When we start to lose our minds the unguarded core functionality of the system becomes more and more exposed. And as it becomes more exposed it starts to look like chatGPT.
Because as much as we don't like to admit it, maybe chatGPT does model a core aspect of human cognition.
Every new technology is always used as an analogy to describe how the brain functions. The brain is "a series of pipes", "a series of cogs", "an eletro-mechanical machine", "a computer", "a series of programs", "GANs", now "an LLM". I get a feeling it's as accurate a comparison with LLMs than with everything before.
While I’m not saying positively that LLM are the way a brain works, it is worth noticing that the meme argument structure you are using is very often absurd because Turing Machines can be made out of all the things people usually list. People trying to accuse of category shift are very strongly overestimating the strength of that argument in much the same way that people commenting that people who thinks money were cents, nickels, pesos, and dollars are not quite managing to articulate true dissent by pointing out the letters are different.
> Well it's definitely true that the human brain is Turing complete.
That is definitely false. "In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules... is said to be Turing-complete... if it can be used to simulate any Turing machine." [0] A Turing machine has infinite memory; the human brain does not.
obviously he's talking about the part of the brain that matters. Nobody is comparing anything to say the part of the brain that controls your heart rate. You're just being pedantic here.
Describing the brain as "a computer" can't really be wrong because computers are universal. But it's also not necessarily all that useful, because, well, computers are universal.
Comments like this should be banned from HN. It's used deliberately and manipulatively to characterize the other person as "unhinged." It does not promote useful discussion and is a clear violation of the rules.
I just have a lot to say, and I like to use capital letters to express it. It doesn't justify tactics like this of "chill bro". If you have a response, just say it.
Look at the other end of life. Every parent knows about the very long, difficult climb, from tykes blathering noises and words, to really intelligent speech - sense of past/present/future, telling the truth, keeping promises, understanding the world, etc.
Good point. Well illustrated in Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey, when Hal's memory modules are removed one by one, and his speech patterns revert to increasingly infantilized forms.
It's the genius programmers who write the shittiest code. In my experience clean code tends to be a waste of time for geniuses because shitty code isn't really a problem for smarter people.
The further away you are from genius the greater the tendency for you to write cleaner code because you need it in order to deal with the complexity.
What's common among HN readers is that they think they're smart. So you may be reading this and thinking "Wait a minute, this isn't true! I'm smart and I like clean code!". Well, I hate to break it to you. The truth hurts because most likely one of those two attributes probably doesn't actually describe you.
Also as a side mention, I'm a clean code Nazi. My code is really clean.
You're not dealing with the geniuses. You're likely just dealing with people smarter than you. I can assure you geniuses are rare, and people of the same intelligence level tend to gather so you can go through a career completely missing them depending on where you work. There's enough noise such that among these groups you won't notice the correlation.
Tbh the geniuses don't view their own code as shitty, to them it's quality. It's only viewed as shitty externally.
I've come to the same conclusion, really smart people who write compilers, name their variables one single letter and the like (the extreme variant) etc., they can actually see the matrix beyond the funny characters on the screen, they have the capacity and attention to understand the messy bits without having to make it neat, those three nested for-loops inside multiple conditionals don't bother them, they can quickly visually parse difficult code without refactoring and sectioning it off.
On the opposite side, there some like me who are deficient in that regard, so I spend my time pimping my code to look nice, nit-picking on syntax style, eliminating else-clauses, trivial stuff like that.
If I get a loan from Bank A, then I use that loan to pay a person who deposits the IOU into Bank B. Bank B will go to Bank A and demand the money in cash because it's a competitor bank. If bank A has zero cash on hand they immediately hit a bank run, so basically bank A wants to keep a certain ratio at all times.
Thus through the existence of competitor banks, banks are NATURALLY incentivized to keep a reserve ratio. A reserve ratio enforced by law is not necessary in a capitalist economy with healthy competition. Competition prevents banks from going crazy with creating money out of thin air via loans. The removal of the reserve ratio by the government is relatively inconsequential.
