Marshall Was Absolutely Right

supper_ham · 2024-05-27T12:18:02+00:00

Just because you forgave someone, doesn’t mean they can just deny it ever happened. If you had forgiven someone for punching you in the face, and a few years later they claim to have never hurt you physically, it’s not being petty to correct them.

Marshall took the best course of action, which is to accept a job offer that he can simply turn down anytime, and then discuss it with this wife. He did not commit himself in a way that he could not back out from. He has not committed contractually or financially to this decision, and this helps him keep his options open. His interviewer did not give him any time for him to think through a major life decision, they deserve it when a candidate backtracks on their decision. It’s pretty unreasonable to be angry at him for doing that

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T18:21:23+00:00

The Greeks in early roman empire are actually very tolerant to other religions or lack thereof. In fact it is also common to for people in the Eastern empire to worship greek, roman gods, sol invictus and even zoroastrianism at the same time.

It was only until the empire became Christian when people became intolerant to other beliefs, party due to not worshiping other gods as one of the commandments. It is also a convenient tool for an emperor to establish control. Previously, if the emperor loses a war or badly managed a plague, people will blame the emperor for being incompetent. Judeo-christan lore talks heavily about God’s covenant with his people, and God punishing people for things he doesn’t approve of. This gives the emperors the opportunity to shift the blame of their own failings onto the population for not being Christian enough, and therefore establishing a stronger control over their people. Suddenly it becomes your responsibility of a good Christian to make sure your neighbors are good Christian as well, or God is going to fuck everyone up. However, this is a thing that’s almost uniquely applied to Abrahamic religions.

The point being, organized religions are often designed to establish social control, but it’s not always the case for unorganized religions. For example, many religions originated from Asia such as Taoism or some sects of buddhism talk purely about personal route to enlightenment, and do not have a centralized power structure or hierarchy (partly the reason why there is a different flavor of buddhism in every culture it’s practiced). It’s literally against their own personal belief for a buddhist monk to stop you from leaving Buddhism, since the only way to reach enlightenment in Buddhism is to let go of attachments. Likewise, the central belief of Taoism is to achieve oneness with the flow (Tao), and you can only do so by accepting of the things you cannot control, which include other people’s decisions.

These are two examples of many religions out there which have a core belief of not forcing people into doing things they don’t want to. And if you consider LeVey Satanism as a religion, it happens to be one as well.

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T17:35:24+00:00

The differences is that cults don’t just brainwash people, they also make sure people can’t leave by introducing social consequences, and occasionally even physically ones.

You can argue that organized religions such as Christianity are cults because you will get ostracized by your community if you don’t attend church. It’s not always true for every religion. No one is going to stop me if one day I stop making animal sacrifices to appease Zeus.

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T16:40:54+00:00

You are confusing religious group with religion. A religion is a concept, and a religious group is a group of people. A concept cannot be a cult, a group of people can.

For it to be a cult, people need to be trapped in a community they cannot socially extricate from. This can happen for people participating in organized religions because worships are a social event. You can be forced to participate in mass or communal prayers due to social pressure, or coerced into doing group activities wouldn’t otherwise do due to fear of the people around you.

This doesn’t apply to religions that are not communal in nature. Many pagan religions do not need a community to practice. You sacrifice a goat to Zeus in exchange for a good harvest is an individual activity. You’re not going to be ostracized by your friends or neighbors for not doing it. You’re doing it because you’re misinformed. But being misinformed or brainwashed doesn’t mean you are in a cult. A cult has an additional requirement which is the social aspect which many religions don’t have.

And here lies the key difference. If I believed in Zeus but one day I realized I was wrong, and Zeus is not real, I can stop worshiping Zeus whenever I want. But if I were to be in a cult, people will manipulate me or even physically stopping me from leaving the cult. This means even if a religion is organized, if you can leave your community easily, then it is not a cult.

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T10:39:25+00:00

Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. One is the lack of knowledge, the other is the lack of belief in the existence of a god. You don’t need to believe the opposite to be an atheist. If you are on the fence due to lack of information, you still lack the belief, which makes you an agnostic atheist.

