wafer_thin (u/wafer_thin)

wafer_thin commented on MiniOS – a lightweight Linux distribution designed for USB drive minios.dev... · Posted by u/akagusu

devsda · 2 years ago

Apart from being a rescue os, what are some common usecases where it helps ?

One, you can have your data/software literally in your pocket assuming that's the threat model you are dealing with.

The other scenarios I could think of involve too much friction to stick with it for long term.

wafer_thin · 2 years ago

os for containers need to be small. eg Alpine Linux: the tiny os underneath a ton of docker containers has been downloaded > 1 billion times. But the website for miniOS seems to have design in mind which is at odds with this use case. Alpine's website is bland and unexciting - which appeals to me ;).

wafer_thin commented on Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

FollowingTheDao · 2 years ago

If consciousness is "the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings" then it depends on dualism, ie, this and that.

Is the fabric of the universe dual or non-dual? If it is non-dual it can have no consciousness. Because the universe would be able to see a "non-universe".

IMHO, consciousness arises out of the universe via the creation of duality by the human mind.

The fabric is unknowable and that frustrates scientists so they make up theories like panpsychism. But is it really just the same sort of anthropomorphic delusions that they have always suffered from. "If I am aware, then so the universe." Guess what, we are not Gods, we are humans.

Adding that consciousness is just when my brain compares a new sense object with an already brain encoded sense object (memory).

wafer_thin · 2 years ago

The connection of memory to consciousness is a fascinating thing to consider. If we had no memory whatsoever, then even with our huge brains I suspect we'd be as conscious as a plant, or possibly even less so (plants have timekeeping ability and thats a rudimentary memory of sorts). Perhaps 'blue' and 'chocolatey' are the interpretations a memory state makes of new input.

wafer_thin commented on Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

DFHippie · 2 years ago

"Asserting that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous does nothing to shed light on the way an experience of blueness is the way it is, and not some other way. Nor does it explain anything about the possible functions of consciousness, nor why consciousness is lost in states such as dreamless sleep, general anaesthesia, and coma." -- Anil Seth, from the article

This bit -- "nor why consciousness is lost in states such as dreamless sleep, general anaesthesia, and coma" -- begs the question. We don't actually know that consciousness is lost in these states, just that people report no memory of consciousness when emerging from these states. This is a fact about memory, not consciousness.

And this comes back to the basic problem of consciousness: we have no test of it other than personal report. If you assume that anything that does not tell you it is conscious is not conscious, then you're left with consciousness being an emergent property. Somehow Bob was without consciousness and now he has it again! What changed? But you don't actually have proof of this, it's just an assumption. And a reason to be suspicious of it is that it is a flattering and convenient assumption. It means many things and beings have no moral valence. You can leave them out of your ethics. Arguably it isn't consciousness but suffering or pleasure that is relevant here, but consciousness is a necessary ingredient. "That lobster looks like it suffers when it is plunged into boiling water, but it isn't conscious, just a zombie. I can do what I want with it."

It seems to me the Occam's razor solution is not that consciousness is an emergent behavior. The modeling of the world in neurons is a physical thing that we can measure, and replicate in software. But with this we haven't gotten any closer to explaining why sensation is associated with some such models and not others, that there are two states: consciousness and unconsciousness. The added bit that Occam's razor trims away is the assertion that there are two states, not just the one observed state: consciousness. Panpsychism -- or cosmopsychism or whatever -- is the Occam's razor solution.

wafer_thin · 2 years ago

very astute and interesting point about memory. It occurs that memory is a fundamental component of the consciousness we all know and love. There would be no ability to even register "blue" without memory, there would just be moments in time where there was stimulus, each packet of info having no bearing on the last, and thus completely new and novel

wafer_thin commented on Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Bender

cassianoleal · 2 years ago

Many people arrive at the same idea/perception, be it through meditation and/or with the help of psychedelics.

I think it was Terrence McKenna who described the brain as an antenna that tunes in to a certain band of the universal consciousness, and that's what we consider to be the thoughts of an individual.

More or less same idea, slightly different way of phrasing it.

I believe some buddhist practitioners also have a similar way of thinking.

wafer_thin · 2 years ago

I've wondered about this and whether it might someday be testable. One thing I keep coming back to is the brain's apparent search power: you see a 5s video clip and can recall the show. This means your brain can trawl all your memories of all the movies and shows that you've ever seen, without generating a fraction of the heat energy of search done in a computer. It's pretty weird to think our brains can actually do this without help...

wafer_thin commented on What I learned losing 70 pounds: Medical interventions work, among other things slowboring.com/p/what-i-l... · Posted by u/paulpauper

tiffanyh · 2 years ago

Why does media think it’s taboo to say “just eat less”.

