Christian Veteran ๐ Founder @invirtualis Building XR-HAI for BCI ๐ง โค๏ธ๐ป Physics Neuroscience Engineering PhD Medicine Reading: Beauty of Living
Ask ChatGPT
โbased on what you know about me. draw a picture of what you think my current life looks likeโ
past your responses below.
thanks again @mreflow & @danshipper
"Student participants will complete a project that involves the study, development, or use of an AI method or tool to address community challenges, while educators will focus on creative approaches to teaching or using AI technologies in K-12 learning."
https://t.co/hG5dH4jBwM
@Aella_Girl The curse was that men toil.
Rough Numbers to add to this:
Female annual earnings are ~$24T globally, and buying power ~$30T.
Women spend more because they often control household budgets, est. 75-80% of discretionary spending.
Men: Toil
Women: Childrear
Seems fair.
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"All the feverish clipboard-waving, nail-biting niggling bureaucrats, abstruse rules and regs, fretting over appearances and so on that exists "elsewhere" -- there's not much room for that sort of thing in places like these."
โค๏ธ
The absolute best parts of the United States are the places that are so harrowingly desolate, abandoned, and isolated that no one cares what you do.
Want to camp under the water tower in the middle of town? Go ahead, no one minds. Building a cabin? "If you're crazy enough to stay here," they might tell you, "then we figure you know what you're doing."
Places where you can pass months without hardly seeing anyone unless you want to. Where everyone's a "character." No jobs, no visitors, no traffic, no crime, mostly just wind and silence and rusty trailers and weeds -- a blank open canvas for a few weird, rugged souls to enjoy.
All the feverish clipboard-waving, nail-biting niggling bureaucrats, abstruse rules and regs, fretting over appearances and so on that exists "elsewhere" -- there's not much room for that sort of thing in places like these.
This is the only genre of American place that has blown my mind ten times out of ten. My memories of time in these places have tattooed my heart; I can't shake my love for them.
If such places didn't still exist, I'd certainly declare this country to be completely hopeless. Thank God they're still out there, weird as ever.
@EMostaque@_Dave__White_ The end of identity-as-utility opens the door to identity-as-play.
If AI dissolves the need to โbe good at mathโ to survive, maybe what emerges is a world where math becomes music againโresonant, curious, unnecessary in the most beautiful way.
A post-utility renaissance begins.
We do stand at the edge of a pronounced crisis of identity, but, only in the fact that it will happen simultaneously for so many.
This has happened again and again in small ways to you, and to everyone ever.
In my philosophy undergrad, I was lucky enough to have a prof named Litke who is one of the rare few philosophers that actively had classes taught about his works while he was still alive (and oddly enough, one of the best garlic collectors/cultivators in the world)
But his passion was the philosophy of self.
And one thing he spoke about frequently was this concept of โthe long body of selfโ
He gave the example, that when he was in highschool, he was a top swimmer, and expected to go a top college on a swimming scholarship and do a degree biology.
However, in his last year of high school, he was in a car accident that severely damaged his shoulder, and broke both his legs leaving him in a wheelchair for months, and never able to swim again at his top form.
He had always defined himself as โa swimmerโ with that internalized language. His friends were his swimming friends. His girlfriend was a swimmer.
He could no longer swim. He no longer spent time with his swimming friends, and eventually they and his girlfriend drifted.
His identity came crashing down.
Until he built it up into something new.
It was around then he discovered his love of botany and of philosophy.
But to each of us, these identity arks happen many times in our lives.
How you defined yourself as a child or a teen likely doesnโt match how youโd define yourself now.
We build up a new version of self, only for it to come crashing down, and we eventually build back up a new identity. In this on-going loop-de-loop pattern.
The thing is, none of these were really our โselfโ
They are externalities we defined ourselves as, and the self is what you see if you were to turn that set of loops 90 degrees and look through the collective snapshot of life.
Each one taught us something, and led to the next one, but none are defining.
After all, did you call yourself a mathematician because there was no one better than you at math, or did you think you werenโt good at arithmetic because a calculator could add faster than you?
No of course not.
You being good at math, and you understanding math, has in fact not changed.
The productivity output of math in the world has changed - but you have not.
(Plus letโs remember, even if people can output the math they canโt apply it if they donโt understand it)
You as a person are more than any one part or talent, and this is also a talent you still retain and do uniquely well; and those who are both top brass at their talents and apply it with unique perspectives are more likely to be more productive with AI rather than replaced by it.
