This reminds me of how I felt when I was 14 years old and I discovered what oxytocin was on an episode of Boston Legal.
The fact that feelings of love and closeness could be prompted by a mere chemical was deeply saddening to me. It wrecked my worldview.
"Love is just the result of some chemical? Then it's not even real!" I thought to myself.
Fast-forward ~20 years later, and that's proven to be an obvious— and massive— and useless— oversimplification.
Of course love isn't "just a reaction caused by a chemical." It's a fantastically complex emergent property of our biological system that we still absolutely do not understand.
It's the same with thinking: are parts of it analogous to pattern matching? Sure! Is this the whole story? Not even close.
I feel I get a lot of value for the $60 I pay annually to read The New Yorker online. [1]
It's not perfect, but it's become essentially the only place I consume "long-form articles about interesting stuff"-type content, which I think they still do better than anyone.
Agreed about the New Yorker. Likewise, agree with the exact same description for the Atlantic. And I have bounced back and forth between them over the years.
Be sure to find out to see if you can check out issues from your library through Overdrive/Libby. Granted, I have to read it via a browser but can still read for free.
> it's looking like one of them could be something like an LLM
I love your enthusiasm in this direction (I really do).
But here's some free advice I won't be able to prove for a long time:
Anyone who is currently convinced that somehow our fledgling efforts in the direction of building useful ML models are somehow going to yield a new golden age of neuroscience and understanding of the brain-- rather than the other way around-- is gonna be in for a long and frustrating next couple of decades, especially if they're low-openness types.
I don't think the person you were responding to was claiming that. The brain plausibly having something akin to a language model doesn't imply that building or studying language models will unlock a better understanding of the brain.
Yeah, ammonia is very common in industrial refrigeration, especially big specialized systems that need tons and tons of refrigerant, as illustrated by this famous accident in which 30,000 lb. of the stuff was released:
For what it's worth, I am not advocating some sort of primitivist disease-ridden Utopia where bears roam by my door. I am saying that we have utterly destroyed huge swaths of the animal kingdom and maybe should try not doing that.
I completely agree-- and, upon re-reading, it wasn't entirely fair of me to cast your comment as representing an "unhealthy extreme", so I'm sorry about that. That's what I get for trying to make a nuanced point hastily!
I think extremism is obviously very clearly unhealthy by definition.
I have yet to encounter a single scenario in my entire existence wherein the fully-to-one-side-of-any-spectrum-you-might-imagine "extreme" point of view on how to solve any particular problem has been the best, most useful one (to my problem-solving brain, at least).
We humans tend to do this thing where, when we're presented with evidence that a previously-held position might be wrong or harmful, our opinions massively pendulum-swing the other way and we have a hard time finding clear, nuanced middle ground.
"Turns out sunlight gives you cancer, so stay indoors all the time! Avoid all sun exposure at all costs!," we say for a time. But no, it turns out that even though it is technically always doing harm to your DNA, sunlight is inescapably necessary for life and healthy immunological function.
Life is complicated, and extremes are simply shit for problem-solving.
Are you familiar with the Overton window? According to it, you will never see successful extremes because what is considered extreme changes before the world does. I think you can find plenty of examples of historical extremism that is now normal (and "healthy").
My use of the word "extremism" may have been slightly misleading; by "extremes" above, I don't mean "ideas or movements popularly considered extreme", but rather literal extremes in the space of possible solutions to a given problem.
Biodiversity is important insofar as it facilitates human flourishing. Flowery poetry about An Idealized Past doesn't have anything to say about that. Therefore, it is uninteresting.
Only? No. Mostly? Yes. For at least a couple of reasons.
Because we humans seem to be the only creatures that have ever existed that have even been able to pose the question of what makes Earth "important". That level of consciousness is special and worth protecting and expanding at all costs. It's more special and magically generative than any other creature that we know to exist or previously exist.
Because Earth without us is a dead man walking. The complete extinction of all complex life on this planet is already baked into the future as the sun expands and boils the oceans in 0.5-1 billion years. It seems to me exceedingly unlikely that any other spacefaring civilization will emerge after us if we fail. Even if you think other forms of Earth life are more "important" than us, the continuation of our human civilization is the only chance this other life has at having a longer existence (on other worlds) than this baked in timeline.
That is a very reasonable stance, and I appreciate it being articulated. Baked into it is an appreciation and respect for life and consciousness, which I respect.
Yes, with all that implies. There may be other habitable planets in the universe but I do not care about them. I care about Earth because that is where I live. I don't think there is any meaningful trade-offs to be made between what is good for Earth the planet and what is good for humans.
That doesn't mean that I want Earth to be a hyper industrialized Forge World, but my reasoning is because that would not be a good place for humans to live.
