BC SCIENCE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

AGI Significance Paradox: As progress accelerates towards AGI, the number of people who realize the significance of each new breakthrough decreases.

 Why is it that you can boil a frog in water without it jumping out if you gradually increase the temperature?
The problem for the frog is that it does not have the internal models to realize that there is a change in the water temperature. A cold-blooded creature like the frog has its temperature regulated by the external environment.
To recognize change, an agent must have an internal model of reality that is able to recognize this change. Unfortunately, a majority of the population do not have good models of human general intelligence.
In fact, even the simplistic dual-process model of system 1 and system 2 is not very well known.
Recent big developments was muZero, AlphaFold2, GPT-3 and Dall-E. GPT-3 did receive a lot of attention, but the other 3 likely have not. To understand muZero and AlphaFold2 requires a high level of expertise. Dall-E is actually like GPT-3 but it's more difficult to grasp.
We are going to continue to get these incremental developments for several years. But the audience that recognizes its importance will continue to decline. Then suddenly, boom... we get to AGI and most people will be in shock. Shocked because they thought there was no progress.
The quantum leaps (punctuated) in evolution is a consequence of many incremental developments that accrue. It is only when the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle is found when the revolution is expressed.
But it takes unusual expertise to know that we are accelerating towards AGI. The problem is that it is not obvious how human intelligence actually works. We simply do not know what it means to 'understand'.
Ask most AGI researchers, philosophers or psychologists as to what it means to 'understand'. They will be stumped to give you a good answer.
So if we do not know this answer, then how can we recognize that the water's temperature is gradually increasing?
The number of people who might know continues to diminish. This implies collectively that we know less and less. When AGI happens, it will come as a shock. It is as if, nobody had anticipated it.
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More from Carlos E. Perez

Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Conscious and conscience are two words that share the same origin but mean two different things. The bias against explanations of consciousness comes from the conflation of these two words.

In addition, the question of free will is also adjacent to the notion of both consciousness and conscience. The ideas of consciousness, conscience, and free will serve as the foundation of justice in our civilization. (care to add another?)

So when we see people fail to condemn an act that is morally repugnant, we wonder if they have a conscience. But we don't wonder if they are conscious. When we incarcerate a person, we ask if they had "free will" but we inquire if they were 'conscious' during the crime.

The presence of consciousness and free will imply sentience. Which is the same as conscious and sounds just like a conscience. Our biases have muddled all the words together to likely mean the same thing.

The words that we use today continue to evolve. The same word can have a different meaning in the past. The word empathy is a recent word invented in the early 1900s. Originally it meant to place oneself from the viewpoint of a thing. Today we don't use it in this way.
LIFE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Does artificial anthropocentric intelligence lead to superintelligence?

When I use the term Artificial General Intelligence, my meaning of 'General' comes from the psychology definition of the G-factor that is tested in general intelligence tests.

It is an anthropocentric measure. The question that hasn't been explored in depth is whether a "human-complete" synthetic intelligence leads to a superintelligence. The prevailing assumption is that this expected.

I am going to argue that this assumption may not be true.

The assumption that goes into AGI automatically exploding into a superintelligence is driven by the bias that human intelligence is perceived at the pinnacle of all intelligence.
TECH
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
We wake up each day with the same attention budget as everyone else. This is the one thing all humans equally share.

Spending that attention budget by doing this is what gives meaning to our lives.

It's is only through doing that we learn. It is only through learning that we find meaning.

Yet many of us waste attention budget exclusively on consumption. Seeking the random dopamine hits that tickle our curiosity. Yet we seek only the convenient things to do.

Activities that are convenient, that takes little effort don't consume a lot of attention. But enough of these small distractions will. But unfortunately, there's little learning taking place.
LIFE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
I woke up realizing that there is something very wrong with thinking in categories and classifications. Many people accept the idea that this kind of thinking is at the core of abstract thought.

Douglas Hofstadter argues otherwise in a very thick (not dumb in the Brit sense) book of his ('Surface and Essences') where he argues that analogy is at the core of thinking. You'll have to read his book, specifically the last chapter to understand what he means.

The problem with categories is that they create artificial boundaries that are too crisp. But we know that when we master any subject that there is a distinct fluidity between concepts. The master seems wrong from a by-the-book novice because he keeps on breaking definitions.

Analogy making employs the tacit knowledge gained through experience to adroitly navigate between similar and competing concepts. A master has an intuitive feel of the vocabulary he employs to create expressions that have previously never been heard.

Biological brains feel their way through their realities. Something feels like red because our interactions with that thing feels the same as if it was red. We do not see the color red, we feel the color red. There is no red in this picture:
LIFE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
I suspect that Emergentism and Enactivism have very little appeal in a world dominated by Reductionists.

To get funding one must present a reductionist idea. A perfect example of this is the European Blue Brain project.

I also suspect that pitches that show how one can get a competitive advantage over the rest of humanity has a much greater appeal than pitches that show how one can that has a unified view of humanity.

My book 'The Deep Learning Playbook' out sold my other book 'Artificial Intuition' by a metric mile. I am however more proud of the latter book.

