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Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

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Re: Discovery Loop

#551

Post by scottyah »

bodash wrote: post #483
sp1nningaway wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why all of these companies need to frame it like this. Why not a large amount of people doing an even larger amount of science?

When you define prosperity in large amount of people, it makes you sound like a communist, and America spent decades to avoid that. The other alternative is to sound like a capitalist, which is very much ok by today’s standards.

That's just not true at all? Might as well just post that you like communism, you barely even tried to cater your post to the thread.

Re: Discovery Loop

#552

Post by scottyah »

anon-3988 wrote: post #411
malaproping wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research Yea no high quality science research happens in the US? What?

There is but the cost is way, way higher from what I can tell. If I want a customized metal shielding with awkward shapes, I can just walk down to Shenzhen and have 10 people clamoring to make it. Does the US have the same?

Yeah, Orange County. They don't try to compete on price though, just quality and speed.

Re: Discovery Loop

#553

Post by storus »

cjbarber wrote: post #18

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

Many of those require a paradigm shift in our understanding of Universe, so I am not sure they are achievable with any convex combination of existing knowledge. We'd need some sharp mind connecting the dots but with heavy use of AI and incentives to use it, we might just never give a chance for such mind to arise.

Re: Discovery Loop

#554

Post by scottyah »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #170
tbrownaw wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see how the second sentence follows from the first. I would think the claim in the second sentence would only be relevant in case of the inverse of the claim in the first sentence.

> I do not see how the second sentence follows from the first. Point 1 on the list is "Make Solar Energy Economical". Solar is economical today - mostly due to China investing (and heavily subsidising) in solar for the past couple of decades; but compare to the US where certain particular big-businesses (oil companies, mostly) were instead cynically funding disinformation efforts and getting into bed with the Republi…

We do have that, now that Tesla has been abandoned by the Left and pretty much all of the big Oil and Gas companies have heavily invested in solar and wind. Ironically, it's the unions and support of keeping old jobs alive that is hindering the solar in the USA- which in my day used to be leftist type ideals.

Re: Discovery Loop

#555

Post by scottyah »

downrightmike wrote: post #457
lkbm wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good sanitation is a financial and political problem. The engineering has been solved for decades now. This was true of computers, phones, books, washing machines, refrigerators, A/C...most technologies. Turns out that doing the addition engineering to figure out how to do these things cheaply makes the political and financial problems way easier .

Suburban sprawl needs to go as it is a complete waste of infrastructure

You just want all your little worker bees to be in massive towers like Hong Kong, without a chance to even grow their own vegetables or have any private space?

Re: Discovery Loop

#556

Post by scottyah »

darth_avocado wrote: post #161
cjbarber wrote: post #18

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

> Make Solar Energy Economical Isn’t it already?

Not really, even the best systems have like a 10yr break-even period. And I live in a place with some of the highest residential electricity rates in the continental United States.

Re: Discovery Loop

#557

Post by scottyah »

twothreeone wrote: post #112
staplers wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods If only we could invent a solar-powered, self-replicating, carbon-stacking, habitat-building machine..

Yes, plant more trees!

It's not that simple, trees contribute to global warming. Norway has had problems with the increased tree growth as snow melts.

Re: Discovery Loop

#558

Post by scottyah »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #488
dag100 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just add 'mind control' while you're at it. Only death stops stagnation in the end. Without death, especially if death can be avoided by the rich and powerful but not the poor, life will get much, much worse for the average person (until only the rich and their automated capital remain I suppose, in which scenario they will simply turn on each other).

This is the classic "without death, authoritarian depots will be in power forever". But it's actually the wrong way around. Hope that the despot will soon die saps peoples' will to do the difficult and dangerous job of removing them. Take away that hope and they are forced to find the courage.

People might be willing to give their known-to-be-finite lives in pursuit of the Greater Good, but the equation changes greatly when you're giving up an eternity for the chance of making things better. More of the population would be aged too, so I think it'd be a lot harder to find the kids that usually die in wars.

Especially true if it is the AIs that get us the immortality- it definitely won't be equally spread, and any incumbents have a massive advantage.

I think more people would settle for worse conditions to stay alive. Do you think you'd be more likely to revolt at 150yrs old when all your family and yourself can live extremely long to forever? Or do you think the threat of death by killing wouldn't be an issue?

Re: Discovery Loop

#559

Post by SubiculumCode »

FuckButtons wrote: post #412
SubiculumCode wrote: post #372

I am siding with the "intelligence is not the bottleneck" crowd. Science takes more than reading literature and making a hypothesis. You have to run the experiment. And that is where messy reality will crush the naive, and resist any attempt to package it up into a factory-like innovation engine. But they will take your money, should you have some to invest.

I’m not sure that I agree entirely with your framing here, yes, you do at some point need to correct your assumptions with external evidence. But clearly there have been many individuals throughout history who have had incredibly out sized impact in their respective fields as a consequence of the quality of their reasoning.

Biology resists reasoning. Chaotic interactions make prediction via reasoning uncertain. Simulation, not reasoning can get closer, and could be leveraged by AI, but empirical verification is probably no optional.

Re: Discovery Loop

#560

Post by SubiculumCode »

dsubburam wrote: post #417
SubiculumCode wrote: post #372

I am siding with the "intelligence is not the bottleneck" crowd. Science takes more than reading literature and making a hypothesis. You have to run the experiment. And that is where messy reality will crush the naive, and resist any attempt to package it up into a factory-like innovation engine. But they will take your money, should you have some to invest.

Would you side with the adjacent statement "expertise is not the bottleneck"? Didn't we recently discuss "LLMs reward expertise"?[1] I suspect Discovery Loop will have to hire experts in each area they are targeting, to supervise and prompt their system effectively, much like the Terence Tao conversation with ChatGPT the OP cited[2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161518 [2] https://www.seangoedecke.com/l…

I did not intend to imply that AI is not an accelerator, but am implying that there is a last mile that it is not equipped to address, at least not without robotics.
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