zazen

My kids love Wondergan

Profile of Yitang Zhang https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/pursuit-beauty He has a talent for long, deep thinking. At 58 (in 2013) he published groundbreaking stuff on bound gaps ("there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by less than 70 million") In November (at 67) he announced he had achieved the solution to the Landau-Siegel zeros conjecture, which caused quite a buzz because it relates to the Riemann hypothesis, one of the most important unsolved problems in Maths. People are still picking through the 111 page proof so its still up in the air at the moment

I'm a bit random in the way I pick up new music but I've listened to these a lot this year: Midnight Sun 2A - Aleksi Perala (and some of the others in that series) Secret Garden - Mu Ziq and Mrs Jinx (oh wait that was 2021) Feorm Falorx - Plaid oh crap, lol, everything else is much older and stuff I've just stumbled accross

Now and again I buy a Plaid album. I bought this one and I really like it. Its very consistent.

I fucking loved it Beautiful underwater stuff, a lot of actually quite complicated character relationships being set up, and a humdinger of an action set piece in the final hour. And its actually about something important. I can easily see how they can make three more of these. And Cameron has hinted its going to go in unexpected directions later. People who didnt like it, please come to this thread and then we can get all tribal about it ?

Tim Minchin has some wise words on the concept of The One (we played this at our wedding)

This is a good idea 1969:

from /r/chatgpt:

The people that founded OpenAI were very aware of this, and OpenAI has a charter to try and counter that happening https://openai.com/charter/ the original point of OpenAI was to try and develop AI in an open-source kindof way so everyone would benefit I think they have drifted somewhat and I'm not sure how open they are now

maybe thats why we need the artifical kind? we have a massive intelligence deficit

