201–210 of 215 posts
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I'd say the opposite -- compare it to us: if you take away our internet we get cranky, but we don't lose all ability to think intelligently.
Imagine if someone took away your speech, hearing, TV, radio, newspaper, and the ability to order new books - you only had access to the knowledge you already have. You're only allowed to communicate via serial terminal, and can only respond, not initiate.
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ChatGPT (instruction tuned autoregressive language models) indeed already seems quite general (it's good at conversation Turing tests without faking it like ELIZA), even if the absolute intelligence is limited. Level of generality and intelligence is not the same. Something could be quite narrow but very intelligent (AlphaGo) or quite general but dumb overall (small kid, insect). Okay, ChatGPT is only text-to-text, b…
I feel like though I speak the same language as everyone else, at least nominally, none of you are using the same definitions as I do for any of these terms. AGI was the result of people using the older term "AI" for things that hadn't turned out to be what we thought AI was going to be. Like alot of technology terms, all of this has its orgins in science fiction, when AI was supposed to be the equivalent of a human…
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Causing chaos on NATO's borders I think isn't meant to stir up a war with NATO but rather to project an image of strength domestically and within other regions that Russia dominates and to further stoke the fires of ethno-nationalism they feed off. Plus creating chaos in general seems part of the goal. Russia was losing (well, lost) hegemony in Ukraine post 2014, but damned if it's going to permit its success outside…
Well, in 2015 Turkey shot down a Russian fighter for crossing the border just a mile or two, everybody thought there will be WW III but nothing happened.
Of course, there _is_ a line, and Russia will probe to see where that is, but they won't cross it.
It's yet another reason why NATO is so firmly bound to supporting Ukraine. Before the opening of direct hostilities there, Russia engaged in all sorts of shit in the west with no consequences. Cyber attacks and surveillance stuff, but actually doing things like brazenly poisoning people on NATO soil and in the process killing UK civilians. Or shooting down civilian airliners. And never paying any consequence because we were afraid of war.
Well, now there's a war, but we don't have to be directly involved with the threat of nukes and cruise missiles hitting our cities...
The one place where I do see risk of the line being crossed is in the Black Sea. I'm disappointed that Turkey and NATO have not taken a firmer line. I hope/expect to see a stronger response to events like what happened in the port on the Danube a couple days ago.
It makes no sense for Russia to be allowed to control the waters outside of its territory on a sea where the coastline is filled with NATO countries.
If there is a serious flare up, it will be there, and naval.
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> First of all, the SO2 goes into the stratosphere, not the atmosphere. Considering that the stratosphere is part of the atmosphere, that's both pedantic and incorrect. > We know a lot about it because volcanoes do this occasionally. Temperatures cool down for about 2 years, which is how long it takes for the S02 to break down. Volcano's don't pump pure SO2. Yes, the science may be entirely valid, and it's not for me…
The distinction is important because at lower altitudes SO2 produces acid rain. But the stratosphere is far above the rain clouds. NASA report on the Mount Pinatubo caused global cooling: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects...
Doesn't SO2 sink in air? Because we'll need to be constantly adding it to the atmosphere aren't we going to end up with acid rain as it falls to the ground?
Martin Shkreli (yes, that Martin Shkreli) is currently running a virtual screen for additional PCNA inhibitors: https://twitter.com/wagieeacc/status/1687137621699436552
His history is not good. >> Shkreli bought the exclusive rights to manufacture Daraprim, a drug that can treat a rare parasitic disease, in 2015 and hiked the price from $13.50 per pill to $750, to much controversy. The entrepreneur was ordered in January 2022 to return $64.6 million in profit made by the price hikes and creating what the Federal Trade Commission alleged was “a web of anti-competitive restrictions” t…
Shkreli's main sin is choosing a drug that is primarily used by a specific protected class. It treats parasitic infections that normally don't take hold in people with healthy immune response. Daraprim's customer list is something like 92% AIDS patients, and 8% immuno-compromised for other reasons.
Shkreli did something that happens all the time, and we don't bat an eye. But you don't do it to protected classes without a mob response.
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> possible helicopter incursion It's not a possible. And yes there are people living 'right on the border'.
If I lived on the border, I'd be upset, too. However, this isn't very far from standard Russian way of doing things. They regularly invade air space of various NATO countries, maybe just to test their fighters, maybe to introduce some tension, who knows. The routine is that our fighters escort the intruders back to where they came from. In this case, since the military training was communicated well in advance and th…
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So the Belarus incursion that Belarus denies and the Polish publicly announced response are all Russian disinfo?
The whole story is quite interesting. After Lukashenko falsified the elections (again) and Belorussians went on the streets (for the first time with such an intensity), in the end Lukashenko decided to fight for his life and visited Putin to get his support. After that, the protests were brutally ended, people dead or in prisons, and Lukashenko came from Moscow with full Putin support. But also with two strings attac…
Seconded. I had such high hopes that they could push it through the last time around and what really irks me is that there are enough Belorussians still that keep this jackass in power, and that they will prioritize their own financial well being over their fellow citizens' lives. I was in Poland during the Solidarity uprising and I had such high hopes for the rest of the SovBloc but not everybody managed to take advantage of the momentum. Ironically, distance from German capital seems to have been a prime factor in the outcome.
I just got a cancer diagnosis with an ugly prognosis. Wish I could fast-forward a few years to when this treatment might be proven and available!
Always get a second opinion. Find the oncologist that doesn't give up hope.
I feel that I'm in good hands. If I was rich, I'd maybe get better care from some more expensive hands but there's no guarantee.
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There's a mental model that many people have which is rooted in negativism. I believe it's a form of intellectual laziness who's roots lie in self-consciousness. Meaning, that some people project internal feelings of inadequacy onto the external world. And I understand the temptation there - if I'm not competing well at a game, the immediate tendency is to blame the game (I stink at golf -> golf is stupid). One of th…
Which is exactly the sort of thing people who have no sense of accountability say. It’s not that I’m Friedrich Frankenstein or John Hammond, it’s that you troglodytes wouldn’t know a good idea if it bit you. You’re just jealous. I was there when the foundations for the enshitification of the internet were laid. And there were a bunch of people complaining about the people complaining about taking a beat to decide how…
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The distinction is important because at lower altitudes SO2 produces acid rain. But the stratosphere is far above the rain clouds. NASA report on the Mount Pinatubo caused global cooling: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects...
Clarifying what part of the atmosphere is important, sure, to say it's not in the atmosphere and instead in the stratosphere is absolutely wrong. Doesn't SO2 sink in air? Because we'll need to be constantly adding it to the atmosphere aren't we going to end up with acid rain as it falls to the ground?
Either way, if acid rain is the price for controlling global warming, I think that is a very desirable trade-off!