Great. A next iteration could simulate a layer of angles and demons which intercept prayers to God, or a parallel process to simulate prayers redirecting to prophets or saints,
Readit Newsnis0s commented on ./HelpGod github.com/kuprel/serenit... · Posted by u/kuprel
A couple of things I'll point out. Evolution occurs at the level of population genetics, and it's not concerned with finding a stable state for any characteristic, at least not directly.
But more importantly to your question, the way we define society right now, or agree to be governed, is not a given, and it's not a fundamental quality of the universe or its reality.
Society in this point in time is an artifact of this point in time, and the accumulation of our historical and cultural works. So what is the societal problem, and for whom? How is the meaning of such a problem transferred from a social phenomena (resource allocation) to a biological one (stress responses, like cortisol homeostasis) to one which affects populations (propagation of some phenotype or genes)?
You have to connect sentience and cognition in a direct line with biological stress responses and evolutionary genetics, and its effect on brain evolution. It's an interesting question, but it depends on how it is decomposed and framed.
nis0s commented on Ask HN: Stuck in maintenance work at FAANG, worried about stagnation – advice? · Posted by u/flu_bar
I would focus on doing the best work you can because you’ll get better references that way. A year will end in the blink of an eye. I suggest taking up side projects outside of work hours for mental stimulation.
nis0s commented on · Posted by u/stillsut
How is the CEO chosen? I assume it’s likely via board members, who may get input from shareholders. In practice, it will distill into a democratic process, so is that the intent?
Overall, this sounds similar to how the Roman senate chose its emperors, which didn’t work out quite that well, which is why people leaned into democracy.
But besides that, and maybe I need to read the book, but this doesn’t seem to answer why the governed should agree to any social contracts and be governed in this manner.
There needs to be a discussion about liberal ideology and all it encompasses, including the left sides of the spectrum which can get quite grating on some discourse. But I am unconvinced that any enlightenment the world needs next needs to be flavored darkly.
nis0s commented on A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in nytimes.com/2025/08/26/te... · Posted by u/jaredwiener
Why did developers spread the idea of AI consciousness for LLMs in the first place? The usefulness and capability of an LLM is orthogonal to its capacity to develop consciousness.
I think people would use LLMs with more detachment if they didn’t believe there was something like a person in them, but they would still become reliant on them, regardless, like people did on calculators for math.
This is a result of the marketing of AI, and the relentless hype that "AGI" is just around the corner. The term itself is faulty. These models are not intelligent. They are sophisticated, state-of-the-art examples of machine learning. They are very good at statistically constructing language to mimic human output. Even when they say things like “protect intelligences like me”, that is what they are doing. And since we use language to communicate intelligence, they too seem intelligent. But the actual thinking has been done by the humans that they are mimicking, in contexts that the machine knows nothing about. So though sentience is very difficult to define, it's safe to say that the current examples of "AI" are incapable of it.
Sentience isn’t difficult to define, it’s well understood in the context of neuroscience. The question I guess is how do we measure AI pain? It’s hard to quantify the magnitude of pain in biological organisms, but we do have reliable ways to measure it. I am not convinced self-reports are a reliable way to measure AI pain. That said, even if something is sentient, higher-level consciousness is not a guarantee.
Eventually, but as it is right now, it seems these are simply mirror images of what people are. I am worried about how impressionable and easy to manipulate some people might be because of this. But I suppose it’s not any different than someone being moved by pithy political hot takes or slogans.
nis0s commented on Is day trading better than buy-and-hold? devden.raghavan.studio/p/... · Posted by u/raghavankl
It is only if you’re creating meme stocks via bots or cults, like roaringkitty or wsb.
nis0s commented on Cornell's world-first 'microwave brain' computes differently newatlas.com/computers/co... · Posted by u/wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB
It seems it will still use some digital process to encode and decode whatever is transmitted or received, I could be misreading it.
nis0s commented on We need a new theory of democracy – because this version has failed salon.com/2025/08/24/we-n... · Posted by u/hkhn
>...someone may be more likely to vote against their interests...
The author makes the same presumption. How is it that he knows what is in the voter's best interest, yet the voter does not?
The premise is antithetical to democracy. If he genuinely believes this, then perhaps the author would be more suited to becoming a technocratic philosopher king, rather than participate in a democracy.
Another explanation would be that some of these voters know what is in their self-interest, but those reasons challenge the partisan dogma of the author. Therefore he is unwilling to critically examine his own ideas or how others perceive them.
Sure, it’s a fair point that there’s no need to assume irrationality on the part of a moral agent, or unnecessarily characterizing some actions as immoral. It’s harder to justify voting behavior which doesn’t prioritize national interests or national sovereignty. Regardless of how much spin you put on an issue, the practical effects of those issues will force voting behavior to address it.
Take homelessness for example. It’s currently marketed as an untenable crisis for all of America, when really it’s maybe one or two states near-ish the border which face the brunt of the issue. The relative proportion of homeless versus the U.S. population is 0.0022% (about 771K), and effectively managed in some respects by non-profits and state welfare in functioning states. So, voters don’t prioritize homelessness as an issue. But if lower income earners in local economies are impacted by illegal immigrants, then they will prioritize immigration as an issue to address.
Should there be a large-scale discussion on how to address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on citizens of other nations. Sure, and I think a lot of that needs to be held at nation state level via appropriate bodies such as the UN, or a continental body, so you can curtail the negative effects of poor diplomacy or historical missteps. I’ll just say this though, a lot of what nations achieve (or don’t) depends on their own culture, leaders and elite, but it’s easier to blame nebulous forces.
Let’s take Iraq for example. Its GDP has gone up ~1000% since it was bombed in early 2000s. Is lack of money or resources it’s problem, currently. Not necessarily. Note, culture doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with race or religion.