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UnpluggedFridge

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UnpluggedFridge ,

X lost half a billion dollars in the first quarter of 2023. Odd that the financial expert didn’t mention this even though it is literally in the same sentence as the “40% drop in revenue” statement in the article.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Lots of stretching here. The paper uses simulations of microtubules to show quantum effects when tryptophan residues are excited by UV light. The paper only did simulations of microtubules, and those simulations did not include the bends and many many dynein molecules found on microtubules. The reason this is important is that researchers have been hitting every biomolecule with UV excitation for decades, including microtubules, and have never observed this effect.

A key finding missing from this video is that microtubules are dynamic. They are constantly disassembling and reassembling and recycling components. This occurs at very short timescales. Also, they do not bridge cell membranes. If information is passing through networks of microtubules, it is constantly disrupted and not affecting other cells. Synapses do handle cell-cell information transfer (where the role of microtubules is already well studied and not quantum in nature). Why would quantum microtubule information be limited to a single cell? Maybe it could influence coordinated assembly and disassembly at the termini, but the authors offer no evidence that there is any chemical effect of this quantum phenomenon, which would be required to change anything about how those enzymes behave.

We already know of a mechanism by which information is transported across microtubules: physical transport of signalling molecules. They are walked (quite literally, dynein is cool) along the microtubules to different sites in the cell. No quantum effects needed to explain this phenomenon.

UnpluggedFridge ,

This article conveniently omits Israel-Palestine relations prior to and during periods of minimal US meddling. Let’s take a look at the prelude to the current conflict to get our bearings.

Obama made statements early on in his presidency about lasting peace in the Middle East. His first meeting with Netanyahu was a disaster, and so he dropped the issue for his entire term. 8 years of pretty much ignoring the Palestinians. Trump enters office and likewise makes public statements supporting lasting peace. His meetings with Netanyahu were a great success…for Israel specifically. The US changed policy to state that illegal Israeli settlements were legal, it recognized Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel with Israel as the sole owner of the city, and it began to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. All of this was a big kick in the pants to Palestine, who were never consulted for any of these policy changes.

Biden entered office and continued to push for normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but let’s be honest, he had a similar do-nothing attitude as Obama had when it comes to lasting peace.

Then Hamas attacks Israel. The US hadn’t engaged them for over a decade and Arab nations were starting to normalize relations with Israel with no regard for Palestine. It is hard to imagine what else Hamas could have done to get the attention of the US and Arab nations.

And that brings us to the present, where Israel’s retaliation has once again captured the attention of the US and Arab nations and put the needs of the Palestinians in the minds of their leaders.

In my opinion, if we had meddled more during peace time and engaged with Palestinians in the absence of conflict, then we could have avoided the current war altogether. The current conflict appears to be the result of the absence of US meddling, or at the very least an unwillingness to recognize the needs of Palestinians during times of relative peace.

UnpluggedFridge ,

What do you mean by work? Do they stop everyone from doing stupid things? No. Do they have a measurable effect on behavior? Yes.

UnpluggedFridge ,

This is a health issue, not a morality issue.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Go to pubmed. Type “social media mental health”. Read the studies, or the reviews if you don’t have the time.

The average American teenager spends 4.8 hours/day on social media. Increased use of social media is associated with increased rates of depression, eating disorders, body image dissatisfaction, and externalizing problems. These studies don’t show causation, but guess what, we literally cannot show causation in most human studies because of ethics.

Social media drastically alters peer interactions, with negative interactions (bullying) associated with increased rates of self harm, suicide, internalizing and externalizing problems.

Mobile phone use alone is associated with sleep disruption and daytime sleepiness.

Looking forward to your peer-reviewed critiques of these studies claiming they are all “just vibes.”

UnpluggedFridge ,

www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm

Teenage suicide rates were declining for over a decade, especially in males. Now they are increasing in both males and females. You would have to be a complete monster to not want to study, understand, and reverse this trend.

