This answered a question I had “I wonder what that guy who wrote that thing on ‘the superintelligence/fast take off idea eating smart people’ thinks of all this new ai stuff” thanks HN!
I still can’t understand the “supersmart ai is so smart we can’t unplug it/patch it/restart it” before it transfers itself into every pacemaker.
Until these things are literally in bodies with some autonomy that allows them to control what happens to their brains, we will shut them off when they cause trouble.
Yeah this is why the Cuban Missile Crisis was a total farce. Lol to avoid catastrophe you just don’t push the button. Simple! The missiles don’t launch themselves, therefore no risk.
How do people join cults, how are people radicalised, how come there are still shootings and terrorists? People can be convinced and coerced to do things by silver tongued slick talkers promising great rewards, and some people would press the button regardless if given half a chance.
Actually, if an llm could become good at propaganda, it could quickly come to rule the world. I never considered that angle before, but it’s legitimately scary.
UPDATE: Thought of a good clarifying analogy. In one of the sequels to “Enders Game” the brother and sister of Ender adopted anonymous online personas and began writing. They were so skilled at politics and propaganda that they disrupted the entire world and the brother soon became world leader.
Is that what happened to create the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Or WW1? Or Vietnam?
Nope. Just pretty much rational people making locally-rational decisions inside a system where series of rational decisions yielded catastrophic outcomes. It’s entirely possible and history is full of such examples.
Why didn't we just "unplug" Hitler and Goebbels? Or Marshall Applewhite? You don't need a powerful physical body(s) to cause tremendous amounts of harm before anyone can stop you. To most people of the time Hitler was a persuasive powerful voice on the radio, or words in a paper - things SOTA generative AI are already phenomenal at.
You’re being downvoted for mentioning the H-man (bad), but I think your analogy has some merit:
A super-smart AI may be intensely popular with many people in the way that some politicians are. It may understand us and speak to us on a seemingly-personal level, the way the best politicians do. A lot of us could support the super-smart AI for that reason.
None of these attempts failed because the act of assassinating Hitler was technically impossible, they failed to chance, unfavorable conditions, intervention, human error, etc. Given enough attempts, eventuelly one of them would have succeeded.
Everything is correct except for the first one. Hydration is HEAVILY dependent on age. Younger bodies can hold on to way more water, and that decreases as we age. This is the primary reason why we get worse hangovers as we age.
Drink water while it makes you feel good, but for the love of God, do not force-hydrate yourself, especially if you are not 40.
If I was being a pedant (which I tacitly now am), I'd be tempted to add two things:
1 - mindfulness meditation. Building the ability of the mind to hold attention is arguably just as useful as training the muscles. Especially for longer term knowledge workers who "get a bit bored of this staring at the screen thing". Like me. This comment is evidence of my ability to procrastinate.
2 - eat wide and well. Up to the individual to decide what that translates into, but eating wide and well will give you all the range of macro and micro nutrients you'll need for optimum cognitive performance.
What's incorrect? You don't think sleep increases working memory and long term brain health? Exercise doesn't fix everything? Water isn't the best thing to drink? Don't dispute universal givens without strong evidence.
Sleep does increase working memory and long term brain health. Exercise is one of the best things one can do to remain cognitively fit. Water is one of the best all-around things one can do for your health.
But: your claim is that all of these things will out perform every fancy nootropic. This dismisses the entirety of pharmacology effectively... which is quite frankly the citation that needs evidence. There is a lot of nootropics / pharmaceutical drugs / herbs / mushrooms / etc out there. It's simply incorrect to assert that sleep, exercise and water are more effective than the intelligent use of some of these things. I get your overall point and I appreciate it and believe a lot of it, but I just think you're wrong in how heavily you assert it.
I am a different person than root, just calling it out though our views are the same and we might as well be the same for practical discussion reasons. Anyway, your statement above is reasonable. I personally find all nootropics to be absolutely useless, except uppers - coffee, energy drinks, etc. They work, but there is a heavy cost afterward. I am very interested in this topic and have read everything from military research to micro-dosing bros in the valley, and I haven't found anything that is remotely effective in improving memory / brain activity / focus. Again, Adderral gets grouped with "effective, but side effects too costly".
The benefit of the things listed above is that there is absolutely no downside other than time.
Edit: If you have an example of something that you consider effective, definitely list it please.
I suspect a lot of nootropics are so person-dependant. I can't speak much about nootropics ability to help someone who is already cognitively well-off, but I can definitely say they have significantly helped my mom's ability to remain cognitively sharp despite e.g. something akin to frontal-temporal dementia. Lions Mane absolutely does noticeably improve her cognitive abilities. Mind you, in this case it means that she goes from noticeably poor cognitive abilities to back to just a normal person's cognitive abilities, but that's fantastic from my perspective (maybe not due to Lion's Mane alone though). I've also noticed a surprising effectiveness of high-dose vitamin D + a powerful antioxidant like glutathione. Again though, this is very personalized. My mom, through blood work, we know is suffering from massive oxidative stress, so of course it makes sense that addressing the specific issues that are affecting her will cause a noticeable effect.
I know a lot of people turn to nootropics to enhance their abilities though and I honestly can't say much about that except that personally lions mane does seem to make me sharper (clearer thinking) but that is very anecdotal and much less noticeable than the improvements I see in my mom when she is taking certain supplements vs when she is not. And I'm generally prone to believe most supplements are bs, fraud or not necessary. I've come around to seeing how important certain supplements can be for certain people at certain times.
There is an enormous cost to working out - you need more sleep, a cleaner diet (usually at least with whey supplementation), a stretching routine, more clothing and showers. And that's after we consider that it's 1-2 hours out of a day where you probably do work-related activities for ~9, sleep 8, do chores & eat for 2. 2/5 "free" hours is a very serious commitment.
It also comes with tangential issues like knowing how not to create muscle imbalances, over-eat, over-train, etc. So that is definitely a valuable call out. Furthermore, a brilliant statement (that's common sense to most) I heard in the last few years is that efficiency is the opposite of stability - working out is more load that causes overall efficiency, but creates more risk. In short, you are absolutely right, even if we ignore the extreme scenarios where someone slips a disc or tears a bicep.
"lift heavy things" can require instruction, but something as simple as 45-60 minutes of walking, hiking, rucking, jogging, or some mix of it all is not something that requires particular skill or stretching.
I am sure there are people who are responsible for more than themselves and live paycheck to paycheck, so between dependents and themselves have little time.
However, I wager that any person or couple without dependents absolutely 100% has 45-60 minutes to spare per day in the form of basic physical activity with a disconnect from social media and work obligations. It's mindfulness and movement in one.
It might not be good at generating original posts, but it’s really good at generating HN comments.
Try it!
Generate typical HN comments to this PG post [ … ].
- Include both positive and negative comments.
- add replies that focus on annoying details that draw attention to the commenter
- include fan boy defence of original post
- point out obvious exceptions
I still can’t understand the “supersmart ai is so smart we can’t unplug it/patch it/restart it” before it transfers itself into every pacemaker.
Until these things are literally in bodies with some autonomy that allows them to control what happens to their brains, we will shut them off when they cause trouble.