A House of Dynamite [2]. Everyone is looking to have more dynamite than the other next room, while living inside the house. All of this happening while the world gets more and more divisive. It's insanity. Are 12,000 nukes safer than zero? [1].
Since the Trump admin and the director had an exchange of views through the media recently regarding the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of the announcement was partially motivated by reality show Trump's TV instincts.
What is this nonsense? I don't understand. All of these are concepts were created, invented and are commonly used by Homo Sapiens. God, math, numbers, integers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, what have you. All abstract concepts brought about solely by humans.
Most mathematicians, but not all, take a philosophical position of platonic idealism [0] in which numbers and other mathematical entities have an independent reality and are not invented but discovered.
> All abstract concepts brought about solely by humans.
That is a defendable philosophical position to hold but many thinkers disagree with it or at least admit there is more nuance [1]. People have been debating the question of the independent reality of mathematical concepts for thousands of years.
If abstract concepts are brought about solely by humans, does that mean the first human to invent a proof of some property actually decides the reality of that property? If Godel hadn't proved incompleteness, could another mathematician created a completeness proof instead? On the hand, if that isn't the case and the truth or falsity of a math statement exists prior a human thinking it, doesn't it have some reality beyond human thought? What about mathematical statements which are true which can't be proven?
Things like the value of pi being 3.14159... just are what they are independent of what Sapiens want and indeed the Indiana Pi Bill of the 1897 which declared it to be 3.2 failed to change the nature of reality. That illustrates there are aspects of maths that are beyond humans just inventing them.
That said I don't think there's much to be gained from dragging God into it all. Even He would probably have a headache changing pi to 3.2.
Everyone's missing the point. You can't reverse globalization. The government doesn't want you to have more babies. Baby production was outsourced overseas to import grown adults. Let others worry about childcare expenses.
Any speculation on the effects of any human related behavior, like tiredness, are just that, pure speculation. we have the illusion to have enough knowledge about these things to infer conclusions and emit opinions about it but the truth is , we don't even know what we don't know. There are inumerous processes that we don't grasp yet the full scope and spectrum of their consequences and side-effects, much less the ones we are yet to discover.
In relation to tiredness, specifically, it seems to me that it's an evolutionary trait that involves all sorts of chemical responses from the body, besides the related induced brain activity, This works to save energy and to ensure it's spent on activities that benefit the spread of the genes, somehow. You get tired mentally (what you are specifically referring to) because the executive function of the brain taken by the frontal-cortex are the most energy expensive one and gets shut-off as soon as anything that can be perceived as life-threatning is detected so that energy can be redirected to the fight-or-flight response required for your survival, as it's coded in your genes.
Now, assuming it will be possible, an uploaded version of whatever human conscience there could be, it would not need to have any of these energy regulation stuff. Or at least as much as we need it right now, as humans, per the limitation by our body's capacity of energy intake. The uploaded conscience would have at its disposal an quasi-unlimited amount of energy to it would not trigger the tiredness response or any "suffering" reflex.
> You get tired mentally (what you are specifically referring to)
I'd like to note that I intentionally did not use the word tiredness (as I specifically intended to not refer to tiredness) but instead explicitly referred to boredom, by which I mean the lack of novel stimuli of a tedious task and which is a term somewhat used in agent theory and is part of the explore-exploit tradeoff, where it carries a clear specific function for all agents (biological, mechanical, digital, imaginary) and decision theory optimization e.g. the "multi-armed bandit" opimization problem where if the agent benefits from not getting "stuck in a rut" repeating the same things (which applies for many real-world situations unless there is some "supervisor" handling that function for the agent) then you'd want that agent to implement a function which is closely analogous to human boredom, becoming progressively less satisfied with repetition without new information and seeking to do anything else to "prevent boredom" and "explore" new options even if that's not strictly locally optimal, in this manner potentially finding out a better local optimum and also changes in environment providing new opportunities.
