YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
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User ID: 680
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3hr ago
difference here is that the ML researchers do not actually spend time thinking about the ML open problems because they are spending most of their time thinking about realworld ML applications
Guilty. Though I do think about sample efficiency, OOD performance, and methods for encoding expert knowledge as inductive biases, which I think would fall under COLT questions. I just have a practical real-world use case in mind...
My question to you is how many of these are represented as formal mathematical formulations that are solvable without experimental testing? It's one thing to write a tight math proof that can be checked in a Lean Solver, quite another to prove that your new formulation of GNNs functions broadly under distribution shifts in multiple domains.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6hr ago
The longer feedback loop is unfortunately the expensive part, as we talked about last time. The real game changer would be to reduce the compute cost and training time for LLMs and/or figure out a more efficient, non-quadratic self-attention mechanism. However, at some level the cost is the moat frontier labs have, so there is almost perverse-conflicting incentives not to improve it but also requiring it for RSI to happen.
The pure math part of ML is unfortunately quite weak right now and hasn't played a huge role in the current boom;
Agreed.
pure math research could provide a much stronger basis for understanding learning and creating new approaches, and I think it will, but that's speculative.
I'm sure the mathematicians left out in the cold by the big data revolution of ML will rejoice that there was indeed a mathematical approach to LLMs over the pesky engineering approaches that were developed by the peons from MIT.
I'm sure they have pointed it at ML, but ML isn't exactly the same as formal math. I'm probably describing this poorly but ML is very experimental/empirical, not theoretical like formal math. The math heavy side of ML would be finding better optimizers, regularizers, improving backpropagation or finding a better method than SGD. The question becomes how much of an edge do these provide? Because better algorithmic components still have to deal less-better data or compute components and how well all those now perform better is not theoretically provable.
What most of these breakthroughs tell me is that supervised learning is highly effective at formal math, and the benefit of something like Lean + Solvers to allow for computational checking of math proofs has been a fundamental driver. Whether or not strategies learned on this frontier are applicable to broader fields that are less formalizable is unknown to me.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
21hr ago
The fact that other leftists would happily line him up against the wall for his heretical beliefs? Well, that's leftism for you.
That's conservatism too, there is always some heretic that needs to be burnt. Some ideological bent, political position, or spiritual disease, that threatens the christian souls of our community!
It must be nice to see everything in a binary black and white partisan position, the one drop rule of political alignment. The 1D political axis truly is the malaise of the soul, the ultimate mindkiller. The devil ever sits on the shoulders of the self righteous.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
North Carolina is a Purple state, It has a democrat governor and a republican state legislature. It doesn't help that the Republican senate candidate is fairly odious, and the democratic senate candidate is a fairly popular former governor. I think it is likely Roy Cooper takes the senate seat.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
I wonder if there is a psychological parallel around belief? I can envision humans having this, for lack of a better phrase, "coping mechanism" for when we expend effort towards a particular narrative, a narrative that divides. It causes the narrative to become deeply meaningful, to infect our psyche despite how banal, or weak it might be. Video games in general do a lot of cognitive hacking of the human mind, some of which is undoubtedly deliberate, but I wonder if this narrative adoption aspect is, or if its merely accidental?
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
maybe, but that feels like a poor predictive answer, it relies on a very "simple" understanding that seems to be more of a "disparate impact" on outcomes sort of view.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
Yes I have noticed this. I know 2 types of conservative-ish women. Those who think that since they are the woman, the man should come to them, and the type that knows what they want, and puts themselves in positions where the more compatible men are.
However I've noticed this equally applies to a sub-section of picky men, who refuse to make some level of actual effort that might require some sacrifice to get themselves into a place where their preferred partners exist. So "women are low-agency" has become more just-world fallacy to me.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
Fascinating, so rules as written yes, but rules as intended? Haven't the mods clarified many a time that they define single-issue posters as "obnoxious" and "non-stop". My model for this is that you'd have to cluster closer the SS, or EC (might be remembering wrong) style of posting rather than this fairly timid mostly-lurker that occasionally comes in to vent about how homeschooling + feminism + Leftism fucked up his brain. He is essentially not prolific enough, aggressive enough, or obnoxious enough to seriously catch mod attention on the topic.
Seems like a case of: "Rules are a blunt hammer, sometimes you need the enforcer to recognize when they should be applied" or that you can't make rules for every situation that are 100% effective.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
Possibly, though maybe an embarrassing admission, I've never read Hegel, I know nothing of his philosophy, or what a "Hegelian Dialectical view of History" is. As far as remember wasn't Hegel the one who funded Marx?
But that is how my old world history textbook was written, very dichotomous. I've been musing that maybe humans are just built for viewing things as two sides. Good vs Evil, Insiders vs Outsiders, Black vs White, Us vs Them, Red tribe vs Blue tribe. Idk it seems like everything devolves into a binary. Probably just due to how the human brain evolved to handle socially complex situations effectively or something.
