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We've made the world too complicated

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Re: We've made the world too complicated

#121

Post by jebarker »

tardedmeme wrote: post #97
patwards wrote: post #95

I was trying to explain to my wife how I felt last night. AI and the pressure to use it and balancing the potential and with the pitfalls is stressing me out. But it’s more than that. This post perfectly captures the feeling.

What is the potential, besides more mail spam and better google search (that isn't owned by google)?

AlphaFold has a shared technical ancestry with LLMs and many people believe that was a truly significant advancement of science that may lead to benefits for humanity and the planet. I don't think this was a one-off fluke, strongly generalizing pattern matchers will be useful in many areas of science even if LLMs turn out to be overblown.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#122

Post by carlosjobim »

globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

> Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babylonians were in charge, if I remember correctly.

What would you say is the secret for people who want to live a long and fulfilling life?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#123

Post by deadonarrival »

manoDev wrote: post #109

> Our internal intuition about right and wrong seems to leave us at an early age. I think it’s the opposite - Kant did too. But modern way of life don’t leave time and space for people to think about right and wrong. One really has to elevate his spirit to begin pondering about that, most people are living for the next paycheck.

>most people are living for the next paycheck.

and that's exactly how the ruling class maintains it's power and siphons more and more wealth away from the working class.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#125

Post by BirAdam »

j_maffe wrote: post #38

> I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand in a building with rooms I can never enter, living in a country dictated by laws I can't control. We spend the majority of our waking hours and lives in an abstract world of compressed life. The moment I walk through my door I'm in a zoning area on a city-owned sidewalk, flanked by ugly metallic monsters, floating through a sea of strangers. This has be…

This isn’t entirely true. A stylus is easy to understand, as is paper. Buildings of stone are relatively easy to grasp as well. Being a polymath was once doable. Today to truly master anything requires a lifetime of dedication.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#126

Post by the__alchemist »

angrydev wrote: post #110

Oh boy, I don’t know about this one. You are born into a body that is so complicated we will perhaps never understand how all of it works. Our society if anything wrangled so much of the chaos of the natural world. It’s hardly simple to live in a world where you are under constant threat from animals, and other humans.

My reaction too, starting with the picture of dense vegetation at the top of the article!

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#127

Post by BirAdam »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #69

> I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand that's on you. It takes just a bit of effort, and I suppose time, to have a very good idea of what happens, at all levels, between the moment i had this comment in mind and you the reader conceptualizing it in your mind. Are some details missing? Sure. We still don't know where thoughts come from and I, personally, don't have the mathematically training…

Having a general understanding of how computer hardware and software works, how it’s built, and how it’s assembled is not the same thing as “fully understanding.” If you truly did fully understand, you’d be making a killing securing the OS and application stack, and the world would have far better software. That we still have constant issues with our hardware and software proves that you do not “fully understand” it.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#128

Post by scoofy »

angrydev wrote: post #110

Oh boy, I don’t know about this one. You are born into a body that is so complicated we will perhaps never understand how all of it works. Our society if anything wrangled so much of the chaos of the natural world. It’s hardly simple to live in a world where you are under constant threat from animals, and other humans.

Technology has always existed. The people that lived in nature had no idea how it worked. To them, a plow was technology and I’m sure there were people complaining about it. We only understand nature now because of technology.

I’ll take scrolling myself to death at 80 over smallpox and dying of a trivially curable infection at 40 every time.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#129

Post by bitwize »

Terr_ wrote: post #89
bitwize wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with. Adapt ourselves to, move in harmony with, rather than trying to adapt nature to our whims. The trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us; maybe our duty here is just to shut up and listen.

> Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with. Your ancestors did that, and invented unknowable gods and spirits to explain/blame everything on, so that people can give up trying to understand or manage the unmanageable.

[dead]

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#130

Post by mapontosevenths »

globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

> The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babylonians were in charge, if I remember correctly.

I was fascinated by this so I looked it up, it's mostly inaccurate, but your larger point remains valid.

1) The Greeks did refer to ancient Lebanon as Byblos, because they bought their paper from the port. The paper was actually made in Egypt and imported there for resale though. They did, and still do, have big trees in Lebanon. They were famous for the cedars. Most of the ancient cedar is long gone, but its still green.

2) Iran and Afghanistan basically have the same climate now they did then. Desert then, desert now. You may be thinking of Iraq. Mesopotamia (Iraq) did destroy the fertile crescent by over irrigating it for too long and basically salting the earth.

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