ebrso
7d ago
Executing drug dealers on the spot is an unmitigated good for society.
What does this even mean, "on the spot"? I assume it's something like, immediately at the place of action, i.e., as the drugs themselves are being dealt (or very shortly thereafter).
Surely, abandoning centuries of criminal procedure would mitigate some of the good for society. (I would still think this even if I were in favor of execution as punishment for drug dealing, which I'm not.)
ebrso
7d ago
What I was taught was that in the late 19th century experimental physicists did what was known as an "ether drift experiment" and famously found that light seems to travel at the same speed regardless of the motion of the reference frame. And that subsequently Einstein started with this assumption and worked out the seemingly bizarre theoretical implications.
I also recall being taught in school that Einstein's development of the postulates of special relativity (particularly that the speed of light is equivalent in all inertial reference frames) was influenced by the results of the Michelson-Morley Experiment, which failed to identify expected changes to the measured speed of light when the Earth's motion changed relative to the position of the sun.
However, this discussion suggests that Einstein's development of special relativity was probably not significantly influenced by the MM experiment, and was mainly influenced by assymetries in classical electromagnetism.
ebrso
7d ago
Research programs have supposedly been gutted by these results. "Careers ruined," as the narrative goes. I think that is an exaggeration or overreaction. There are thousands of mathematicians and their interests are very wide ranging. The odds of someone's research program or problem being "solved" by AI are very small.
I suspect you're wrong; I get the sense that the majority of the projects worked on by today's most productive research mathematicians have been very significantly disrupted by OpenAI's public releases. You can get a sense of the scope of these results by skimming the collection of mathematicians' reactions compiled here.
I don't see anything changing much. The status quo of journals and academia will remain intact even with rapid progress in AI, save for the occasional breakthrough in an unsolved problem.
Again, I suspect you're wrong; I expect the most important math journals will all pivot now to publishing primarily expositions of computer-generated results, which is a major shift. Soon, the expositions themselves will be computer-generated, too. As far as academia, the entire systems of reward, hiring, and promotion for research math will be unsettled (each of these systems is currently focused on the ability of individuals to develop proofs of mathematical statements).
A math PhD program, especially from a good school, teaches or guides future researchers towards productive areas of research that are of interest to the "math community," rather than results that are merely "personally interesting". AI cannot recreate such communities or networks.
I think you're making the point here that research math isn't solely about problem solving (proof development), and that exerting social influence over (e.g.) area focus and direction is similarly important. That's clearly true. Gauss wrote: "I confess that Fermat's Last Theorem, as an isolated proposition, has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of" - which I take as suggesting that the prominence of Fermat's Last Theorem owes as much to historical and social factors as it does to any inherent importance of the statement. But so what? Yes, the emphasis placed on particular problems emerges as a consensus across the work of mathematicians operating as a community. But this emphasis has no real bearing on whether humans or machines are better-positioned to tackle such problems, which was previously only ever the work of individual humans.
I suspect many of these successful proofs were prompted by experts who knew what to look for, rather than just naively trying. What is touted by the media as an AI breakthrough, may involve surgically precise prompting in the background by an expert in said field.
I think this is a fair point. At least right now, a lot of the success of the models in solving major math problems may owe to effective interactions with human experts in the form of seasoned prompting. We honestly don't know how significant the human collaboration was to generating these results. Many mathematicians have called for OpenAI to share these details.
Alluding to the "airplane meme," there is also survivorship bias: you don't see all the failed attempts with AI . Sometimes it works great, but other times hit or miss.
I don't understand this point. Certainly we don't deride great (human) mathematicians this way (look at all the problems Gauss couldn't solve). Maybe you're suggesting that humans today can still more effectively resolve certain types of math problems than machines can? If so, what evidence do you think supports this idea?
ebrso
25d ago
The standard print versions of the Talmud, which Jews actually study, specify "mi-Yisrael" or the soul of a Jew. And this gets to the heart of the problem of left-wing antisemitism, especially with notorious left-wing commentators like Hasan Piker. They always denounce antisemitism in their diatribe against Israel. When in fact the right-Wing antisemites are correct that this is not only a problem with Israel, it is actually a problem with the way Jews politically and culturally organize in the United States. It leads to wildly inappropriate and disparate treatment of Jews in which they get all sorts of public funding and support for their dedicated spaces, combined with unlimited cultural veneration and educational propaganda. [Emphasis added]
Can you help me understand what the pronoun this represents above? Does it refer to Jews systematically favoring the interests of their fellow Jews over the interests of non-Jews as part of the observance of an explicit religious obligation? Is it Jews hiding their general perfidy by systematically misrepresenting their religious beliefs to non-Jews? Something else entirely?
