Ryan Moulton (@moultano@sigmoid.social)@moultano
I think this part of the argument isn't true. If natural selection is a blunt tool, gradient descent is a science fictional molecular scalpel by comparison. There's extremely high bandwidth between the objective and the changes to the model, which natural selection does not have.
Liron Shapira @liron
Gradient descent, the way we train AI models today, is a blunt tool.
Natural selection used a similarly blunt tool, genetic hill climbing search, to build humans.
Notice the frightening disconnect between what criterion humans were selected on, vs. what humans feel like doing. https://t.co/PPVbtIecvJ
1:03 AM · Feb 24, 2023
3 Reposts · 115 Likes
Dare Obasanjo@Carnage4Life
The inflation adjusted version of the employees per $1M chart implies that worker productivity plateaued right around when smartphones were invented.
1:45 PM · Feb 24, 2023
43 Reposts · 530 Likes
CatGirl Kulak 😻😿 (Anarchonomicon)@FromKulak
🧵 People in the Past were Desperately Poor 🧵
1/
Whenever I discuss history its shocking how much ignorance I encounter from even trained historians about the level of poverty in the past
Contrary to idiots and revisionists No. People in the past were horrifyingly impoverished
2:34 PM · Feb 24, 2023
671 Reposts · 4.17K Likes
pwner of a lonely heart@revhowardarson
for the longest time the top google search completion for "why won't" was "why won't my parakeet eat my diarrhea," because any human being who saw that phrase would immediately click, and not for the reason we wanted them to
elena 🌸 @cheer_wine
if you look up “is british still” one of the top suggestions is “still ruling india”
enough americans type the sentence “is british still ruling india” that it is a top search suggestion
fascinating
2:32 AM · Feb 25, 2023
51 Reposts · 610 Likes
Ethan Mollick@emollick
Fascinatingly, AIs bullshit (speak without regard to truth) under the same conditions as humans.
Folks bullshit when they are expected to have an opinion on a topic they don't know & they won’t be corrected.
AIs hallucinate most when forced to answer on topics they don't "know"
3:50 AM · Feb 25, 2023
45 Reposts · 216 Likes
Darrell Owens@IDoTheThinking
First time in my life i've ever heard of Oakland police catching a hit-and-run driver. usually bad drivers in Oakland are arrested when they leave the city and get caught by like Alameda or Berkeley PD.
sfchronicle.com
Oakland police arrest suspect in hit-and-run that killed 100-year-old pedestrian
5:37 AM · Feb 25, 2023
49 Likes
Guillaume Blanc@gguillaumeblanc
“In 1700, almost 1 in 25 inhabitants on Earth, and one in five in Europe, was French. Today, less than a percent of humanity is French”
If you want to understand why, and the long-run consequences of this, read my piece in online magazine @WorksInProgMag
worksinprogress.co
France’s baby bust - Works in Progress
9:12 AM · Feb 25, 2023
101 Reposts · 638 Likes
Caleb Watney@calebwatney
It's been very encouraging to see @NSF's willingness to experiment with novel funding mechanisms.
Letting reviewers occasionally take "non-consensus bets" on projects they are especially excited about could accelerate scientific breakthroughs.
2:33 PM · Feb 25, 2023
31 Reposts · 152 Likes
Brian Hanlon@hanlonbt
CEQA serves to uphold the status quo, protect incumbents, and enrich consultants and attorneys.
Champion and strengthen California's environmental laws that have massively improved environmental outcomes and human health - not CEQA!
4:24 PM · Feb 25, 2023
16 Reposts · 206 Likes
Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff
This pseudo-Malthusian reasoning — that a particular demographic is statistically predisposed to be loud, and are therefore *inherently* an environmental harm — is a fair housing nightmare. latimes.com/california/sto…
6:22 PM · Feb 25, 2023
43 Reposts · 235 Likes