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Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

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71–80 of 571 posts

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#71
post #59

A very neat problem and result. I often find myself swinging between "It's so over" and "We're so back" - some days I roll out of bed thinking I could have Claude solve some random unproven OEIS sequence before breakfast; other days, I wake up in a cold sweat worried about the fate of humanity and what the world might look like in a decade. I think it's that I don't have a very high p(doom) or p(utopia), and I don't…

"Caveats, stated plainly" You should have seen the discussion of this on the Schneier blog a few days ago. Someone had their agent check the solution, presumably it emailed a librarian to check that it was correct for the original edition. Then their comments read like "The BL/EEBO witness lacks it, so the discrepancy is copy-specific, not a disproof of the cipher." and "A complete 285-coordinate physical replication…

[dead]

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#73

Anytime I get worried about where AI might be headed, I think about how Climate Change is now on its way like an out of control freight train headed straight for us, and I worry about AI a little less. I doubt it's going to do anything to us that we're not already doing to ourselves

Here's an alternative take. Climate change, and the myriad related environmental crises, are essentially a product of human population and technology. Population will follow its course, up and then down. The wildcard is technology. Yes, AI's energy hunger is worsening things right now and that's a problem. But, personally, I can't help be hopeful that AI's sheer potential might come to invert that curve. At the very…

> we could really use a revolutionary technology [to address climate change]

We have it. We've had it for a long time. We've had several such technologies, take your pick: solar, nuclear, hydro, wind. The technology is not holding us back, politics, ignorance and greed are. I'm not at all hopeful AI will help us with any of those three very human flaws.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#74
post #46

> The answer was simple in hindsight. It just kept looking until it found it—and that persistence might show up in many other areas. Sounds more like brute forcing than intelligence, this time.

That seems a like the result for a lot of AI solves. It solves it due to persistence, on a problem that hasn’t been important enough for a human to invest significant time into.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#75
post #45

Anytime I get worried about where AI might be headed, I think about how Climate Change is now on its way like an out of control freight train headed straight for us, and I worry about AI a little less. I doubt it's going to do anything to us that we're not already doing to ourselves

What makes you say that on climate change? I was still prophesied ice ages when in high school, then 12ft water increases and sunk Maldives in university and we still have roughly the same weather.

You have entirely failed to grasp what climate change is, its effects and the timeline as described by scientists for decades.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#76
post #21
post #2

> I told it to look online at some of Fable’s strongest feats, especially the math problems it has solved, and that something like this should be easy in comparison. Fascinating. I wonder if you could show "fake news" to a weaker model and get it to be more ambitious in its attempted solutions, even if it's not fundamentally any smarter.

Career path: software engineer -> prompt engineer -> positive affirmation engineer

https://github.com/stbenjam/skills/tree/main/plugins/hype

I have a plug-in to do this. I don't know if it's effective but Claude said it was genuinely helpful (obviously would say that about anything)

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#77
post #59

A very neat problem and result. I often find myself swinging between "It's so over" and "We're so back" - some days I roll out of bed thinking I could have Claude solve some random unproven OEIS sequence before breakfast; other days, I wake up in a cold sweat worried about the fate of humanity and what the world might look like in a decade. I think it's that I don't have a very high p(doom) or p(utopia), and I don't…

"Caveats, stated plainly" You should have seen the discussion of this on the Schneier blog a few days ago. Someone had their agent check the solution, presumably it emailed a librarian to check that it was correct for the original edition. Then their comments read like "The BL/EEBO witness lacks it, so the discrepancy is copy-specific, not a disproof of the cipher." and "A complete 285-coordinate physical replication…

Astra told me yesterday:

> The run baseline was captured without a physical MAC; the current device is not durably bound to it.

> Engineering mode confirmation is the ESPHome component read-back; the LD2410 UART acknowledgement is not observed, so this is not proof the radar itself applied the sensitivity change.

No clue what the fuck any of it means.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an alternative take. Climate change, and the myriad related environmental crises, are essentially a product of human population and technology. Population will follow its course, up and then down. The wildcard is technology. Yes, AI's energy hunger is worsening things right now and that's a problem. But, personally, I can't help be hopeful that AI's sheer potential might come to invert that curve. At the very…

If there is energy to be used, the system will use it because people always use power when it exists. AI can't do anything to stop it as it is both controlled by the powerful and has been trained on the tendencies of human beings to get ahead. If AI gives a person new capabilities, they'll use those capabilities selfishly, or even unselfishly but still causing harm because they're in an arms race. We don't need a rev…

What are you alluding to exactly and who is “we” when you say “we need to experience immediate pain from reckless innovation “

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an alternative take. Climate change, and the myriad related environmental crises, are essentially a product of human population and technology. Population will follow its course, up and then down. The wildcard is technology. Yes, AI's energy hunger is worsening things right now and that's a problem. But, personally, I can't help be hopeful that AI's sheer potential might come to invert that curve. At the very…

If there is energy to be used, the system will use it because people always use power when it exists. AI can't do anything to stop it as it is both controlled by the powerful and has been trained on the tendencies of human beings to get ahead. If AI gives a person new capabilities, they'll use those capabilities selfishly, or even unselfishly but still causing harm because they're in an arms race. We don't need a rev…

> If there is energy to be used, the system will use it because people always use power when it exists.

That doesn't seem correct to me. There is always energy available that is not used because it is not cost-effective to do so. (Consider - the grass in your yard is not harvested and burnt for power). AI may yet turn out to be a paperclip maximiser, but humanity itself is not there yet.

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