Ok yeah I am playing the role of Musk Apologist in this thread, and its getting harder and harder. Actually this thread has got me to reflect on how I got here. Here's the story: Im in the UK, middle aged, left wing. Left Wing as in, my ideal would probably be the high-tax, high social security European countries like Netherlands, Denmark etc. At school 35 years ago I was hearing all about the greenhouse effect, and the idea that humanitys combined orgy of consumerism is wrecking the planet has always been with me. Always been there, a dark future looming ahead of me. But what can I do about that? I've voted, obviously. But thats just once every 4 or 5 years. So I tried to live ethically - every pound you spend, or earn, is like a little vote right? So for most of my life I've been veggie, worn second hand clothes, rode a bike around London, used second hand technology (phone, laptop etc), every major purchase tried to work out the most ethical way to do it. Bought fair trade, bought organic. Also since my mid-20s I've only worked for charities and not-for-profit orgs. Savings have been ethically invested. I drive an EV (not a Tesla), etc etc. I've donated LOTS of money to FotE and Greenpeace and so on. I've been on protest marches, I took part in Reclaim The Streets in the 90s (remember them). Not so much activism though since I had kids. But the world is probably still fucked right? I remember the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, I was 18 and that seemed like an optimistic thing, but it was just an agreement to start trying to agree on things and all my life there's been this glacially slow global political process with the world meeting every 4 years to slowly start thinking about maybe preliminary talks to try and agree to set some targets for carbon reduction yadda yadda yadda. And it just drags on and not much progress gets made. And no progress gets made because our world is dominated by corporations which are like superpowered toddlers who pursue only profit above all else. And really because the political will to make significant changes to the world (e.g. a proper carbon tax) will only happen when enough people are concerned enough to push back against the corporations. And that will only happen when the environment is bad enough that people can really see we're fucked. And by then it will be too late. Climate Change is dangerous because its such a slow process and the point of no return comes way before its obvious. Actually in the last 10 years or so I've come to the realisation that even if we all boil alive the 'climate change isnt real' brigade will still just say its because of sunspots or some shit. This argument is literally never going to get settled in time to save us. So we're probably just fucked. Our kids are probably fucked. Really since having kids I've tried not to think about all of this so much. I hold out some hope that our modelling is wrong. There are complicated climate feedback loops that are hard to model (the role of clouds, the role of the oceans, the climate models are just models and cant cover everything). Maybe there's a feedback loop that will push the other way and make things not as bad as feared. Realistically thats probably our best chance. So then in about 2015 or so, Tesla and Musk come to my attention. I'm not really into cars. I watched the Model X launch. I looked at Tesla's mission statement "Accelerating the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy". Seems good. I liked the way that Musk was actually really bad at public speaking but had that geeky air of knowing what he was talking about. And the 'fuck it lets do it completely differenty' impressed me.Over the air updates, innovation in drive trains and doors and air filters and so on. I'm not naturally inclined to be impressed with billionaires. But this seemed good. And what really clinched it was the Tesla Energy/Powerwall launch in 2015 - I'd really recommend you watch it - in 18 minutes Musk sets out a vision of batteries + solar and what it would take to stop using fossil fuels. And I would point out that Tesla really have accelerated the worlds transition to sustainable energy. And although the Tesla solar roof stuff has been a flop, the home batteries and massive powerpacks for national grids made by Tesla have been a great success. So I had given up hope of any political progress that would happen in time to steer us away from climate disaster. But here is Musk with a vision of how to make massive changes within the current capitalist system without needing the UN Climate Change Conference to do anything, or without needing the whole world to agree a carbon tax. Musk was showing a way to bring about by massive changes by just making EVs and Batteries better than the alternatives. And crucially, he was in a position to make it happen. And with Tesla EVs and the powerwall stuff he's actually been very successful at that. When Tesla announced the Gigafactory in 2014 they said they were going to build the biggest battery factory in the world. And they built it. And now they've built five or six of them. And other car manufacturers have built their own. People cast doubts as to whether Musks environmentalism is genuine 'hes just doing it to collect subsidies' etc. But whatever his other faults are, there's no doubt in my mind that he wants to move the world away from fossil fuels. And as he said, if you just want to make a lot of money, starting a car company is not the obvious thing to do. Hes the same generation as me, grew up hearing the same stuff in school as I did about climate change. I think he said once "I just want the future to not suck" and I think he's sincere in that. Whats gone wrong in the last few years? I could try and analyse it but I've already written loads. A lot of driven, successful peope are also dicks. Perhaps they have to be? Steve Jobs was a dick. Bill Gates was a dick in his business dealings. Musk is also a dick but the difference to me is that he's putting his energies into things that I actually think are good ideas TLDR: the reason I'm in this thread trying to stick up for musk is that his vision of market-driven change to move the world away from fossil fuels is the only feasible vision for a future that I've heard in a while. I dont have much hope in the UN Climate Conference. I dont have much hope that humans will suddenly spontaneously decide to stop being consumerists and just live in eco communes all of a sudden. Musk has gone off the rails of late but the things I care about (Tesla, Gigafactories, Powerwalls) are still in place and functioning. So I'm hoping he can get his shit together and get back to the main mission.

re: how the media works See this article about "Elon Musk was spotted with a sanctioned, pro-Putin Russian TV presenter at the World Cup final in Qatar" https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-spotted-pro-putin-russian-tv-presenter-world-cup-2022-12?r=US&IR=T They're talking about Nailya Asker-Zade. Here's the picture business insider uses, looks like they're having a conversation That WaPo article in post above also mentions "Musk also posed for pictures with Russian state television presenter Nailya Asker-Zade." Someone nearby recorded them together: So she was just sitting nearby and asked him for a selfie. Doesn't look like he said anything to her. Anyway he's still totally fucked the pooch with Twitter and a bunch of the other people he was standing near at the world cup are arseholes (that wapo article lists them) But I'm posting this as an example of 'when there's a media frenzy someone will write a whole article about the smallest thing and portray it in the most click baity way possible'

dcom can I be your friend?

Ok when I go back and re-read your post you had hedged it quite a bit (edit: and I dont even mean that you'd edited it, probably I had just read it too quickly and got the slightly wrong end of the stick). And I approve of hedging. But still your overall point was and then you said So it seems the overall shape of your argument is that 'the instances that get the most publicity' (do you mean ChatGPT or something else, please specify) 'seem intelligent but really theyre not' and thats an ok position, philosophically, to take but if you then say 'I'm not starting a conversation about the hard problem of consciousness' then its like you're trying to disqualify any opposing argument before its even started. Because the way to counter your argument is to talk about the hard problem of consciousness.

