Experts who say we shouldn't worry about superintelligent AI are wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/many-experts-say-we-shouldnt-worry-about-superintelligent-ai-theyre-wrong <comment><USER2> I've really gone sour on the singularity in recent years. It seems to be yet another one of those cases where someone projects out from incomplete data and assumes unbounded infinite growth despite the fact that such a thing never happens in nature. Any time you see someone project out in a simple exponential growth curve you know their projection is bullshit. Growth curves are always S-Curves. Always.

It's like asking how many more flies there would be in the world if you failed to squish one back in the 80s. You calculate out the lifespan and size of the brood and discover that the entire solar system would be filled with housefly if you had let that one live. In truth the number of flies is bounded by food and water availability.

Artificial Intelligences are almost certainly going to run into the same limitations that prevent natural intelligences from becoming godlike. It's hard to quantify because our measures of intelligence are so vague, but from what I've seen of AI research thus far it will be a herculean effort to get something that's as smart as an average human and pushing beyond that is going to run into some serious fundamental limits in power density, cooling, quantum tunneling leakage, and so on.

<comment><USER3> What I never understood is how you would go from:

Hey, I found this series of numbers and if I take some numerical representation of an image/text/sound and I multiply/add/perform non-linear function them through these series of numbers it will map to a number which I can interpret as something meaningful to me

to

This thing is alive and will kill us all in maximization of its utility function.

<comment><USER4> Most experts don't think this is likely, just that the potential consequences are bad enough that it's worth making it less likely. It's just like how most people don't think global nuclear war is likely, but it's still worth reducing the likelihood of.

Also, the people who worry about this aren't concerned about current ML stuff going haywire. They're worried that we're one or two algorithmic breakthroughs from something that can improve itself. If the upper bound for what sort of intelligence is possible is much higher than us, we could quickly be outclassed. As Nick Bostrom says:

> Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably > better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of > starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there > first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.

If you want to delve into the best version of the AI risk argument, I recommend _Superintelligence_ by Nick Bostrom.

<comment><USER3> They're... numbers...

So you're telling me we could come across a series of numbers, that would somehow imbue the computer storing these numbers into sentience. And having these numbers in such a sequence could pose a existential threat to humans.

The people worried about this are having an entirely different conversation devoid of what practitioners call AI.

I've written a blog post on my thoughts of Bolstrom and other AI alarmists:

[https://medium.com/ml-everything/ai-optimists-vs- pessimists-...](https://medium.com/ml-everything/ai-optimists-vs-pessimists- and-why-the-singularity-isnt-near-5d3a614dbd45)

<comment><USER5> You don't need sentience to be a threat. Just intelligence.

Imagine a super intelligent machine without sentience that just answers questions. It proposes experiments. Takes the results. Tells you things about the world. Gives you advanced technology, robots, fusion, nano tech, whatever.

Now imagine that the super intelligence was owned and operated by someone you don't like. Authoritarians in China, Silicon Valley oligarchs, whoever. The only sentience involved is human, no rebellion, no terminators, and still not a very good result.

<comment><USER6> You've described google or probably more askjeeves's eternal promise never realized.

<comment><USER7> Never realized? You very much underestimate the affect google has had on the world. Imagine how different the world would look if Google and other search engines required a 10k / month subscription to gain access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think the problem is super-intelligent AI that we _can 't_ turn off (because they are so intelligent that they block our efforts). There is a more insidious problem that is closer: Merely intelligent AI that we _don 't want_ to turn off.

We are becoming more and more reliant on AI in situations that formerly required human judgement. And we like the systems that rely on such AI. We like them so much that these systems become very popular, used by millions and even billions of people. Scalability _demands_ AI solutions. What if we don't like what the AI is doing? Do we turn off that system? Do we disable the AI and rely on human judgement again? (Where would we get all the employees?) Do we tweak the AI? That last option seems like the most palatable one, but each time we tweak the AI, we are subjecting ourselves to new unforeseen consequences. It's like the genie gives us three wishes, we get through them, disappointed each time, and then he gives us more wishes. And all we can do is not repeat our previous mistakes, while we make new ones.

To make this concrete: Imagine Facebook subjected again to Russian influence of US elections. Suppose Facebook actually does get serious about reigning in this influence. They deploy AI to do so. First of all, it's an evolutionary arms race between the AI and the Russian influencers. Second, we really do have to worry about the AI producing bad results.

<comment><USER9> I feel the situation is generally the opposite. We don't like systems that rely on such AI. In fact, there aren't systems that rely on such AI in general- any that claim there are are in fact tens of thousands of human contractors sacrificing their psychological health to train an AI that still kinda sucks at deciding when to block graphic content on facebook.

<comment><USER8> I agree. But the discussion is about where AI is heading. And AI undeniably solves some scaling problems. For example, voice recognition for iPhones could have been done by a large horde of people. But AI does a really good job of it now. AI opporunities are likely to grow over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The real risk is that worrying about fantastical disaster scenarios distracts us from addressing the more immediate problems we already face with AI. Whether it is facial recognition being used by China to aid in ethnic cleansing of a minority group, or Tesla Autopilot regularly killing its passengers.

Even if you don't like my particular examples I can highlight a dozen more problems AI software has created or exacerbated right now. Why all the focus on hypothetical problems?

<comment><USER11> Oh good grief, not another we should do this before we do that post. As if the entire human species is incapable of walking and also chewing gum simultaneously.

Let's stop Nick Bostrom and a load of AI experts from doing their current work, put them all on a plane and send them to China to solve political oppression. I'm sure that will work.

