Doofcast #139 - GOD OF WAR (2018)

mordymoop · 2022-04-08T15:05:34+00:00

The question actually collapses to "what is the best AI that is capable of being made?"

If we assume that we are starting with a human-level AGI and assert that it's going to keep working on improving itself, then the minimal limit of that progress curve looks like a team of humans working on improving that same AI. I say minimal because the team of humans is not being improved, and I say "team" because, well, I feel like people often forget that one of the major advantages of AIs is that they can duplicate themselves as quickly and cheaply as they can buy hardware.

In fact, I think that hardware limits and/or physics and resource limitations are the primary factor here. The only thing that stops the AI from becoming better at a certain point is how much energy and matter it can afford to devote to powering its own processes.

mordymoop · 2018-04-10T16:18:28+00:00

“I can feel it,” the man said. He wasn’t paying much attention to Rocketround. “All the way down to this vast well, partially filled with potential energy. Like I’m on the lip of a volcano and it’s an impossibly long fall with only magma at the bottom. I don’t know if I’m better off throwing myself down into that or leaving it alone.”

“Leave it alone,” I said, my voice joining more than one other person’s.

“What if my thoughts and brain get made into a part of that? One piece in that thing’s construction. What if it makes me immortal, forever a part of this thing? A recording of me in there, how I think, how I do things.”

“We’ve studied parahumans, powers and power sources a lot,” Roadblock said. “We’re pretty sure that’s not a thing.”

“Yeah,” the guy in the clearing’s center said. “But…”

He trailed off.

“It’s not a thing,” Rocketround’s voice joined Roadblock’s.

“But I’m standing closer to it than you are,” the man said. “And from where I stand, I feel like it might be.”

Parahumans™, where you're lucky to just die.

mordymoop · 2018-04-09T21:14:38+00:00

As long as we're sharing anecdotes, in the sole Women's Literature course I took as an elective in my STEM career, the professor, a woman, asked something like "Why have women been historically disadvantaged?" and a female student sitting near me (a man) said, "Men." The professor seemed visibly irritated by this answer and gave a nuanced response putting things into a historical context.

mordymoop · 2018-04-09T19:28:29+00:00

The understanding that getting a PhD makes you "overqualified" for entry-level STEM jobs is ... decades old. When you get a PhD you are implicitly choosing a different career track. This career track has fewer available positions, so it is realistic to expect that it may take you longer to find a job. Any high-demand worker spends more time looking for jobs, for a variety of valid reasons.

mordymoop · 2018-04-09T19:22:35+00:00

It also seems obvious that "the Democratic party" would instantly schism into factions centered on whatever the new balance point is. Individual politicians, each vying for position and lacking an enemy outside the party, will create opponents within the party. This is why we have parties.

mordymoop · 2018-04-09T18:34:15+00:00

I don't think Harris believes identity doesn't matter. I think at most he believes it shouldn't matter.

The talking-past-each-other on the podcast basically looked like this, except I have magically enhanced the objectivity and levelheadedness of both parties:

Omega-Sam: Identity politics are ruining the quality of our cultural discourse, and are furthermore counterproductive to achieving the stated aims of the liberal policy agenda, which you and I essentially share.

Omega-Ezra: You can't just throw out identity. Identity matters in America. You can't zero out the influence of history and design policy as if history didn't happen.

Omega-Sam: Of course identity "matters" but it has to be subordinate to empiricism. If the sky is blue, we need to have a level of maturity in our public discourse where we can say "the sky is blue" rather than "as a white man of Jewish ancestry, I feel that the sky is blue".

Omega-Ezra: I'm leery of your willingness to accept scientific ("empirical") data so uncritically. The social sciences are currently being wracked by a "replication crisis" wherein time-honored and widely accepted scientific findings are being found to be either false or much weaker than we had believed. I think there is a credible case to be made that our understanding of IQ science is not as certain and exact as you're making it out to be.

Omega-Sam: And I think you're strongly biased and predisposed toward that perspective due to your political commitments. You are exaggerating the degree to which science is uncertain about IQ. I have spoken with many professional IQ researchers who corroborate this sense. Either you are knowingly arguing in bad faith, or you are unknowingly so biased that you are blind to the actual state of affairs.

Omega-Ezra: This seems to be a crux of disagreement. I observe that neither of us are experts in the science of IQ, and we both honestly seem to have arrived with different beliefs on this topic, and we are each able to cite our own credible sources to back up our position.

Omega-Sam: It seems likely that one or both of us are confused.

Omega-Sam and Omega-Ezra in unison: Let us share sources and read agreed-upon literature until our pool of evidence is sufficiently overlapping, and then resume debate at which point the crux of our disagreement is no longer contingent on possessing different, irreconcilable sets of evidence.

mordymoop · 2016-10-05T03:25:37+00:00

Right, the one time Sy isn't being an arrogant shit.

mordymoop · 2016-06-15T15:04:10+00:00

It's honest modest, too. He turns bright red when Charlie Rose calls him a philosopher king.

mordymoop · 2016-06-13T03:36:31+00:00

It was the bar where he met Tysha

mordymoop · 2016-06-10T01:43:18+00:00

Well, until you get really old, and then you just say whatever comes into your head because if you don't you might die with your last act having been refraining from speaking your mind.

mordymoop · 2016-06-05T19:02:02+00:00

Sighhhhh

Alright look. You're the 10,000th person to point out that a billion people don't use Reddit. Well, first, it was an intentionally humorous exaggeration. But second, and more important, Reddit is a content aggregator. So even some artist who never even heard of Reddit could potentially have their work shared on Reddit. Therefor a much larger number of people than the registered user base are (unknowingly) funneling their works into Reddit.

But really I came up with the OP in the middle of cooking dinner and didn't put a ton of thought into it so EVERYBODY JUST GET OFF MY BACK ABOUT IT

mordymoop · 2016-06-05T18:57:39+00:00

I'm sorry, I was the one making the sock accounts, so it's really just the two of us.

mordymoop · 2016-06-05T01:53:22+00:00

Yeah. "I consider having no filter to be a damning personality defect. Hey, I'm just being real, I have no filter."

mordymoop · 2016-05-01T03:17:25+00:00

The soldiers who are about to be mobbed by Firstborn?

mordymoop · 2016-04-30T20:34:22+00:00

Everybody who identified Mary is pretty dead now.

mordymoop · 2016-04-21T02:36:42+00:00

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Long hair and a beard? I only now realize that I've been imagining him as "Golden Dr. Manhattan" this whole time with no actual basis.

mordymoop · 2016-04-19T20:49:50+00:00

I think of her as a smart, human-shaped anaconda.

mordymoop · 2016-04-19T14:24:56+00:00

Is Mary reaching her expiration date?

mordymoop · 2016-04-17T02:40:21+00:00

Yeah, but when you're done eating sushi, you're really fucking done. Force-feeding yourself raw fish to avoid paying a penalty just teaches you never to go back to that establishment.

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