That's because the word 'playbook' conveys a thing that once possessed gives one new power. In contrast, the word 'intuition' does not feel like a think but more of a process (a thought process). Processes don't appear like things that can be owned.
GOVERNMENT

More from Science

Eric Holthaus
Eric Holthaus
@EricHolthaus
JUST IN: The U.S. National Climate Assessment is now public.

This is the report that the Trump Administration doesn’t want you to see. Years in the making, released on the day after Thanksgiving. #ClimateFriday

Here are some of the main

This report is mandated by Congress and focused on the impacts of climate change in the U.S.

Basically: This is what our best scientists think will happen to us as a result of the actions our government is (not) taking to address the most important problem in human history.
/2

300 experts in 13 federal agencies volunteered their time to make sure you have this information.

Please share it widely.
/3

The top finding:

“Climate change is projected to significantly affect human health, the economy, and the environment in the United

To expand on that finding:

“In the absence of more significant global mitigation efforts, climate change is projected to impose substantial damages on the U.S. economy, human health, and the environment. ...”
/5
SCIENCE
Stephen Barlow
Stephen Barlow
@SteB777
1) Science denial is destroying our societies, our civilization. Various vested interests, usually right wing ideologues find various scientific facts and information contrary to their agenda, so through propaganda they are orchestrating the public into denying this science.

2) We are seeing this with regard to the COVID virus, where a range of denial is being promoted, ranging from absolute denial the virus exists, to different levels of denial, such as only some people are vulnerable to the virus, to facilitate business as usual.

3) For a long time, to promote business as usual, vested interests have been promoting the denial of the climate and ecological crisis through propaganda. The aim being to create a large enough body of public denial to prevent action which can change anything.

4) We have seen similar patterns over a long time, such as when tobacco companies promoted denial of the emerging scientific evidence of how harmful and addictive tobacco smoking was. This further denial uses exactly the same methods.

5) Understandably, the public can't be educated about everything and have to rely on experts to inform them of concerns about threats to public safety. Malicious vested interests take advantage of this by using pseudo-experts to misinform the public.
SCIENCE
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@808TeslaY
💥💥 Situation Update, Dec. 7th – DNI John Ratcliffe, the bogus science of PCR testing and China’s GMO super soldiers

✅ I cover the bogus science behind PCR testing, explaining from a lab science point of view why no PCR instrument can “quantify” anything,
[M. Adams]


1. whether it’s a coronavirus viral load or the percentage of a food that’s GMO. In fact, literally all the tests currently conducted with PCR equipment are scientifically invalid when it comes to diagnosing illness or determining infectiousness. The sample acquisition used for

2. PCR tests — nasal swabs — aren’t even standardized! (100% bogus junk science).
After covering PCR tests, today’s update then goes into detail about Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe, pointing out that he will be issuing a report on foreign interference

3. in U.S. elections on or before Dec. 18th. If this report confirms the existence of foreign interference that was capable of altering the outcome of the election, it gives President Trump full justification to declare the election null and void and dispatch military troops

4. to seize all ballots and hold a new count under military authority.

👉 Podcast notes and sources:
The office of military commissions has cleared its calendar for December:
https://t.co/u4nFRiUj8m

US military STOCKPILED Pfizer’s mRNA vaccineBEFORE it was approved by theFDA
SCIENCE
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@BillyBostickson
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10-K Diver
10-K Diver
@10kdiver
1/

Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you understand the basics of Binomial Thinking.

The future is always uncertain. There are many different ways it can unfold -- some more likely than others. Binomial thinking helps us embrace this view.


2/

The S&P 500 index is at ~3768 today.

Suppose we want to predict where it will be 10 years from now.

Historically, we know that this index has returned ~10% per year.

If we simply extrapolate this, we get an estimate of ~9773 for the index 10 years from now:


3/

What we just did is called a "point estimate" -- a prediction about the future that's a single number (9773).

But of course, we know the future is uncertain. It's impossible to predict it so precisely.

So, there's a sense of *false precision* in point estimates like this.

4/

To emphasize the uncertainty inherent in such predictions, a better approach is to predict a *range* of values rather than a single number.

For example, we may say the index will return somewhere in the *range* of 8% to 12% (instead of a fixed 10%) per year.

5/

10 years from now, this implies an index value in the *range* [8135, 11703]:
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Patrick McKenzie
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Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.

In that spirit, here's some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.

Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.

Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams ("because software is so easy there, amirite guys?")

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The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

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Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI BANASHANKARI AMMAN, BANGALORE
#bharatmandir

Located in Southern Bangalore, this is one of the most popular places of worship in Bangalore City.
Devoted to Devi Banashankari, this shrine is visited specially during Rahukala which is believed to be an unfavorable time.


Somanna Shetty, a great devotee of Devi, brought this murti from Badami’s Banshankari Amma Kshetram.
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However, upon their insistence, he conducted the puja. When he returned with prasadam, the ladies vanished. This made the people believe that they were none other than the Devi herself. Since then, the people perform poojas here during the Rahukaal.
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People use lemons as a diya. Lemons are cut from the centre and their pulps are removed, for pouring oil in them.
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