danny dyer is alive and so are you

software engineering manager and poet-philosopher. reposts a banger every few days and then retreats back into a gestational phase. alas, but such is life.

[John Wittle @JohnWittle]

when i explained gpt-2 to my dad, specifically gwern noting that one output where the jester referred to the king as 'my lord' demonstrating a rudimentary understanding of social hierarchy

he spent like 30s in silence and then said "oh wow, human language is a fully general highly compressed mathematical isomorphism of human cognition, isn't it?"

[darren @darrenangle]

asked claude opus 5.5 to make a film about intelligence arising from text sequences

stupefying that this is all code. what a model

(warning: flashing lights)

[Daniel Rosiak @DanRosiak]

No, but listen, you know this "put the fries in the bag, Terence Tao"'--*sniff, sniff*--already the usual replies concede too much. "If Tao is serving fries, YOU will be in the lithium mines." My God! This is our defense of human dignity? Don’t worry, the correct people will get the terrible jobs!

*Pulls at shirt* You see, everything is up for radical transformation, human intelligence, consciousness, and so on and so on--except that somebody must still have a shitty afternoon so I can enjoy my lunch.

But to say "these people are envious", this is too easy. It allows us, "the educated ones," our own little fantasy: we are disliked only because we are so wonderful.

You know, the more interesting thing is this *sniff* peculiar identification with the machine. When the mathematician discovers something, apparently this was HIS achievement, his privilege, his little secret. When the machine discovers something, suddenly it's "Look what WE can do!" The achievement has become collective precisely at the moment when no human being can claim credit.

See how this "we" functions. For the achievement, I identify with the machine. For the consequences, I identify YOU with the human. "We have surpassed you." Who are we? Well, myself and the thing that has also surpassed me.

There is something almost touching here, really. To escape the humiliation of somebody absorbed in something opaque to you, you appeal to something which knows incomparably more than either of you. And this is supposed to settle the matter in YOUR favor.

You know the old example of canned laughter. Here we have a similar arrangement. The machine achieves something on my behalf. The mathematician suffers the loss of human significance on my behalf. Somebody to be brilliant for me and somebody to be obsolete for me, without me having to be either, so I can remain as I was.

But *pulls on shirt* there is this little difficulty that hides the essential thing: you still need a response from Tao! A correct proof, this Lean slop and so on, is not enough. You need him to certify his own defeat. You need him to say "By god, this is extraordinary! Yes, this is correct, but also this is interesting." Which means--and here comes Hegel--the person you are reducing to an obedient instrument must remain more than an obedient instrument. You need recognition from someone whose authority you are abolishing.

"Your so-called expertise is worthless. Now tell me, in your expert opinion, that I, qua machine representative, was right."

*Touches nose* But I would go a step further. What does this math person actually do to provoke you? In the fantasy, I mean. He need not insult you. He can be generous, mild-mannered, whatever. Something remains irritating: there is something over there which occupies him, which matters to him, and your opinion does not settle what it is worth. Perhaps he is not even looking down on you. This is the really intolerable possibility.

This, you see, is closer to the Lacanian problem of the Other's desire. Not simply "What does he have that I don't?" but "What the hell is going on with him?" Perhaps the answer is: he is thinking about something else.

The fries solve this beautifully. Now you know what you are for him. He needs the money. Your presence creates an obligation.

And this, at last, also explains why the machine can be less threatening than the mathematician. The machine's intelligence may exceed yours unimaginably, but you imagine it arrives in response to your prompt. You can complain about the tone. You have the privileges of an angry customer and so on and so on. The human has this irritating possibility of being interested in something you did not request and cannot order. And please, this includes the person already serving the fries!

*Pulls at shirt* I am almost tempted to say: the dream of unlimited intelligence conceals just this: a the wish that nobody should be doing anything you cannot immediately understand as a service.

[sullen @fakepalindromes]

Play is solemnity, not silliness. Adults who try to “recapture their childhood” often do so by trying to capture the whimsy of childhood. But play is serious for children, not whimsical. It’s whimsical for adults to watch, so the wires get crossed. They are “recapturing” the feeling of watching themselves watch children, watching their own memories, not of being a child. To recapture your childhood energy, take something incredibly seriously.

[bashu, thanks @bashu_thanks]

Being a dev today using frontier AI feels like I'm playing Watson to Sherlock Holmes. I just stand back and go "my word holmes how did you deduce that" and occasionally stop him from getting shot

[danny dyer is alive and so are you @tiniestsongs]

@simonw The OG!

[roon @tszzl]

incredibly good essay co-sign everything

[ananta @meansinfinity]

"You can be deeply relaxed (low-arousal, parasympathetic) and still highly clenched"

[danny dyer is alive and so are you @tiniestsongs]

@thdxr After seeing some of its purported reasoning traces (e.g., contrived example: “ABunchOfWords SmashedTogetherLikeThis/SemanticCompression”) I feel like this is hyper token dense compression flavored. Same reason Fable is so hard to understand

[Auggie @aug5thmusic]

GPT-6 Astra has the best result yet on the Bach Benchmark. Its chorale contains no voice-leading errors, and its harmonic palette is sophisticated enough to include a Neapolitan sixth chord. More importantly, it is the first model to ever write passing tones on this benchmark, a significant leap in musical understanding.

Extra High effort. Prompt below:
“In LilyPond (version 2.24), write a 4-part chorale in the style of Bach, 3/4 time, G minor. Use two staves -- soprano and alto on the top staff, tenor and bass on the bottom staff. Respond with only the code block.”

[danny dyer is alive and so are you @tiniestsongs]

@DanielleFong I’m so delighted to follow you, you’re doing such cool stuff!!! Cheering you on from afar Danielle 😊

[danny dyer is alive and so are you @tiniestsongs]

@strangestloop loop

[danny dyer is alive and so are you @tiniestsongs]

@liminal_warmth myth-slayer feels accurate. worldview shifted today

[Suhail @Suhail]

Priorities for high agency people are almost always communicated by the latency of their response.

[AVB @neural_avb]

Asked Fable 5: "Visualize neural attention and how a small language model generates stories. Use particle effects and a physics engine. Dont stop 'til you get enough"

This is actually insane. This is a real model that is running inside my browser rn with webgpu. 🤯

[Avraham Eisenberg @avi_eisen]

Is this AGI