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richk449 commented on Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi   hegemon.substack.com/p/fa... · Posted by u/veqq
mapontosevenths · 21 days ago
I agree with this whole-heartedly.

Certainly some facts can imply a certain understanding of the world, but they don't require that understanding in order to remain true. The map may require the territory, but the territory does not require the map.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” ― Philip K. Dick

richk449 · 21 days ago
In this analogy though, maps are the only things we have access to. There may be Truth, but we only approximate it with our maps.
richk449 commented on Ask HN: How are you productively using Claude code?    · Posted by u/nocobot
Sevii · a month ago
I recently used claude code and go to build a metric receiving service for a weather station project. I had it build all the code for this. It created the SQL statements, the handlers, the deployment scripts, the systemd service files, the tests, a utility to generate api keys.

I think you are using the wrong language to be honest. LLMs are best at languages like Python, Javascript and Go. Relatively simple structures and huge amounts of reference code. Rust is a less common language which is much harder to write.

Did you give claude code tests and the ability to compile in a loop? It's pretty good in go at least at debugging and fixing issues when allowed to loop.

richk449 · a month ago
How do you give cc the ability to compile in a loop?
richk449 commented on Ask HN: New RevOps guy wants to switch us from M365 to GSuite+Slack    · Posted by u/9dev
richk449 · a month ago
Slack is orders of magnitude better than Teams.

Google docs is better than Microsoft office, but only by a little.

Google drive is many many orders of magnitude better than Sharepoint.

richk449 commented on I don't think AGI is right around the corner   dwarkesh.com/p/timelines-... · Posted by u/mooreds
somewhereoutth · 2 months ago
Our silicon machines exist in a countable state space (you can easily assign a unique natural number to any state for a given machine). However, 'standard biological mechanisms' exist in an uncountable state space - you need real numbers to properly describe them. Cantor showed that the uncountable is infinitely more infinite (pardon the word tangle) than the countable. I posit that the 'special sauce' for sentience/intelligence/sapience exists beyond the countable, and so is unreachable with our silicon machines as currently envisaged.

I call this the 'Cardinality Barrier'

richk449 · 2 months ago
It sounds like you are making a distinction between digital (silicon computers) and analog (biological brains).

As far as possible reasons that a computer can’t achieve AGI go, this seems like the best one (assuming computer means digital computer of course).

But in a philosophical sense, a computer obeys the same laws of physics that a brain does, and the transistors are analog devices that are being used to create a digital architecture. So whatever makes you brain have uncountable states would also make a real digital computer have uncountable states. Of course we can claim that only the digital layer on top matters, but why?

richk449 commented on Numerical Electromagnics Code (NEM)   nec2.org/... · Posted by u/hyperific
zoomablemind · 2 months ago
Does HFSS visualize the field in real-time or a user needs to set the geometry/parameters then precalculate the field and only then be able to explore the visualization?

Say, if I wanted to see immediate effects of changing an incidence angle, could I just "scroll" the incidence parameter?

richk449 · 2 months ago
HFSS does a typical FEM matrix solve then displays the results. It is often used for very complex or large problems, so as far as I know it isn’t set up for instant display of results. That would be a neat feature for small problems.
richk449 commented on Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately   thealgorithmicbridge.com/... · Posted by u/baylearn
imiric · 2 months ago
Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no?

This is the main point that proves to me that these companies are mostly selling us snake oil. Yes, there is a great deal of utility from even the current technology. It can detect patterns in data that no human could; that alone can be revolutionary in some fields. It can generate data that mimics anything humans have produced, and certain permutations of that can be insightful. It can produce fascinating images, audio, and video. Some of these capabilities raise safety concerns, particularly in the wrong hands, and important questions that society needs to address. These hurdles are surmountable, but they require focusing on the reality of what these tools can do, instead of on whatever a group of serial tech entrepreneurs looking for the next cashout opportunity tell us they can do.

The constant anthropomorphization of this technology is dishonest at best, and harmful and dangerous at worst.

richk449 · 2 months ago
> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no?

Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I hardly even hear about it - like it just faded away.

As far as I can tell smart engineers are using AI tools, particularly people doing coding, but even non-coding roles.

The criticism feels about three years out of date.

richk449 commented on Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately   thealgorithmicbridge.com/... · Posted by u/baylearn
empiko · 2 months ago
Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).
richk449 · 2 months ago
> If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years?

What if chatbots and user interactions ARE the path to AGI? Two reasons they could be: (1) Reinforcement learning in AI has proven to be very powerful. Humans get to GI through learning too - they aren’t born with much intelligence. Interactions between AI and humans may be the fastest way to get to AGI. (2) The classic Silicon Valley startup model is to push to customers as soon as possible (MVP). You don’t develop the perfect solution in isolation, and then deploy it once it is polished. You get users to try it and give feedback as soon as you have something they can try.

I don’t have any special insight into AI or AGI, but I don’t think OpenAI selling useful and profitable products is proof that there won’t be AI.

richk449 commented on Numerical Electromagnics Code (NEM)   nec2.org/... · Posted by u/hyperific
richk449 · 2 months ago
What’s the latest on open/free solvers to replace HFSS/CST?
richk449 commented on A Tiny Boltzmann Machine   eoinmurray.info/boltzmann... · Posted by u/anomancer
AstroJetson · 3 months ago
The key takeaways are that there are lots of people involved with making these breakthroughs.

The value of grad students is often overlooked, they contribute so much and then later on advance the research even more.

Why does America look on research as a waste, when it has move everything so far?

richk449 · 3 months ago
Why do you say that America looks in research as a waste? We spend higher percentage of gdp on R&D than just about any other country in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...

u/richk449

KarmaCake day799December 11, 2016View Original