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Comment · 3 months ago
I'm probably way off the mark here, but my instinct tells me there's nothing intrinsic about the human condition that makes it the exclusive vessel of thought.

It is theoretically possible, after all, to simulate a human brain at a subatomic level. Sure, the complexity is absurd and interface required to measure it seems far fetched, but technically there's no restriction.

Because of this I believe what we know as "thought" or consciousness exists in the space between the physical world. It's just a way to represent the world around us, with the ability to reference the past and systems to predict the future.

LLMs to me are like a simplified version thats stretched across the domain of active memory. The "thought" process is the same, an active state (current token) guided by the past state (previous tokens).

I think the next step is to reduce what a token is. Right now they are vectors that are linked to words. If instead of words we fed it direct video and audio, and a way to translate the raw data into something resembling the information passed from our eyes and ears in real time, and train it like a child learns from its parents, it's hard to draw the line on where thought begins.

It's an interesting experiment, but I still consider it anti-human.

In the future, when we have "robot" rights for robots that identify as humans, you'll find me on the side of "they aren't a real human". We'll be called bigots, and I'm okay with that.

Comment · 7 months ago
The same way expecting you understand what a Kelvin is isn't respectful to you.
Comment · 7 months ago
Saying something is false and then asking for citations doesn't seem that helpful to me.

To support your argument, take the following example:

Lets take some water at 273.15 Kelvin and add 1 Kelvin of energy to it. The water is now at 274.15 Kelvin. The difference is of 1 Kelvin.

If we had the same amount of water at 0 degrees Celsius and added 1 Celsius of energy, the water would now be at 1 Celcius.

Converting these values leave us with 273.15 Kelvin and 274.15 Kelvin respectively.

You can repeat this experiment (ignoring latent heat) for any value of Kelvin or Celsius, therefore Kevlin and Celsius are interchangeable in reference to temperature comparasion.

Comment · 7 months ago
Also, the way Kelvin is defined necessitates that both degrees are identical. If 10 degrees Celcius defined the boiling point of water at 1 atmosphere (or whatever the actual definition is) then Kelvin would be smaller by a factor of 10. And this applies to both negative and positive K values.
Comment · 7 months ago
This is probably the most ridiculous comment I've read in the history of this website.

There is no difference in the amount of energy 1 degree Celsius delta and 1 degree Kelvin delta represents.

The only (and I really mean only) difference is how zero energy is defined. It is not possible to have negative energy, and that zero Celsius represents the freezing point of water is an artifact of convenience, not of absolute definition.

Comment · 7 months ago
Just like increasing taxes incentivises people not to work.
Comment · 8 months ago
After seeing a post on an x86 kernel in zig (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055262), I thought people might be interested in my project for an os for the original IBM PC.

I had built this project many years ago, and even got it to the point where it was "technically" self hosting. The architecture was as follows:

- The "kernel" is just a set of common routines for input, output and file handling.

- The file system was just an index number, corresponding to a sector on disk.

- A simple shell program had a table of strings and numbers to load a program from the disk.

- The text editor was line based, and I mean literally line based. You could only print or add one line at a time.

- I ported the hex program to assemble the files.

I got this to a point where it could assemble itself (I dont think assemble is the right word), but the process was incredibly tedious as you had to load the text file from one disk, assemble it, swap disks, and write it to the new disk. Repeat this for each file; it was per program so maybe 5-6.

It's been a while since I've had time to work on it, but I've recently changed jobs so I might get to this stage again soon.

P.S. - Assembly is Too High Level

Comment · 9 months ago
There is no line. Killing one person while saving a thousand is just as bad as killing one person.
Comment · 9 months ago
I think it's different to the trolley problem in terms of trying to measure the outcome.

If we make decisions based on what will have the best outcome, well the trolley problem is trivial; minimise the negative outcome.

In the scenario of murder for the cancer cure, you're still left with someone who was murdered. My take is that this isn't any less bad than someone who was murdered for something other than the cure for cancer, which in turn means I would stop this murder even if it meant not curing cancer.

Comment · 9 months ago
How would you compare the two? I think no matter what the good was, you're still left with "yeah, but x happened".
Comment · 9 months ago
I guess my point is you will always be bad as a result of doing this very bad thing, no amount of karma can counter it.
Comment · 9 months ago
Moral distance is an interesting concept, because it implies two acts are comparable at some level.

If someone cured cancer, do you think they couldn't be tried for murder?

Comment · 9 months ago
People have always told me I'm too hard on myself.

Then again, I've made mistakes to know I wasn't hard enough on myself.

If you're worried about causing a negative effect on someone and then you do, the solution isn't to not worry about that.

Comment · 9 months ago
> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence.

I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed.

As much as I may agree, however, it's probably the most damaging and destructive moral framework you can possibly have, because it just consumes anything positive.

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