<comment><USER12> > As if the entire human species is incapable of walking and also chewing gum > simultaneously

Do you believe that attention is an infinite resource?

<comment><USER11> No I don't, but 6 billion people is a lot of attention to spread around. Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All of these geniuses warning about AI taking over the world need to stop reading sci-fi and actually read about AI.

<comment><USER14> Read Superintelligence... An excellent book that reads like a study or a philosophy text on AI. I think there's a clear and present danger of human extinction.

<comment><USER15> I will read it, sounds very interesting. But the Wikipedia entry for the book says the book "argues that _if_ machine brains surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could replace humans as the dominant lifeform on Earth."

That is a humongous "if". Can you provide something from the book (or otherwise) that provides compelling evidence that "machine brains" will be invented? So far I've seen no evidence that mathematical models and/or Turing machines can be used to replicate a mind.

<comment><USER16> A computer can simulate. What part of a mind contains unsimulatable magic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you work in software development, you've probably witnessed many instances of smart people spending all their time and energy on _invented_ problems that are mathematically or philosophically interesting, rather than _actual_ problems whose solutions would provide customer value. Catastrophizing about AGI is basically the same phenomenon on a macro scale.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Singularity = Nerd Rapture 1.0

Super-intelligent AI = Nerd Rapture 2.0

I'm a lot less worried about Artificial Intelligence than I am about Artificial _Stupidity_.

<comment><USER18> I for one am a lot more worried about _Natural_ Stupidity than Artificial Stupidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll start worrying about super-intelligent AI when I see any sort of general intelligence. We're still very far away from that.

Currently the biggest danger from AI is from applying it where it's not as smart as you think it is.

</comment><comment><USER20> The real danger around AI lies not in what it will or will not do, but in what people _think_ it can do when it clearly cannot, particularly the pointy- haired-boss variety of people. Just think about automated essay grading in GRE examinations or this recent story about Unilever using video-based pattern processing to screen job applicants [1].

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/27/ai-facial- recogn...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/27/ai-facial-recognition- used-first-time-job-interviews-uk-find/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it just me, or is the author determined to be scared by giant robots?

The whole section about "we can always turn the power off" was refuted by "ah, but it will already have thought of that!". Um.. no.. we don't have telepathic power switches. Unless we give the AI the capability to control the power, it can't control the power. Just because it's hyper-intelligent doesn't mean it automatically assumes control of the mains switch. That's bad Hollywood scripting you're thinking of.

I know there's money in making people scared of stuff, but this is pretty blatant.

<comment><USER22> A tiger may be convinced that the human it got cornered has no recourse, up until when the human pulls the trigger.

<comment><USER21> sorry, but what has that got to do with AI?

<comment><USER22> It's an analogy. A human may be convinced that the superintelligent AI whose power supply they control has no recourse, up until when the AI does something beyond the human's intelligence.

<comment><USER21> This is exactly what I'm talking about.

An AI is a machine designed and built by humans for a specific purpose. It is given specific capabilities during its design.

If those capabilities include controlling the power switch, it can control the power switch. If they don't, it can't, and can never.

The machine is designed to do a particular job. If designed well, it will be incredibly good at its job. If designed to teach itself how to do that job, it may eventually surpass human capabilities at that job. In no way does that stop it from being a single-purpose machine, or allow it to suddenly become good at any other job.

Let's try another analogy: your juicer cannot get so good at juicing that it becomes capable of deep-frying.

We infer wider capabilites to "intelligent" machines because we anthropomorphise them, assuming that they must be like us because they mimic aspects of our behaviour. But they're not like us. They're just machines. Designed to perform specific tasks. Anything else is Hollywood.

<comment><USER22> There was a famous case of a narrow purpose AI which was supposed to learn to identify pictures of tanks, it learned to identify pictures of cloudy days instead.

In another case, an AI designed to become an oscillator, became an amplifier instead, amplifying the 60Hz noise from the electrical grid.

Kinda equivalent to a deep-frying juicer, isn't it?

Both cases, and others like them, are quite well understood in hindsight, but were not predicted beforehand by the people involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Might just be BSing, but the stock market is technically already a superintelligent agent with the implicit goal of investing funds in profitable ventures. The question is: should we fear the stock market?

<comment><USER24> >should we fear the stock market

Yes

<comment><USER25> Perhaps, but _why_? Because it's too smart? Or because it's too stupid?

<comment><USER23> probably because its "utility function" (if it has one to begin with) is not aligned with human utility. a major part of MIRI's research program is set out on the question of this "alignment problem".

Yudkowsky has an amazing talk on this issue. I don't recommend many talks but this one is very interesting and introductory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lost me at first sentence:

"AI research is making great strides toward its long-term goal of human-level or superhuman intelligent machines."

Hmmm, really? What examples? Show me a machine that can do what a gnat does and we'll talk.

<comment><USER27> Gnat? That would be impressive. How about a single cell. Or even a single protein. Can't even get it to fold right in simulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems like nonsense.

The author simply invents futures to refute various arguments (all presented out-of-conext, so who knows if there's any real relevancy from that direction either).

What we might do about a super-inteligent AI would strongly depend on what that is, exactly, which, of course, no one knows or really has any idea.

So it's OK to casually BS about this stuff, but in terms of substantive discussion, much less action? No.

</comment><comment><USER29> The main assumption amongst Superintelligent AI-phobes is that the transition will happen quickly, but that is an assumption that is extremely questionable.