UnpluggedFridge ,

If you do the search I suggested you will find relevant reviews immediately. If you add keywords based on my post text you will find the primary sources immediately.

UnpluggedFridge ,

We probably don’t want to use the current leader in cause of death for kids as a template for good policy.

UnpluggedFridge ,

They sell CBD oil with this little droppers for dosing, but when you read the studies the dosage is like a mouthful of oil. It’s like the exact opposite problem of melatonin dosing.

UnpluggedFridge ,

My shower thoughts are always repeating cycles of “fuuuuuuuck this feels niiiiiiiiice” and “time to turn up the heat a smidge.” Am I doing it wrong?

UnpluggedFridge ,

From someone who grew up with a racist father, it was likely a juxtaposition of the handshake with stereotypes of hypersexuality and uncleanliness among black men mixed with sexist ideals of young women and their purity.

UnpluggedFridge ,

I remember hearing this argument before…about the Internet. Glad that fad went away.

As it has always been, these technologies are being used to push us forward by teams of underpaid unnamed researchers with no interest in profit. Meanwhile you focus on the scammers and capitalists and unload your wallets to them, all while complaining about the lack of progress as measured by the products you see in advertisements.

Luckily, when you get that cancer diagnosis or your child is born with some rare disease, that progress will attend to your needs despite your ignorance if it.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Chinese EVs subsidized with prison labor and CCP funds to undercut the market and stagnate long-term innovation, what a boon to humanity!

UnpluggedFridge ,

We are not in a recession. The problems with wage stagnation are not some temporary hiccup in the economy. It is a systemic problem. Stop conflating the two, complaining that a macroeconomic term with a very specific meaning isn’t defined the way you want it to be. Stop expecting the problem to heal itself if the fed lowers rates or taxes get nudged up or down or whatever. We know how to fix wage stagnation because we have done it before. Regulation. Labor protections. Minimum wage increases. Wage stagnation occurs in the absence of these things, and they can only be done by Congress.

UnpluggedFridge ,

These cases are interesting tests of our first amendment rights. “Real” CP requires abuse of a minor, and I think we can all agree that it should be illegal. But it gets pretty messy when we are talking about depictions of abuse.

Currently, we do not outlaw written depictions nor drawings of child sexual abuse. In my opinion, we do not ban these things partly because they are obvious fictions. But also I think we recognize that we should not be in the business of criminalizing expression, regardless of how disgusting it is. I can imagine instances where these fictional depictions could be used in a way that is criminal, such as using them to blackmail someone. In the absence of any harm, it is difficult to justify criminalizing fictional depictions of child abuse.

So how are AI-generated depictions different? First, they are not obvious fictions. Is this enough to cross the line into criminal behavior? I think reasonable minds could disagree. Second, is there harm from these depictions? If the AI models were trained on abusive content, then yes there is harm directly tied to the generation of these images. But what if the training data did not include any abusive content, and these images really are purely depictions of imagination? Then the discussion of harms becomes pretty vague and indirect. Will these images embolden child abusers or increase demand for “real” images of abuse. Is that enough to criminalize them, or should they be treated like other fictional depictions?

We will have some very interesting case law around AI generated content and the limits of free speech. One could argue that the AI is not a person and has no right of free speech, so any content generated by AI could be regulated in any manner. But this argument fails to acknowledge that AI is a tool for expression, similar to pen and paper.

A big problem with AI content is that we have become accustomed to viewing photos and videos as trusted forms of truth. As we re-learn what forms of media can be trusted as “real,” we will likely change our opinions about fringe forms of AI-generated content and where it is appropriate to regulate them.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Even though the law can be circumvented, it nonetheless provides resistance. Traveling to another state, filling out paperwork, paying extra money, etc all provide additional obstacles to overcome. If someone was having an acute mental problem and felt compelled to eat a barrel, a simple few hours delay in acquiring a gun can make all the difference. For someone planning on using a gun for criminal activity, at some point they might just consider employment as an easier alternative if acquiring a gun is too much of a pain.

