lefnire

Read on the treadmill.

Or videos, Udacity courses, etc - hard stuff, not novels. Two birds one stone, blood-pumping and endorphins helping maintain focus. I get a quality hour of education every day, where before it was a constant TODO.

I was prescribed Aderall for ADHD growing up; 14-25yo. Towards the end doctors were loath to continue my prescription, until finally a doctor refused and I couldn't get it since. Their story has always been: it's an amphetamine, and comes with all those risks and health concerns. Particularly around heart health.

When I took it, it felt like that movie "Limitless". Superpower concentration. I took their word on the health bit though, no free lunch, so I stayed away. I developed A-fib (Atrial Fibrillation) at age 30, which is very rare at that young. Could be any number of things, most notably genetics (though I'd be my family's first); but doctors to whom I mention Aderall all have this "ahhhhh" reaction. "Could be something else, but if I were a betting man..."

Frankly, I've always figured the way Aderall abusers abuse - here and there, for finals or work deadlines - couldn't be that dangerous, unless you get into the habit. I (and many others) was prescribed 1x/d for ~10 years. Seems to have caught up to me, but that's some relative heavy usage. I certainly don't condone, just brain-dumping experience.

I'm with the others on this. Never mind the cringe - he's all show, so much so I think he's bluffing (doesn't know ML). He amps up on "character" so much you're excited for the knowledge drop - when it comes, it's so fast and technical there's nothing to gain from it. The adage "if you can't explain something simply you don't understand it" applies. I was hoping he understood ML enough to boil things down; instead he spews equations and jargon so fast (1) you don't catch it, (2) I think he's just reading from a source. He doesn't go for essence, he goes for speed - and that's not helpful.

Again, the cringe isn't the problem directly; but that it's a cover for his bluff. The result is a not-newbie-friendly resource.

I wouldn't compare AI to mars colonization. AI is coming in strong, we've made tremendous progress - mars colonization is still in its infancy / theoretics. AI's a constant-moving target of a definition; by all accounts, we've "achieved" AI already if you'd ask someone from 50 years ago. Art, music, conversation, research, ... If he wants to say "what if the Singularity never happens," that's fine and good - but it just seems weird to me to say "what if AI never happens." It's like saying "what if self driving cars never happen" just because he's not yet driving one.

False-starts: in this regard, AI is like VR. VR had its own winter too, after Virtual Boy and the like. We're in VRs second stand; same as AI. And in both cases, both are making a very strong case, and making lots of money. I'd put my money on both horses now.

With current VR content, these robots will be damn fine archers.

AI

Or possibly 'extrapolation'. We've seen science explain magic time and again: eg, what was previously an evil spiritual infestation is now a bacterial infection. Think on the analogy, a metaphysical phenomenon became physical (and observed/manipulable). Unless you're a dualist, you buy that the brain (a science-accessible object) equals the mind in a fundamental way (from MRIs, brain damage, etc). Whether it's connected to a separate physical phenomenon yet unobserved, or creates the mind by emergence in a way that's not inductively accessible but only deductively (through information theory and the like, per this article). So yes, 'faith' in science to do what it does best - but 'extrapolation' from prior scientific achievements in explaining magic.

I too hate when people dare to dream out loud about interesting unsolved riddles in the universe. For some, sci-fi psuedoscience is their inspiration into the field, boosting their achieving the impossible - take Musk. I recently landed my first machine learning job, brought here precisely because I think synthesized consciousness is possible, swayed by none other than this community's most hated quack: Ray Kurzweil. Many choose science because they're inspired to achieve incredible (literally "not credible") things. If journalists should shut up, I wouldn't have my rewarding job. I've learned to ignore psuedoscience whistle-blowers, they just sound curmudgeonly to me.