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Life is more than an engineering problem

lareviewofbooks.org

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Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#121

Post by gcanyon »

guitarlimeo wrote: post #94
gcanyon wrote: post #56

I'm 100% certain Chiang is wrong about art. I'm a product manager, not an artist, but I write many things as part of my job, and Claude in particular is a better writer than I am. Here's how Claude rewrote that, you can argue whether in this particular instance it did better than I did :-) While I respect Chiang's perspective on AI and art, my experience as a product manager has shown me otherwise - Claude routinely…

I 100% like your own voice more. Don't feel discouraged of using your own voice and style, that's actually a huge part of you that matters more than if the text is 1% more readable.

Thanks, honestly I agree in this case, but I decided before even trying the experiment to post Claude's output no matter what. I (not humbly) think I'm pretty good at succinct statements like in this case. Anything more than about half a page, the tide starts to turn.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#122

Post by gcanyon »

bee_rider wrote: post #63
gcanyon wrote: post #56

I'm 100% certain Chiang is wrong about art. I'm a product manager, not an artist, but I write many things as part of my job, and Claude in particular is a better writer than I am. Here's how Claude rewrote that, you can argue whether in this particular instance it did better than I did :-) While I respect Chiang's perspective on AI and art, my experience as a product manager has shown me otherwise - Claude routinely…

IMO Yours is much better in this case, it is more direct and clear (although I guess I’m looking for problems in Claude’s output). Yours starts by just giving us what you are trying to say. Then gives us your background succinctly. Claude’s starts out with this circuitous “While I respect…” failing to drive the point in the interest of being… polite, I guess? But not actually polite because everybody who’s read anyth…

Agreed -- I like mine better, but I (internally) committed to posting before I went to Claude. I think it does better than I do as the content gets longer.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#123

Post by abecedarius »

freejazz wrote: post #88
abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

>and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. I wonder how people write things like this and don't realize they sound as sanctimonious as exactly whatever they are criticizing. Or, if I was to put it in your words: "how could someone intelligent post like this?"

You're right, it was kind of rude. Apologies. I really would rather be wrong, for a reason I gave in another comment.

The thing is, you can interact with this new kind of actor as much as you need to to judge this -- make up new problems, ask your own questions. "LLMs can't think" has needed ever-escalating standards for "real" thinking over the last few years.

Gary Marcus made a real-money bet about this.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#124

Post by andrei_says_ »

Squarex wrote: post #6
vrnvu wrote: post #4

Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others". I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist. Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomati…

Ted Chiang and Greg Egan are my absolutely favourite authors. Do you know about other similar writers?

A bit “harder” sci-fi but incredible world building - Alastair Reynolds.

I recommend his short stories first - Galactic North is a good start. Or Beyond the Aquila Rift.

House of Suns is a good first novel.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#125

Post by weego »

abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

Counter point: what is it about scraping the Internet and indexing it cleverly that makes you believe that would lead to the the creation of the ability to reason above it's programming?

No one in neuroscience, psychology or any related field can point to reasoning or 'consciousness' or whatever you wish to call it and say it appeared from X. Yet we have this West Coast IT cultish thinking that if we throw money at it we'll just spontaneously get there. The idea that we're even 1% close should be ridiculous to anyone rationally looking at what we're currently doing.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#126

Post by infBIGlilnums »

abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

What is intelligent person? You seem to have approached the article with an existing reverence.

Rather 1984 to look at the contribution of an academic and an iron welder and see authority in someone who memorized the book, but not how to keep themselves alive. Chiang and the like are nihilists, indifferent if they die cause it all just goes dark to them. Indifferent to the toll they extract from labor to fly their ass around speaking about glyphs in a textbook. Academics detached from the real work people need are just as draining on society and infuriating as a billionaire CEO and tribal shaman. Especially these days when they derive some small normalization from 100s of years of cataloged work and proclaim their bit of syntactic art is all they should need to spend the rest of their life being celebrated like they’re turning 8 all over again.

Grigori Perelman is the only intelligent person out there I respect. Copy-paste college grads all over the US recite the textbook and act like it’s a magical incantation that bends the will of others. Cult of social incompetence in the US.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#127

Post by ninetyninenine »

analog31 wrote: post #65
ninetyninenine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC partners own capital right? I mean the labor they actually do doesn’t translate into the income they receive which is astronomically more. Take for an example: a yc partner can take everything they know and train someone to do the same work and pay that person a much lower fixed salary. That salary represents work contributed, but a yc partner earns more than this. The majority of wealth gained from the yc partner…

Nobody needs to be rich enough to own a 747, in order to justify making one. In fact, I doubt there are more than a dozen individually owned jetliners in the world. All you need is for a lot of people to pool their wealth and allow it to be directed towards a common purpose. In turn, this happens because society provides entitlements (such as financial and corporate regulations, the money system, etc.) that allow gre…

>Nobody needs to be rich enough to own a 747, in order to justify making one

My argument is not about the justification to making or owning a 747. It's the justification for how is it realistically possible for ONE person to own enough wealth to buy a 747 EVEN when his own intrinsic abilities are not great enough to build a 747. This is orthogonal to society pooling together wealth and building a 747 AND orthogonal to the actuality of a wealthy person purchasing a 747.

At best a human can probably output the utility equivalent of 3 other human beings if that human has super strength or genius level intelligence. But the ability to make a 747 which takes thousands of man years to make? What sort fair exchange did the person engage in, in capitalist economy to generate that level of wealth WHEN at best his own output can only be 3x the average human? Obviously the exchange he made is fundamentally unfair.

The thing with communism is that it's unfair. You distribute resources equally, then actors who don't perform get an undeserved portion of wealth. Capitalism on the other hand is fair in the sense that the amount of effective effort you put in the more wealth you gain? Or is it? Then how come in capitalism you get entities that own enough wealth to buy a 747 when clearly the amount of work that person can output is obviously not even close to the amount of work used to create the 747 itself? That's the issue, and it's a small issue.

The bigger issue is that the person who has enough wealth to build a 747 has assets that will grow in compound. He will get richer and this will eat the world as what's currently happening in the actual world right now.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#128

Post by satvikpendem »

vrnvu wrote: post #4

Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others". I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist. Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomati…

I recommend the story Hell is the Absence of God in the book you mentioned; as someone non-religious, it was quite interesting to see how people generally feel about deities and their awesome power, from this short story [0].

[0] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50e08e65e4b0c2f497697...

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#129

Post by unification_fan »

abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

>and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this,

Read up on the ELIZA effect

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#130

Post by unification_fan »

fmbb wrote: post #83
mofeien wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this also feels like a statement that would obviously need strong justification. For if animals are capable of reasoning, probably through being trained on many examples of the laws of nature doing their thing, then why couldn't a statistical model be?

> For if animals are capable of reasoning Are they? Which animals? Some seem smart and maybe do it. Needs strong justification. > probably through being trained on many examples of the laws of nature doing their thing Is that how they can reason? Why do you think so? Sounds like something that needs strong justification. > then why couldn't a statistical model be? Maybe because that is not how anything in the world a…

> Needs strong justification.

if animals didn't show problem-solving skills, and thus reasoning, complex ones wouldn't exist anymore by now. Planning is a fundamental skill for survival in a resource-constrained environment and that's how intelligence evolved to begin with.

Assuming that intelligence and by extension reasoning are discrete steps is so backwards to me. They are quite obviously continuously connected all the way back to the first nervous systems.

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