Chathamization

Right, most people are would hate eating a 100% pure cacao bar, but that doesn't mean they won't enjoy chocolate. There's so much variability in these things, and in the end, it mostly comes down to "try different stuff and see what you like." I almost always drink coffee without any cream or sugar (exception listed below), but I wouldn't say I enjoy coffee more than someone who drenches theirs in both. It's just different tastes.

Even the oft-maligned Nescafe is pleasant for me if I make it correctly. Not the original formula, but the 100% coffee one without the extra ingredients. I thought it tasted horrible when I first tried it, but if I drowned it in a lot of soy milk it actually made for a fairly pleasant drink.

In general, people are going to be happier if they stop trying to cultivate aristocratic aversions to common food, and instead start cultivating curiosity and an interest in finding ways to enjoy things they didn't expect themselves to enjoy.

> at least without assistive/adapted systems such as a wheelchair and accessible bus.

Which is precisely what the robotic body I mentioned would be.

You're talking about humans who have the mental capacity to do these things, but who don't control a body capable of doing them. That's the exact opposite of an AI that controls a body capable of doing these things, but lacks the mental capacity to do them.

How are any of these a useful path to asking an AI to cook dinner?

We already know many tasks that most humans can do relatively easily, yet most people don’t expect AI to be able to do them for years to come (for instance, L5 self-driving). ARC-AGI appears to be going in the opposite direction - can these models pass tests that are difficult for the average person to pass.

These benchmarks are interesting in that they show increasing capabilities of the models. But they seem to be far less useful at determining AGI than the simple benchmarks we’ve had all along (can these models do everyday tasks that a human can do?).

That’s precisely what I meant in my comment by “these types of tests.” People are eventually going to have some sort of standard for what they consider AGI. But that doesn’t mean the current benchmarks are useful for this task at all, and saying that the benchmarks could be completely different in the future only underscores this.

> Our belief is that once we can no longer come up with quantifiable problems that are "feasible for humans and hard for AI" then we effectively have AGI.

I don’t think that follows. Just because people fail to create ARC-AGI problems that are difficult for an AI to solve, doesn’t mean that said AI can just be plugged into a humanoid robot and it will now reliably cook dinner, order a pizza and drive to pick it up, take a bus to downtown to busk on the street and take the money back home, etc.

ARC-AGI is an interesting benchmark, but it’s extremely presumptive to think that these types of tests are going to demonstrate AGI.

One of the things is wanting to be part of the discourse. For instance, this has happened to me several times - big players are talking about a particular topic. I dig through the primary sources, and see that many of the assumptions people are making about it are wrong. I try to bring it up, but - where? Blog/Tweet about it, and with no audience you're yelling into the void. Sometimes I try contacting the big players, but like I said, it's a pretty cliquish environment, and if you're a nobody you get ignored. Another option is to spit out a lot of garbage dopamine hits to build up a big enough audience to the point where someone might pay attention to your good points.

In the end I just gave up, because I realized the state of discourse in these spaces is terrible. It's a shame, though, because there are a lot of small, overlooked voices that do similar things, diving through primary source material and data and uncovering very important stuff that's gotten ignored. Occasionally, I've seen these people break stories that eventually get the attention of the national media - but it's hard, and this usually only happens for the really huge stories.

Meanwhile, the big players in these spaces are usually intellectually incurious and busy churning out vapid engagement bait.

> Of course, I’m self-aware enough to recognize that it might be because my writing is terrible or because I’m covering topics no one cares about.

I've hard similar issues with you, and actually think the opposite to be the case. When I was trying to build an audience, I actually found that it was the low effort nonsense that would get the most traction. At a certain point I was attempting to try to get followers by making a lot of those, and then trying to mix some quality posts in, and had some success. But I started asking myself, to what end? What kind of community am I building that's only interested in low quality junk?

And one thing I noticed about Blogging and Twitter is that they're extremely cliquish. From what I've seen, most people would rather interact with popular Bloggers/Twitter users that they hate or say are idiots than they would with users who have a low follow count/seldom read blog. Sure, there are ways you can juice your follower count so that you're large enough that the big guys will think you're worth enough to pay attention to. But again - what's the point? When you see the complete vapidity of many of these supposed thought leaders, is it really worth it? So what, you can get into the daily Twitter slap fights that they seem to love so much?