We have already seen this effect in reverse with regard to immigration. Legal immigration is such a painful crapshoot that people are willing to surrender their fate to cartels as an alternative.

UnpluggedFridge ,

I think where you are going wrong here is assuming that our internal perception is not also a hallucination by your definition. It absolutely is. But our minds are embodied, thus we are able check these hallucinations against some outside stimulus. Your gripe that current LLMs are unable to do that is really a criticism of the current implementations of AI, which are trained on some data, frozen, then restricted from further learning by design. Imagine if your mind was removed from all stimulus and then tested. That is what current LLMs are, and I doubt we could expect a human mind to behave much better in such a scenario. Just look at what happens to people cut off from social stimulus; their mental capacities degrade rapidly and that is just one type of stimulus.

Another problem with your analysis is that you expect the AI to do something that humans cannot do: cite sources without an external reference. Go ahead right now and from memory cite some source for something you know. Do not Google search, just remember where you got that knowledge. Now who is the one that cannot cite sources? The way we cite sources generally requires access to the source at that moment. Current LLMs do not have that by design. Once again, this is a gripe with implementation of a very new technology.

The main problem I have with so many of these “AI isn’t really able to…” arguments is that no one is offering a rigorous definition of knowledge, understanding, introspection, etc in a way that can be measured and tested. Further, we just assume that humans are able to do all these things without any tests to see if we can. Don’t even get me started on the free will vs illusory free will debate that remains unsettled after centuries. But the crux of many of these arguments is the assumption that humans can do it and are somehow uniquely able to do it. We had these same debates about levels of intelligence in animals long ago, and we found that there really isn’t any intelligent capability that is uniquely human.

UnpluggedFridge ,

My thesis is that we are asserting the lack of human-like qualities in AIs that we cannot define or measure. Assertions should be made on data, not uneasy feelings arising when an LLM falls into the uncanny valley.

UnpluggedFridge ,

How do hallucinations preclude an internal representation? Couldn’t hallucinations arise from a consistent internal representation that is not fully aligned with reality?

I think you are misunderstanding the role of tokens in LLMs and conflating them with internal representation. Tokens are used to generate a state, similar to external stimuli. The internal representation, assuming there is one, is the manner in which the tokens are processed. You could say the same thing about human minds, that the representation is not located anywhere like a piece of data; it is the manner in which we process stimuli.

UnpluggedFridge , (edited )

You seem pretty confident that LLMs cannot have an internal representation simply because you cannot imagine how that capability could emerge from their architecture. Yet we have the same fundamental problem with the human brain and have no problem asserting that humans are capable of internal representation. LLMs adhere to grammar rules, present information with a logical flow, express relationships between different concepts. Is this not evidence of, at the very least, an internal representation of grammar?

We take in external stimuli and peform billions of operations on them. This is internal representation. An LLM takes in external stimuli and performs billions of operations on them. But the latter is incapable of internal representation?

And I don’t buy the idea that hallucinations are evidence that there is no internal representation. We hallucinate. An internal representation does not need to be “correct” to exist.

UnpluggedFridge ,

We do not know how LLMs operate. Similar to our own minds, we understand some primitives, but we have no idea how certain phenomenon emerge from those primitives. Your assertion would be like saying we understand consciousness because we know the structure of a neuron.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Nor can we assume that they cannot have the same emergent properties.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Read again. I have made no such claim, I simply scrutinized your assertions that LLMs lack any internal representations, and challenged that assertion with alternative hypotheses. You are the one that made the claim. I am perfectly comfortable with the conclusion that we simply do not know what is going on in LLMs with respect to human-like capabilities of the mind.

US Lemmys what could Biden do in the next 6 months to EARN your vote? (other than just not being Trump)

Sorry this is kinda political. Is there an asklemmypolitics group this would be better for? I’m hoping not to get into the libs vs progressives political debate we see everywhere on here… Just want to know what people are actually looking for.

UnpluggedFridge ,

For real, we’ve got the first openly pro-union president, we expanded NATO, student loan forgiveness, actual infrastructure funding, the first administration to openly push back against Israel during war time, all of that in only 4 years. He is the most effective president of my lifetime and I am happy to vote for him again.

UnpluggedFridge ,

It is so strange to say that identity should take a back seat to humanism when every historical example of discrimination and dehumanization is based on identity. Identity in those instances is not imposed on oneself, but is used to define the outgroup that is being dehumanized. Identity politics is simply an honest accounting of groups that being descriminated against. When the discrimination ends, we see the group identity evaporate. We need only look at the early 20th century definitions of Caucasian, and the identity politics of Irish and Italian Americans subsequently evaporating when that definition evolved to include all Americans of European decent, to see that identity politics is a reaction to injustice and not the other way around.

Study reveals "widespread, bipartisan aversion" to neighbors owning AR-15 rifles (www.psypost.org)

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...

UnpluggedFridge ,

Details like this are really just a distraction. Do you really think the average respondent understands these technical details, or have any good reason to memorize the specs of all rifles? The focus on the AR-15 is not because of any risk associated with that particular gun, but because most people understand that this is a semi-auto rifle. There is no other model of gun that will have that kind of widespread recognition.

Drawing up these very silly technical arguments is a willful ignorance of the underlying issue: What is the limit of deadly force we should allow one person to lawfully own? We don’t let people own tactical nukes. We don’t need to argue over thermonuclear or hydrogen nukes. We don’t need to understand quantum mechanics to regulate these devices. The technical details do not matter. The potential body count is what matters. And so it is with guns, which happen to occupy that grey area where reasonable people disagree on an acceptable level of lethality. You do not need to know all the different models of gun to be killed by one, so we should not require such technical knowledge when engaging in discourse around their regulation.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Requires a warrant or subpoena. That is the difference.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Except the most relevant part: it is owned by a hostile foreign government.

UnpluggedFridge ,

The government can already access the data with a warrant. The ownership of TikTok has literally 0 effect on the government’s ability to access user data. Not being owned by the Chinese government has a huge impact on China’s ability to access that data.

UnpluggedFridge ,

This is the real question. Is there a loophole that allows foreign governments to freely exercise mass surveillance and psyops if they allow US citizens to post on a blackboard outside their offices?

UnpluggedFridge ,

TikTok pushed a notifications to all US users with the phone numbers of their local congressmen to oppose the bill. So many calls came in that the phone lines were jammed.

Let me distill that for you: China attempted to directly influence legislation with a mass propaganda campaign targeted at its US user base.

Please explain to me why that isn’t a threat and why the US should allow hostile foreign powers to directly influence internal politics?

UnpluggedFridge ,

The real question you are asking is whether inaction is worse than inconsistency. Should we not put out a fire unless we can put out all fires? What you are suggesting is to let something burn for the sake of consistency.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Is no one going to acknowledge that a huge portion of the American electorate actually supports Israel’s genocide? Part of living in a democracy is accepting that official policy reflects some mixture of the views of the electorate. If the US electorate is still mixed in its view of Israel then the official US policy should be mixed as well (which it is).

I will use my vote to push for an end to the genocide, the release of hostages, and a stable 2-state solution. But I will not abandon core democratic values just because I find myself in the minority.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Travelling forward in time could also kill everyone… Our adaptive immune systems are developed somatically and purifying selection is nonzero in humans.

ChatGPT provides false information about people, and OpenAI can’t correct it (noyb.eu)

It’s clear that companies are currently unable to make chatbots like ChatGPT comply with EU law, when processing data about individuals. If a system cannot produce accurate and transparent results, it cannot be used to generate data about individuals. The technology has to follow the legal requirements, not the other way...