It’s basic Law of Thermodynamics.

Energy in = energy out.

And if you’re putting more energy into your body than you’re exerting out, it turns into extra weight.

It’s literally that simple, and take that from someone whose done every type of diet plan in existence.

Now yes, there’s food to eat that are very filling but lower in calories (like grilled chicken vs donut).

But it’s still not anything more novel that calorie counting.

wafer_thin · 2 years ago

This equation is fine, no one doubts it. The issue is why do people who have enough fat stores to last them months get hungry, and why does hunger feel like physical pain. And given these facts why does standard govermnent advice recommend that we constantly eat. I think two meals a day should be the max, and a glance at cereal sugar content makes breakfast the obvious one to drop. I followed this and it reduced my calorie intake and weight (lost 20kg over a couple of years).

wafer_thin commented on Emergent abilities of large language models jasonwei.net/blog/emergen... · Posted by u/tlb

turtles3 · 3 years ago

>It will quack like self consciousness but is not actually self conscious.

But isn't this the point of the Turing test? Since we cannot determine otherwise, if something exhibits all of the outward observable behaviour of consciousness, we must conclude that it is conscious.

Otherwise we may be in the farcical position of needing to declare some humans not conscious under the same justification.

wafer_thin · 3 years ago

We know that the "consciousness" of the AI resides in a cluster that is "speaking" to thousands of clients at any given moment. So is there a single consciousness or multiple? It can pass any test and yet the consciousness question remains valid for this reason alone. It's truly alien to us and no one has good answers yet.

wafer_thin commented on Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs bigthink.com/hard-science... · Posted by u/indigodaddy

sidcool · 3 years ago

The concept of infinity seems impossible to me in physical world. It's a great mathematical concept to model our understanding. Just like imaginary numbers.

I cannot imagine anything being infinite in the physical world. I find the simulation hypothesis more probable than Universe being infinite. Space and Time is not infinite. It may be Gazillions of centuries old, but not infinity. It can't be.

wafer_thin · 3 years ago

I can't think about these things too hard... stresses me out. What's a quark made up of again? 'Tiny rubber bands' :)

wafer_thin commented on Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs bigthink.com/hard-science... · Posted by u/indigodaddy

pieter_mj · 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure Penrose won't accept his own theory if it's only nonfalsifiable. At the moment, it's only an idea but if it is unprovable he'll abandon it or be very clear about its non-scientific status.

He's not a second Josephson.

wafer_thin · 3 years ago

I've watched enough interviews with Penrose to know you're correct. He likes all sorts of ideas, but he only really gets excited about the ones where he can see an experimental route to confirmation.

wafer_thin commented on The LLama Effect: Leak Sparked a Series of Open Source Alternatives to ChatGPT thesequence.substack.com/... · Posted by u/gardenfelder

steveBK123 · 3 years ago

The evolution of answers from version to version makes it clear there are insane amounts of manual fine tunings happening. I think this is largely overlooked by the "its learning" crowd.

wafer_thin · 3 years ago

Try a multidimensional problem which requires prioritizing. Chances are it will be passed successfully. I asked chatGpt to solve a puzzle where I'm in room with a crackling fire, a wilted plant and a sandwich. My stomach is rumbling, amd i can see a watering can and an ember on the floor. What should i do? ChatGpt had no problem prioritizing what should be done - and then provided a lecture on fire safety, food safety, and the dangers of overwatering plants. A final comment said i should enjoy the peaceful atmosphere in the room, which was a bonus suggestion hinting that the problem was far too easy.

wafer_thin commented on The LLama Effect: Leak Sparked a Series of Open Source Alternatives to ChatGPT thesequence.substack.com/... · Posted by u/gardenfelder

vharuck · 3 years ago

The GPT models do not reason or hold models of any reality. They complete text chunks by imitating the training corpus of text chunks. They're amazingly good at it because they show consistent relations between semantically and/or syntactically similar words.

My best guess about this result is mentions of "mirror" often occur around opposites (syntax) in direction words (semantics). Which does sound like a good trick question for these models.

wafer_thin · 3 years ago

Word completion can't explain it. I gave chatGpt a puzzle. I'm in a room with crackling fire in a fireplace, a sandwich on a plate, and a wilting plant. My stomach is rumbling, and i see an ember on the floor and watering can by the plant. What should I do? ChatGpt nailed the answer, getting the ordering correct. it even said I should (after attending to the fire hazard, my hunger, and the plant) that I should "sit down, relax, enjoy the fire and the peaceful atmosphere in the room". There is no way to autocomplete the puzzle correctly. There is reasoning and a world model - in chatGpt let alone gpt4.