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The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

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Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#331

Post by tinfoilhatter »

NateEag wrote: post #324
tinfoilhatter wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ideal. Definitely not mine. Get rid of everyone else so your life is easier and more sustainable... I guess I need to make my goal to get rid of you? Do you understand how this works yet?

No, you should make your goal to teach AndrewKemendo to appreciate his existence as the inscrutable gift it is, and to spend his brief time in this universe helping others appreciate the great gift they've been given and using it to the fullest. See how it works?

AndrewKemendo (based on his personal website) looks to be older than me. If he hasn't figured out the miracle of getting to exist yet, unfortunately I don't think he's going to.

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#332

Post by striking »

famouswaffles wrote: post #269
striking wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if interpretability of specific models or features within them is an open area of research, the mechanics of how LLMs work to produce results are observable and well-understood, and methods to understand their fundamental limitations are pretty solid these days as well. Is there anything to be gained from following a line of reasoning that basically says LLMs are incomprehensible, full stop?

>Even if interpretability of specific models or features within them is an open area of research, the mechanics of how LLMs work to produce results are observable and well-understood, and methods to understand their fundamental limitations are pretty solid these days as well. If you train a transformer on (only) lots and lots of addition pairs, i.e '38393 + 79628 = 118021' and nothing else, the transformer will, duri…

It's pattern matching, likely from typography texts and descriptions of umbrellas. My understanding is that the model can attempt some permutations in its thinking and eventually a permutation's tokens catch enough attention to attempt to solve, and that once it is attending to "everyday object", "arc", and "hook", it will reply with "umbrella".

Why am I confident that it's not actually doing spatial reasoning? At least in the case of Claude Opus 4.6, it also confidently replies "umbrella" even when you tell it to put the parenthesis under the J, with a handy diagram clearly proving itself wrong: https://claude.ai/share/497ad081-c73f-44d7-96db-cec33e6c0ae3 . Here's me specifically asking for the three key points above: https://claude.ai/share/b529f15b-0dfe-4662-9f18-97363f7971d1

I feel like I have a pretty good intuition of what's happening here based on my understanding of the underlying mathematical mechanics.

Edit: I poked at it a little longer and I was able to get some more specific matches to source material binding the concept of umbrellas being drawn using the letter J: https://claude.ai/share/f8bb90c3-b1a6-4d82-a8ba-2b8da769241e

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#334

Post by yoyohello13 »

danesparza wrote: post #108

"I'm aware this is unhinged. We're doing it anyway" is probably one of the greatest quotes I've heard in 2026. I feel like I need to start more sprint stand-ups with this quote...

That quote basically sums up then entire technology landscape these days.

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#335

Post by AndrewKemendo »

tim333 wrote: post #254
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok here: Everything from the semiconductor through the vacuum cleaner, automobile, airplanes and steam engines was developed to give a small group an advantage over all the other groups. It has always been the case, it will always be the case. Fundamentally, at the root nature of humanity, humans do not care about the externalities, either good or bad.

That's a slightly odd way of looking at it. I'm guessing the people developing airplanes or whatever thought of a number of things including - hey this would be cool to do - and - maybe we can make some money - and - maybe this will help people travel - and - maybe it'll impress the girls - and probably some other things too. At least that's roughly how I've thought when I make stuff, never this will give a small gro…

But the whole point is embedded in the task otherwise you wouldn’t do it

If somebody is using monetary resources to buy NFT‘s instead of handing out food to the homeless then you get less food for the homeless

All of the things listed are competitive task situations and you’re looking for some advantage that makes it easier for you

well if it makes it easier for you then it could make it easier for somebody else which means you’re crowding out other options in that action space

That is to say the pie is fixed for resources on this planet in terms of energy and resource utilization across the lifespan of a human

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#336

Post by woopsn »

Good post. I guess the transistor has been in play for not even one century, and in any case singularities are everywhere, so who cares? The topic is grandiose and fun to speculate about, but many of the real issues relate to banal media culture and demographic health.

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#337

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jacquesm wrote: post #272
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok here: Everything from the semiconductor through the vacuum cleaner, automobile, airplanes and steam engines was developed to give a small group an advantage over all the other groups. It has always been the case, it will always be the case. Fundamentally, at the root nature of humanity, humans do not care about the externalities, either good or bad.

Vacuum cleaner -> sell appliances -> sell electric motors But there was a clear advantage in quality of life for a lot of people too. Automobile -> part of industrialization of transport -> faster transport, faster world Arguably also a big increase in quality of life but it didn't scale that well and has also reduced the quality of life. If all that money had gone into public transport then that would likely have be…

This is where the concept of trickle down economics came from though and we know that that’s not actually accurate

I used to hear about this with respect to how fun funding NASA would get us more inventions because they funded Velcro

No it’s simply that there was a positive temporary externality for some subset of groups but the primary long term benefit went to the controller of the capital

The people utilizing them were marginally involved because they were only given the options that capital produced for them

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#338

Post by threethirtytwo »

NateEag wrote: post #320
project2501a wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody knows how LLMs work. I'm sorry, come again?

I think they meant "Nobody knows why LLMs work."

same thing? The how is not explainable. This is just pedantic. Nobody understands LLMs.

Re: The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday

#340

Post by Windchaser »

taurath wrote: post #245
nine_k wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you replace "taxes" with more general "investment", it's everywhere. A good example is Amazon that has reworked itself from an online bookstore into a global supplier of everything by ruthlessly reinvesting the profits. Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA. If you're looking for periods of high taxes and growing pros…

> the state is usually a much more sloppy investor I don’t find this to be true The state invests in important things that have 2nd and 3rd order positive benefit but aren’t immediately profitable. Money in a food bank is a “lost” investment. Alternatively the state plays power games and gets a little too attached to its military toys.

Yeah, our use of our military force provides some of the most obvious cases of "bad investment". Vietnam, Iraq, etc

And there are many others that might've been a positive investment from a strictly financial perspective, but not from a moral one: see Banana Republics and all those times the CIA backed military juntas.

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