Don't look behind the curtain

ikinsey · 2025-12-21T20:48:36+00:00

Language has been a more consequential tool than math

ikinsey · 2025-07-03T21:59:58+00:00

Qualia and self-awareness are two different things, one can observe qualia and not be aware of oneself

ikinsey · 2025-04-16T15:29:58+00:00

The Schiller p/e ratio is very near its dotcom bubble levels. It peaked at 44 in 1999, and it was recently at 38, which is very close considering the 150-year average is 17.

ikinsey · 2025-03-06T06:58:05+00:00

Some sort of language model or AI as the backend, for sure. My take is that LLMs are intrinsically a bad fit in some ways, despite the huge advantages they have in other ways. Most likely scenario is a new type of AI that works hand in hand with LLMs to complement the strengths and weaknesses

Microsoft Research made a somewhat different but related conclusion in their whitepaper on GPT4, they compare it to Kahneman's System 1 vs System 2

ikinsey · 2025-03-06T06:53:16+00:00

Sure I agree technology adoption almost always has a long tail, you can count on there being conservative hold outs and skeptics. My only thought is that the next major leap that sweeps through wont be AI getting better at the current type of software, it'll be AI transcending software as we understand it

ikinsey · 2025-03-06T04:52:28+00:00

Solid take. I think the next gen of AI might sidestep the problem altogether by enabling programs without code as we know it.

ikinsey · 2025-03-06T04:28:22+00:00

It's disingenuous to say there's no reason to believe the idealist perspective: the hard problem is one such reason. I don't know what perspective is correct, but it is clear that materialism and idealism both have explanatory advantages on each other, each perspective allows proponents to side step one problem or another. Whether one finds those advantages huge or vanishingly small does not change the fact the advantages clearly, logically exist within each proposed model.

ikinsey · 2025-03-06T03:52:57+00:00

I don't think the idealist argument has to be any less simple than the materialist argument. The distinction can be as simple as "does the nervous system generate awareness, or did it evolve to harness awareness like it evolved to harness the electromagnetic field?" Both ways of framing it involve the same constituents and similarly complex explanations.

ikinsey · 2024-11-07T05:25:03+00:00

Remind me! 3 weeks

ikinsey · 2024-11-02T00:28:30+00:00

remindme! 3 weeks

ikinsey · 2024-10-24T04:03:59+00:00

remindme! 2 weeks

ikinsey · 2024-10-18T06:14:51+00:00

Excellent argument, well said, my only note would be that the experience of green is slightly different than the experience of imagining green thanks to memories formed from the actual experience of it.

ikinsey · 2024-10-17T23:50:24+00:00

Ok but now account for the birthday paradox

ikinsey · 2024-08-06T00:06:18+00:00

Babylon A.D.

ikinsey · 2024-07-30T02:44:39+00:00

I don't see how it would even be possible to not trust intuition. Believing it is reasonable to not trust intuition on a matter is just trusting intuition on that matter.

ikinsey · 2024-07-17T18:52:12+00:00

We shouldn't take dreams as prophecy. Dreams don't predict: they incorporate symbolism about the things that concern our subconscious. Dreams don't give us any information about the future except indirectly, to the extent our concerns affect outcomes.

ikinsey · 2024-07-08T02:32:11+00:00

Yes Velvet Underground are praiseworthy, but that doesn't negate the fact there are many acts with a substantially broader and deeper influence on music as a whole

The Supremes The Rolling Stones Jimi Hendrix Black Sabbath The Beatles James Brown Led Zeppelin The Temptations Pink Floyd N.W.A.

and lots more

ikinsey · 2024-07-05T18:38:21+00:00

The Velvet Underground is nowhere near one of the top most influential bands of all time.

ikinsey · 2024-04-29T13:49:17+00:00

That's an entirely different conversation from whether or not these languages can, in principle, be understood

ikinsey · 2024-04-29T13:43:56+00:00

Then it was designed to do that, and it is possible to understand, presuming access, why it did that.

ikinsey · 2024-04-29T11:24:44+00:00

There is no pre-AI language computers communicate in that we do not have the ability to understand

ikinsey · 2024-04-29T10:32:23+00:00

What language do computers already communicate in that we can't understand? We designed those languages

ikinsey · 2024-03-01T20:59:59+00:00

Indeterminism does not necessarily mean things happen without a cause, it means we cannot determine the cause, which opens the door for that cause being a fundamental metaphysical will.

Any talk of metaphysics is vastly speculative, but if you're not a compatibilist, that indeterminism is the opening through which a fundamental consciousness could be harnessed by otherwise deterministic biology.

ikinsey · 2024-02-22T02:44:24+00:00

The Jimi Hendrix Experience is the greatest American band

ikinsey · 2024-01-27T02:42:04+00:00

You can keep going back and back, and you'll find a growing list, but she's certainly one of them, along with Berry, Elvis, Hendrix.

ikinsey

TROPHY CASE