UnpluggedFridge ,

LLMs do not look stuff up (except when they have an API that allows them to), but I think OP’s point still stands. The statistical next token predictor metaphor is useful , but in many regards that’s what text and language are. If you can understand that certain words are linked to certain other words, then you should be able to appreciate that certain groups of words can be associated in a way that is functionally the same as data.

I have not memorized the pytorch documentation, but I can use what I understand about pytorch and other libraries to infer specific aspects of the library that I am not familiar with. Functionally, this is no different than if I accessed the documentation directly. If I communicate this information to others I have functioned as a data repository. The repository works on a more abstract and error-prone level, but it works nonetheless.

Here is another very concrete example: LLMs know George Washington’s birthday. Not because they look up that information, but because of the learned associations between George Washington, birthday, and his actual date of birth.

UnpluggedFridge , (edited )

Here I think you are behind on the literature. LLMs can infer and reason, and there are whole series of papers that evaluate LLMs for these properties the exact same way we evaluate humans. So if you can’t trust the metrics, then you cannot even assert that humans can reason and infer and understand.

UnpluggedFridge ,

You linked a paper on planning in LLMs. Planning is largely in the domain of reinforcement learning. The paper you linked conflates reasoning with planning, alongside the obviously biased prose, so the author really doesn’t seem credible. I prefer nuanced and careful evaluations such as: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S2949719123000298

UnpluggedFridge ,

Notice that there are methods, data, and peer reviews that I can freely scrutinize. All things your opinion piece lacks.

UnpluggedFridge ,

It would be if McCarthy’s hearings were full of actual KGB agents.

UnpluggedFridge ,

TikTok enacted a very obvious influence campaign to fight this legislation that resulted in congressional phone lines becoming jammed. So what China can do is directly influence our laws.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Lol these are grants. Guess what, we’ve been funding research into corona viruses ever since the first SARS outbreak…which came from a wet market in Wuhan.

What you need to link is physical evidence showing that COVID-19 was in the lab prior to the outbreak, or that the COVID-19 sequence is comprised of two or more sequences from viruses stockpiled in the lab (it is a surveillance lab).

You do not have that evidence. You do not understand how viral labs work. You do not even understand how science funding works. You are the kind of person that believes a highly controlled lab environment with trained personnel is more likely to spread disease than a dense market place where known viral reservoirs are slaughtered in open air by any moron with a blade.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Where is the safety report for the Wuhan wetmarket? You know the one that unequivocally started one viral pandemic? Then, while closed down, we enjoyed a period with no new coronavirus pandemics? And then, shortly after reopening, there was another coronavirus pandemic originating in Wuhan? That wetmarket, you have a report on that one?

UnpluggedFridge ,

A similar thing happens with cockroaches where crucial bacteria are absorbed into cells to ensure inheritance in offspring.

UnpluggedFridge ,

Who are you talking to, the founders?

can you help me formulate an answer to a colleague who is not my boss but feels entitled to tell me how I have to work?

the colleague in question feels that only her way of doing things is the right one and expects me to adapt to her way of thinking and her logic. This is tiring and burdensome because I have to force me to stop doing things automatically and efficiently, but think how she wants it done and do it her way. I work worse when this...

UnpluggedFridge ,

Or the variation, “Ok!” with a smile and simply carry on. I understand the urge to “fix” this person, but it is never worth the time. Smile and nod and then ignore what they said.

UnpluggedFridge ,

People seem to think that a prior opinion about the dependent automatically means that a potential juror cannot be impartial. All that is required is that the juror can render a verdict based solely on the evidence presented at trial. Plenty of people with strong opinions about Trump himself can still be impartial jurors.

'My school abandoned me': California university cancels pro-Palestinian student's commencement speech (www.middleeasteye.net)

The University of Southern California has cancelled a scheduled commencement speech by Asna Tabassum, citing unnamed security concerns after her selection as valedictorian was met with a wave of online attacks directed at her pro-Palestinian views....

UnpluggedFridge ,

The context matters IMO. We have universities in this country that require all students to participate in Christian religious practices, for example.

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