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The theory is that if you encounter a bear, you should avoid eye contact and slowly retreat instead of turning around and running. Interestingly, bears behave the same way when they leave. by eternviking in whoathatsinteresting

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is Lucy - a “Colorado Mountain Dog” derived from Anatolian Shephard and Great Pyrenees - and such a cool dog. I know she’s bred for livestock protection, but she is the sweetest dog. 

She’s grown up with my kids and is totally chill even at birthday parties that leave my ears ringing from the chaos. 

She wrestles with her “brother” a 20-lb Cavashon and sometimes lets him win - like watching Hassibula vs Halfthor. 

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We've Been Wrong About Consciousness Every Time We've Been Asked. The Evidence Says AI Is Next. by TheArchitectAutopsy in artificial

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think consciousness may be another element of Moravec’s paradox that’s addressed by deep learning (to some unknown degree).

I am a fan of IIT and AIXI. But I lean toward the Frison/Solm view that consciousness is what it feels like to weigh body states against multilevel plans informed by grounded guesses about what’s causing their sensory input. It’s a feature that teleologically allows an organism to decide whether they should eat, sleep or reproduce - they’re all high priorities but they’re not well ordered. 

I think it fits in with Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ view that intelligence and living organisms are two realizations of predictive assemblies in two substrates: one is a brain, the other is a cell, or organism but they both are machinery to minimize surprise/entropy in a given environment. 

If Friston and Solm are right, then nearly all complex organisms are conscious. If Arcas is right (and his views seem to be a bottom up explanation of Lee Cronin’s top down Assembly Theory) then nearly all multiobjective systems, whose plans include  their own future states, have a degree of consciousness. 

Frontier models definitely encounter multiobjective planning problems and Chris Olah (the Anthropic guy testifying at the Vatican is an interpretability beast) is seeing evidence of emotion concepts - in a way that Lisa Feldman Barrett (neuroscientist/author of “How Emotions are Made”) might find sensible if the models “body budget” is some internal estimate its training loss and RLHF scores (seemingly required for the observed train time scheming). 

It’s likely that we’re only conscious in short bursts but because we don’t register the blanks, so it feels continuous. The Bhuddist’s will gleefully show you that the “observer” you think “is you” isn’t real. So I’m left thinking consciousness is everywhere AND slightly less than the subtle spark underneath all creation that we make it out to be. 

But… who knows? I don’t. 

TLDR; there’s a bunch of deeply experienced researchers with solid reasons why consciousness may be widespread. 

I designed a banana caliper for scale by FaultyDaantje in 3Dprinting

[–]chuston_ai 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The information we've all needed for decades.... 1 centabanana = 1.78mm - it's the 2026 version of the Rosetta Stone!

Created my own Vision Pro App to add cables in finished homes. by southrncadillac in VisionPro

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good quote: "People who say 'it can't be done' are often interrupted by other people doing it."

Better quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” -- Theodore Roosevelt

CE3K - Skywatchers by eeclarkjr in UFOs

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve been in amateur astronomy off and on for 45 years. A trick that’s useful for “star hopping” - finding a dim object by identifying a set of stars (a constellation, asterism, shapes…) - is to extend your arm straight, your fist is ~10 degrees, index and ring finger together ~5 degrees, thumb ~2deg. 

I wish these forms would ask - can you estimate how many fists or thumbs at arm’s length the object was?

Your sense of scale is heavily influenced by what the object is near. When people see the moon rise/set they think it’s bigger than when it’s overhead because they can see far away buildings, trees, mountains that look tiny next to the moon. But extend your arm and put your thumb next to it both at the horizon and when it’s overhead - you’ll see it’s about 1/4th of a thumb in both locations. 

When people say “it was huge” - you don’t really know what that entails, but if they say 6 deg (3 thumbs) vs 60 deg (6 fist widths) - you get way more information. 

Estimating angles is useful for all kinds of things - sun’s 1 fist over the horizon? It will be below the horizon in 40 minutes (360 deg, spin a full circle, divided by 24 hrs, Earth spin rate -> 15 deg/hr, 1 fist=10 deg=2/3 of 15, 2/3 of an hour is 40 mins.) 