And this is valid even in total absence of the concept of tiredness, which matters if and only if there is a real need for periodic downtime which an AI agent might not have, and for which the difference between tedious tasks and interesting tasks would not matter much.
This is Science. Computer Science. From one of the greatest alive.
"This is a preliminary version of a book. If you have any comments to make or questions to ask about it, please contact
me by email. But when you do, include the version date.
I expect there are many minor errors in this version. (I
hope there are no major ones.) Anyone who is the first to
report any error will be thanked in the book. If you find an
error, please include in your email your name as you wish it
to appear as well as the version date."
The main exception might be high-assurance systems. They require clear description of requirements, formal specification of design + goals, proof one embodies the other, test cases that show it empirically, replication by third parties, and hostile review (pentesting) of all of that.
Praxis’ method was a practical application of these concepts used in industry:
Funny you ask this question, since yesterday there was a HN post about Herbert Simon.
Here is Allen Newell, Alan Perlis, and Herbert Simon's response (1967) to your question about whether computer science is even science. For context, the three of them are Turing Award winners and early pioneers of computer science.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html
Professors of computer science are often asked: "Is there such a thing as computer science, and if there is, what is it?" The questions have a simple answer:
Wherever there are phenomena, there can be a science to describe and explain those phenomena. Thus, the simplest (and correct) answer to "What is botany?" is, "Botany is the study of plants." And zoology is the study of animals, astronomy the study of stars, and so on. Phenomena breed sciences.
There are computers. Ergo, computer science is the study of computers. The phenomena surrounding computers are varied, complex, rich. It remains only to answer the objections posed by many skeptics.
It is a side effect on how it is called in US and some other english speaking coutries I guess.
What people in US call computer science, in Portugal is a math degree major, mostly called something like Computing Applied Maths.
Computer related degrees are called Informatics Engineering, where computer science subjects are mixed with software engineering content, the degree is certficied by Engineerings Order, and is protected professional title.
Or you have Business Informatics, more tailored to current software being used in companies with little theory, more focused in management stuff.
Very similar in Italy as well, where the math side is just called Informatics and the engineering side Informatics Engineering. The former is typically part of the hard maths department, the latter of Engineering. There is significant overlap of course, and both degrees allow being professionally certified by the Engineering Order.
It’s as much a science as mathematical physics, I would suppose? You can make predictions (scaling of an algorithm, correctness of a concurrent algorithm) and test them empirically.
Some people might call pure math a “science”, but this is at the very least applied math (ie more connected to physical reality than pure math).
I like to call it non-material science :) Sure call it math, but studying information and computation gets into what is logically or combinatorically possible, the nature of chaos and symmetry. not just a little system of manmade manipulable symbols.
This would be a much better TV series script than that "The Good Doctor" crap. No offense to all the "The Good Doctor" fans. (We all have our own "crappy" stuff we like)
Society would improve if we could turn these high skilled individuals into productive law abiding citizens without having to go through A Clockwork Orange kind of "reeducation".
No it's not. People are great. The problem is that we are not OK. When can't help ourselves, much less others. A lot of us are sick and don't have help. We are silently succumbing to the suffering of an increasingly dehumanizing environment. Machines should be beside us, to help. Not between us and stop us from fully interact with each other.
> The problem is that we are not OK. When can't help ourselves, much less others. A lot of us are sick and don't have help. We are silently succumbing to the suffering of an increasingly dehumanizing environment
ok, maybe? i don't think that's unanimously true
> Machines should be beside us, to help. Not between us and stop us from fully interact with each other.
and who puts them there and uses them as such?
who comes up with things like DRM'd juice packets?
people anthropomorphize machines:
"the car rolled over and crushed..." or "the train doors closed in his face"
No.
"the reckless driver rolled his car..."
"the uncaring conductor closed the doors in his face"
"the bureaucratic corporation and engineers designed the train leaving no way to override the doors by the operator"
not as romantic, but closer to the truth.
machines, computers included, are simply powerful levers. they amplify forces applied - good or evil or dehumanizing - by their users. nothing more.
not all people are good, and when those people use powerful machines to amplify their intentions, it can have enormous negative effects.
