional—they both prod consciousness in themselves and other beings. The point that we’ve underestimated the cognitive complexity of other animals is an important one. No other animal is capable of going beyond the confines of this planet, and the fact that only humans can enable such thing is quite exceptional.
glial · 4 days ago
> No other animal is capable of going beyond the confines of this planet, and the fact that only humans can enable such thing is quite exceptional.

One thing humans seem to be uniquely good at is picking goalposts that separate us from other species.

glial commented on Show HN: Whispering – Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust   github.com/epicenter-so/e... · Posted by u/braden-w
glial · 5 days ago
This is wonderful, thank you for sharing!

Do you have any sense of whether this type of model would work with children's speech? There are plenty of educational applications that would value a privacy-first locally deployed model. But, my understanding is that Whisper performs pretty poorly with younger speakers.

glial commented on Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study   kcl.ac.uk/news/toothpaste... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
ben_w · 8 days ago
Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato.

So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?

glial · 7 days ago
And "pasta" is just the Italian word for paste.
glial commented on OpenAI Progress   progress.openai.com... · Posted by u/vinhnx
bryant · 7 days ago
> to orient toward the unfolding of possibility in others

This is a globally unique phrase, with nothing coming close other than this comment on the indexed web. It's also seemingly an original idea as I haven't heard anyone come close to describing a feeling (love or anything else) quite like this.

Food for thought. I'm not brave enough to draw a public conclusion about what this could mean.

glial · 7 days ago
The idea is very close to ideas from Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving [1].

"Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Loving

glial commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets   scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter
pimlottc · 8 days ago
What do you mean specifically here?
glial · 8 days ago
“Selling the F-35, or American systems for that matter, will certainly become more complicated for American companies,” said Gesine Weber, a Paris-based fellow at transatlantic think tank German Marshall Fund.

“An important factor in the purchase of the F-35 by European governments was the idea that European defense would be built on a transatlantic basis in terms of strategy, institutions and capabilities,” she said, adding that “the Trump administration is in the process of dissolving the transatlantic link, and the purchase of American systems will therefore no longer have any added value for Europeans.”

“If you keep punching your allies in the face, eventually they’re going to stop wanting to buy weapons from you,” said a Western European defense official, granted anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. “Right now we have limited options outside of U.S. platforms, but in the long run? That could change in the coming decades if this combativeness keeps up.”

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/punching-allies-in-the-face-...

glial commented on The Folk Economics of Housing   aeaweb.org/articles?id=10... · Posted by u/kareemm
WalterBright · 8 days ago
Why would he leave it vacant?
glial · 8 days ago
Because the value always goes up and managing renters and repairs is a PITA.
glial commented on What are the real numbers, really? (2024)   infinitelymore.xyz/p/what... · Posted by u/EthanHeilman
glial · 9 days ago
Hopefully someone better educated than me can answer this - several of the definitions in the link feel constructivist, i.e. they describe constructions of of real numbers. It seems easy to think of methods of constructing non-rational numbers, by e.g. using infinite sequences, by taking roots, or whatever.

It seems harder to prove that every real number can be constructed via such a method.

Is there a construction-based method that can produce ALL real numbers between, say, 0 and 1? This seems unlikely to me, since the method of construction would probably be based on some sort of enumeration, meaning that you would only end up with countably many numbers. But maybe someone else can help me become un-confused.

glial commented on Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?   seangoedecke.com/real-rea... · Posted by u/ingve
mentalgear · 9 days ago
> Whether AI reasoning is “real” reasoning or just a mirage can be an interesting question, but it is primarily a philosophical question. It depends on having a clear definition of what “real” reasoning is, exactly.

It's pretty easy: causal reasoning. Causal, not statistic correlation only as LLM do, with or without "CoT".

glial · 9 days ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sure it's so simple. LLMs are called causal models in the sense that earlier tokens "cause" later tokens, that is, later tokens are causally dependent on what the earlier tokens are.

If you mean deterministic rather than probabilistic, even Pearl-style causal models are probabilistic.

I think the author is circling around the idea that their idea of reasoning is to produce statements in a formal system: to have a set of axioms, a set of production rules, and to generate new strings/sentences/theorems using those rules. This approach is how math is formalized. It allows us to extrapolate - make new "theorems" or constructions that weren't in the "training set".

glial commented on Lack of intent is what makes reading LLM-generated text exhausting   lambdaland.org/posts/2025... · Posted by u/ashton314
vouaobrasil · 18 days ago
You can't be serious. This is a highly specialized field in a topic that a few dozen people have interest in. Rather useless and basically a mental stimulating game for some professors. I have a math PhD and know very well that math went well past its point of diminishing returns in solving real-world problems a long time ago.
glial · 18 days ago
You asked for a thorny problem, and that is one. Whether it's significant by some other metric you didn't specify is a separate question.
glial commented on EPA Moves to Cancel $7B in Grants for Solar Energy   nytimes.com/2025/08/05/cl... · Posted by u/Jimmc414
keb_ · 18 days ago
Can someone in this thread please give me a good steelman that humans don't have a significant affect on climate change? This seems to be a growing sentiment among friends who I regard as intelligent, but goes against what I've believed to be the scientific consensus for years. I'm willing to admit I've been misled or wrong.
glial · 18 days ago
I'd be curious about your friends' Youtube viewing habits.

u/glial

KarmaCake day1887February 4, 2014View Original