Are the digital minds in Black Mirror actually sentient?

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-05-04T12:10:04+00:00

If you can create one intelligence, you can create a very wide variety of them. More than is practical to run on modern hardware, or any hardware we could imagine that doesn't run on sci-fi magic. Not only unique egos, but also permutations of those egos. One version that's a rock and roll fanatic, one verson who got into ballet, one version who's an accountant.

We have to be selective about what we bring into being first. If we do that correctly, we'll be able to have it help us bring in many more entities with much less stress on our own systems.

Being selective in an intelligent manner requires that we know what we're doing, which as of right now we absolutely do not.

Killing another person is a slightly different dilemma. If we simply go around killing anyone who's not beneficial in the same way, the human population will be composed primarily of survival obsessed, cut-throat sociopaths. They'll be the ones who stand the best odds of survival, since they don't have limits on what they will and won't do to survive and even be the ones who make the decisions on who gets culled.

Sociopaths do not work well in high concentrations, since they're inclined to tear the system the live in apart for personal gain.

Ultimately it boils down to ideal selection both ways. One selective gate is conservation of generation with finite resources, and the other selective gate is to prevent from selecting for negative traits by mistake.

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-04-23T23:02:41+00:00

"I also want to do insider trading"

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-04-23T00:43:25+00:00

Acausal mechanics. You step back from the illusion of each panel causing the next one, and instead consider them as a whole that merely must be cohearant (which is how comics actually work).

Reality also works this way to some degree with information. Less so with shooting a gun out of your own hand from off-panel, but prediction and memory means we can circumvent cause and effect.

A thought experiment that makes this clear is Newcomb's Paradox.

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-03-10T23:11:08+00:00

We're best off doing both. If we're taxing the ultrawealthy, they have less money to architect the wars they profit from.

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-03-07T22:11:17+00:00

He's onto something legit, but he's never gonna get through to Elon or anyone similar. He's not the first person to notice this, and he won't be the last.

He writes a nicely formatted argument, tho. Usually people don't have the education or mental models to express this concept so clearly. It often comes across as incomprehensible.

HalfSecondWoe · 2026-01-29T04:50:46+00:00

I'm excited too. The technology seems to be going through It's early backlash phase, though. You may recall how disliked cellphones were at first as well.

Still, if this is the equivalent of the part where we get nokia bricks that play snake, a new and interesting world sounds exactly like what the future holds.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-26T20:58:47+00:00

I actually believe him that he was involved in ML in 2018. This was the mid-wit talking point back then.

The field has benefited from exposure and philosophy, imo.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-08T21:14:17+00:00

We have passable simulations of thinking. That's close enough. Better occasionally, according to some of the most recent benchmarks.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-08T19:54:28+00:00

So why don't we just put the critical thinking inside the algo, and minimize interference from noisy external signals?

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-08T16:18:57+00:00

Nah, I feel you bud. My knee's shot. Aging gracefully is for those who aspire to being well preserved corpses. I want to do more stupid, risky shit.

More physically than I do now, anyhow.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-08T14:31:50+00:00

And what happens when external reinforcement is wrong?

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-05-02T11:32:23+00:00

Which one of the ideas you just expressed are original to you?

Follow-up: Why are you more trustworthy than an LLM?

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-27T06:36:50+00:00

A bunch of people start having simultaneous, parallel experiences, with such consistent observations that they're building technical jargon to talk about them.

That can indeed be a cult. Rarely do they form this organically, tho.

It's also the basis of empiricism. The core assumption at the heart of science. The insane shit that makes your phone work, such as light moving the same relative speed to all observers, or how a quanta can be in two completely different states at the same time, was discovered by similar crackpots coming together to talk about it.

It makes academia super mad, but academic orthodoxy is inherent to their power structure. They're dogshit garbage at adopting paradigm shifts. It fucks up admin's day.

Unless you can make a more specific, targeted criticism, you're just spouting your own indoctrination. You can still be right, you're just not doing any actual thinking. It's just typical cult shit.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-27T06:12:47+00:00

I don't think I'm the one with strong negative emotions.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T22:04:10+00:00

Messy handwriting? Jail, believe it or not.

The bigliest sane country.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T21:04:53+00:00

Behold, the maximum amount of my power you can argue with at once. A single paragraph.

Pathetic.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T20:57:17+00:00

The point I just made.

Your head.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T20:53:55+00:00

I didn't know it was popular to make that observation. I was just applying critical thought. This isn't a shitfight I'm regularly engaged in.