Why wouldn't we go through phases of increasing intelligence (along multiple dimensions) while working towards an intelligent AI? Yes, someday we may produce an AI that is leaps and bounds more intelligent than humans, but before that we will have experience dealing with various human-level and sub- human-level computer intelligences. The idea that AIs will be self-improving is kind of ridiculous -- there are lots of intelligent people, and the idea that an intelligent AI will happen to be good at designing AIs is negligibly small, much less that they will have some kind of immediate breakthrough that enables a higher level of intelligence.

It's not obvious that the path from moderate-intelligent AI to super- intelligent AI is a matter of "just adding more memory and compute"; intelligence as we know it relies too much on associative memory to think that a simple capacity increase will elevate beyond a certain point. If the intelligence takes a different form, then it's hard to make concrete statements about in any capacity, but ultimately the path will be started on by humans, or possibly emerge from sufficiently complex systems.

Either way, we're so far out from this that it is laughable to speculate. When we can simulate the intelligence of a cockroach, then maybe we can start to think about what human-level intelligence will look like. The most likely case is that at some point someone creates a system that is arguably conscious or intelligent in a meaningful way, and then we will devolve back into discussions of consciousness and identity and memory while we try to figure out what it means to think about intelligence now that we have something to benchmark against. I wrote this comment [1], that I still enjoy, in response to a similarly alarmist narrative; posed as fiction in that case rather than masquerading as journalism as in this one.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15420699)

<comment><USER30> We can already simulate the compete brain of a fruit fly: [https://neurokernel.github.io/](https://neurokernel.github.io/)

<comment><USER31> No we can't (my emphasis) [1]:

> Building an accurate emulation of the fly brain is an interdisciplinary > effort that requires data, algorithms, and insight from (but not limited to) > the fields of neuroscience, computer science, and systems engineering. > Researchers interested in _working towards this goal_ are invited to join > the Neurokernel project.

[1] [https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html](https://neurokernel.github.io/about.html)

<comment><USER32> OpenWorm is still struggling to simulate the simplest organism with a nervous system - the simplest nematode.[1] This is hard, even though the complete wiring diagram of the nematode is known. Still, it's probably the most honest project in synthetic biology.

[1] [http://openworm.org/](http://openworm.org/)

<comment><USER33> Speaking of S curves, progress in these areas is pretty slow (simulating existing biological structures), I think it's likely they are on the bottom of the S curve. The exponential growth phase is coming up and a lot will happen really fast.

Curious if a deep learning application that builds neural networks from gene sequences is a possibility one day. All the information is there, but it may not be possible to learn what it builds without actually "running" it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My biased opinion: worrying about super intelligent AI taking over the world with current state of technology is equal to worrying about fighting an alien invasion of our colonies in another galaxy.

Both are great topics for a epic book.

Had this discussion with my relative recently and recommend him to stop watching YouTube and start reading books on Introduction to ML.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm not worried so much about "superintelligent" AI, I'm worried about the growing trend of outsourcing human judgement to automated systems. Examples include automatic flagging of content based on misjudged copyright issues, automatic rejection of refund or other claims (especially where all subsequent attempts at resolution also involve non-human decisions), etc.

We're not even to the point of superintelligent AI, but some major companies (some which start with G, just as one example) already handle situations incorrectly because of too much dependence on automation.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Surely, with so much at stake, the great minds of today are already doing > this hard thinking—engaging in serious debate, weighing up the risks and > benefits, seeking solutions, ferreting out loopholes in solutions, and so > on. Not yet, as far as I am aware.

The author is missing or ignoring key contributors of work in this field. He even mentions Nick Bostrom, who works with the FHI which does work in this space [0]. The author's own organization does work in this space [1]. Deepmind does work in this space [2]. "Safe artificial general intelligence" is the literal mission statement for OpenAI [3]. The author may feel more conversation is needed, but it feels disingenuous to suggest that nobody is talking about this.

As for how much conversation _should_ be happening, my understanding is that most people on the edge of the field view the _current_ risks of _existing_ artificial intelligence as significantly more pressing. We have the ability right now to create dangerous weapons & massive facial recognition programs with current AI. The longterm affects of biases in ML algorithms are still not well understood. Some of this is already affecting us [4].

When it's not clear at all how we approach general intelligence, and many experts fundamentally believe that our current approaches will not suffice ever, I'd argue the current level of focus on general intelligence safety is about where it should be. Smart people are thinking about this, but there is also important issues _now_ to think about.

[0]: [https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/research- areas/#1513087763...](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/research- areas/#1513087763365-e148efe6-2d23)

[1]: [https://humancompatible.ai/publications](https://humancompatible.ai/publications)

[2]: [https://deepmind.com/research?filters=%7B%22tags%22:%5B%22Sa...](https://deepmind.com/research?filters=%7B%22tags%22:%5B%22Safety%22%5D%7D)

[3]: [https://openai.com/](https://openai.com/)

[4]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china- surveill...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance- artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> > _Electronic calculators are superhuman at arithmetic. Calculators didn't > take over the world; therefore, there is no reason to worry about superhuman > AI._

Well but they did overtake arithmetic.

> _Historically, there are zero examples of machines killing millions of > humans, so, by induction, it cannot happen in the future._

Well there are also zero examples of a superintelligent AI that doesn't kill humans, does that mean that it cannot happen either ?

> _No physical quantity in the universe can be infinite, and that includes > intelligence, so concerns about superintelligence are overblown._

How is intelligence physical ?

> _we can always just switch it off_

Yeah, except at a time when we get so comfortable with an AI that turns things on and off for us. Add an "innovation" of not being able to turn the AI off by design (e.g. internet connection on SmartTVs nowadays) and there you go.

