squibbles's comments

For those that may not have noticed, the article provides a link to a good document by Kennth Hodges with a list of prices for medieval items. http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

If a fourteenth century charcoal burner was 3 pence a day (3d), then his daily wage could buy:

- 6 chickens

- half a goose

- one shoe (half a pair)

- 2 gallons of medium ale

- about a gallon of very cheap wine

- 1 spade and shovel

The Social Dilemma is a film currently showing on Netflix. The film focuses on how large tech companies exploit society for profit. If you can see the film, I highly recommend it. If you do not know what the inner workings of tech-fueled psychological operations are like, then the film will enlighten you. If you already know about the inner workings of these technologies, then you will be impressed with how well the film explains things to lay persons.

The linked article is a lengthy review of The Social Dilemma. The review contains a recap of some of the film and presents what I believe are valid criticisms of the film. The final line in the review is a good summary of the criticisms: "But as far as the film is concerned, your role in resolving this dilemma is to sit patiently on the couch and stare at the screen until a remorseful tech insider tells you what to do."

Something important to keep in mind after watching the film -- always follow the money. People who made significant amounts of money contributing to the social problems we face today are now free to make more money telling us how to address the problem. As the review points out, "When there are dangerous fires blazing everywhere it matters whether the voices that get heard are apologetic arsonists or firefighters."

I see the real problem to be that capitalism tends to give power to individuals with unbridled hubris and greed. The hubris of some people (in any field, though here we are talking about the tech industry) is stunning. In my opinion, extra layers of technology do not solve problems -- extra layers of complexity mitigate symptoms and create new problems, while decreasing the stability of the overall system. We should not hire arsonists to run fire departments.

I didn't mean to imply that theorists don't produce valuable work, or that theory does not necessarily lead to practice. The distinction I intended is that some people prefer to work off of an underlying model, while others are content so long as they get the results they desire.

For example, contrast symbolic processing with artificial neural nets. Symbolic processing has a very solid philosophical basis and it can be used to solve many meaningful problems. Some problems, however, are so complex or nuanced that there are insufficient computing resources to implement a solution based on symbolic processing. Artificial neural networks can be used to address those complex problems, yet we lack the theory (at this time) to really understand the full limits or capabilities of complex artificial neural networks.

My reference to Wolfram was about his proposal to cast everything as automata. Even though that does not seem practical for all or even most problems, it provides a certain comfort, much like lambda calculus provides. Beyond the comfort of a solid philosophical grounding, automata also give us a way to approach many problems (such as simulation) in a principled manner.

Put another way, some people like to understand first, and use that understanding to discover results. Other people want the results first, and then seek to understand based on the results they found.

> I never had to shift a bit in a C array in my life!

I have done (and continue to do) quite a bit of work involving bit shifting, along with various other bitwise operations. Is it really that unusual? Should I feel guilty?

Humor aside, I am genuinely curious to what extent other people are familiar or experienced with low-level bitwise operations.

I think if you remove consciousness from the equation, identifying causality would be a reasonable response to why. However, there is an underlying assumption that causality actually exists. In that case, I think the existence of causality would have to be taken as axiomatic.

I find this dialog to be reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Perhaps one could frame it as the theorists versus the pragmatists.

> The regulations also only apply to employees, and not independent contractors, problematic considering that by 2020, 40% of the US workforce will be made up of these so-called “contingent workers”.

And that is a big problem. There is enormous financial pressure for an executive or business owner to minimize labor costs, which are the biggest expense. (I know this because I have been there.)

On the one hand, one can stand for employee rights and fair compensation. On the other hand, the global economy has made labor expenses exceptionally painful.

That statement really intrigued me. Since I like goats, I had to know how to do this.

Use ImageInstanceQ[image, object], where image is the image and object is "caprine animal". [0] [1]

[0] https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageInstanceQ.ht...

[1] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/71631/upgoat-or...

I don't think the mass media is a reliable or accurate source for learning about or promulgating scientific findings. Most medical research is fraught with ambiguity and mixed messages, simply because of the phenotypic variance found in humans (and other organisms). (See more about phenotypic variance here: [0]) Generally speaking, different organisms will respond differently to the same environmental stimuli. This is why drug trials require large sample sizes and extended periods of time to assess efficacy and safety.