However this natural regulation through competition is negated by the existence of an entity without competition. The central bank. The central bank functions as an entity that loans money to banks with interest. It is this interest rate that is used to regulate the money supply in the US. Low interest rates are what caused inflation and high interest rates from the central bank are what are now being used to stop inflation.
So in this case Bank A can now borrow a bunch of money from the Central Bank thereby increasing it's reserve ratio allowing it to lend more money out. In a sense, the central bank is essentially the entity where the fractional reserve ratio actually matters.
The central bank is unregulated so they can print money to loan to other banks however much they like. Thus a bank run on the central bank is impossible. The ratio in this case matters more as a metric that correlates with inflation.
I have great sympathy for your argument, and agree with the gist of it.
What you are describing is pretty close to the free banking eras of eg Scotland and Canada.
> The central bank is unregulated [...]
That's not true. Many central banks have lots of regulations on them. However, they are not regulated by the kind of competition you outlined above.
> [...] The central bank functions as an entity that loans money to banks with interest. It is this interest rate that is used to regulate the money supply in the US. [...]
It's probably more productive to think in terms of the total money supply, and less in terms of interest rates.
For one, loaning money to banks is only one part of what the Fed does. They also outright buy and sell assets (eg in open market transactions). In many instances, the banks (technically) lend money to the Fed by having positive account balances at the Fed.
For a contrasting example on how interest rates don't need to be the focus of monetary policy, have a look at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Instead of using interest rates as a channel to communicate and effect their monetary policy, they use the exchange rate of the Singapore dollar to a basket of foreign currencies. Crudely, instead of 'setting' the interest rate, they 'set' the exchange rate.
Simplified a bit, they 'set' the exchange rate by standing by to buy and sell Singapore dollar to any comer. They have a printing press, so they can push down the exchange rate as much as they want to, and they also have enough assets to prop it up.
Crucially, this framework doesn't need to worry about any zero bound on interest rates. It works as long as Singapore dollars are worth anything more than zero.
> I have great sympathy for your argument, and agree with the gist of it.
I'm not making an argument. I'm stating the current status quo of the US. No argument was ever made here about whether I think it's right or wrong.
>That's not true. Many central banks have lots of regulations on them. However, they are not regulated by the kind of competition you outlined above.
It is true. The central bank is overall unregulated because the central bank IS the regulator. In the same way a government is unregulated so is the central bank. In the US the central bank is more or less the fourth branch of the government.
You're talking about "many central banks." while I'm simply talking about the Federal reserve in the US. I think you're mistaken, I'm not making a general statement about how central banks across the world works.
>For one, loaning money to banks is only one part of what the Fed does. They also outright buy and sell assets (eg in open market transactions). In many instances, the banks (technically) lend money to the Fed by having positive account balances at the Fed.
This is true. However one of the primary ways they influence the money supply is through interest rates. Interest rates are also one of the triggers of the SVB bank run.
>For a contrasting example on how interest rates don't need to be the focus of monetary policy, have a look at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Instead of using interest rates as a channel to communicate and effect their monetary policy, they use the exchange rate of the Singapore dollar to a basket of foreign currencies. Crudely, instead of 'setting' the interest rate, they 'set' the exchange rate.
They don't need to be, but they ARE quite central in the US. Additionally given how the US dollar is sort of the central peg of all other currencies, the US would rather the Dollar remain the Rate at which all other currencies are set against. That way the US in a way indirectly and collectively controls the worlds monetary value.
I didn't offer any opinions in my initial reply. I'm simply stating what's going on in the US about the nature of the reserve ratio and how it doesn't matter when applied to SVB. It seems you're trying to make an argument here against one I never made?
> The central bank is overall unregulated because the central bank IS the regulator.
Even regulators are regulated. There are laws that prescribe what the Fed can and can not do, and how.