Because the one thing that any system will struggle with is the same thing we humans do: originality.
And you are good at originality, and at a thirst for pursuing it.
So in your life, in a thousand little ways, and in a handful of large ways, you will redefine yourself, but it is only the collection of those experiences that are โyouโ and that is always a unique and valuable thing.
And know that after each crash, no matter how bleak it can seem - we always do redefine ourselves and often it becomes so natural that we struggle to remember the ways we identified ourselves in the past.
There will always be human experiences to have.
There will always be new ways we define ourselves.
There will always be new places we fit in the world, no matter how out of place we feel.
And you will always be good at math.
๐ซก
"now a bunch of robots can do it. as someone who has a lot of their identity and their actual life built around ...[insert your niche thing]. it's a gut punch. it's a kind of dying."
the openai IMO news hit me pretty heavy this weekend
i'm still in the acute phase of the impact, i think
i consider myself a professional mathematician (a characterization some actual professional mathematicians might take issue with, but my party my rules) and i don't think i can answer a single imo question
ok, yes, imo is its own little athletic subsection of math for which i have not trained, etc. etc., but. if i meet someone in the wild who has an IMO gold, i immediately update to "this person is much better at math than i am"
now a bunch of robots can do it. as someone who has a lot of their identity and their actual life built around "is good at math," it's a gut punch. it's a kind of dying.
like, one day you discover you can talk to dogs. it's fun and interesting so you do it more, learning the intricacies of their language and their deepest customs. you learn other people are surprised by what you can do. you have never quite fit in, but you learn people appreciate your ability and want you around to help them. the dogs appreciate you too, the only biped who really gets it. you assemble for yourself a kind of belonging. then one day you wake up and the universal dog translator is for sale at walmart for $4.99
the IMO result isn't news, exactly. in fact, if you look at the METR agent task length over time plot, i think agents being able to solve ~ 1.5 hour problems is coming right on time. so in some way we should not be surprised. and indeed, it appears multiple companies have achieved the same result. it's just... the rising tide rising as fast as it has been rising
of course, grief for my personal identity as a mathematician (and/or productive member of society) is the smallest part of this story
multiply that grief out by *every* mathematician, by every coder, maybe every knowledge worker, every artist... over the next few years... it's a slightly bigger story
and of course, beyond that, there is the fear of actual death, which perhaps i'll go into more later.
this package -- grief for relevance, grief for life, grief for what i have known -- isn't unique to the ai age or anything like that. i think it is a standard thing as one appreaches end of career or end of life. it just might be that that is coming a bit sooner for many of us, all at once.
i wonder if we are ready
@_Hybreed_ Chesterton recommends living at both extremes.
Women took this to mean embodying paradox.
So, yes, we want to be left alone. And, yes, we want to be chatted up by men we could be interested in.
We are embracing a challenging ideal, is all ;)
@cantguardjake My friends and I used to hang out on the beach near a big youth hostel and watch people pass by on the boardwalk. One of our favorite games was called 'German or Gay.'
@elonmusk, when you're ready, please buy @Disney.
@Tesla_Optimus + Disney, respect for children and families, the desire to inspire wonder --
You'd make such a great Walt.
"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger โ something better, pushing right back."
- Albert Camus
I return to this quote often, and a lot recently, going through some rough challenges.
I love you all โค๏ธ
> invite things into your life that you canโt handle yet, because you want to become a person who can handle them
> it works! You have more capacity!
> you keep doing it
> โฆrealize thereโs no ceiling, just increasing challenges, so youโre constantly immersed in what you canโt handle, even tho you can now handle 500x more than you could years ago,
> โฆwhere do you set a line and decide to justโฆ stop? Just stay at the zone you can now handle and stop hoisting yourself past it?
@estrandquist The Mac is growing on me, though. That battery life ๐ซ
And itโs so light weight ๐๐ชถ
Iโm getting used to all desktop โfeaturesโ and their secret handshake user inputs, too. Like, *inverse starburst with my fingertips == app list*
Buying an iPhone was a mistake. I miss my Android (and I miss my stylus).
Whatโs the best way to sell a new iPhone? ๐ฒ
Canโt return it. Canโt trade it in.
@bryan_johnson โsleep decimates bonersโ @Cobratate
Bro, he said it. Caffeinate to potentiate, king.
Biggest alpha: never sleep.
You can sleep when youโre super unquestionably heterosexually dead!
Meanwhile, best of luck in your literal d measuring competition, Mr. Johnson. ๐ซก