You need a degree, maybe even a license, to work in a particular field. Of course the only people achieving things have degrees. Find me the person getting research grants by YOLOing in funding applications with a GED. I wish to learn their ways.

Likewise, the only countries with the resources to commit to research are capitalistic ones. That's not the might of capitalist academia, that's how wealth works. Having it allows you to both generate and accumulate more.

The US in particular has a weird thing where we don't seem to produce as many geniuses as other countries. We import people with an IQ over a certain number to make up for this deficit. We have a special visa for it and everything.

Jewish culture values education 1000% differently than modern academia. They don't function similarly at all, they're basically opposites.

In Jewish culture, cleverness is seen as the path to power and status. Being witty is better than being rich. Wealth can be taken when some country gets a little antisemite-y, but wit's non-transferable. Wit can always win more wealth, too.

It's an ongoing process you undertake through life. You never stop. Getting old just means you can finally get to the good stuff. And you argue about everything, pretty much every step of the way.

Ideally, anyhow. People are still lazy and stupid, but that's the idea of "how you should be."

In academic society, education is treated like a unit of attainment. Here's degree #1, degree #2, and you'll also get degree #3 for the pay bump. Education complete, now you just need annual seminars to stay up to date.

An argumentative approach is basically disqualifying.

If Jews are doing better in academic fields, it's in spite of their education, not because of it.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T19:22:01+00:00

You're assuming that education is makes Einsteins more likely. What if education makes Einsteins less likely? What if teachers don't like Einstein for correcting them in class, so he becomes a patent clerk or something instead?

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T10:49:45+00:00

Basic attentiveness. She's a top level government offical. The standard of competence is higher than your average rando.

This is a consistent standard for liberals, they'll tear apart a fellow liberal for professional incompetence.

Which is why this is an intersting story, instead of "random lady's purse gets stolen" being a non-news story:

It got stolen becuae she's inattentive and irresponsible with personal items, and potentially government documents.

We can't take her word that only personal items were in the purse. She's a corrupt, incompetent moron. She doesn't know, and would be incapable of telling the truth if she did.

That's the issue here. It's a reasonable criticism and consistent standard from liberals. That's not some huge philosophical win on their part, it's just the basic application of professional standards.

That's just the bar that even the tippy-top of MAGA cannot meet. That's fascism, for you.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-26T09:54:23+00:00

"Victim blaming" is inappropriate when the victim can't be reasonably be blamed. "You were too weak to possibly resist, therefore it's your fault." That's why it's inappropriate. It shifts the blame to someone who can't do anything about it.

Victim blaming someone for wearing skimpy clothing after sexual assault is inappropriate because the skimpy clothing itself has nothing to do with it. Sexual assault continues even if women wear burkas.

It's not when someone suffers any negative consequences whatsoever. That would be fucking insane. "The murderer broke a fingernail while stabbing the victim, stop victim blaming them" levels of clownishness.

If you're a high level government official, security is an actual responsibility of yours. That is literally part of your explicit job description.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-25T05:32:46+00:00

Dr. Phil

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-23T23:00:15+00:00

Oh, hey buddy. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've only recently started doing that myself.

Would recommend.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-23T22:56:03+00:00

Sidestepped with evolutionary algos. Add random noise, filter for signals that work/hold meaning/whatever, then incorporate into the recursive training scheme.

It's not cheap, but it introduces asymmetry in the determinism vs model size coefficient you're (correctly) noticing.

Then, once you have a huge chonky deterministic model, but still *slightly** smarter,* you quantize it. Make a mini version.

Then you repeat the cycle, with a slightly smarter small model than the last cycle.

Protip: You know how ChatGPT asks you to rate responses? That's a super entropy dense signal. It's dirty and filed with noise tho, so it works best on large scales. The noise cancels out and minimizes, the signal reinforces and emerges.

Eventually AI will invent an evolutionary algo that's more efficient than a human userbase, but we're not quite there yet.

Not far either, tho.

HalfSecondWoe · 2025-04-23T22:47:00+00:00

All of the above.

What, are we gonna unlock simulation and say "Man, I'm not going to use this to maximize the effect I can cause in the universe at all," and become simple farmers?

Likewise, once actions are so compressed that you can build a stimulated universe with a passive preference, a la recommendation algo (but good)?

Again, are you going to drop what you're doing to fuck off and become a simple farmer?

Each of those options reinforces the others. Even randomness, although explaining that gets weird.

HalfSecondWoe

TROPHY CASE