I'm having a hard time responding in a way that meets the Hacker News guidelines. I don't want to attribute to you the implications (slavery, slaughter, environmental destruction, etc), because I have a hard time believing you actually mean that (or perhaps you thought I was only referring to the mineral aspect of the world and not the life that lives in it). I understand that you might object to slavery being implicit in your belief (because you make a special carve out for only humans mattering)- but understand that up until recently, in many cultures many people were not considered human.
The most substantive thing I can suggest is to read Hegel's master slave dialectic, and consider the upshot- that by viewing others as only being instrumental, you inhibit the development of your own consciousness.
You're right that I do reject your implication of extending the ethics of human slavery to non-human life and granting it shared tenant owner rights to the Earth. I find it surprising that you struggle to respond to this idea because it is not a fringe one. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that it is the predominant View held by humans on this planet about their relation to the natural world.
As an aside, I also reject your claim that slaves were historically considered subhuman on factual grounds. For most of human history slaves were considered humans and subjugation was justified simply as a matter of having the might and means to do so. In a historical context, the idea of slaves as subhuman is primarily a New Philosophy developed in
the Antebellum South.
> I find it surprising that you struggle to respond to this idea because it is not a fringe one. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that it is the predominant View held by humans on this planet about their relation to the natural world.
I think you are correct that this is the predominant view held by humans, but it doesn't mean it is justified. It is hard to dispute it quickly without invoking something like god, which is something I am uncomfortable doing. What I can do is start with something like Descartes's meditation. Without his ability to invoke god, we are left with the paradox of the world being ultimately unknowable. Likewise if you start from the idea that there is a real world. At best, you become committed to the paradox that we are living within our own imaginations somehow embedded in our brains. From any other starting point, at some point in our reasoning we are led to a deep paradox, which seems to be a defining aspect of our consciousness. Ultimately, the world is unknowable and the best we can do is be honest, humble and do our best with what we have.
That leads me to why I reject what we both consider to be the predominant view held by humans. If we trust natural history, we can see that the mammalian anatomy has been conserved for at least 65 million years. Mammals adapted to all kinds of environments, grew large, grew small, etc, but fundamentally, the mammalian anatomy remains the same (even the whales have essentially the same anatomy as any other mammal). As long as the physics of our world remains constant, function is determined by structure. That means that the same functions that underlie our experience underlie other mammals. The only major difference with humans is that we grew out a section of our brain (the neocortex), which gives us greater ability to visualize, synthesize the input from our senses, develop speech, and interrupt other parts of our nervous system (i.e., like using meditation to quiet the mind, dampen the response from the amygdala, etc).
With that understanding, it seems deeply wrong to subjugate other consciousnesses. It seems like instead of having a "tenant owner rights" view of Earth, we should view ourselves as gardeners cultivating the planet out of a sense of beauty and love that coincides with helping ourselves and other creatures.
That is one thing I am deeply committed to. Humans exist as the most exquisite and beautiful branch of life and are the greatest care-givers on this planet. We not only give of our bodies like the other mammals to nurture, and develop groups to care for individuals, we also care so much that we care about truth, and continue to grapple with it even when it seems out of reach.
> because you make a special carve out for only humans mattering
Your relating of an anthropocentric ethics to support for slavery does not make sense to me. What does the previous horrors of human slavery have to do with our relationship to non-humans?
Biodiversity & ecosystems seem obviously existentially important to the long term survival of humanity. Even if we're not sure what exactly would kill us (first) from acidifying the oceans, killing all the trees, melting the ice-caps, & killing most wild mammals.
The enormous risk we've created against there being a human future. I for one hope for a sustainable flourishing, and find any other avenue not merely uninteresting, but actively malicious & evil. Global gaian awareness is absolutely required, or you are just a primitive wild mammal.
And I'll admit that I'm exhausted by eco-nostalgia and eco-doomerism, which led me to comment dismissively. I understand how that can be off-putting and unpersuasive.
Excellent to see a fellow SE user! I still happily run my iPhone SE (1st generation). I might take 5 minutes to boot Notion or run out memory and crash when I try to boot Amazon; but, my EarPods pair instantly—I just plug my 3.5 mm jack in my 3.5 mm port and then I can freely listen to music or do a phone call (works every time)! Also, I can easily swap connections from my laptop to my phone with the same workflow—simple (but sadly not futureproof).
I would rather have a gen1 SE than my current iPhone 12 mini. Had an iPhone 5 before, but AT&T stopped serving data to it. I thought maaybe it'd be ok not having a headphone jack, but nah, this sucks.
