Very disappointed in this week's article. I thought it was going to be a continuation of last week's water melon discussion. I was hoping for am article about using data science to pick the best watermelon
I've gotta ease people into this blog's true character, as a review blog for fruits and desserts and childish coffee drinks. But, slowly, slowly, we'll get there.
My take on the thought experiment of the man in the box following the flowchart to deal with instructions in Chinese, is no, he himself does not understand Chinese.
But take a step back, the box understands Chinese.
We use abstraction layers all the time in tech. Does an electron moving or not moving across a semi-conductor in itself hold any discrete binary value, no.
Only when we group transistors to form logic gates to hold a binary state and impose some degree of meaning on it, then yes!
And all the way up the stack.
But one other bit that is missing from this experiment: the observer. Who gives the box meaning and determines whether it is following the instructions?
I've always thought this thought-experiment was wrongly framed.
Does the group of less that 1000 neurons give rise to what we would term consciousness?
Scale it up to several billion neurons, then something more complex emerges ... even then, put that consciousness in an environment with no connection to the outside world, then how would you determine anything is actually going on?
So there's another thought experiment that kind of asks this same question, where it basically says, what if there's an entire country of people living in these Chinese rooms, and each one is one step of the flowchart. Would that country be conscious?
It sort of plays in the opposite direction of the original one, where in this case, it seems instinctively wrong to say the country is a conscious being, though, as it's set up, it seems like it kinda should be?
True, there probably needs to be an updated version of this for the transfer portal, and for when you can insider trade on everything on Kalshi. So many more options now...
Step 1 would make step 2 easier. but ofc you could also argue that by the time you did 1, the window of 2 is already gone. It could also be true, depending on your own position in your life.
Yeah, if I had to guess, I'd say that's probably the weird thing about right now, where 1) big companies are always there, 2) startups or whatever are mostly always there, and startups in 5 years may not be *that* different than they are now, 3) the crazy "big companies at the center of everything" thing probably *won't* be there in 5 years.
Not sure the fork is as permanent as it reads. Plenty of people join the winner as an apprenticeship and spin out once they've seen how the machine works, so the real choice is sequencing, not identity.
Normally, I would agree with that, and I think in most moments, that's more or less true. But this particular moment feels somewhat different. I'm sure as not as frenzied or urgent as it feels in the moment of it, but it does seem like the the "early AI" windows (whatever those may be) won't be open for that long.
Very disappointed in this week's article. I thought it was going to be a continuation of last week's water melon discussion. I was hoping for am article about using data science to pick the best watermelon
You missed the point. The time is now for you to build your watermelon picking app/business!
I've gotta ease people into this blog's true character, as a review blog for fruits and desserts and childish coffee drinks. But, slowly, slowly, we'll get there.
My take on the thought experiment of the man in the box following the flowchart to deal with instructions in Chinese, is no, he himself does not understand Chinese.
But take a step back, the box understands Chinese.
We use abstraction layers all the time in tech. Does an electron moving or not moving across a semi-conductor in itself hold any discrete binary value, no.
Only when we group transistors to form logic gates to hold a binary state and impose some degree of meaning on it, then yes!
And all the way up the stack.
But one other bit that is missing from this experiment: the observer. Who gives the box meaning and determines whether it is following the instructions?
I've always thought this thought-experiment was wrongly framed.
Does the group of less that 1000 neurons give rise to what we would term consciousness?
Scale it up to several billion neurons, then something more complex emerges ... even then, put that consciousness in an environment with no connection to the outside world, then how would you determine anything is actually going on?
So there's another thought experiment that kind of asks this same question, where it basically says, what if there's an entire country of people living in these Chinese rooms, and each one is one step of the flowchart. Would that country be conscious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain
It sort of plays in the opposite direction of the original one, where in this case, it seems instinctively wrong to say the country is a conscious being, though, as it's set up, it seems like it kinda should be?
I would join the winners first, win a championship, then convince them all to transfer to the second school the next year
True, there probably needs to be an updated version of this for the transfer portal, and for when you can insider trade on everything on Kalshi. So many more options now...
My take would be:
1. Join the winners first;THEN,
2. Become a winner myself
Step 1 would make step 2 easier. but ofc you could also argue that by the time you did 1, the window of 2 is already gone. It could also be true, depending on your own position in your life.
Yeah, if I had to guess, I'd say that's probably the weird thing about right now, where 1) big companies are always there, 2) startups or whatever are mostly always there, and startups in 5 years may not be *that* different than they are now, 3) the crazy "big companies at the center of everything" thing probably *won't* be there in 5 years.
Not sure the fork is as permanent as it reads. Plenty of people join the winner as an apprenticeship and spin out once they've seen how the machine works, so the real choice is sequencing, not identity.
Normally, I would agree with that, and I think in most moments, that's more or less true. But this particular moment feels somewhat different. I'm sure as not as frenzied or urgent as it feels in the moment of it, but it does seem like the the "early AI" windows (whatever those may be) won't be open for that long.
it’s like would you rather be a big fish in a small pond? or small fish in a big pond. or just be a frog on a lily pad 🐸
I think that's basically it, though I think the mistake that we often make (eg...https://benn.substack.com/i/146084626/is-that-all-there-is-to-a-firing) is not realizing that, for the most part, we just want to be good fish in whatever pond we fell in.