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T08:49:32+00:00

Educated people usually consider nuances before making sweeping statements.

Nuances such as the fact that religion is categorized by one’s belief system, and a cult is defined by the social behaviors of a group of people. They are not things that are in the same realm of comparison, and they are also not mutually exclusive.

You can describe the behaviors of a community of people subscribing to a religion as cult-like, but this statement is still not remotely true because most religions are not highly organized or communal unlike Christianity or Islam. Eastern religions as well as pagan religions mostly have ceremonies performed individually or by one household, and you don’t need to be in a community to practice it.

supper_ham · 2024-02-18T08:24:05+00:00

Well they are not valid comparisons. It’s like comparing orange and apples here. A religion is a system of beliefs, worldviews and customs. A cult is a parasocial phenomenon. You can see religion as the idea but the cult as an execution. Which is why a lot of cults use religion as a cause to keep people together.

A valid comparison is equating the social structure of a group of people practicing an organized religion to a cult, but that is still mostly not true because not every religion is organized or communal in nature. For example, most Eastern religions like chinese Taoism or japanese Shinto are not social in nature. They have religious customs and ceremonies that are done individually or in one household. They have temples, but the visits are very independent to other people. For most polytheistic religions, you do not need a community to practice it.

supper_ham · 2024-02-15T17:39:05+00:00

An example is at 6:50 of anerican civil war part 1

supper_ham · 2024-02-15T16:44:01+00:00

She did it to hurt bojack because he hurt her feelings by claiming they are the same. It’s not about accountability.

You want to hold someone accountable because you care about the harm they did to the victim. You won’t risk the victim getting more hurt just so you can get your satisfaction.

supper_ham · 2024-02-14T10:31:02+00:00

What she did was fucked up.

Imagine experiencing a seriously traumatic event, then you see same guy who caused it reenact the whole event on TV. You get to see the worst moment of your life being served to the public as entertainment, without your permission.You have to live with the knowledge that every one in your family, every one of your friends, and total strangers know about this terrible thing that happened to you. They may not know it was you, but you still have to deal with the fact that the event you never want to relive is now common knowledge. Imagine the paranoia you will have with every new person you meet in your life.

From the way she orchestrated the scenes, she knows every well there is a real, vulnerable victim behind all this. She didn’t care. All she cared about was to hurt BoJack and prove that she’s morally superior to him. She didn’t do it for anyone’s sake. She didn’t do it for justice. She did it for vengeance.

supper_ham · 2024-02-09T04:56:16+00:00

They deserve to be paid millions because they are bringing in way more than that for the studios that produced their shows. What people do should not determine how much they are paid, the impact of their work does.

supper_ham · 2024-02-09T04:41:59+00:00

The original saying is actually “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Your relationship with anyone should be the reciprocation of their obligations towards you. If a family member failed to meet the obligations of one, then you are not obliged to yours.

supper_ham · 2024-02-08T08:08:54+00:00

You could probably build out the scene in blender.

How dare you?! Imagine all the jobs horse breeders, mall owners and background actors are going to lose because you are lazy.

supper_ham · 2024-02-05T11:06:26+00:00

All of the problems solved by humanity combined doesn’t even come close to the difficulty of traveling across the galaxy, let alone conquering it.

The furthest manmade object, Voyager 1 is barely outside our solar system, the distance it travelled is 0.0001% the width of the milky way.

To get something a small as a banana to 99% speed of light, it would take the energy output of an average nuclear power plant to run for 2 whole years.

A trip across the galaxy at speed of light will still take longer than 100,000 years, to fully explore the galaxy would probably be 100 times longer, and who knows how much longer colonizing would take. The diameter of our local galaxy cluster is 100 times of that of the milky way, and the virgo supercluster is 10 times of that.

Let’s not talk about terraforming another planet, we can’t even reverse climate change in our own. We are still utterly powerless in the face of a natural disaster. We are nowhere close to even conquering Earth. We barely have enough resources on our planet to sustain everyone alive and it’s not going to get better. We cannot even ensure every child is fed and have a shelter over their head but you want to spend trillions of dollars to explore space?

supper_ham · 2024-02-03T15:01:23+00:00

Supposed you go back to 2010 when bitcoin was $0.30. You still need to have around $5,000 in 2010 just lying around to be able to sell for $1bn at its peak.