Please accept my sympathy. I do understand and soon enough I'll be in the same predicament. Every iOS 15 patch feels like a gift. I seriously don't know what I'm going do when iOS 15 becomes end of life; there aren't any modern phones that have my critical—and arguably reasonable—hardware requirements.
The other requirement being the home button instead of these awful swipe gestures and facial unlock? And compact size.
Man, Steve Jobs got it right before.
Precisely that and I couldn’t agree more. I even ditched my case about a year ago—live for today.
The hardest thing is the strain the whole experience puts on my relationships. I already used up all my fiancé’s patience with my chronic melancholy about my perfectly functional but ultimately doomed phone; and end of life hasn't even happened yet.
Seeing iOS 12.5.7 was bittersweet, a glimmer of hope, a reason to hold on.
Nah, swipe gestures are way better imo. Anecdotal, but there is a story that the design team (who were used to the previous button design) got so used to the swipes that they tried to do that constantly on their old phones as well.
I would have agreed with you on the fingerprints being superior, but I have to say that I really can’t say anything bad about the face scanner. It is fast and accurate and very rarely fails (which would be the same with fingerprints, you may have gloves on, or your hands are dirty, etc)
I've been using this phone for a year and haven't gotten used to it. There are too many scenarios where the swipe you want is difficult to pull off. It used to be common UI guidance to use gestures for extra convenience but not to rely on them.
Like if I'm using the map, it's swipe up from near the bottom to open nav options or swipe up from slightly below that to open app switcher; keep in mind I'm probably doing this hastily at a red light. Lock screen is swipe up to unlock but also to look at notifications. Home screen is swipe down for notifications or control center, depending on which side, I always forget.
Facial unlock has a hard time with my glasses. I have to input my pin half the time. If I'm driving, I can't look at my phone. Also idk why it has to auto-lock immediately like I'm paranoid; there used to be a setting to delay auto-locking for 30min unless I press the lock button myself.
Buy the $9 dongle from Apple and keep it permanently connected to your headphones. Then it's just a plug in scenario, the same as a headphone jack whenever you want to use them. Sure, you can't charge and use your headphones at the same time but I get 2 full days of battery life from my iPhone 12.
I did, and I got the typical outcome for dongles. Left it plugged into my car aux until my wife wanted to play music off her iPhone 6... turns out it can't use that dongle. She disconnected it, then it got lost beneath the seat eventually. Had another for my headphones, turns out it can't use the wired mic so it's kinda useless. Third one broke. Other car has Bluetooth, but it sucks, often doesn't auto pair or the phones fight over it.
This is a bad compromise that didn't need to happen; I should just be able to plug headphones into my phone. In the end, I took my old iPhone 5 and left it in the car for playing music. It's the better phone.
Same phone here. Only thing I really wish for is better battery capacity out of the box. Battery health is now 83% which is not the worse but definitely noticeable when I don’t charge during the day. But even brand new the phone would not make it through some days without charging or powersaving mode.
In the same light my S20, which by all benchmarks should be inexcusably slow compared to Apple, still feels like a brand new phone to me as well. I think we've lately hit a level of performance excess that means that phones don't age like they once did.
I looked into this a while back, and there's simply no feasible way to construct an airship from known materials that could sustain a vacuum of the necessary volume without being crushed by atmospheric pressure.
You can keep reinforcing the vacuum chamber, but by the time it's strong enough, it'll be too heavy for the buoyant forces to lift it.
Instead of additional mass, you could add additional energy.
For example, a small maglev running around the inside of the vacuum sphere would steady outward pressure on that part of the sphere. Add more trains at different angles to even out the forces.
As a bonus, this kind of "active structure" can dynamically vary its structural strength as atmospheric pressure changes with altitude or weather.
Honeycomb structures; may be dynamic and expanded as a sort of umbrella since pressure is lower higher up above the clouds. I guess a nifty construction with tiny small mirrors can direct lots of solar energy and work as sails, controlled by smart bending compliant mechanisms.
Also - regarding flying objects, I've always wondered if a rotating disc, ie frisbee falls slower to thee ground because of atmosphere interaction, or if it's still falls slower in a vacuum with other forces at work.
Well, still rails and boats are good stuff.
I really like that honeycomb for an -n dimensional space construction idea.
The fact that feelings of love and closeness could be prompted by a mere chemical was deeply saddening to me. It wrecked my worldview.
"Love is just the result of some chemical? Then it's not even real!" I thought to myself.
Fast-forward ~20 years later, and that's proven to be an obvious— and massive— and useless— oversimplification.
Of course love isn't "just a reaction caused by a chemical." It's a fantastically complex emergent property of our biological system that we still absolutely do not understand.
It's the same with thinking: are parts of it analogous to pattern matching? Sure! Is this the whole story? Not even close.