But you're doing the latter by skirting around the former. You're saying ChatGPT is a dead end because its just a fancy markov chain and you see no path from there to AGI. Me and others are saying that we know its just a fancy markov chain, but it still seems to kicking arse and exhibiting abiltiies no-one expected language models to have. Seems like there's some potential there when it continues to scale up.

Fair enough Actually despite my advice in the previous post, now I think of it, the one time I split up with someone that I owned a house with (she had had an affair) I remained in touch with her and 'friends' for exactly as long as it took to sell the house and split the money (we werent married so no divorce to sort out). Then I got the fuck away. I sortof did that unconsciously, while we were sorting the house out it made total sense to me that we would stay friends. Then once we'd sorted it out and the deposit money was back in my account, I was hit with the realisation that I was much better off just moving on and I never wanted to see her again.

Lyst I like that you are talkign this through with a bunch of us forum strangers and have the self awareness to post that meme And you are doing a lot of soul-baring here and I appreciate thats difficult Its good to think and write about whats happening because writing helps us think. and its really easy to trick oneself in these situations.

This to me seems like quite sortof game-playing behaviour. If it was me I'd be looking for a way to not get involved in the game, e.g. go and stay somewhere else Is there someone else you trust who you could get to be in the house in your place? Or who could check on the house once a day or something make sure its not been cleared out. Then you go somewhere else for a few days? Home office is just a laptop really, right? tbh whats worked for me in situations like this is getting the fuck away from them and never seeing them again, and keeping communication to an absolute minimum. you gotta move on

re: your soon to be ex moving back in for a few days embrace the awkwardness. If you both end up in the kitchen at the same time and its awkward, just breathe in the awkwardness and swim in it. Make small talk about the toaster taking too long, revell in the small talk, dont feel bad about having to mumble inconsequential things. Dont worry about awkward situations, it will pass

lol

When I was a kid, my big brother played lots of Specials and Fun Boy Three and stuff, its all lodged deep in my brain

Always liked this one

This Insider article isn't very good, although their strapline seemed like it was going to be interesting - "At Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk was a jerk with a grand vision. At Twitter, he's just a jerk." The bit about overworking employees is accurate, but the rest of that paragraph is baloney Having followed Musk for a while, its interesting actually to see the talking points the right used to attack him with back in 2015 (luxury cars dont make a difference/ he just sucks up subsidies/building rockets is easy) now being repeated from the left. So here's my points: building a car company is hard. its not a field 'with very little competition'. Most car companies go bankrupt and the big ones have to be saved by the government Tesla started with low volume, expensive cars and is working their way down to cheaper cars as they scale up. Its the only way to do it really Tesla has absolutely transformed the car industry. There were EVs before, like the Nissan Leaf, but automakers only made them with about 100 mile range on the basis that 'market research said thats what people wanted'. Making Evs with 200 or 300 mile range needed a lot of R+D and economies of scale - because batteries are heavy and expensive so efficiency of the drivechain becomes vital. Tesla found a way to make people want EVs with 200/300 mile range and found a way to build them at just about the right price. It was an absolute massive kick up the arse for the rest of the industry but they're only just catching up. Dont even get me started on SpaceX and how fucking difficult it is to make a twelve storey high explosive tube fly to space and fly back down and land itself. You just can't reduce this to 'Musk is a dick and Tesla and SpaceX were scams' Tesla and SpaceX are both wildly successful. But Musk is a dick. The much more interesting question is what were the conditions that made Twitter a disaster and Tesla and SpaceX a success? It is because its hardware/engineering rather than social media? Is it having the right people around musk to offset the dickishness? It is just that hes gone nuts this year? Thats the analysis I want to see.

In that twitter poll he didnt say 'when' he would step down and he'll probably delay it on the basis that 'he cant find anyone else who can do it'