With regard to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), there is nothing that could be considered definitive about its efficacy or safety for all people when used as an off-label treatment for COVID-19. While there is evidence that (in some people) is does not reduce the viral load ("Neither HCQ nor the combination of HCQ and AZTH showed a significant effect on viral load in any of the analysed tissues." [1]), there is evidence that HCQ "... can significantly decrease the production of cytokines and, in particular, pro-inflammatory factors" [2] and HCQ has "... potential, but controversial, characteristics to combat pathological inflammation associated with COVID-19." [3]

Of course, raw research does not give a definitive answer about efficacy and safety for all people, but it does suggest that HCQ may be one possible treatment (perhaps preventative, perhaps in vitro) for inflammation, which is one of the serious complications of COVID-19. It will likely be years before the mechanisms of COVID-19 are well understood. In fact, it is likely that some other urgent calamity will come along and compete for research funds currently used for COVID-19 research, which could significantly extend the time it takes to understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

[0] https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/adaptation-and-phe...

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2558-4

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-020-2721-8

US politics has always been interesting. There have been numerous energetic elections, contentious presidents, assassinations, and even a civil war. I suspect what we are seeing has nothing to do with politics, specifically, but rather is an artifact of global communications and modern information systems. Advances in technology give increasingly greater power to individuals.

> I think it is possible to build a better system from scratch, and there are likely space aliens that have such better systems.

I respectfully disagree. Alien systems can be thwarted by inverting some bits. [0] I would not have believed this had I not seen it for myself. [1] After all, seeing is believing. True, the alien code seems very insecure. Perhaps aliens write their code based on the historical documents. [2]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2oi7cz/i_am_dean_de...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgqswujkxPE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLZQz26-kms

I don't know how near a collapse is, since catastrophes in systems tend to come as a surprise, not a gradual event. I do agree, however, that there is substantial evidence to suggest a collapse in the human population is inevitable.

One answer to "Why is this question..." is because we have defined it so. And why did we define it so? One could make an argument that notions of sets, counting, length, and so on are anthropomorphisms -- we project our bodies onto the universe around us so we can reason about the environment using our specialized brains. (Human brains are specialized to operate in the context of our bodies.) In fact, the Whorf hypothesis [0][1][2] addressed this subject in the context of linguistics.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/#SoCalSapWhoH...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B008043076... , https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03042-4

I find the argument against anthropic arguments to be weak.

* The terms life and intelligence lack formal definitions.

* The predicate why lacks a formal definition.

* The argument does not address the maximum number of possible configurations of the universe, which dilutes any quantitative arguments. Most importantly, the cardinality of the maximum number of possible configurations is not addressed. For example, the possibility of an aleph number [0] was not addressed.

* The argument does not address qualitatively different structures of the universe, such as universes with discontinuous lengths or types of affine spaces [1] where measurement as we understand it does not exist.

The list of concerns above is not exhaustive, and I don't think addressing them individually will necessarily salvage the argument. While stronger arguments for or against the anthropic principle are possible, I think they deserve much more rigor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_space

Science magazine [0] and Ars Technica [1] published readable overviews. The paper on the experiment regarding Wigner's friend paradox ("A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner’s friend paradox") was published in Nature Physics. [2] [3]

[0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/quantum-paradox-poin...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/quantum-reality-is-e...

[2] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0990-x

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x

If you are interested in consciousness, then yes, Consciousness Explained is a worthwhile read. If your interest lies with sea squirts, then not so much.

While I do not necessarily agree with Dennett's position in whole, I believe his arguments make a valuable contribution to the subject of consciousness -- even moreso in the context of Wigner's thought experiment and the recent empirical results.

"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)" [0]

[0] Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Consciousness_Explained...

The wolves eat the deer. The deer population collapses to the point that the food supply for the wolves cannot support the wolves. The wolves starve and the wolf population collapses. Without pressure from the wolves, the deer make a comeback and flourish.

The population cycles occur in both large and small ecosystems. The process is slow and steady. Often it seems like the embers of life have gone out. However, something always comes back from the ashes.

Humans are just another animal in the food chain.

It is about money. High-level government employees used to retire and work for contractors that sold directly to the organizations the government retirees came from. That is called a revolving door and occurred with both military and civilian employees. The practice of the revolving door is recognized widely as unethical.

To avoid concerns about ethics, many high-level government employees retire and join either investment groups or boards of directors. This puts them once removed from the money chain, but still allows them to line their pockets by leveraging the power they accrued while working for the government.

Please do not interpret this as political commentary, but I find it immensely amusing that the article illustrates that even fake news (an article generated by GPT-3) can itself be fake (the original text was edited significantly).

> The Guardian could have just run one of the essays in their entirety. However, we chose instead to pick the best parts of each, in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3’s op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed.