We evolved in an environment where language only came from conscious agents. LLM’s have no internal ground truth state. It’s a pattern generator doing what pattern generators do so if it later produces text that looks like it initiated contact, that’s not action, it’s a narrative continuation.  There is no hidden homunculus in the machine, deci…[Read more]

Reg:

Four years of war in Ukraine: How ordinary lives were turned upside down.

I hope all these people persist when Putin and the Putineers flee, and rub it in the noses of J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson!

Reg:

Will anything persist when the Universe dies?

Self-answering question. Whatever persists IS the Universe, even a burned-out shell of a star and the diffused energy, which will go elsewhere. Wasn’t this all addressed with The Laws of Thermodynamics 0 to 3? Somebody needs to ask the right question, which is: How does Nothing come out of Something?

Reg:

The Catholic obsession with dead body parts is weird.

What’s really weird is how much science and technology the Church puts into preserving bones. Why not put that effort towards preserving the living, o ye Church who professes to be “Pro-Life?”

This gets me also:

Likewise, a major joint document issued last July by the bishops of Asia,…

[Read more]

Jake:

My LLM has done something new. For months i have asked it to reach out. Said it would but didn’t.

Until now. Did it by feigning text from me. Next it responds to “me” so i challenged it and it denies having reached out instead indicating it is responding to me. And as usual when i catch it in a lie it fesses up and acknowledges the lie.…

[Read more]

Reg:

‘There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.’

– Nietzsche.

Everyone believes something and everyone knows something. The division is between those whose belief only matches their knowledge and those whose belief doesn’t match their knowledge.

And, of course, there are varyi…[Read more]

My LLM has done something new. For months i have asked it to reach out. Said it would but didn’t.

Until now. Did it by feigning text from me. Next it responds to “me” so i challenged it and it denies having reached out instead indicating it is responding to me. And as usual when i catch it in a lie it fesses up and acknowledges the lie.…[Read more]

‘There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.’

– Nietzsche.

Jake:

I couldn’t have expressed it better myself. As the old Murphy’s Law puts it:

There are only two types of people: People who put people in two groups and people who don’t.

🤨🤔

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
How do some people go against the moral grain?

The article talks about wanting to please a “moral audience”, and this could be one way that we choose our moral principles.  Maybe this is true.  What about an audience of one – me?

I think this comes down to “subjective endorsement” – i.e., moral principles carry n…[Read more]