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Gas Town Decoded

alilleybrinker.com

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Re: Gas Town Decoded

#111

Post by ncruces »

soulofmischief wrote: post #74
keyle wrote: post #66

I'd help build Gas City and Gas State, and Gas Country if that would mean we actually would solve the things AI promised to solve. All sickness, famine, wealth ... The problem is, we're just fidgeting yolo-fizzbuzz ad nauseam. The return on investment at the moment is probably one of the worst in the history of human investments. AI does improve over time, still today, but we're going to run out of planet before we g…

The Wright brothers are idiots, if it were me I'd have made a supersonic jet from the get go and not waste my time mucking around with prototypes.

The prototype phase meant data centers are now measured in MW instead of TFLOPS.

At a time where we were desperate to reduce emissions, data centers now consume around 20% of the energy consumed by the entire aviation sector, with consumption is rising at 15% YoY.

Never mind the water required to cool them, or the energy and resources required to build them, the capital allocation, and the opportunity cost of not allocating all of that to something else.

And this is, your words, the prototype phase.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#112

Post by BrenBarn »

bkolobara wrote: post #104
dchuk wrote: post #98

I’m very bought in to the idea that raw coding is now a solved problem with the current models and agentic harnesses. Let alone what’s coming in the near term. That being said, I think we’re in a weird phase right now where people’s obvious mental health issues are appearing as “hyper productivity” due to the use of these tools to absolutely spam out code that isn’t necessarily broadly coherent but is locally impress…

There is a lot of research on how words/language influences what we think, and even what we can observe, like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. I have a suspicion that extensive use of LLMs can result in damage to your brain. That's why we are seeing so many mental health issues surfacing up, and w…

> If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors.

That is quite untrue. It is true that people may be slightly slower or less accurate in distinguishing colors that are within a labeled category than those that cross a category boundary, but that's far from saying they can't perceive the difference at all. The latter would imply that, for instance, English speakers cannot distinguish shades of blue or green.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#113

Post by Terr_ »

ViscountPenguin wrote: post #73
keyle wrote: post #66

I'd help build Gas City and Gas State, and Gas Country if that would mean we actually would solve the things AI promised to solve. All sickness, famine, wealth ... The problem is, we're just fidgeting yolo-fizzbuzz ad nauseam. The return on investment at the moment is probably one of the worst in the history of human investments. AI does improve over time, still today, but we're going to run out of planet before we g…

As of yet, the AI models doing important work are still pretty specialized. I'd be happy to pitch in to run something like an open source version of alpha-fold, but I'm not aware of any such projects. I have trouble seeing LLMs making meaningful progress on those frontiers without reaching ASI, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

I think part of the problem/difference is that all "important work" needs to be auditable and understood by humans. We need to be able to fix bugs, and not just roll the dice and hoping that a lack of symptoms means everything is cured.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#114

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bkolobara wrote: post #110
jstanley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. Perhaps you mean to say that speakers are unable to name the difference between the colours? I can easily see differences between (for example) different shades of red. But I can't name them other than "shade of red". I do happen to subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in the sense that…

No, if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no. EDIT: I have been searching for the source of where I saw this, but can't find it now :( EDIT2: I found a talk touching in the topic with a study: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

> if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no

The experiments I've seen seem to interrogate what the culture means by colour (versus shade, et cetera) more than what the person is seeing.

If you show me sky blue and Navy blue and ask me if they're the same colour, I'll say yes. If you ask someone in a different context if Russian violet and Midnight blue are the same colour, I could see them saying yes, too. That doesn't mean they literally can't see the difference. Just that their ontology maps the words blue and violet to sets of colours differently.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#115

Post by cthalupa »

bkolobara wrote: post #110
jstanley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. Perhaps you mean to say that speakers are unable to name the difference between the colours? I can easily see differences between (for example) different shades of red. But I can't name them other than "shade of red". I do happen to subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in the sense that…

No, if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no. EDIT: I have been searching for the source of where I saw this, but can't find it now :( EDIT2: I found a talk touching in the topic with a study: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

The ability for us to look at a gradient of color and differentiate between shades even without distinct names for them seems to disprove this on its face.