Also, what is the educational propaganda you have in mind here? You've called (many times) for a rejection of the broad historical consensus that several million European Jews were systematically murdered in WWII - is that what you mean? Are you talking about disinformation surrounding the historical settling / foundation of Israel and Israel's conduct in its historical / current wars? Propaganda about Israel's treatment of non-Jewish residents within its 1967 borders and the occupied territories? Propaganda about Jewish religious beliefs and obligations? Something else?
ebrso
1mo ago
I wish OpenAI would just disclose these results. Even assuming their strategy is benevolent, I’m still uncomfortable with the company keeping such artifacts secret.
If OpenAI has a proof of (e.g.) the Riemann Hypothesis, then that seems like part of our shared human cultural heritage. I’d feel similarly if some private collector discovered a trove of lost Shakespeare plays and declined to share them.
ebrso
1mo ago
I hope this forum preserves the norm of humans writing for humans by humans, even as I know that the overall tide is flowing the other way.
I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. —Kafka
When I engage with a creative work, I accept that the author’s describing what it’s like to inhabit his bones. Without this belief, I doubt I could ever be moved by a piece of art.
ebrso
1mo ago
The most obvious threat - that AI could make a breakthrough in prime factoring or discrete logarithms - is somehow absent in the list of AI doomers.
Most important software that implements cryptographic primitives that rely on the hardness of these specific problems (prime factoring & discrete logs) is already in the process of being deprecated / replaced, just because it's known they'll no longer be secure if / when quantum computing hardware scales.
I agree with the major point, though: it's not unlikely that robustly super-human mathematics will destroy many of our cryptographic protocols in the near [1] future (not just particular software implementations of these protocols, but the protocols themselves). At this point, I would not be shocked to see a SHA-512 collision published (probably on Twitter).
[1] I don't know what "near" means exactly.
ebrso
1mo ago
Are these actually the full relevant portion of his remarks?
For example, immediately preceding this quoted speech, he said:
I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, ‘Free Palestine.’
This introduces the follow-up exclamation, "I said, Free Palestine."
He may have indicated that making this point was a major reason he was on the tour to begin with, i.e., that he was on the tour partly because he "wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America" to speak out about Palestine - but I cannot say this with confidence given that the video I'm referencing gives-off some suggestions of having been misleadingly edited.
Macklemore (everyone's favorite white rapper) got kicked out after (in an earlier concert) saying "Free Palestine", playing a song with pro-Palestine lyrics, and this:
To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, it in no way is criticism of you...This message is for peace, love, for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.
I don't think the fundamental issues change, but the OP's downplaying the scope of Macklemore's statements (youtube), which are significantly more wide-ranging. Among other things, these include a celebration of the recent Columbia University encampment project, a call for a free Cuba (I assume he means free from American attempts to isolate the country?), criticism of ICE (the American immigration enforcement agency), and a declaration that he'd joined the tour partly to support Palestine.
[Edit: I'm concerned that the youtube clip above may have been edited misleadingly to imply that Macklemore had declared that he'd jointed the tour partly to support Palestine. I've removed this part from my comment.]
[Second Edit: After reviewing a transcript of the singer's full remarks, I'm satisfied that what I'd written was accurate, so I've reverted my comment to its original version.]
ebrso
1mo ago
perhaps a better way to put it is that "the direction and magnitude of technological changes on human social structures can't be determined ipso facto".
Yeah, strong agree on that point - Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
ebrso
1mo ago
it's possible to set your post history to be private.
Fair point - I hadn't realized that individuals' post histories could be configured as non-visible. (I'm not sure what the merits are of supporting non-visible post histories; my instinct is that prior posts offer some useful context for evaluating current claims, although I guess there can be offsetting privacy concerns.)