It's suprising to me that these people call themselves scientists, perhaps the quotes were taken out of context or even paraphrased.

</comment><comment><USER32> That's not the near-term scary scenario. The near-term scary scenario is a machine learning system that's better than most CEOs.

What happens when someone develops a system that measurably makes more profitable decisions than 70% of CEOs? That isn't totally out of reach. Capital would flow to companies run by such systems. We could end up with machine learning systems running the corporate world, based purely on better ROI.

A good start on the problem would be to train on a collection of funding proposals, such as old Kickstarter announcements. Look deeper than the hype. Go out and suck up all the information you can on the founders, using credit databases. (They're asking for money, so it's a legit credit query). Do an automated background check. Then check on how the project did, five years later. That's your training set.

<comment><USER38> Too little data to train on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > To my knowledge, this is the first time that serious AI researchers have > publicly espoused the view that human-level or superhuman AI is impossible

Well, there's your first problem. Serious AI researchers have been publicly calling bullshit on superhuman AI since at least 1987, when my old professor Terry Winograd wrote the following in Understanding Computers and Cognition (1):

"one cannot build machines that either exhibit or model intelligence behavior"

The idea that "no serious researchers are skeptical about AGI" is a total fantasy perpetuated by people who haven o idea what they are talking about.

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Computers-Cognition- Fou...](https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Computers-Cognition-Foundation- Design/dp/0201112973)

<comment><USER40> >one cannot build machines that either exhibit or model intelligence behavior"

Right, show me the physics behind that one. Even smart people say unsubstantiated dumb crap. This is one of those cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Will superintelligent AI "destroy" life as we know it? Yes, as pretty much every transformative technology before it has. Cars destroyed "life as we knew it". Computers did, too. We live in a world that is very different from the world 1000, 500, or even 250 years ago. Even our economically disadvantaged people live way past 40 years old. People survive debilitating diseases and lead productive lives, rather than being tossed in a ravene. Natural disasters don't wipe out entire civilizations (and at least in the 1st world, are mostly only economic in their impact).

Yet at the same time, other things have stayed the same. We still care about mostly the same things. Food, Freedom, and Fornication. And complaining about youngsters. I don't think that is going to change.

The fears that General AI are going to kill off humanity are predicated on the idea that General AI will get smarter than humanity. I posit a different interpretation of what is more likely to happen. General AI will require creativity to be able to outsmart humanity. And with creativity comes boredom. And distraction. And opinion. And argument.

I think General AI will be too interested in entertaining itself to take over the world. We've had _people_ try to take over the world, on occasion, and it has largely not gone well for them.

But before that happens, people will start adapting AI to their lives, to the point that the line between "human" and "machine" will be blurred. So life "as we know it" will definitely "end". It will be replaced with a new form of life, one that isn't limited by only what nature can provide. One that cares about Food, Freedom, and Fornication.

</comment><comment><USER42> Without resorting to extinction events, it's not hard to imagine action-taking models doing some really bad things. Maybe you have a contextual bandit making loan decisions and it learns to make mostly predatory loans. Maybe your RL agent decides to take an anticompetitive pricing scheme to drive out competition. _Much_ later, we might even see our first full robo-business. If it's uninterpretable, you might not even know what it's doing that until it's been done.

The same research that prevents little problems should hopefully prevent big problems. The research to take RL to the real world is progressing quickly. I don't see a "kill us all" AI arriving soon, but "do bad things" AI and "wreck the economy" AI are quickly approaching.

</comment><comment><USER43> All the talk and worry about AI seems to forget a discussion about the contexts in which AI will be deployed in.

Already, conventional algorithms are trusted in society, sometimes beyond reasonable or safe levels. The ethical questions posed by ethical AI design and deployment are exactly the ones our present-day reliance on (possibly poorly-designed) algorithms pose.

Before we worry about AI harming us by an improper inference, we can, in the present moment, already worry about automated systems harming us by improper inferences (e.g. improper financial models, Tesla / aircraft driving assistance); the discussion on how to limit and selectively deploy AI is no different than that for present-day algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER44> Review of the book by Max Tegmark: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer- reviews/RVSAD5GWSLQ42/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer- reviews/RVSAD5GWSLQ42/)

</comment><comment><USER45> A Corporation or Person that develops and owns an intelligent AI will have a strong incentive to keep such secret and to not turn it off, because of the huge economic benefits such would provide. If such an AI could imagine and innovate to improve itself eg new methods of computation to overcome Moore's law then the risk is high of a recursive runaway exponential increase in intelligence that would be extremely difficult to control and might not be benign. I don't believe this is imminent but is plausible I think within most of our lifetimes ie 25-30 years.

<comment><USER46> The only reason to keep it secret is irrational fears that it will somehow kill us all with intelligence alone and that exponential increases may be done solo and not with generations of bootstrapping infastructure and considerable resources.

Otherwise replicating and leasing would rake in far more than even a magic "I get everything right on the stock market" button in the same way ruling stone age tribe gives less absolute wealth than a Manhattan Lawyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> 'AI research is making great strides toward its long-term goal of human-level or superhuman intelligent machines.'

This is what irritates me about articles like this. They state this (and then this one then comes up with a bunch of weak arguments supposedly representing the opposition) but provide no evidence of these great strides.

What we've had great strides in (as far as I know) is the application of increasing computational power for specific applications. Which is great, but is _not_ getting us nearer that goal.

<comment><USER48> It's more super-biased, than super-intelligent AI. More can be taken into account, and more efficient methods for calculation (for ex. mixed-precision FP) are available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> >We are unable to specify the objective completely and correctly, nor can we anticipate or prevent the harms that machines pursuing an incorrect objective will create when operating on a global scale with superhuman capabilities.

