timeagain (u/timeagain)

timeagain commented on Among the A.I. doomsayers newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/preetamjinka

HankB99 · 2 years ago

If I let my imagination run wild, I can imagine that at some point AI becomes in some way sentient. By that I mean it gains reasoning, some sort of understanding, and motivation.

I wonder what the possibility is that this AI will decide that a pitched battle is going to waste resources and risk humans pulling the plug. What if it understood that and instead operated so subtly that it was not obvious it was controlling The World.

Hopefully it would not conclude that eliminating large swaths of the human population would be to its benefit.

timeagain · 2 years ago

Silly question. If an AGI did exist, what reason do we have to believe that it would act in its own best interest? Does an AGI need an ego?

timeagain commented on Among the A.I. doomsayers newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/preetamjinka

1vuio0pswjnm7 · 2 years ago

Always all-or-nothing thinking from these folks. Like what they are working on can never be just another boring thing that nerds find entertaining. No, it has to be "world-changing". Gonna "change the world" (for the better or the worse?) while sitting behind a keyboard. Except they do not know how to write. Overlook the important details and exaggerate, communicating in hyperbolic, know-it-all nerd gibberish.

(Grants do not require repayment.)

timeagain · 2 years ago

Everyone is courting VC dollars. Think of these claims as grant applications and everything makes more sense.

timeagain commented on The Best Essay paulgraham.com/best.html... · Posted by u/tosh

geor9e · 2 years ago

Anyone can nitpick anyone by listing whatabouts they didn't intend. Whatabout this OTHER sense of the word "best". It's in the dictionary. You didn't address it, therfore you're a lazy man of straw. The only defense to that type of attack is to write everything in a way that never chooses any one path, spends all it's time mounting a defense to every whatabout, vaguely floating over eggshells, immune to attack. Who wants to read something like that? Or, you can trust the reader to try to understand the context. The context is a man who calls himself an essayist, has about a hundred essays spanning a decade, all in a very distinct style, where most folks reading them are fans of the prior ones. The context is the Paul Graham Essay sense of the word essay. It's not discussing emotional, spoken, money grossing essays. And to help the reader not get hung up on those whatabouts, he even explicitly spelled what sense of best he is talking about.

timeagain · 2 years ago

I’ll concede my point, I think you’re right. Everyone’s a critic.

timeagain commented on Being a Fast, Cogent Writer Is Useful v5.chriskrycho.com/journa... · Posted by u/luu

timeagain · 2 years ago

Boo. Sure it’s probably wrong to call someone “cogent”. But is there such a huge difference between saying “Harry has cogent writing” and “Harry is a cogent writer”? Is the reader confused about the meaning?

I might use “prosaic”, “flowery”, or “confusing” in the same way, even though strictly speaking those words are describing the writing and not the writer.

timeagain commented on The Best Essay paulgraham.com/best.html... · Posted by u/tosh

timeagain · 2 years ago

> The best essay would be on the most important topic you could tell people something surprising about.

The premise is wrong (or at least not obviously right) IMO, so I have a hard time taking any of the rest of it seriously. Could the best essay not be the most emotionally moving? The best when heard aloud? The most convincing call to action? The most accurate? The highest grossing? Driving the most engagement? What about the topic (any topic) that you could tell the /most interesting surprise/ about?

If Paul Graham didn’t run this company he certainly would not make it to the front page for his lazy philosophy.

timeagain commented on What a $1 deal says about America's office market bbc.com/news/business-684... · Posted by u/pseudolus

FireBeyond · 2 years ago

Yes. We are all supposed to take one for the team to support businesses, especially that sacred cow, small business…

I’m not sure under what extraordinary circumstances businesses are expected to take one for the team for our and society’s benefit. Perhaps we might even find out, one day…

timeagain · 2 years ago

This is not the first time that the whims of the rich have gutted cities. Compared to the explosion of suburbia and white flight in the 50s-80s, the current situation is much less dire.

My hometown of Minneapolis lost 30% (!!) of its population between 1950 and 1980. The only major difference now is that rich people are losing money instead of making more of it.

timeagain commented on Man behind viral fake currency shocked by its success bbc.com/news/world-africa... · Posted by u/defrost

timeagain · 2 years ago

On the other hand, you can actually use it to buy things which is nice

timeagain commented on The Purple Streetscape computer.rip/2024-03-09-t... · Posted by u/turtleyacht

timeagain · 2 years ago

There are a few people street lights near me in Seattle and now I probably know why. I thought it was a vain (!) attempt to deter intravenous drug use.

timeagain commented on Ratchets over Levers v5.chriskrycho.com/journa... · Posted by u/luu

hahajk · 2 years ago

The part at the beginning about how critical software is to our world reminds me of the time (or so I've heard, it was before my time) when there was a push to make software engineering a licensed field. A "real" engineering. I'm very happy that didn't happen.

timeagain · 2 years ago

The assumption being that if SE was a licensed field that it wouldn’t have the same outsized impact on people’s lives?

timeagain commented on How Should We Think About Race and "Lived Experience"? astralcodexten.com/p/how-... · Posted by u/feross

timeagain · 2 years ago

This article tries to out-logic racism (so smart!) but completely overlooks that different cultures have different experiences regarding who is a part, what it means to be a part, and how their culture meshes with the whole. And the sudden and intense interest in biological difference is kind of creepy too.

Obviously people of different cultures are slightly genetically different, otherwise how could you be racist against strangers! In the case of the professor who learned she was not ethnically indigenous, people didn’t want her out just because she, individually, was pretending to be native. It’s because there is an entire industry and extensive history of non-native people smothering native culture, telling native people through movies, books, etc. of what their own culture is or what it means, and of native arts and symbols being used by white people to make a quick buck. She /symbolized/ a sore point for the community and furthermore she was not open about it. The whole situation was unfortunate, but the author seems more interested in her case to prove his own point than in the concerns of the community he is poorly explaining about.