In any case, the relevant user's history doesn't appear to be configured this way.
ebrso
1mo ago
You don't need an eidetic memory - you can access anyone's posting history by clicking on their username.
ebrso
1mo ago
Respectfully, I don’t think I’m following this reasoning. I think (?) you’re expressing several inter-related points with which I broadly agree:
We should view those pronouncing confidently about the future with skepticism (yes). Some aspect of research math has always involved aesthetic considerations (yes). If / when AI achieves manifestly superhuman capabilities in math, we’ll likely continue to see some humans devote attention to some forms of math exploration (yes). Support for modern research math projects is often promoted through reference to supposed diffuse economic contributions that are actually mostly a fiction (yes). Many job roles in modern economies are less directly related to profit-maximization than we may commonly assume, and are instead largely shaped by various traditions and social expectations (yes).
But the suggestion that “technological changes cannot inherently alter anything in a system that is already artificially constructed by humans”? I just don’t know what this means, concretely.
Baseball’s a system that’s artificially constructed by humans. Professional baseball has also struggled notoriously (and perennially) to police the use of disallowed “performance enhancing substances” (particularly steroids), which are a technology change. Now, imagine someone tomorrow develops a drug that makes players much faster & stronger - and its use is substantially impossible to detect. Wouldn’t we expect that development to significantly alter baseball?
ebrso
1mo ago
Even if AI becomes strictly superior to humans at proving and disproving conjectures, as is the clear trajectory of the technology, it means nothing for the profession of mathematics in and of itself;
Productivity for research mathematicians today is mostly evaluated as contributions made to resolving “important” open math problems.
If / when AI advances to a point where humans can no longer meaningfully contribute to this process then, at the very least, we'll need to reconsider how we evaluate human research math productivity.
Your statement above reads to me like, even if we get rid of the hoop, it means nothing for the profession of basketball in and of itself.
ebrso
1mo ago
Edit: Guess the rumours about Anthropic solving a Millenium problem that circulated a couple of days ago, were not unfounded.
OpenAI (not Anthropic) has announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the 7 Millennium problems.
ebrso
3mo ago
I really thought he was just going to stay in, try to rehabilitate his image while still in the public eye, and then just lose by 5-10 points. He didn't have to actually beat Colins - he just needed to survive another news cycle, so that the very last thing anyone ever heard about him wasn't calling him a rapist. To me, that seemed like his least-bad option.
ebrso
3mo ago
Hilarious. I was thinking that by the time I posted this, he might already have dropped out.
Still, the point was always moot in the sense of lacking practical significance / being purely academic - I wasn't seeking to sway his decision! So I guess I still have a similar question: what could have happened behind the scenes to convince Platner to abandon his campaign?
ebrso
3mo ago
Democrats have plenty of comfortable sinecures that he'll have access to, if he plays nice. Media figure, think tank employee, a professor of feminist studies at the University of Maine. The world is his oyster; just not the Senate.
I guess I just don't see this - I don't see him doing much better than his old oyster farm job if he drops out now.
In any case, what are the mechanics here? Like, how do these conversations actually work? Is someone offering an explicit quid pro quo (Graham, if you drop out now, then next year we'll put you on the payroll at Colby college)? Is that even legal? Either way, how could Platner rely on any such assurance?
Democrats can run a write in campaign, like Mukowski a few years back. Platner's negotiating leverage isn't that great, and since Maine has ranked voting, Democrats can plausibly pull off a win.
It's possible, but it sure seems like a long shot to me. Murkowski was a known entity (she was the incumbent Senator, was reasonably popular, and came from a prominent family), and she hit the ground running (she already had her campaign infrastructure in place for the Republican primary, which she lost). For Maine, it's not even clear who the write-in candidate would be - and that person would only have 4 months to build the campaign. Admittedly, I never thought Murkowski had a chance at winning as a write-in candidate.
ebrso
3mo ago
What are the Democrats’ carrots & sticks for pushing Graham Platner out of the campaign?