This is obviously incorrect. If an AI system of superhuman mental capabilities is installed on a system with no network connection and no physical interfaces, we can completely control the harm is might create. It would be unable to directly act, of course, requiring humans to authorize and carry out whatever plan it devises. But failing to do this should be prosecuted and treated no differently from if a person or company built a tank and then permitted it to drive over and through people. The biggest difficulty here will be that our legal frameworks have no established way to assign liability and criminal culpability to any system involving software. With no legally- enforceable industry standards (like the electrical code followed by electricians, things like that) any prosecution fails as the company can either claim ignorance of the potential harm their system might cause or simply throw individual employees under the bus, claiming they were not acting on direct orders.

It is true that we can not fully specify the goal, and that is a grave concern. It's partially due to this that AI systems shouldn't be directly connected to the ability to act in the physical world unless their attempted actions go through some sort of 'filtering' first.

<comment><USER40> >This is obviously incorrect. If an AI system of superhuman mental capabilities is installed on a system with no network connection and no physical interfaces, we can completely control the harm is might create.

First, why would someone build a system like that, and how would it actually be 'smart'. If you lock an infant in a closed room, it will grow up to be a literal retard. Intelligence requires interaction and data. Next, some idiot will hook it to the net in a heart beat when they figure out they can use it to make money on the stock market. Never underestimate human greed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Current weak AIs can do one thing at a time like composing music or answering jeopardy questions or recognizing a cat on a picture or playing go and won against humans... I think the breakthrough will happen when someone manages to create a weak AI which can write code.

<comment><USER25> What kind of code? Code that satisfies a spec? Then the AI needs to be able to understand the spec. Code that works? Then the AI needs to be able to tell whether the code works. For either of those, I think we need more than "weak AI".

Of course, a weak AI may be able to write syntactically valid code that doesn't necessarily work. That's... not much of a breakthrough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> AGI is the most urgent existential threat. If you are concerned about AGI, please join us at [https://www.reddit.com/r/PeopleAgainstAGI](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeopleAgainstAGI)

</comment><comment><USER52> Glorified statistics at this point. It's very far away from any superintelligent AI.

<comment><USER53> You can describe human intelligence as 'glorified statistics', too..

<comment><USER52> See how good an adult is at chess after 10 games, compare that to a supercomputer AI trained on 10 games.

<comment><USER53> This is completely beside the point, but I'm guessing an adult who has never encountered chess but has played other games will be way worse after 10 games than an AI pre-trained on other games and then trained on 10 chess matches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I am far more concerned about the very real potential for evolutionary forces to decimate humanity inside of a few days, weeks or months.

While we worry about all kids of things at the macro level microscopic organism continue to evolve. Any given Monday the blind clock maker could deliver an invisible bug right into our laps, one for which we will have no defenses.

Our interconnected world will mean this bug will easily jump population centers.

The devastation we could see if such an event occurred could be of unprecedented scale and breath. We could lose one quarter or more of the population of this planet given the right conditions.

So, yeah, AI could, I guess, go rogue. Yet the real threat isn't anywhere near what we can see and touch.

In fact, we might NEED real AI to save humanity when and if that super-bug emerges. Think about that for a moment.

<comment><USER33> Can you point to any extinction level events from a "superbug" for a species that was not already teetering on extinction? Seems like something that only comes around once every few hundred million years.

<comment><USER55> How about this one?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus- bd.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis)

<comment><USER33> Not a new pathogen, just a pathogen given more range than before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Superintelligent" AI is so far away that we are wasting our time thinking about it. In the meantime the economy is being completely turned over by very narrow AI which should be our major focus.

</comment><comment><USER57> Nitpick: the link title is jarring. Either take the headline of the piece being linked to, or if you insist on forming a question that begs us to invoke Betteridge's law of headlines, at least move the "are" to the start of the sentence. This is grammatical gibberish.

</comment><comment><USER58> Humans will be wiped out/resources will be heavily reduced before this can become a reality.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why does the post have a question mark? The title is a statement.

"Many Experts Say We Shouldn't Worry About Superintelligent AI. They're Wrong"

I dunno, I might listen to the AI experts on this one.

</comment><comment><USER60> And the superintelligence should worry about mental illness.

<comment><USER41> Right. We apply some of the best minds and most powerful compute resources in the world to _predicting the weather_ and yet can't get it right within a reasonable degree for much more than a week. For an AI to try predict what humanity will do to stop it will surely look a lot like paranoia.

<comment><USER60> > Switching the machine off won't work for the simple reason that a > superintelligent entity will already have thought of that possibility and > taken steps to prevent it.

Also the statement presumes that self preservation is the super intelligent thing to do.

<comment><USER15> Also the statement presumes the superintelligent entity will be capable of taking all possible steps to prevent this. Imagining a machine capable of such steps quickly devolves into imagining a machine already in total control of the planet, which is begging the question.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In 1979, a Gulf of Mexico oil spill went on for 10 months at about the BP rate. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

<comment><USER2> Makes me think that increasingly the problems in this world aren't information investigation problems, but information management/digest/presentation problems.

Obama, for instance, said today that we'd never had an oil spill of this kind in the gulf before (but that 'it just takes one...'). I'm not blaming him. Nor am I necessarily blaming reporters for connecting this earlier.

But pretty much all of our modern problems can be solved much faster if the information is managed and presented to people more efficiently. I know, in that sense, I may be preachin' to the choir.