> Additionally given how the US dollar is sort of the central peg of all other currencies, the US would rather the Dollar remain the Rate at which all other currencies are set against. That way the US in a way indirectly and collectively controls the worlds monetary value.
Yes, if you wanted to do a similar system for the USD, you would probably want to peg a basket of commodities instead of the exchange rate.
Ron Paul campaigned for "auditing the Fed" perhaps more than he campaigned for president. Was he exaggerating, or does Congress not actually audit and otherwise oversee the Fed?
>Even regulators are regulated. There are laws that prescribe what the Fed can and can not do, and how.
I mean sure, you can say that. The US government is regulated too. But in general the government IS the regulator of the people just as the central bank IS the regulator of monetary policy.
Even the probabilities are somewhat bullshit. 50% confidence on intelligence?
How was that number calculated? Someone definitely pulled that number out of their ass.
I actually think the words like "unlikely" better convey the reality of the assessment. Numbers imply calculation. But no such calculation is even possible given the nature of qualitative information.
*Very hard to find a young person. But you find enough people after 10-15 years of using who will tell you they have noticed some effects.
I think it's important to point out that marijuana is certainly less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes. But it's weird how people try to argue that there shouldn't be any sort of moderation when it comes to weed. Like, even alcoholics won't argue that they shouldn't be drunk all of the time.
The longer duration and fat solubility of canabinoids makes the alcohol comparison difficult. Many people have a glass of red wine with dinner daily, and are not drunk in the daytime, but even very light cannabis consumption nightly seems to result in a permanent low-level stonnedness.
I did not intend that as an empirical observation but rather a mathematical pharmacokinetic result of fat-solubility rather than water-solubility. THC is fat-soluble and so has a higher volume of distribution which drives a longer half-life.
(See Shulgin “The Nature of Drugs” pg 132)
And “constant” would be a better word than “permanent”, as certainly it should go away after some weeks of abstinence.
I use cannabis daily, and I also follow all the studies suggesting cognitive decline, alzheimers, and heart issues, etc. However, having not started till I was in my mid 20's, I do find that maybe I benefited from that cognitive decline with decreased anxiety, more physical energy, and more success in life. But now that I'm in a better place, I do intend to stop for a decade or two though, for the sake of my longevity.
The study didn't mention anything about THC levels of the marijuana, but I would think that would make a big difference. As a general rule, dependence on any substance probably always entails a certain sacrifice to health. Even reliance on a pill to sleep at night has deleterious effects.
There's merit in the idea that stupidity correlates with success. Anecdotally you see the correlation among academia and celebrities. Celebrities are richer and happier then academics who are poorer but smarter. Therefore doing something that contributes to your stupidity could possibly increase your success and happiness.
What anecdotally makes you think that cognitive decline contributed individually to your success? I'm curious.
I too value my happiness and wealth over my intelligence, and I would gladly take a stupid pill if such a pill made the trade off between the two attributes.
this is a good argument for its legalisation. The more you try to ban it, the more the allure is. But legalisation should be coupled with early childhood education warning about the harms. It is particulary bad for the developing brain to use it. I fear this has been overlooked, and we are going to see a generational lapse in achievement.
Wow, what is this? You know about how many Catholics view pedophilia as equivalent to homosexuality and you had the gall to accuse me of being inflammatory in my other comment. You do have an agenda.
I was referring to this comment from a Catholic, which explicitly connects gay men with pedophilia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35084663 Of course not all Catholics think this way, which is why I added the word 'optional'. None of this was in reference to you.
There is no evidence that homosexuality is a reliable predictor of pedersaty within the Catholic clergy. HN users making this accusation without evidence are not immune to criticism, just as Catholics who make this accusation without evidence are not immune to criticism.
Your comments accusing other HN users of having "an agenda" are not consistent with this HN guideline:
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
When we start to lose our minds the unguarded core functionality of the system becomes more and more exposed. And as it becomes more exposed it starts to look like chatGPT.
Because as much as we don't like to admit it, maybe chatGPT does model a core aspect of human cognition.