I mostly wish their were more places were thoughtful people to find and chat with each other, without having to get involved with petty blog/Twitter vanity games.

No, I'm genuinely confused by your claim that in order for Chinese to be similar to English in this manner, it would be "somehow unique among all human languages." These are contradictory ideas. That's why I was asking for clarity.

> I'm objecting to your argument that Chinese would be an incomprehensible mess if written alphabetically.

That's fine, but it runs directly counter to your initial comment. If a phonetic transcription would make Chinese just as easy to understand as it is written now, it would be quite different from English, and almost every other written language, all of which include non-phonetic elements in order to facilitate reading.

That's very much the impression I get. I've never seen pinyin used in Chinese writing, and the Chinese friends I've met have said they've never seen it either (they said they'd probably just look up the character or write a homonym instead, but even then it's pretty rare that it comes to that).

That's not to say it's never done, but it feels like an outlier. As if a friend found a word too hard to understand and drew a picture instead, and then the author wrote an article about how spelling is so difficult that it leads English speakers to draw words instead of writing them.

But the thing that struck me the most was just how confused people were when I asked them about it. It just didn't seem to be anything that was an actual issue for them.

Removing the added information would make it much more difficult to parse, though. Paragraphs don't exist in oral English - or spaces between words, quotation marks, capitalization, etc. - but we still find it much more easy to read properly formatted text than improperly formatted text.

Just because people are able to understand strict phonetic transcriptions, doesn't mean it's a good way to convey information (which is why almost no language relies on just strict phonetic transcriptions).

> So you were talking about both English and Chinese in that sentence.

I was talking about English in the sentence you quoted. In the next paragraph, I said that Chinese was the same as English in this regard. That's why I couldn't (and still can't) understand your comment.

You're saying it isn't true that removing those parts of English would mean "most people would find the result to be an incomprehensible mess" unless Chinese is unique? Chinese has absolutely no connection to written English becoming a mess after removing those elements of written English.

Or are you objecting to the paragraph after the one you quoted, where I say the same thing that happens in English is true for Chinese? "Unless Chinese is somehow unique among all human languages, this isn't true" that Chinese would be like English? That doesn't make any sense to me unless you misread my initial comment to mean the complete opposite of what it was saying.

Being able to write a character by hand, being able to type it up, and being able to read it are all different things. I doubt many Chinese would be thrown off from reading or typing 打喷嚏.

I actually did a deep dive into the issue of unfamiliar characters coming up when reading, and how people handle them. I won't go into all the details, but the general takeaway is:

1. Unfamiliar characters can actually be quite rare or quite common depending on the material you're reading.

2. It's not much of an issue for people either way.

> Unless Chinese is somehow unique among all human languages, this isn't true.

I was talking about English in that paragraph:

> The same is true for written English - putting spaces between words, dividing texts into paragraphs, capitalizing them, differentiating between different pauses (a comma, period, semicolon, etc. all signifying what kind of pause something its), quotation marks, parenthesis, etc. - none of this is available in our spoken language, and we’re still able to understand it. In theory, we could get rid of them all and understand what’s being written. In practice, most people would find the result to be an incomprehensible mess.

From what I've heard people say (and what I've seen), the most common way to handle it is to simply write another character that sounds the same. In other words, the characters can be used as phonetic elements when it's needed. It looks weird (in the same way that spelling words phonetically in English can look word), but it's doable.

That's for situations where they had to write something by hand but didn't have their phone with them to check (otherwise they can just spend a second to look at the character), which isn't a common occurrence.

The shrimp example is kind of strange. Like you said, it's an extremely common character, and not a difficult one either. But beyond that, if you look at it he got the radical, 虫, correct. The phonetic element, 下, is a fundamental character that I doubt anyone forgets to write.

It just seems like such an odd outlier example. Like talking about a friend that spells "been" as "bin." I'm sure it could happen, but it's not indicative of a broader trend.

The story was reported by Victor Mair, though, who is extremely opposed to using characters and often exaggerates the issues with them.

Personally, I've seen a lot of Chinese people's written notes, and I don't think I've ever seen them resort to pinyin, even among people that didn't go to college. I just asked a few Chinese friends about this, and they told me they never resort to pinyin either.

It would result in a pretty severe loss of fidelity.