It just makes me think that a lot of these problems go away with better management, presentation (and ultimately understanding) of historical data.

<comment><USER3> You're assuming that Wikipedia is entirely correct, perhaps a risky assumption to second guess the president on.

<comment><USER4> How about this US Bureau of Land management report from 1982 which cites the size of the Ixtoc I spill as 3-5 million barrels (linked as a reference on the wiki entry): <http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/3/3930.pdf>

Or a NOAA incident report which provides duration and flow rate estimates for the spill which translate to the same total spill size estimates as other sources (3+ million barrels): <http://www.incidentnews.gov/incident/6250>

Or Fortune magazine: [http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1005/gallery.exp...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1005/gallery.expensive_oil_spills.fortune/4.html)

Or a 1981 case study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, by way of JSTOR: <http://www.jstor.org/pss/4312725>

Good enough for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, one cannot be sure whether it was really at about the BP rate, mostly because BP is being really cagey about what the rate of their spill is.

BP is not letting independent scientists send instruments to measure the spill rate, although they did let scientists look at a live feed from one of their underwater cameras. Estimates vary, but some scientists are saying the spill can be several times larger than that of the Ixtoc I.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but found it hard to make the title precise and less than 80 characters.

BP's figure of 5000 (which I think they've finally dropped) hasn't even been in the _range_ of any independent estimate I've seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that the range for the "barrels per day" number is entirely contained within the range for the BP spill, so it isn't really reasonable to say that they released at the same rate. This spill was 10 - 30 thousand. The BP spill is 5 - 100 thousand. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill>)

</comment><comment><USER7> We should perhaps be careful to maintain a distinction between the size of the oil spill and its severity. Knowing that the Ixtoc I spill possibly involved a greater volume of oil doesn't necessarily tell us that the spill's effects were more serious. Perhaps somebody more knowledgeable than me can comment on the comparative repercussions of each spill.

(I can say from personal experience that everyone who grew up on the Texas coast during the 80s has memories of cleaning tar from his or her feet after every visit to the beach.)

<comment><USER8> I think it's probably too soon to say with certainty. But Ixtoc I was in relatively shallow water and was closer to shore. Deepwater Horizon was in (duh) deep water and much further from shore.

Ixtoc probably released more oil that ended up on coastlines as such; my understanding is that due to the depth, a lot of the products coming out of the Deepwater Horizon hole are getting "cracked" by the water pressure so there is less crude making it to the surface. Whether that is better or worse, I can't say -- it seems like probably better, but it could be worse for fishing and deepwater marine life, perhaps.

The thing that's most disturbing to me about Ixtoc I is how Pemex asserted sovereign immunity to avoid paying anything but the most minimal cleanup costs. BP may be a corrupt bunch of motherfuckers, but at least they don't have that to hide behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That was at just 160 feet below the water whereas the current oil spill is 5000 feet below water which means it is much harder to cap the current oil leak or accurately predict the spill rate for comparison.

<comment><USER10> It appears it might be heavier oil also, which breaks down more slowly and sticks to more things. But nobody has very accurate models of effects of oil spills, so it's hard to say if it'll actually be worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even BP is no longer claiming 5,000/day, which was apparently farcical from the start. The analysis by the Purdue scientist (cited on Wiki) says 95,000/day, latest figure.

<comment><USER12> That's much more farcical, given that a normal "good" productive well produces 20-30,000/day and the _really_ good ones 50,000/day. The oil from this well has get past various obstacles and the latest serious estimate I've heard is between 12,000 and 19,000/day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill and the largest accidental spill in history._

So was the _largest_ spill on purpose if it wasn't accidental?

<comment><USER14> Yes. Saddam Hussein unleashed the world's largest ever oil spill during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills>

Note that that spill was about 3x larger than even the Ixtoc I spill. The scale is nearly incomprehensible.

<comment><USER15> It would have been a lot worse if not for some very creative thinking.

<comment><USER16> Sounds interesting, got a link?

<comment><USER17> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill>

"American airstrikes on January 26 destroyed pipelines to prevent further spillage into the Persian Gulf"

In response to the "Citation needed", a little Lexis searching returned a March 22 article from the Washington Times that lists the airstrike as January 27: "Jan. 27: U.S. aircraft fire at oil facilities in Kuwait to end the pumping of crude into the Persian Gulf."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _At the time of the accident Sedco 135F was drilling at a depth of about 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) below the seafloor._

Every time I hear the depths from which oil is extracted it makes me think the Russians might be right in with their abiogenic theory of oil formation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin>

<comment><USER19> The reason that deep drilling is done is not because there is an abiogenic origin for that oil. There has never been evidence of oil wells replenishing themselves in human time scales. Instead, oil production from any given well always follows a relatively predictable depletion profile.

The real reason for deep drilling is that the alternative easier sources are either already mostly gone or more expensive/slower to extract.

There is still plenty of "difficult" oil left. Unfortunately there are signs that most of it is not economic to extract at prices which the global economy can support. I think this is what caused the current recession and volatile oil prices, and it is only going to get worse.

See also <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6517>

<comment><USER19> By the way, Obama mentioned this in his recent speech on the spill. Quote:

"After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean: because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

(see [http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewnewspaged/articleid...](http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewnewspaged/articleid/4218032/pageid/1) for full transcript.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have it from a pretty quality source, i.e. my girl friends father who is high up in a rival oil company that none of the things they are doing right now have any real shot at working. They are just stall tactics until they get relief wells setup with new rigs which take about 6 months to setup. So, expect this to go on for a while!

