Fragments

The Magicians is one of those series of books that I enjoy rereading. Not really sure why, but one thing that's surpising to me is how many of the real world places that seem to have inspired the book are in my orbit.

In Brooklyn, there are a couple of scenes were they hang out in a dead zone near the Gowanus canal. I had a wild neighbor who used to own if not that exact spot, then something exactly like it.

"Brakebills" exists somewhere upstate near West Point, and I've spend many hours in Bear Mountain.

I've ended up in Arles a couple of times, and wandered through the back country around Murs when the gang went to look for ol' timy religions.

Flying into the British Virgin Islands there was a passport problem with one of our group, and that outpost was definately reminicint of the end of Fillory.

At the end of the last book, they get into a big fight in the woods of western Connecticut, which is where I live now. They take a train from Amenia back to the city, and I just got tacos in Amenia at this strange mexican grocery store that could very well have been a front for something. Tacos were great though.

In astronomy, the term evolution refers to the production of elements, stars, galaxies, and the other configuration of inorganic matter.

In biology, evolution refers to the adaptions of organisms to their environment through natural selection.

In humans, or the psychosocial domain, evolution refers to a type of human growth and civilizational development.

Each of these domains – inorganic, organic, psychosocial – operate on different principals. They are related, but each one has trancended the one previous. Inorganic evolution produces living species, giving rise to life; organic evolution produces intentional beings, giving rise to to consciousness.

The third type of evolutionary trancendance isn't here yet, or at least isn't widely distributed.

But if we think about the world and all of the things in it, its not right to say that some things are more evolved than others in the sense of better better or having progressed more; everything is as equally evolved as everything else since it's all been evolving together.

Timezones were created because of the trains. Before, everyplace has its own definition of noon, which was when the sun was at the highest. First proposed in 1883, it was eventually signed into US law in 1918 as the Standard Time Act.

Where do languages come from? A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Where do dialects come from? I think from books, or more to the point publishers, who are trying to reach an audience and market. The more they publish in a certain dialect, the more that dialect is defined and reflected back to itself.

The fluidity is then circumscribed a fixed by the commerce; in the first case transportation, and in the second place by book publishers and consumers. Without those forces, everything would be fluid and local.

So Yiddish, the Hasidim not withstanding, has more of a chance of surviving because of all of its published literature.

Here’s some food for thought: “Granting rights is not the only way to address the moral status of robots: Envisioning robots as rites bearers—not rights bearers—could work better.” A new paper, “Should Robots Have Rites or Rights,” suggests that “the Confucian alternative of assigning rites (or role obligations) is more appropriate than giving robots rights. The concept of rights is often adversarial and competitive, and the potential for conflict between humans and robots is concerning.”

Turing Post FOD #10: Prompt Engineer vs AI Engineer, and Superhuman Human Fallacy

Full PDF of the paper

Excerpts:

In Confucianism, individuals are made distinctively human by their ability to conceive of interests not purely in terms of personal self-interest—but instead in terms that also include a relational and communal self. Etymologically, the meaning of humanness ( , ren) is “two people.” The Confucian’s recognition of the communal self requires a distinctive perspective on rite or ritual. The Chinese term li ( , rite or ritual) symbolizes arranging vessels in a religious setting. But Confucian texts used li outside the scope of religious tradition. Examples abound, including friendship, gift giving, or forms of speech. The rites that concern Confucius are quotidian practices. Here is a modern example: “I see you on the street; I smile, walk toward you, put out my hand to shake yours. And behold—without any command, stratagem, force, special tricks or tools, without any effort on my part to make you do so, you spontaneously turn toward me, return my smile; raise your hand toward mine. We shake hands—not by my pulling your hand up and down or you pulling mine but by spontaneous and perfect cooperative action. Normally we do not notice the subtlety and amazing complexity of this coordination ritual act.”

I signed up for Threads today. Download, click, click, and suddenly I'm seeing a wall of random stuff. A post from a Kardashian. Influencers commenting on brands. No idea why I'm seeing any of it.

At first I thought it's because someone I'm connected with on Instagram commented on it, but honestly I don't know why anyone would want to talk to Netflix unless it was a customer service complaint.

What I expected was that I'd see the people on Instagram that I followed. This content I'm seeing here never needed to be discovered.

A better word for hallucations is really bullshit, which differs from a more straightforward falsehood because the speaker is blithely unconcerned about truth.

It's not so much that these AI tools are grounded in reality or hallucating, telling the truth or misinformation, as much as they sound authoritiave when they do it.

Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true.

— On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

Also available as an expanded book

"A Taxonomy of AI Panic Facilitators"
A visualization of leading AI Doomers (X-risk open letters, media interviews & OpEds).

Some AI experts enable them, while others oppose them.
The gender dynamics are fucked up.
It says a lot about the panic itself.

Your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/xnhSP4smIj

— Nirit Weiss-Blatt, PhD (@DrTechlash) July 1, 2023

more in thread

via Turing Post

The sounds when you turn the steering wheel and force it out of driver+ is mellow and soothing. The wheel turns smoothly when moving to the center of the road giving the bicyclists more space, there's no fighting with it. Nothing flashes red.

The Telsa both tries and actually accomplishes a whole lot more. It's always watching and always guiding. Are the alerts actually useful? Somewhere in Tesla HQ the feeling seems to be that human drivers need to be saved from themselves.

The data seems to support that, but it's not nearly as much fun.