The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up • Hacker News Board

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#41

Post by madengr » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

In our tour at work, they show off a 3D printed, computer optimized part. It looks very similar to that tensile structure; ver organic looking. The customer didn’t like the look, and they had to fill in some areas to make it look less alien.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#42

Post by mjevans » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #26

kyriakos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure the story suggests a first person escaped. More like there were always some people who never got captured and added to the matrix who freed others.

It's been implied that the machines might have built Zion on purpose. Including freeing first people to live in it in every iteration.

I thought that it was implied Zion was still part of the simulation, part of the equation to balance things out and give the illusion of choice. Like a nesting of VM containers or Inception dives.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#43

Post by madengr » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

Uhuhreally wrote: post #16

this reminds me of that time blowhard Richard Dawkins disected an animal (can't remember which) and proceeded to bang on about how stupid the vagus nerve is, wandering all over the place as it does for no apparent reason. People used to say the same of the appendix and adenoids; that they're pointless vestiges, the blindness of evolution, contingent structures. Dawkins said obviously the nerve should simply connect d…

It was a giraffe, for which that nerve just seems out of place.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#44

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

Incidentally, I think the producers of Star Trek nailed this with design language of the Borg, perhaps accidentally.

For those who don't know, the Borg are a machine intelligence hive mind species that roams the galaxy in their cubes, spheres, diamonds and other ships shaped like basic solids, destroying or assimilating anything interesting in their path, and speaking a lot about "bringing order to chaos". Yet seemingly despite their focus on order and perfection, the individual drones and the microstructure of the ships both look like a haphazard bundle of lights and wires. This is in line with the article - machine intelligence optimizing for extreme efficiency across multiple dimensions isn't going to create sleek-looking constructs.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#45

Post by daguar » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

I think I have to quibble with this:

> Here, I propose Scott’s Law: never put order in a system before you understand the structure underneath its chaos.

James C. Scott wouldn't probably never underwrite re-ordering of systems from the top down.

Central to his argument is that viewing complex systems from any singular position requires a process of simplification (legibility) that prevents a complete understanding.

The presumption that one has gotten to a place of "understand[ing] the structure underneath [the] chaos" is in fact the false confidence he attributes to most of these ordering projects.

I think if you want to wrangle a suggestion from Scott's book, it's more about making lots of small pokes at a system and seeing how it reacts, and slowly building on positive reactions from the system.

(Also, messiness and complexity are not intrinsically linked to the efficiency of a system — systems can optimize for lots of variables and it's really context-specific. So as much as you shouldn't take order to be innately good, don't take messy to be innately efficient!)

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#46

Post by toxicFork » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

Mindless2112 wrote: post #37

pmoriarty wrote: post #10

"When a God-level AI takes over in a science fiction book, it often remakes the world in its image: full of straight lines, smooth acceleration rates, and lots of chrome (AIs love that stuff). But as we start using algorithms to design things, we get results that look a lot more chaotic than that..." It would be interesting to see a movie where an AI takes over and turns reality in to a Rube Goldberg machine.

Having seen AI play Mario, I'd expect to see it try to achieve its goals by exploiting bugs in reality based on whatever simulated reality it was trained in.

Yes, that AI is called Life, and some surprising optimisations have lead to flying eight limbed creatures, floating lizard-like beings, and a machine within the simulation that is supposedly capable of creating a simulation of reality itself.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#47

Post by paganel » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

Very interesting examples provided in the article, the "topological optimization" one [1] made me think of the Vauban fortifications. As can be seen from even a cursory look on the dedicated Wikipedia page they're mostly pretty symmetrical and especially well-organized, as can very well be seen for the Alsatian town of Neuf-Brisach [2]. I'm wondering if the "ideal" solution for the problem Vauban was set out to solve (protecting towns against artillery fire) isn't a lot more less symmetrical, like in that topological optimization example where the "ideal" AI-found solution is a lot more "messy".

[1] https://twitter.com/jo_liss/status/674332649226436613/photo/...?

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuf-Brisach#/media/File:Neuf-...

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#48

Post by rini17 » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #27

lmm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, corporations and governments flatten and simplify everything until they can understand it. The next step, once we have powerful enough systems, is to embrace the chaos and use it. E.g. older houses were hand-built, but nowadays houses are built with straight walls and standardised heights for everything so that mass-produced furniture can fit in them. But if in the future our furniture is made on-demand by AIs, t…

I work for a large size corporation but one which is a quarter the size of many fortune 100s. I guarantee you almost no one knows how things work or are done beyond their immediate scope. Much of my life is spent just trying to glean an understanding of some adjacent function or trying to convince people above me that things they believe about how things work are not actually reflective of how they actually work. A R…

Maybe that's how Musk's ventures are different - he knows how everything in his corporation works?

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#49

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#50

Post by knowaveragejoe » Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #20

Mirioron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think AI would turn reality into a Rube Goldberg machine, but rather that it would create so much complexity that we can't see through it.

The Matrix. I always thought it would be interesting to have a prequel about the first person to escape. Office Space meets X Files, and the order of the complexity slowly becomes more apparent, until the movie turns into Playtime.

There was no first person to escape, there were people who survived the war with the machines and were never "in the matrix" to begin with. You should check out The Animatrix.