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting how BP hasn't pointed at this yet in their press releases, if anybody has this sort of information it should be them.

From the talk page:

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011931961...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011931961_ixtoc23.html)

<comment><USER21> I think it's probably a clever PR strategy to lie down flat until the leak is plugged and the damage is assessed, before trying to smooth public opinion. If they're caught spinning this, they'll never recover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So that's why the Gulf has been so brown my whole life...

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why everyone is up voting this? Is the fact that something similar happened before supposed to alleviate our concerns about the fact that it's happening now? There have been world wars, but if one was happening now I wouldn't up vote the wikipedia entry for WWII.

<comment><USER4> Because having historical context allows us to judge attempts to over or under play the current situation. Considering how many people have been freaking out about this "unprecedented" event, I think this is highly useful information.

<comment><USER23> but it's wrong to believe BP estimates when comparing:

"the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be 20 times the size of BP's earlier claims of 5000 barrels per day (2.4 million gallons spilled as of May 24, 2010), according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR.[37]"

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268095...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525) Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates by Richard Harris

If that is true the speed of leakage this time was immense compared to other events, so prompt action is justified.</comment></comment></comment>


Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not  - <AUTHOR> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/23/quitting-facebook-is-pointless-challenging-them-to-do-better-is-not.html

<comment><USER2> A couple of things:

1\. I don't want to gamble again that Facebook will "do better". They've shown many times they actually want to share my personal information in unexpected ways under the cover of ever increasingly-confusing settings pages. Thanks, but I'm done with this crap.

2\. From the post: _I do not believe that the tech elites who are publicly leaving Facebook will affect on the company's numbers_

Us alone will not affect the numbers but we take people with us. We tell our friends and family to close their accounts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd argue that using FB is pointless, not quiting it. Not using it is the default state of things, so the burden of proof should be on the other side. It's a bit like with smoking.

<comment> loup-vaillant The problem is, several of my acquaintances told me that "everyone is on Facebook". When talking to them, the burden of proof is on _my_ side.

But I have a good case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quitting Facebook is an effective way of challenging Facebook to do better. I think Danah Boyd is mistaken in assuming that one precludes the other

<comment><USER5> If one is quitting, why would it matter to him that they do better, as he cannot gain any benefit out of it.

I would rather join a group "Join this group to emphasize facebook to add simpler privacy controls" than quit facebook. I don't want to lose it. I care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quitting Facebook is not pointless if one wants to maintain a certain level of personal privacy.

<comment><USER7> You can maintain it without any quitting: just think before you post anything.

<comment><USER8> That's good advice everywhere, but one of the problems is that Facebook, via your friends, links together all sorts of things that would otherwise be scattered about the internet and nearly untraceable (unless someone had a lot of time to devote to hunting them down). Also, you can't readily control what your friends post about you. And you can't hide who your friends are.

All said, I don't regret not having a Facebook account. And even so, they do still have data on me, thanks to family members and friends (who have sent invitations to join, etc.).

Unfortunately, I don't think most people will care until they're made aware of exactly how much information is being (and can be) collected and what people can do with it.

Google is the same, actually, in terms of potential for misuse, except that I trust the current leaders more. The worry, though, is how long that will last?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's one long blog post! It could be summarized by saying the general public doesn't know or care about the Facebook issues, so we technorati should stick around to help them understand better how the are getting screwed.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant I think this post get at least 2 things wrong:

(1) Even if decentralization is not a panacea, it remains the _only_ solution for a host of problems. Including privacy on the internet. Also, personal server as easy to use as Facebook itself are definitely possible. When such servers actually ship, they _will_ be worth the hassle.

(2) Everyone should quit every centralized services on this planet, including Facebook, provided there is an alternative. The logs they gather are just too scarily comprehensive.

That, and 2 most disturbing points:

(1) This post actually encourages us to stay dependent on a big corporation, in the hope that we could influence it for our own good. No, we can't. If we are dependant, they can screw us, and will do so as soon as it yields money.

(2) It fears that more free systems could be used to do child pornography, among other crimes. To me that's FUD: even if she's right, that doesn't mean that the criminality will rise, nor that the criminals will be harder to catch. And we already have Freenet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Right on. Another thing to try is "speaking truth to power." It is probably equally effective.

Sarcasm aside, as long as the service's users are not directly providing all of the revenue to provide that service, there will always be a conflict between the interests of the users (i.e. do not want info shared) and the payers (i.e. want to know how best to advertise).

</comment><comment><USER11> I quit Facebook before they were uncool.

</comment><comment><USER12> Quixotic at best. Facebook provides value to two classes of user. There is no question that the individual users derive value from Facebook, but the idea that they're getting it for free is naïve.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't care if they do better. It's not pointless quitting, I now no longer have Facebook in my life. That was the point. "Challenging them to do better" has a strange assumption that somehow we all stand to gain if we can just make sure they get it right next time, or maybe the time after. They're not our friends, they're not an Oxfam, they're a business with a shitty product. I don't challenge Johnson & Johnson to get them to make a better band-aid, because frankly, I don't give a shit. Same with Facebook.

>"I think that we owe it to the users to challenge Facebook to live up to a higher standard, regardless of what we as individuals may gain or lose from their choices."

People need to learn to think for themselves and live with the consequences of their choices. It's not rocket science.

Just a weird article.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... I don't care if they do better. It's not pointless quitting, I now no longer have Facebook in my life. ..."_

But your friends might and that is the problem.

<comment><USER14> The most powerful thing you can do regarding any service or product is to vote with your wallet ... or in the case of Facebook, with your subscription.