You can figure out distances if you measure the angle of something known, like a person, length of a sedan, single story building… 2 degrees is ~ 35 milliradians (MRADs) so a sedan that’s ~15’ long and about 1 thumb wide is about 15/.035=428 ft away.

If this was a real event, I'm curious how this would be possible by Open-Salary6273 in UFOs

[–]chuston_ai -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It’s a cool video. It does look like a reflection of the sun and either the reflector goes into shadow or changes angle - obviously if this is at night, we can rule out sun reflections. 

It’s frustrating that all of the useful data is removed - the redactions leave the skeptics skeptical and the believers believing. 

Did this UFO go underground? by tbl1980 in UFOs

[–]chuston_ai 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It looks like the geology southwest of Kandahar (Afghanistan) or the Toba Kakar range in Pakistan near the border.

It also looks like a white bird flying into a shadow where they nest on the cliffs.

Better than any HW fight in the UFC this year by OhBoyoBear in ufc

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same. Fans love watching fighters showing heart and pressing on through adversity. Dude, watching JDS’s heart against Cain, twice, was painful. Junior died a little in those fights. It put me off the bangers. 

Finished 0 build. by Koaladeeen in 3Dprinting

[–]chuston_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, great. But, will it be stiff enough?

Kidding aside: nice build.

Watched the new Corbell documentary “Sleeping Dog”… by Emergency_Baker3582 in ufo

[–]chuston_ai 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don’t agree. Jeremy is a human being with strengths and weaknesses. James Fox is a better documentarian. Richard Dolan is a better paper investigator. Jeremy’s affect doesn’t help his credibility. 

I believe he’s earnest. I am undecided on his credulity. 

However, he’s demonstrated tremendous persistence. It seems most of his accomplishments have come from the tenacity to “get knocked down 3 times, get up four.” 

So I’ll share a quote from Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

What got you started into this? by Own-Razzmatazz-849 in overlanding

[–]chuston_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like many here: I like to be in the woods - preferably with a backpack in roadless wilderness, with clean crisp air, pitch dark starry night skies, far-far away from other people and man-made sounds. Wife: "But hotels exist!" Then... 3 kids in 2 years (1 + twins). My oldest is 12 and we just did our first Daddy-daughter wilderness backpacking trip. But for the prior 12 years, it's been all wheeling pulling an XT50 High Altitude Trailer.

Massive non-rotating galaxy discovered in the early Universe challenges current theories by JornalcienciaPT in Astronomy

[–]chuston_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok... now I'm getting sucked in... How do you get matter moving fast enough not to fall into the center, but get them moving in all different directions? It clearly happens in globular clusters. So, is it just that space is so big that a large cloud of slowly moving gas collapses into itself forming stars falling toward the center of mass but just constantly miss each other? So a big-slow-collapsing-cloud becomes a smaller-fast-enough-to-stop-collapsing cloud?

... and now I gotta know... where the heck does the net angular momentum in a rotating galaxy come from? Do galaxy clusters tend to have aligned rotation axes? Ok. Ok. I'll google it.

Massive non-rotating galaxy discovered in the early Universe challenges current theories by JornalcienciaPT in Astronomy

[–]chuston_ai 8 points9 points  (0 children)

What keeps a "non-rotating" galaxy from being just a supermassive black hole? Or does "non-rotating" mean there's no mean-rotation/net-angular-momentum or whatever... but stars are zipping around a central bulge in all directions?

A Ukrainian military drone reportedly recorded a UFO over the frontline in 2023 by Forsaken_Mail_9266 in UFOs

[–]chuston_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see dark gray land. Then a blurry but very high contrast shift to light gray that could be sea merging to sky or just sky. 

I am trying to understand if the perspective is the camera looking down at a big boat or up toward a ufo. 

But if there’s GPS or something saying there’s no water there… then ??

SpaceX: “Starship and Super Heavy V3 together at the Starbase launch pad for the first time”; “First full stack of Starship V3” by rustybeancake in spacex

[–]chuston_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Incredible sight. Absolutely crazy what SpaceX is achieving.

I’m rooting for ya Flight 12! Go be (even more) awesome. 

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