You may think it’s not needed, because that information isn’t available in spoken Chinese. The same is true for written English - putting spaces between words, dividing texts into paragraphs, capitalizing them, differentiating between different pauses (a comma, period, semicolon, etc. all signifying what kind of pause something its), quotation marks, parenthesis, etc. - none of this is available in our spoken language, and we’re still able to understand it. In theory, we could get rid of them all and understand what’s being written. In practice, most people would find the result to be an incomprehensible mess.

The same goes for Chinese. Written languages, for the most part, are more than a simple transcription of spoken sounds.

Even less of a difference. There's no equivalent character, so it's clearly 烹 written with an extra stroke. It's more like the difference between writing "deceive" and decieve."

> I guess you could write down 景茶 (jing3cha2) and rely on the phonetics, or use a different word if you know one, but it's still wrong on a level that "choclit" just isn't.

If a non-native did this in their own way would likely look wrong, but Chinese natives do occasionally use phonics to write or to substitute some characters with others.

The fact that 嚔/sneeze is usually the go to example means it ends up becoming the exception that proves the rule. Most other characters are much more easily remembered.

True. You also need a group that knows what they're doing and is trying to be cutthroat. Then the whole table is trying to trade for color sets and dissuade others from trading for color sets, which often leads to this absurd mass negotiation where people are just throwing away massive amounts of money and property in order to not be shut out. Sometimes you end up bribing another player just to keep them from undercutting a deal, or you work with that player and cut out the original person you both were haggling with, at which point they're trying to bribe another player to intervene.

As long as you're using the correct rules and everyone is playing the game fast, they know what they're doing, and they're competitive, the game can be quite fun. It's also a lot less time intensive than many other board games where lots of people are negotiating.

Right, but I don't see anything in the quoted text implying that's not the case:

> In Sirens of Titan, there’s this army of Mars which is really a joke. No one in the army, [not] even the officers, are really in charge of what’s going on. They’re all mind controlled. Nobody has any real free will. They’re just set up as a pawn to be sacrificed, to make Earth come together, kind of Watchmen-style.

Which part of that quote do you think is a misreading? That's exactly how I remember it unfolding in the book.

It depends on the people you’re playing with. With an active group there’s a lot of strategy that goes into the negotiations, and also a good amount of “push your luck” gameplay. In my experience, a lot of the game comes down to one or two extremely intense negotiation sessions that everyone at the table ends up jumping in on.

> I still remember the screen names of folks I interacted with in and on IRC, AIM, ezboard, IGN boards, forums, etc.

> I only remember a handful of HN usernames and absolutely zero handles from elsewhere.

Same. It's strange that in terms of interpersonal communication, we appear to be worse off than where were 25 years ago with AIM and e-mail. Back then it was common to carry on pretty deep conversations and relationships with people from all over the world. Part of my nightly routine was going over the day with my friends (both near and far). I would send long e-mail to my distant friends on their birthday, talking about all the things that had happened in my life, and they would do the same. I'd even keep in contact for years with pen pals I had met all over the world.

There's no reason this couldn't be done today, but I suppose most people prefer the much shallower interactions we have now.

> Is that no longer the web?

From what I've seen, a lot - I'd say most - of the communities that existed outside of the major platforms have dried up or ended (the famous/infamous bodybuilding forum apparently just went down). Web forum communities, mailing list communities, communities built around an individuals website (it sounds strange to say now, but this was pretty common a couple of decades ago). Even the offline meeting sites like Couchsurfing and Meetup are a shadow of what they were in their heyday (about 15 years or so ago).

The actual number of people actively using the internet is much higher, yet the number of people outside of a few small social media silos are much lower. So I can only surmise that these social media silos are giving the vast majority - almost everyone - what they want (those gratifying instant hits). It's just sad to know that there's apparently only a tiny sliver of humanity interested in venturing off the main path and interacting with people outside of these silos.

> Regardless, I just read the transcript for that video and he doesn’t give any timeline so it seems premature to crow that he was wrong.

If you watch the video he's clearly saying this was was something that was already happening. Keep in mind it was made 10 years ago, and in it he says "this isn't science fiction; the robots are here right now." When bringing up the 25% unemployment rate he says "just the stuff we talked about today, the stuff that already works, can push us over that number pretty soon."

Baxter being able to do everything a worker can for a fraction of the price definitely wasn't true.

Here's what he said about self-driving cars. Again, this was 2014: "Self driving cars aren't the future - they're here and they work."

"The transportation industry in the united states employs about 3 million people. Extrapolating worldwide, that's something like 70 million jobs at a minimum. These jobs are over."