Unless the question is literally the equivalent of someone showing you a swatch of crimson and a swatch of scarlet and being asked if both are red, in which case, well yeah sure.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#116

Post by pverheggen »

bkolobara wrote: post #110
jstanley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. Perhaps you mean to say that speakers are unable to name the difference between the colours? I can easily see differences between (for example) different shades of red. But I can't name them other than "shade of red". I do happen to subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in the sense that…

No, if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no. EDIT: I have been searching for the source of where I saw this, but can't find it now :( EDIT2: I found a talk touching in the topic with a study: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

You're probably thinking of the Himba tribe color experiment - which as it turns out, was mostly fabricated by a BBC documentary:

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17970

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#117

Post by bkolobara »

BrenBarn wrote: post #112
bkolobara wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of research on how words/language influences what we think, and even what we can observe, like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. I have a suspicion that extensive use of LLMs can result in damage to your brain. That's why we are seeing so many mental health issues surfacing up, and w…

> If in a langauge there is one word for 2 different colors, speakers of it are unable to see the difference between the colors. That is quite untrue. It is true that people may be slightly slower or less accurate in distinguishing colors that are within a labeled category than those that cross a category boundary, but that's far from saying they can't perceive the difference at all. The latter would imply that, for…

The point I was trying to make is that the way our brain works is deeply connected to language and words, including how fast and how accurate you perceive colors [0][1]. And interacting with an LLM could have unexpected side effects on it, because we were never before exposed to "statistically generated language" in such amounts.

[0]: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k?si=GK6VPP0yoFoGyOn3 [1]: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#118

Post by bkolobara »

pverheggen wrote: post #116
bkolobara wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no. EDIT: I have been searching for the source of where I saw this, but can't find it now :( EDIT2: I found a talk touching in the topic with a study: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

You're probably thinking of the Himba tribe color experiment - which as it turns out, was mostly fabricated by a BBC documentary: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17970

Yes, I think this was it! Thanks for sharing the link. I had no idea that part was fabricated.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#119

Post by jpfromlondon »

soulofmischief wrote: post #74
keyle wrote: post #66

I'd help build Gas City and Gas State, and Gas Country if that would mean we actually would solve the things AI promised to solve. All sickness, famine, wealth ... The problem is, we're just fidgeting yolo-fizzbuzz ad nauseam. The return on investment at the moment is probably one of the worst in the history of human investments. AI does improve over time, still today, but we're going to run out of planet before we g…

The Wright brothers are idiots, if it were me I'd have made a supersonic jet from the get go and not waste my time mucking around with prototypes.

the Wright brothers sold me a subscription to a supersonic jet and I've got a bundle of matchsticks and some canvas.

Re: Gas Town Decoded

#120

Post by wongarsu »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #114
bkolobara wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no. EDIT: I have been searching for the source of where I saw this, but can't find it now :( EDIT2: I found a talk touching in the topic with a study: https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8?si=v1FNU06rb5mMYRKj&t=889

> if you show them two colors and ask them if they are different, they will tell you no The experiments I've seen seem to interrogate what the culture means by colour (versus shade, et cetera ) more than what the person is seeing. If you show me sky blue and Navy blue and ask me if they're the same colour, I'll say yes. If you ask someone in a different context if Russian violet and Midnight blue are the same colour,…

If you asked me if a fire engine and a ripe strawberry are the same color I would say yes. Obviously, they are both red. If you held them next to each other I would still be able to tell you they are obviously different shades of red. But in my head they are both mapped to the red "embedding". I imagine that's the exact same thing that happens to blue and green in cultures that don't have a word for green.

If on the other hand you work with colors a lot you develop a finer mapping. If your first instinct when asked for the name of that wall over there is to say it's sage instead of green, then you would never say that a strawberry and a fire engine have the same color. You might even question the validity of the question, since fire engines have all kinds of different colors (neon red being a trend lately)

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