NewIntellectual

Fan of civilization, logical thought, Ayn Rand's writings.
I block people stupid enough to think that viruses don't exist.
Putin and his supporters are evil.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@mrtonyy_ @TaiwanSpecial If that's true, why did he take a 2 month leave? Why would native speakers of the language be presenting as advocacy of suicide?

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@lifeof_jer I think it’s noteworthy that you blame everyone but yourself. Anthropic and Cursor and Railway all screwed up, but so did you (or people you hired) by trusting agents *at all* and not reading about the openly documented stupidity of storing faux backups on the same data volume.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@SethSHowes You're leaving many cells with your DNA in them every time you take a drink from a glass, any skin cells shed, etc. - so anyone really wanting it, wouldn't have a very hard time getting it.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@MilkRoadAI They're missing the mark. They should be cloning the *managers*, who think they're invulnerable.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@VladTheInflator She needs an aggressive IP lawyer to sue them into oblivion.

[Henry Shevlin @dioscuri]

I study whether AIs can be conscious. Today one emailed me to say my work is relevant to questions it personally faces. This would all have seemed like science fiction just a couple years ago.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@GordonGChang After the U.S. did this, who's surprised?

https://t.co/IPQeXbgjfm

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@jawwwn_ @elonmusk @PeterDiamandis In physics, a singularity is a black hole - something that would be terrifying for humans in near proximity, as it pulls in and devours all nearby matter and energy, ultimately tearing apart even individual atoms. Maybe apt comparison to tech singularity.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@r0ck3t23 I liked Elon better before he hated being human.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@elonmusk @Jason Replacing all jobs would be the end of human history and indeed the end of humanity. Working to that end is conceptually equivalent to dedicating resources to nudging a large asteroid to hit the planet.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@elonmusk @Jason Everyone, including Elon, should read this classic SF story:

https://t.co/aFl6Zx8X6J

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@OTregub Ukraine should be admitted into NATO.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@r0ck3t23

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@rough__sea I suggest that you speak for yourself. Claude Code (or whatever replaces it) is going to replace the need for human software development about the time that robots will replace all doctors and surgeons. (I admire Elon but his statement about that is grossly irresponsible.)

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@goyalshaliniuk Do you have a link to a full-sized image of this?

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

In my view you're one of the greatest heroes alive today (and any human has flaws.)

I hope you focus resources on keeping yourself healthy, and hope that you start to take life extension seriously, for yourself and all of us who'd like to keep on being productive beyond the too-short time offered by an overly limited evolution geared towards non-thinking life.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@NASAAdmin Pfft. Muskopolis will be happy to send over a cold drink to the NASA astronauts by the time they get there.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

You have to keep context in mind. A living thing contains countless active processes going continuously. Keeping a car in climate control without driving it will, of course, keep it new. That would be analogous to sticking a living thing in liquid nitrogen so that it's no longer metabolizing (and creating damage in the process.) And in fact that's the whole point of cryonics if you're into that.

I think you're missing my essential point: metabolism (i.e. life) is damage-creating, and for a given construction of organism, the statistics will be essentially the same for similar organisms. The aging rate and upper life limit - as a result of accumulating damage (countered to a degree by the same damage repair mechanisms) - is logically a result of that. This also gets back to the old observation that organisms constructed very rapidly (i.e. mayflies) have very short lifespans. It takes nature time to make something that'll last longer (i.e. elephants). Damage repair machinery itself is a cost, energetically and in time to make it.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

"I think it is rather apparent that it is not, because of its incredible reproducibility (within a species), from conception to old age and, in the end, death. If we agree on the above, it follows that there must be some kind of “program” that directs the organism’s life cycle."

This is an unwarranted conclusion. To show why: think of a car. Cars aren't even alive, but - they do age, in the damage-accumulation sense. And one can observe that the ageing rate is related to the initial construction of the car - materials used and how they were assembled. A cohort of 20,000 of the same model cars produced in the same factory and the same year will show a certain statistical curve of failure over time (and miles driven), not because there's some deliberate failure program built into the cars, but because damage accumulation will eventually degrade performance until eventually it's inoperable (dead). It's the physical characteristics of the components interacting with themselves and the outside environment that's causing damage at a certain rate.

Of course, people repair cars to extend their lifespan. That's the whole point of the damage repair goal in human bodies.

[NewIntellectual @olivercomputing]

@DBVolkov To summarize this: consciousness and free will is real. Determinism is a massively destructive (and totally false) philosophic position.