41–50 of 53 posts
Not only do we have to live with endless LLM slop now, it seems we also need to accept an endless sequence of 2-cent philosophical blog posts where people describe the "world with AI" based on two minutes of meandering thought.
Well with each new thing we get the grifters, lesswrong is an AI grifter hangout.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well with each new thing we get the grifters, lesswrong is an AI grifter hangout.
Grifters don’t usually spend their entire lives devoted to preparing for something that doesn’t yet exist, giving up whatever else they like doing to work on that problem, and spending years trying to plan out how to make things go well for everyone when that thing materializes. Grifters are opportunistic short-termists. Whatever you can say about these rationalists, they aren’t that.
/the oxygen side pre-burner in a full flow staged combustion rocket engine is a nasty place and figuring out a material that will survive in that environment was the key (or one of the keys) to making Raptor a reality.
The positive impact on human aging/lifespan/healthspan is not being talked about enough when it comes to AI+biosciences.
But I do agree that if we're on the verge* of von Neumann replicators and getting replaced by Pokhumans** to cheer on the ASI, then curing cancer, immortality and cryo-suspension are likely trivial achievements in comparison.
*Nope, not even close, but don't tell that to the ASI cultists, that's like questioning the veracity of the gospels now.
**Yes, that's the strong claim in AI 2027. And the democratic party apparently believes it.
Has anyone in the rationalist, doomer community actually seriously engaged the real biology/virology of a “virus that wipes out humanity”? Playing Plague Inc doesn’t count. I mean, we’re talking about real physical things, not first principles thought experiments here. Thus, they have limits imposed by physics and biology. Limits on transmission rate, lethality, particle size, evolutionary change rates, and so on. Al…
An AI doesn't need to kill even nearly 100% of humanity in order to render us a non-threat. Also there are plenty of doomer scenarios along the lines of e.g. some ethnosupremacist cult making a virus that kills everyone outside of their group.
And that was my reaction 15 or 20 years ago. It is only harder to poke holes in the logic now than it was then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I doubt our flying machines are anywhere near as energy efficient as birds This kind of nerd sniped me, so I looked into it and turns out no, planes are more efficient than birds! You have to look at the energy spent for moving a fixed mass over a fixed distance and for the most efficient birds I looked into, that’s about 300g of fat burned for 300g of “dry weight” for a trip of ~11,000km. (bar-tailed godwits) For…
Fascinating! Though how much of that would be due to a birds baseline metabolism? Wouldn’t be a fair comparison if that includes the birds basic energy costs of living.
And you could argue the plane also has a baseline metabolism ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fascinating! Though how much of that would be due to a birds baseline metabolism? Wouldn’t be a fair comparison if that includes the birds basic energy costs of living.
Did some quick maths, it’s roughly 10% for the bird (2W, approx. 4g/day of fat, over 10 days) so not negligible but doesn’t change the full story. And you could argue the plane also has a baseline metabolism ;)