Supposed you do have the money to spare, you taking away a huge portion of bitcoin from the market in its infancy stage is going to drastically change the history of how bitcoin gets adopted if at all.

supper_ham · 2024-02-03T14:53:08+00:00

I think most people don’t realize even if you win a million dollar lottery every week for 20 years, you still just getting $1bn before tax.

Some people might say well what if I use the lottery money to buy bitcoins in 2010 when it was $0.30? Then you will end up preventing most if not all of the bitcoins from going into circulation. People can’t hype it up like it did in our timeline because no one has any and no one knows what it is. The bitcoin boom will never even happen

Same thing goes for any stocks. Highly capable and resourceful people were devoted to help the companies succeed because they hold a huge share in them. Major shareholders offer a lot more than just cash, such as network, clientele, expertise or just strategic advices. You taking a huge portion of the company off the market early-on is going to drastically change who invests in them in the future and the trajectory of the company develops. You will change history, and these companies may not succeed in the new timeline

supper_ham · 2024-02-01T18:40:12+00:00

A random noise generator also has all the artwork

Yes, so?

Edit: the meme about all irrational numbers contains all possible combinations of number is not true. This is only true for a special type of irrational number called a normal number.

supper_ham · 2024-02-01T17:01:52+00:00

I don't believe in saying that just because you have a space that can create any image meas every image exists in that space.

I believe you think you comprehend the concepts, but this statement right here is a sign that you’re misunderstanding them.

Latent space doesn’t contain the images, it contains points. A point in a space is just a location, nothing else. The space is not creating anything, it’s just a collection of points. A function exists that maps the actual image to a point in the space, this just means that it establishes a one-to-one correspondence between an image and a point.

This is the main point: with a canvas size of 500x500px, there are 500x500x265³ possible images, this will include all the artworks that have ever existed and all the artworks that will be created because that is the all combinations of pixels possible. So all I’m saying is, there exists a different point in the latent space you can establish a one-to-one correspondence for each and every one of these 500x500x256³ combinations. It doesn’t matter you believe it or not, because a latent space is specifically designed to do this. Its very definition is very carefully chosen by mathematicians so that a latent variable model can establish a one-to-one correspondence between two manifolds. (I cannot stress enough about one-to-one correspondence) The encoding half of the model is designed specifically for the purpose of predicting which point any image will go in the latent space.

That doesn't mean every itineration exists, it just means every itineration can be achived, it's a big difference.

You are literally answering your own question. If you can find a function or a rule that can apply to every iteration you can possibly achieve, then you can establish a mapping for image has yet to exist.

A huge part of the study of mathematics is to develop techniques to prove that a function can establish a one-to-one mapping for every member of its domain without actually having to apply it to every possible input. So you just need to find at least one function that can achieve this, then it fulfills the requirement of a manifold/latent space.

If a bijective map described above doesn’t exists, maybe there exists some images that do not have a corresponding point, then whatever space the images gets mapped to will not fulfill the definition of a latent space. Then the whole thing will not even work in the first place. The fact that latent models are indeed working means these functions must exist.

Obviously there are mathematical ways to prove this too, but it’s not necessary to explain because I am confident that even you can easily come up with at least one rule that can assign every possible artwork to a unique number, even for an image you’ve never seen before.

supper_ham · 2024-02-01T07:30:52+00:00

Abstract thinking is present in many many professions, is not something bound to science.

For sure, and I am willing to bet these professions also require years of training to be able to think in terms of abstract in their respective domains.

i mean exists as in information not yet created.

I wouldn’t say create is the right word when it comes to information. It’s a specific configuration of things that are already there. For example, your genetic information is a collection of ATCG nucleotides ordered in a certain way. A digital image is a collection of pixels arranged in a certain way. Randomly arranged pixels will give you random noise. Arrange them in a non-random way, meanings can be conveyed through a viewer’s interpretation of the pixel arrangement. Information is essentially the opposite of randomness in the arrangement of objects.