In the red vs blue tribe thing specially its complicated because chud gamers are not how the example red tribers are portrayed, in the traditional use of the term (it's definitely evolved), gamers are almost always blue or grey tribers, who through politicization of games have become, anti-blue tribers, not necessarily red tribers.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
board games (but not too much)
What constitutes too many board games but not too many video games? I've never heard this qualifier constructed in that way.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
I've always been vaguely jealous of the Indian arranged marriage setup
I second this, having watched my socially awkward Indian friends fail at western dating but then have the cushion to fall back on arranged matchmaker setups, and get marriageable, family-approved women with good jobs and prospects, often fairly attractive with such comparatively low effort, I can't help but being a bit jealous. I went through the fucking trenches of the dating wars to find my girlfriend.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
6d ago
If any staff member would like to ban me, I think I'm going to keep using this forum for venting, at least as context and drive permits, and that is trite.
Why? Nothing you said seems remotely objectionable. You are sharing your experience, which is not against the rules.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
7d ago
One would wonder why no women from NYC go to SF/Seattle. Why do we never reach equilibrium between two unequal states unless transfers are one sided or the transfers that are happening aren't the problem population.
It's a well-known phenomenon.
Theoretically, but among my remaining friends in SF/Seattle, including some who took 6 month hiatuses to NYC for this reason, I have not seen drowning. It's hard to prove or disprove this as phenomenon with relying on anecdotal data because while its theoretically possible its too multivariate to quantically determine it.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
7d ago
high quality mates. See: San Francisco.
Sorry to burst your bubble but if wealth + intelligence is your only metric for high-quality mates you have a weird skew. As the saying goes: "The odds are good but the GOODS ARE ODD". Autistic nerdy men who happen to make 7 figures do not high quality mates alone make.
It's almost a tautology at this point, but the Bay has been known for this sort of male population for a long time. So if men in the Bay are still struggling then it would behoove you to update your model on what is actually considered high quality (different than high status) instead of what autistic nerds would like to be considered high quality
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
7d ago
You are of course correct, Though, the undead lore is a bit all over the place. The real soyboys are undoubtedly Blizzard for being unwilling to write consistent, good characterization of the two sides in a way that is appealing without being cookie cutter. It's funny how a decision made almost 20 years ago on Ally vs Horde still burns a fire in my stomach.
That said, after thinking about it, some of my more local friends are much more lefty/blue tribe, they are joining my hometown chud friends in playing (I wonder if this is going to be a disaster) and they are also diehard Horde gamers. In that sense, maybe Blizzard has created an effective lore, with the goal being to create good narrative anchor points for a wide swath of diverse mindsets on both factions rather than make interesting lore/characters.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
8d ago
I haven't read the manga, but in the anime, it's spelled out that intelligence is Aqua's dump stat. It's pathetically low and she is "max-level" so it's never improving. It's also strongly hinted that basically all of the problems in the world have all been caused by Aqua, through various short-sighted acts. Several of her previous choices for reincarnations created civilization-ending disasters, her followers/cult are pretty much responsible for the demon-king, and I read some theory that the demon-king is actually someone she reincarnated.
Essentially Aqua is on the hot-crazy scale where her crazy-selfish-stupidity needs to be graded on a log scale, relative to her hotness. That's the joke.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
8d ago
My tender year chuds from my hometown, grew up playing WoW together in McBumFuckville Midwest-edition . It looks like there is some desire to get the band back together for WoW Forever. I've been seriously considering it, even going so far as to look at the talents calculators, and skills changes. We've dabbled in classic servers occasionally, we started playing late TBC, early WotLK, though I don't think anyone has been playing retail classic for a bit.
On the same note, I'm curious how other players map Horde vs Alliance to red tribe vs blue tribe. In my mind, the Horde is obviously blue tribe: a mix of indigenous refugees, freed slaves, alt lifestyle burnouts, history's victims trying to make good. The Alliance is obviously red tribe: your classical trad heroes joined by traditional religious belief and racist hatred of the Other. But I could equally see the alternative: Horde is masculine, aggressive, ugly while the Alliance is effeminate pretty do-gooders.
It's fascinating to me that you see horde x alliance as blue tribe vs red tribe. I know that a certain famous streamer of "Gamer-Chuds Rise Up"-mentality has some massive ally guild in beta, which confuses me. I see the opposite. Horde is straight up the bad guys in most cannon lore and they give as good as they get, underdogs they are not.
- Alliance is full of soyboy NPCs who just want to larp Tolkien as basic bitches and need the lore to coddle them as the "good guys". You are playing the same races as 4 decades of fantasy. They are all "peace and understanding, nature woo-woo". Their warcry is this paltry: "For the Alliance!" like some limp wrist fanny.
