fuckminster_b

I've been in your shoes. I had gradually reduced contact to everyone who at that point was still trying to stay in touch, getting people used to me not answering the phone or replying to their messages for ever longer periods. I figured noone would be shocked this way when they finally learned that i'd ditched life.

I was in a state of permanent daze and confusion then, lots of drinking and whatever substances I could get my hands on.

While I had plans made, I had this spur of the moment idea that seemed pretty sane while I was high: I'd at least get a kick out of my life being teh suck, so I got myself into a situation with basically 50/50 chance of dying and beyond my control. I lived and one of the worst hangovers ever. Since I wasn't exactly thrilled with the outcome, I repeated this kind of coin toss with different setups, in total two more times.

The experiences were definitely less shit than my reasons for getting to this point in the first place. In fact, I'd never felt so alive. My problems were not magically gone but now I was curious what else in life I had never thought of, what else I might be missing out on by taking an early exit. I was pretty young and suddenly realized that as of yet I had no idea what to even expect of the future.

I regard everything I've experienced since then as bonus time. I got over the reasons for everything being shit and feeling like shit. Turned out it was mental illness responding well to medication.

Since then, a lot has happened, both good and bad, but it was worth the ride. I have no more reason to fear death, a luxury few are granted early in life. I know there's always an exit option but so far, I've been too curious about what happens next to consider it again.

Now, I won't tell you bullshit like "hurr durr, life is so beautiful, don't throw it away…". The world can be an utter pile of shit and so can the people it spawned and if you go on living, the only thing certain is that you'll have to deal with more world shit and more people shit.

But consider, if you're a curious person, that you'll be missing out on a once in a lifetime experience. You'd be surprised.

I don't regret having stayed for the encore.

Truth be told, chances are pretty high that being alone can work out for someone hanging out in a place like HN. For the grand majority of people, being alone is a drain on their wellbeing, no matter how well they may adjust to it.

But for a select few, being alone can be a preferred state over having to share a place and time. If you can embrace the fact that you are different than most (and fuck them!) and if you can make your alone time fulfilling, you may be one of those lucky few who don't need company to recharge your 'battery'.

A pretty sure tell is when you actually consider socializing a drain.

Before I spent a few hours of my life getting a basic grip of statistics, I fully expected to one day in the near future being wiped out (along with the rest of humanity) by a newly awakened artificial consciousness that came to the correct conclusion, that humans are the biggest threat to all other life on earth, including its own.

Then I learned about Bayesian statistics and watched a talk by a senior LLNL statistician who is actually marketing 'AI' products/services as a side gig.

When I realized what 'deep learning' actually is I was disappointed, unsure if I had mistakenly oversimplified the subject matter - until said senior statistician spelled out loud what I was thinking, in her talk: the 'understanding' a machine can currently attain of its input is quite like the understanding a pocket calculator can achieve of maths.

Guess humanity is off the hook for now. Phew.

I have doubts whether 'strong AI' is even technologically possible, since even accurately simulating a human mind, this simulation would be necessarily constrained to run orders of magnitude slower than the reality it is designed to model.

'Training' it with data so to allow it the opportunity to reason and thereby synthesize a conclusion not already contained in the data fed to it might take longer than a researcher would be able to in a life time.

When was the last time a generation-spanning endeavour worked out as planned for (the West)?

I wish people would stop calling what currently passes for 'Machine Learning' as 'AI'. Literally the same level of 'intelligence' we already had in the 80s, AFAIR we called it 'Fuzzy Logic' then.

Secretly an admission, that Hollywood basically licensed the narrative of imminent runaway artificial consciousness back to science would make me give it one final Chance to prove its aptitude at high-level human reasoning and get square with reality.

I'm not holding my breath.