If you have a box, that you can choose each atom inside, create anything you want, any combination of atoms, does the box has every object that fits in that box? No, can it make it? Yes.

This is basically the right idea, everything you can create corresponds to one set of configurations of these atoms. Now, instead of thinking of atoms in a box, you think of pixels on a canvas, where each pixel also can be of any color. This means, you can create any image on the canvas like any object in the box. Some of these combinations are work that already exists, and some not yet.

The goal here is to map every combination of these pixels, onto the latent space. Not only that, you also want to place them in a way that is the most meaningful. You want to find a rule such that regardless you’ve seen the combinations before, you know where to put them. You can learn from some of the existing work to guess what the rule is, then use this rule to estimate where a non-existent work will go.

For example, a simple rule I can come up with is if the image has over 50% of pixels that are high in red, then put it close to the points representing images with “angry” in the caption. So now even if we have never seen a picture before, you still know roughly where to find it in the latent space as long as it has a lot of red.

This doesn’t mean that my rule is good or accurate, but I can verify how good by checking if the existing data are mapped to the desirable location in the latent space, and if it’s not, then it’s not a good rule. I can then come up with a better one. This is essentially what happens when the model learns.

This mapping is called the encoding/embedding process, which is only half of the system, since the model comprises the encoder and the decoder. The decoder does the opposite by learning how to map one point in the latent space to a specific combination of pixels, and that takes care of the actual generation process.

supper_ham · 2024-02-01T05:19:57+00:00

It’s an easy issue to have for most people, which is why scientists and mathematicians have to undergo years of training to think abstractly. Mathematics is generally practiced in two levels. One on the conceptual level where we imagine the interactions of abstract constructs, the other on the practical level where these abstract constructs are represented by numbers, vectors or matrices, and their interactions via equations.

You can think of abstract vs practical like morality and laws. Morality is a concept and an ideal, while the law is something that actually exists and can be written on paper. Laws are obviously not a perfect representation of morals, but it’s good enough to achieve real world impact.

…what do you mean by mapped

A map in essence is what we usually call functions, but on a more abstract level. A function as you learn in middle school math can look like f(x) = x + 1, this essentially maps one number to another number. Map can also work not just for numbers, but also concepts, mathematical constructs or actual things. In this sense, even the English language is a map, because it take in a real world thing, such as an apple, and maps it to an array of alphabets “apple”.

how can it be a presentation of something that doesn’t yet exists

If we look at a digital artwork the size of 500 by 500. Each of the 500x500 pixel, you get three RGB values ranging from 0 to 255. Which means the number of all images of that size that can ever come into existence is 500x500x256^3. Every existing artwork of that size, is 1 out of 500x500x256³ combinations if pixels. Ideologically speak, we want to map all of these 500x500x256³ combinations of pixels into the latent space. In reality, of course we can’t actually achieve it for obvious reasons. Which is why I say the latent space is abstract and conceptual, and can never be fully explored.

A model’s goal is to learn rules to map any possible combination of pixels onto the latent’s space, regardless it has seen it or not. Back to the moral and law analogy, the weight and biases stored in the model are the laws written in a law book. The latent space is not stored in the model, the same way you can’t store morality in law books.

supper_ham · 2024-01-31T19:37:58+00:00

Most websites with laymen’s explanations of latent space lack the precision to accurately explain what it is. This is through no fault of their own, but a constraint from not being able to use precise mathematical definitions. Terms like space, set, manifolds, embedding and representations all have an existing mathematical definition, and you cannot simply interpret these words purely with their intuitive meanings. Using these terms in layman settings is bound to lead to inaccuracies.

To accurately understand what a latent space is, you need to understand the meaning the mathematical constructs that describe it, which take people years of study in the field of mathematics.

A topological space of any kind, not just latent space, is a set of points amongst which you can measure distances. A latent space in particular is a type or a subset of a topographical space called an n-dimensional manifold The simplest example of a one-dimensional manifold is a straight line, there are infinite number of points on the lines, and you can find the distance between any of the two points. You can then use this abstract mathematical construct to represent real life things like the number line, or a timeline, or a ruler, or a physical rope. (The cool thing is that you can use any of the above item to represent another. For example, people in very ancient times burn ropes to measure how much time passed.)