> ok, maybe? i don't think that's unanimously true
I get your point. Some people seem to be thriving. Yes, but those don't suck. The ones that are thriving and do suck are, in the end, succumbing to the increasingly dehumanizing environment.
> and who puts them there and uses them as such?
> who comes up with things like DRM'd juice packets?
We do. People do. Yes. Those people suck. They are not ok and are clearly succumbing to the increasingly dehumanizing environment.
> people anthropomorphize machines:
Oh yes they do. Excelent point! In the end, it's all people. I totally agree. We cannot let responsibility die as an orphan. Those people suck, but ... well, you know, they "suckumb" ;).
> machines, computers included, are simply powerful levers. they amplify forces applied - good or evil or dehumanizing - by their users. nothing more.
> not all people are good, and when those people use powerful machines to amplify their intentions, it can have enormous negative effects.
Yes. Without any doubt. We need to counteract that. Let's work together. We can!
"It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable."
- David Deutsch - The Beginning of the Infinity.
Effective Altruism is a bad idea. Applying money in a way that does the most good possible is focusing/obsessing too much on one angle. A Local Maximum will be reached without mechanisms to get out of it.
Sure. The one angle I am talking about is focusing on maximizing the application of money on the _things that do the most good possible_. There may be cases where financing something that will certainly not do the most good possible, on the contrary, it may cause havoc, suffering, death and destruction, like war, is the best course of action. Sacrifice sometimes is needed. Effective Altruism already proved to be a failed idea. It inspired smart and good people to justify any means for and end, just because they thought the end was ultimately good and honest (I believe that SBF was aware of the illegality of what he was doing but it was ok because it was for a good cause). EA is a virtue signalling and a god complex pit.
Of course, no one is against maximizing resources to where they are needed the most. That it should be an evidence based approach and focused on systemic change and long term solutions, rather than just alleviating symptoms. Yes, but this is just common sense. Now, naming it Altruism and adding Effective on top is just creating a banner for another Crusade like endeavor. Throw your money at us and you will be saved and your sins forgiven.
How dependable are you on your google account? What if Google would block your account and make you pay if you don't go trough enough ads? It has already started to force you to disable the ad-blocker. So, I think that could be a next step.
With this blocker however, the ad is still loaded and played but it's skipped. So, you don't see the ad but Google, hopefully, still counts it as an impression.
I'm seeing all kinds of dark patterns emerging on google apps. In Google Play, the new notification indications (the bell icon with a number, supposedely indicating the number of new unread notifications) that are just ads. Still in Google Play, when you search for apps you get the sponsored ones on the top with the install button like it was a search hit. And of course, youtube that is just a bunch of traps all over.
I know they've thrown away the "Don't be Evil" motto long ago but this? This is just going the opposite way in full force and being in complete a$$O1e mode. I am sure I've seen malware applying less agressive tactics.
They are just not taking care of their product (their users) very well.
> What if Google would block your account and make you pay if you don't go trough enough ads?
I don't have a youtube account. If the day came where I was forced to be logged into youtube just to see a video at all I'd either find some kind of workaround (piracy, or maybe some kind of shared/proxy account) or I'd stop watching youtube videos. Under no circumstances would I pay Google to watch youtube videos and as long as I have some means to block ads available to me I'll keep blocking them.
I accept that my relationship with Google is adversarial and that they'll do everything they can to violate my privacy and make money at my expense. There have been times where I've gone to some lengths to block ads, for example never watching on the website and saving all videos to disk before viewing them, or not watching any videos for weeks while I wait for an update to tools like newpipe. I'll do what I have to. I'm mostly just waiting for Google to piss us off enough that we see people building and turning to alternative platforms that treat both viewers and creators better.
[1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/annie-jacobsen/ [2] https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537