If you follow U.S. domestic politics (or if you’ve just read the thread below), then you’ll know who Graham Platner is. He’s the young-ish politician who won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from Maine, in the process attracting attention for combining liberal political positions with some elements of a blue collar background. In my view, he received a tremendous amount of scrutiny for being at the intersection of 3 significant stories: (1) the Democrats’ struggles to attract rural male voters; (2) the importance of Maine as a toss-up Senate seat in 2028 for deciding the balance of the U.S. senate; and (3) the adoption of certain leftist political positions by new politicians (broadly economic populism and antagonism towards Israel) that are seen as breaking from norms and potentially as a marker of future political currents.
More recently, Platner has also attracted attention for a series of scandals. First, some of his early, intended-to-be-anonymous internet postings were identified, and they were both unseemly and promoted ideas in conflict with his current public political positions. Then, it was revealed that he had a Nazi-symbol tattoo from his time in the military (Platner denies knowing that the tattoo was Nazi imagery when he got it; some people find this explanation believable and others don’t). Then, it was revealed that he’d recently pursued extra-marital relationships through some kind of seedy dating app. Then, some of his ex-girlfriends came together alleging that Platner was volatile and had been trouble towards them in various ways.
Through all this, the Democratic establishment had mostly defended Platner. Then, a few days ago, one of Platner’s exes came forward alleging treatment by Platner that would seem to satisfy the legal standard for rape (some disagree that the alleged conduct would constitute rape - see the discussion below for details).
Anyway, I’m not really interested in re-litigating any of these items. But what really fascinates me is that the Democratic establishment now seems to have arrived at a consensus that Platner’s campaign needs to end so that another candidate might be selected (Platner has essentially lost all prominent public-backing over the last 48 hours). But ultimately, it seems that procedure requires that Platner himself formally resign his campaign in for this to happen. My question is, how can Platner be influenced to abandon his campaign?
Normally, you influence with carrots (rewards for good behavior) and sticks (punishments for bad behavior). Democrats can appeal to Platner’s sense of dignity (such as it is), patriotism, and desire for the common good. But what other levers do they hold?
I doubt that Democrats would just concede Maine if Platner were to remain in the race. If he drops out now, he’ll always be remembered for this last week. But if he stays in the race, then I assume he'll benefit from 4 months of Democrats campaigning for him, seeking to rehabilitate his image. Even if he ends up losing the Senate race badly, that seems like a better outcome for Platner individually than the alternative of dropping out now.
What am I missing here?
ebrso
3mo ago
[Contains mild spoilers for Lord of the Flies]
Can you expand on this criticism of To Kill a Mockingbird? I consider the novel as offering very powerful lessons about (e.g.) conformity and the nature of the legal system.
Also, what's the criticism of Lord of the Flies? I've always been partial to interpreting it as an anti-war novel - by having the boys rescued by a warship, Golding's emphasizing the parallels between modern and primeval expressions of savagery.
Does anyone have thoughts about the potential link between childhood fluoride exposure and lower IQ? Alternatively, links to reasonable discussion?
In particular, I'm narrowly interested in what the science says about (1) whether fluoride exposure at levels to which Americans were occasionally exposed causes IQ decreases and (2) if so, what kinds of threshold effects might exist.
For what it's worth, I (along with many of my friends) took daily 1 mg fluoride tablets (supplements) as a kid on the recommendation of our pediatrician, and I have mild dental fluorosis to show for it (although I've never had a cavity in my life). The idea that this may also have cost me a few IQ points is distressing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/health/fluoride-children-iq.html
ebrso
1yr ago
In 2010, the vibe (to me at least) was that self-driving cars had effectively been developed; by 2025, substantially all the cars on the roads of American cities would be fully autonomous (without requiring a human standing at-the-ready to take over in a crisis).
So what happened? Why, at least outside Silicon Valley, is my Uber cab still driven by a human? Do technical challenges remain in developing autonomous technologies? Is regulation / liability the major obstacle to adoption?
ebrso
2yr ago
Anyone have tips for combatting the green-eyed monster? I often find myself begrudging others’ successes and good fortune. My resentment applies to friends [1], but also extends to people whom I barely know in passing (or even public figures).
[1] Although am I really their friend if I react this way?
What is the evidence that current models are poor "conjecture and definition makers" relative to humans?
An alternative hypothesis is that this is a case of the "what happens when you post a real Monet and say it's AI?" phenomenon, in which human purported experts systematically downplay the strength of AI capabilities for complicated social / psychological reasons.
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