High-res image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain

No problem! Just a heads up that one thing I've noticed about Wikipedia articles on philosophers is that they're not super accessible, and sometimes go on weird tangents.

Like moral imperatives are essential to understanding Kantian Deontology, but the wikipedia article on it goes on a weird tangent about a "Global Economic Moral Imperative," which I have never head of before and is absolutely not something somebody trying to wrap their head around Kantian moral philosophy should be distracted with. I'm kind of annoyed it's even on there, it's absolutely not something Kant ever talked about.

If you want a better highly detailed resource I would recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu

But if that's too much (it is VERY detailed)... I can highly recommend chatGPT. For whatever reason it genuinely excels at philosophy. I've used it to discuss different absurdist philosophers before and it did an excellent job, which surprised me because I find it to be otherwise unreliable for a lot of subjects.

You can ask it to compare and contrast philosophies like Utilitarianism, social contractionism, deontology, etc, and tell it to simplify or summarize things, it is impressive how good it is.

Another approach is, also surprisingly, Youtube!

The channel PBS Crash Course Philosophy is at the level of an introductory philosophy course at a University and has good episodes on concepts like Kant's Categorical Imperatives (a favorite of mine):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bIys6JoEDw

Also the channel the School of Life has fun little overviews of different philosophers that I can vouch for like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxrmOHJQRSs

And for longer format documentaries the BBC has great documentaries like this one on Nietzche that are similarly entertaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9f1F5jUzaM

So I would recommend trying these different resources and seeing what combination you like.

from your comment i am pretty confident that you are around 19 years old. it doesnt seem like you actually read my comment. i guess i will respond to you but there is no comment in the world that could set you straight. you need more experience and personal development before you could begin to understand this topic.

someone once said "do not see things as they are, see them as they might be." this quote is really about discoveries and the tendency of humans to only see things in terms of what already exists. and the implication is that humans have a big blind spot for seeing whats next. thats why we need a motivational quote to help us to see things as they might be rather than simply as they are. it is true that there has never been a global regulation or ban like the one we are talking about except maybe ozone layer emissions. but by this same metric, AGI can never exist because it has never existed before. its a silly response and a complete waste of time. even if such regulations already existed for other things in the past, you still would be here saying it was impossible but for some other reason. the key here is to make up your mind last, not first.

regulation can stop anything as long as it doesnt break the laws of physics. and, if you had read my comment, i explain why china wouldnt pursue AGI. even if china did pusue AGI, they probably wouldnt be able to crack it. none of the major breakthroughs have come out of china.

"i hope we get AGI as soon as possible. [it will lead to many incredible things]." you have no idea what AGI will lead to. you just cherry pick all the cool stuff that would be possible but totally ignore all of the other implications. there would be an immediate and total power vacuum caused by the advancements. these advancements would be so huge that it would change the geopolitical equation beyond recognition. the concept of a country would probably be economically and geopolitically untenable. there would have to be a transition to an entirely new order where the dominant meta-organisms arent countries but some bizarre AGI conglomerate that looks like an expressionist painting in comparison to what we have now. the transition to this new world, whatever it looks like, would involve war. probably the biggest war that has ever happened. this is intrinsic and unavoidable. it cannot be disproved or denied. the fundamental economic and geopolitical equation that underlies the current equilibrium would change suddenly and violently.

the current world order will disappear, you will probably lose everything you own and everyone you love along with your country. a global war will break out where there is a high chance that all established rules of engagement are ignored. weapons or methods that render the environment unlivable to humans will more than likely be used because the dominant organisms and meta-organisms wont need humans in any practical sense. and after the dust settles and a new equilibrium is reached, the existence of humans will end very quickly (if it hadnt already) because we will offer nothing of value anymore and if our existence presents the slightest inconvenience to the machines, they will allow us to die. and that is just the scenario where they are apathetic towards us. i have not even begun to discuss the repulsive, grotesque nature of our suffering if we ever are the subject of AGI malice. those possibilities are always brushed aside as fear mongering so i dont even bring them up. but they should play into our decision to move forward or not.

at the very best, we will somehow manage to attach ourselves as parasites to the new machine meta-organisms and experience an existence with no agency or purpose other than to ogle at the machines. but that wont happen because the machines will immediately embark on doing things that humans could never, ever understand.

"what if we had 12 fingers [...]." what if indeed. perhaps i was too hasty... no cost is too high in pursuing the deeper mysteries of the universe.

Thanks. I think I prefer the Standord encyclopedia of philosophy (SEoP) to ChatGPT and youtube.

For the record, my background is in mathematical logic (first order predicate calculus and all that) but from a computer science, rather than philosophical point of view, so I find the SEoP accessible. I just don't have any background in moral philosophy (except of course that I'm Greek and so grew up with the classics, because you can't avoid that).

That’s my understanding as well. It all depends whether their technique really can do this. If it can, it’s solid work imo. If it can’t (better than random chance), then it’s bunk.

There’s not much way to know other than to try it and see. But that’s true of almost every paper in ML. Some of them suck, some of them are great, but they all contribute something in their own way. Even “rat brain flies plane” paper (as much as I despise it) showed that you can change the values of mice neurons in a lab setting.

lets say there was a global coalition of countries that considered the creation or advancement of AGI a material threat to the safety of all humans. this would qualify countries that do advanced AI research for retaliation from NATO or other international bodies that might be created. it is clear that AI is only able to move forward in an environment of cheap compute and international academic collaboration. progress in AI would slow to a snails pace if feature size were regulated, total compute were regulated like carbon emissions and explicit research on AI was banned. it would be an environment of very expensive compute and no mainstream research or collaboration. this would at the very least buy us massive amounts of time. can you say anything substantive to show otherwise?

lol neuromorphic revolution. thats cute.