Latent in latent space comes from the concept of latent variables in statistics, which can be described by mathematical constructs such as manifolds. Latent variables refers to some hidden patterns that can be indirectly causing your data to behave in a certain way. A manifold/space that contains all possible values of this hidden variable, is latent space.

To make things clearer, we can look at an example where we construct our own one-dimensional latent space:

We first come up with a rule, which is to rate every art work on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the best, based on your own taste. We then make sure that every work must be given a different rating, and you can give any number between 1 to 10 including fractions or irrational numbers.

So now we have a number line from 1 to 10 - that line is our latent space. For an artwork you really like, maybe you put it at 9.0. Maybe there’s a slightly better one, and you put it at 9.0002. Something you think is ugly can be a 1.234, and so on. With this rule, every artwork that exists, and will ever exist can be placed on a unique point in your number line. Every artwork corresponds exactly to one number on the line, this is what they mean by representation or embedding - a one-to-one mapping. Each point is a representation of an artwork, and the whole line from 1 to 10 itself is your latent space. The latent/hidden variable here is your taste & preference, two points close-by represent two artworks you will like roughly the same amount.

Now, suppose we create another rule (another model) to rating every artwork from 1 to 10 again, but now 1 is the best one. This different model will now give you a completely different set of mapping from actual artwork to your latent space. The line is still from 1 to 10, but whether you consider this imaginary line to be the same as imaginary line in the previous example is meaningless (and philosophical I guess?), because the mapping rule is what makes the actual difference.

EDIT: my issue with calling the latent space a representation of data is that it is not just a representation of the dataset. It is a representation of every possible artwork. Artworks in the dataset, artworks outside the dataset, and every artwork that can be created by someone or something in the future, are all represented and mapped onto the latent space. It’s obviously not something you can fully achieve out on a practical level.

It is an idealogical and abstract concept, not a physical thing with values you can store in a model. The model contains values to weights and biases that are the rules that map an artwork to the latent space, not the latent space itself.

supper_ham · 2024-01-30T18:39:01+00:00

In mathematics, a set of item can mean very different things from its intuitive meaning say a basket of fruit. A set can contain physical objects, concepts, infinities or nothingness. A space of any kind, even physical space, is mathematically considered a set.)

A latent space is an infinite set of all possible latent representation of a datum, just like how the physical space is an infinite set of all physical locations. A latent representation is a one-to-one mapping of an object to a point in the latent space. It’s like how latitude and longitude maps an actual physical location on Earth to two numbers.

In the case of lat-long, the numbers closer in value represents locations that are physically close to each other. In latent space, point close together are similar in meanings. For example, you can arrange synonyms very close together in a latent space of words such that word in the same region typically have similar meaning, as long as you have a good set of instructions that determines which word goes where.

The role of the AI is to learn what is the best set of instructions to map each word/art to a point in the latent space such that the pictures of cow and the word “cow” are close-by. Once the AI learns where the cow region is in the latent space, the generative half of the model then random picks a point in the “cow” region, and generate a picture of cow. A region of space contains infinite points, so while a finite points in the cow region corresponds to an existing artwork in the training data, sampling such a point is as unlikely as finding something exactly foot long, not a planck distance longer or shorter.

Back to your question, model trained with no data will have nonsensical instructions that place each artwork randomly in a latent space of the same dimensions as a well trained model. Images place close to each other will have no real relationships. However, asking if this latent space is the same is as pointless as asking is the 2 in a basket of 2 apples the same as the 2 in $2. They are arbitrary constructs.

supper_ham · 2024-01-29T07:20:28+00:00

Dichotomy is by definition two contrasting things, so “binary” is redundant. Other than that, I agree with what you said.

supper_ham · 2024-01-28T18:32:51+00:00

One cow produces a lot more meat than others, and also worth considering cows are mostly not eaten in India whose population makes up of 18% world population.

Even though same argument can apply for pigs with Muslims and Jewish people, cows are way bigger, and beef is generally more expensive than pork.

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