- Horde is the Mongol horde, its full of the rough barbarian races, the literal undead hordes. It's playing industrializing Sauron, Golgatterath, the Black Company. It's masculine, aggressive, original, authentic. No need to borrow 4 decades of fantasy NPC sensibilities. "Horde rapes, tortures, and kills poor humans and Elves - YesChad.jpg", It's made for the chud-gamers who cast off the school-marms and the church lady sensibilities. Part of their warcry: "Lok’tar Ogar" literally means "Victory or Death", and whole cry goes fucking hard. The Horde is civilized for now, but always that savagery underneath the surface.
As I type this, I do wonder if this is however a split between the different types of reds. The problem with the red vs blue dichotomy is that it only works on a our post-modern level. It is all together too binary, too simple. My inchoate thought is the divider is that in modern era "Christian" is red tribe, but in pre-industrial societies it was undoubtedly blue-tribe. Since WoW is pre-industrial-ish fantasy, values/themes are being projected on an imperfect axis.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
8d ago
some of the other participants were probably drunker than her
you silly goose, don't you know consent is only applicable to women, men always consent even when intoxicated! /s
Classic case of male hyper-agency and female hypo-agency.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
11d ago
for instance the question of if River is meant to be in Slough House
Yes he absolutely deserves to be there.
Putting aside
The incident with the
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
11d ago
I don't know, I think Slow Horses is pretty good.
I think this is a pretty shallow read. SH is a spy thriller, what is happening on the surface is not really the entire plot. The whole first season is about how the #2 in MI5 essentially created a situation so they can get money/prestige, but that situation goes off the rails. They instigate, fund, and organize a false flag with some local domestic disgruntles. If you are mad about "Right wing terrorists ends up being a false flag op of a bunch of glowies plus an actual nutter organized by girlboss" because it is "unrealistic", I point you to the Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, in which there is good evidence that the entire thing was setup by different alphabet soup agencies. If you are mad because its Hollywood making right-wing terrorists the big-bad, I recommend you chill the f out, and learn how to actually analyze cinema.
The institutional MI5, and the elites are the source of a the majority of the problems/villians throughout the series. They are portrayed as incompetent, Machiavellian, toxic, rife with abuse and mercenary behavior. This is not 24, or james bond where its a classic good-guy spies vs evil villains, its far too modern. The heroes of the entire series are the "Slow Horses", a cast of actual colossal fuck-ups, everyone of them being an actual loser for some reason or another, but who because they don't get with the toxic culture of the institutional MI5 have been exiled to a waste dumping zone. Being a spy thriller deconstruction, River Cartwright is what James Bond acts/looks like, and he a colossal fuck-up. Jackson Lamb is what actual spies operate like. Using actual wits, brains, tradecraft, and covert actions.
In addition this is an actual book series that is being adapted, and to my knowledge a fairly close adaption. So no, this is not Hollywood being Hollywood and taking the "shit on the right wing".
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
11d ago
When scientists study pain in humans they construct the experiment so there is only a single unknown variable, and they perform both positive and negative expressions to deduce the full range of confounders. In this case they have 2 unknown variables and performed only a the positive application. They then went on to claim that their theory was correct but they did not look for confounders and they did not consider that the 1st variable was not what they thought it was.
Its poor scholarly work and bad science.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
12d ago
I don't think you understand what 'a priori' means. It means without regard for evidence.
No I understand what it means and am using it correctly. Yes, you believe LLMs are Human-level cogitators without evidence. You start with the belief and then find evidence to support that belief. And when people point out how you are misconstruing the evidence in a way that is unsupported, you reach for increasing convoluted metaphysical arguments to back up your belief. Those metaphysical arguments are unfalsifiable. Our last argument was about LLM-agentic behavior, your argument was: "LLM-Agents are human cogitators so the abstract of their behavior systems is that of humans behavioral systems". Do you understand how backwards that argument is? You assume a conclusion, a-priori and then find evidence that supports that conclusion.
It's like arguing with a flat earther, no evidence provided will ever dissuade them from the belief the earth is flat, they believe it a-priori. Any evidence you show them will be twisted and construed as evidence in their belief.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
12d ago
You very clearly believe AI's are at some level human-level cognition, up to including some nebulous sentience definition. After repeatedly discussing this topic with you, I'd go as far to say you believe it a-priori. And you are clearly working backwards from that to describe that the AI is just a human-like mind in silicon. It's pretty much unfalsifiable woo. You didn't logic your way into this belief, it comes across as strongly-value/first principles derived.
Rite of Passage honestly. I had one similar about the fundamental theory of AI, lots of proofs. While fascinating I actually wanted a class of how to train neural nets back when Torch was still in Lua and how to use Cuda.
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