> I’m talking about actual academics like Ilya, Hinton, etc.

Which of Hinton's statements are you claiming were dismissed by people here but were later proven to be correct?

The AI doomsday folk had an even worse track record over the past decade. There was supposed to be mass unemployment of truck drivers years ago. According to CCP Grey's Human's Need Not Apply[1] from 10 years ago, the robot Baxter was supposed to take over many low skilled jobs (Baxter was continued in 2018 after it failed to achieve commercial success).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Discussing these textbooks - and more generally discussing education - also seems to reveal a lot of weaknesses in how people think about the world. There's a tendency to think that because something is difficult it's worthwhile. There's a tendency to ignore opportunity costs, or consider alternative efforts. There's a tendency to frame on cool concepts that are intellectually fun and more pleasing to the ego as "real learning," when most CS graduates are likely going to be running into much more trouble on less glamorous stuff like navigating frameworks.

I'm definitely coming from my own perspective, having initially been self-taught, and then finding myself with the opportunity to go back and academically study CS at a well ranked university. Supposedly, this would fill all of the "holes" in my knowledge (you see this sentiment a lot). I found the classes fun, and I did well in them. But I was also constantly trying to find usefulness in them when it came to work I actually was doing, and didn't find any. Though I don't regret doing it as an interesting life experience, it was honestly a waste of time and money when it comes to my CS skills.

Which isn't to say that SICP is useless for everyone, or that no one will get value out of it. But reading the article in the link, as well as all of the replies, it's telling that people are writing so many paragraphs but aren't able to say anything concretely. Even multiple paragraphs accusing people of looking for excuses not to do it - but not providing any concrete examples of its usefulness. This should set off red flags.

Yes, there are people who are completely clueless about core concepts. Though SICP is obviously not the only place to learn about those concepts. Further, most people hanging out in places where those concepts are discussed and are considering whether or not to do SICP in their free time likely have been exposed to the concepts already (and might already have a pretty good grasp on them).

There always is a bit of posturing and ego involved when some of these things come up, and they often lead to people giving very poor advice.

> Their use is similar to radicals in Mandarin, which is to provide additional semantic clarification.

Radicals are used in the same way for Hanzi (Chinese/"Mandarin") and Kanji (Japanese). Most of the Japanese characters are the same as the unsimplified Chinese characters. Furigana is used in a fairly different way, though. You occasionally see phonetic writing similar to furigana underneath characters in books that are used to teach children how to read. But it’s not nearly as common as in Japan, and it’s only (from what I’ve seen) used as a study aid for kids, not in the more creative ways the author discusses here.

The big difference as well is that the phonetic writing in Chinese isn’t part of the language itself. It’s like IPA (the dictionary pronunciation symbols) - they’re used to tell you how to write something, not to actually communicate. Kana (which furigana is written in), is actually part of the Japanese language.

> I mean, isn't that what Bell Labs basically was? Put smart people in a supportive playground and harvest the cream off the top?

Was it? A lot of people here think the transistor was one of the most important inventions to come out of Bell Labs. Here's Wiki's description of its creation:

> In 1945, Bell Labs reorganized and created a group specifically to do fundamental research in solid state physics, relating to communications technologies. Creation of the sub-department was authorized by the vice-president for research, Mervin Kelly. An interdisciplinary group, it was co-led by Shockley and Stanley O. Morgan. The new group was soon joined by John Bardeen. Bardeen was a close friend of Brattain's brother Robert, who had introduced John and Walter in the 1930s. They often played bridge and golf together. Bardeen was a quantum physicist, Brattain a gifted experimenter in materials science, and Shockley, the leader of their team, was an expert in solid-state physics.

> According to theories of the time, Shockley's field effect transistor, a cylinder coated thinly with silicon and mounted close to a metal plate, should have worked. He ordered Brattain and Bardeen to find out why it wouldn't. During November and December the two men carried out a variety of experiments, attempting to determine why Shockley's device wouldn't amplify.

It hardly sounds like they just gave a bunch of smart people a playground and told them to have fun. The problem with many historical examples is that people sometimes only pay attention to the fun parts they want to hear (a lot of focus was put on engineers and they were given some leeway) and often ignore the hard work that went into it (a lot of management, structure, and focus). We get left with overly simplistic solutions that sound wonderful, but then fail when people try to implement them.