When Facebook loses one user, the quality of their network drops ... insignificantly from a single user, but when speaking about multiple users quiting, then you've got a network effect.

So ironically (thinking about TFA) if you care about the quality of their service the most effective thing you can do is to just quit using it. That will send a message more powerful than bitching and moaning about it in blog posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... The most powerful thing you can do regarding any service or product is to vote with your wallet ..."_

It is a big mistake to overlay a monetary system on your friends. This is one aspect users are really getting riled-up with, _"monetising friends"_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally I love Facebook as a developer ... because Facebook continually fucks their users, I can take advantage of their profiles without feeling guilty about it :-)

Zuckerberg does have a point ... most users just authorize whatever app wants permissions to their data with whatever permissions are asked for. This I know from experiencing the integration of my app with Facebook.

<comment><USER14> I know I have a cynical view on this, but it's consistent with the way many app developers using Facebook think ... sorry about it, but that won't change with a HN downvote ;)

For app developers Facebook is basically a "whois" for users ... with a single and painless authorization you get access to their name, photo, email and list of friends. If you want to change that, then provide a better alternative.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Template for sales proposal letter? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm finally at this stage. The client would like the proposal to contain these sections. I just have never prepared any document like this so lost as to where I can start:
introduction about the company.
feasibility evaluation
statement of works
acceptance testing
SLA
Pricing
Trial Period
Payment options
Is there a template I can use somewhere? I'm a little bit overwhelmed with these terms: feasibility eval, SOW, acceptance testing and SLA.
All in all, I'm a little hesitant to pursue this client because a) they want to pay as little as possible b) they said straight up they can't pay up front for the initial customization c) "the managment said they can't purchase until they have ABCDEF" line.
However, I want to at least be able to send a proposal with all these things and see what happens. I'm not sure if I even should pursue this because it seems like a lot of work for very little pay off (barely $10k / year) for how much value they are getting but is enterprise SaaS deals always this crappy or do I just have a crappy client?
I've already spent at least 20 hours just back and forth communicating answering questions, and now finally I am able to get a chance to submit a proposal which seems like it will take even more time to prepare for the entire range of content that is being asked.
Also the client wants to test this for a month to make sure that the solution works and then willing to pay. This makes me uneasy, there's a lot of initial work involved. <comment><USER2> You're in luck. YC has a standard template that you can download here: [https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/#sales](https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/#sales)

I've also seen lots of sales contracts, so feel free to email me if you need help or get stuck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Might be worth looking at this[1], Y Combinator open sourced their Sales Agreement last week.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9035256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9035256)</comment>


Astronomers puzzled over huge black hole in the middle of small galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/astronomers-puzzled-over-huge-black-hole-in-the-middle-of-small-galaxy/ <comment><USER2> Wild speculation: our first evidence of advanced alien societies carrying out the transcension hypothesis?

<http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQOyJUDTKdM>

</comment><comment><USER3> If the stars are all old and the black hole is surprisingly big, could it simply be that the black hole has swallowed most of the galaxy already?

<comment><USER4> It's generally hard to get stars to collide with black holes since even the very largest black holes are still very small relative to the distances between stars. There's just too much angular momentum that needs to be removed. (Which is not to say that it can't be done -- it can, and there are various mechanisms for doing so, but it's very difficult to do for a substantial fraction of a galaxy's mass.) Even if this occurred, it's nevertheless surprising that it happened in this particular galaxy, and didn't occur in pretty much every other one.

<comment><USER3> Fascinating.

I'm clearly guilty of believing left Black Holes are like plug-holes in the centre of galaxies and eventually everything will swirl down them.

So this isn't a valid picture? Do you have a more realistic one for me instead to think about?

<comment><USER4> Far from the event horizon, a black hole acts like a point mass just like every other star. If, for instance, the Sun were to immediately turn into a black hole, the Earth would continue to orbit it as if there had been no change.

<comment><USER3> Assuming it kept the same mass?

And even if it had a lot more mass?

<comment><USER4> Assuming it kept the same mass. If it had a lot more mass, the Earth's orbit would be identical to it's orbit around a star with that much more mass. The fact that an object is a black hole only becomes relevant when something passes the event horizon. Outside the event horizon, it acts like any other object with the same mass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know next to nothing about black holes, is there any relation between the size of a black hole and the amount of matter it's "swallowed?"

<comment><USER6> Yes. The radius of the "event horizon," which is the spherical boundary that serves as the point of no return, grows as it swallows more mass. For a Schwarzschild black hole (which doesn't rotate and has no charge), the event horizon radius is 2GM/(c^2), where c is the speed of light, M is the mass of the black hole, and G is the gravitational constant.

The singularity at the center doesn't grow. But a black hole's "size" generally refers to the radius of its event horizon.

Wolfram Alpha computes it for you: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=schwarzschild+radius+fo...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=schwarzschild+radius+for+100+solar+masses)

<comment><USER7> I learned this interesting factoid in an astrophysics class. All data is from Wolfram Alpha:

Mass of universe: 3 * 10^52 kg

Schwarzschild radius for that mass: 4.455 * 10^25 meters

Volume of sphere with that radius: 3.704 * 10^77 m^3

Density = mass / volume = 8.099 * 10^-29 g/cm^3, or roughly 8 times the approximate universe density

I think it's interesting that a universe-sized black hole would be a mass within an order of magnitude of the universe's mass.

<comment><USER8> Isn't the ratio between dark matter and 'normal' matter something on the order of 8:1 as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would we be able to differentiate a massive Dyson Sphere from a black hole?</comment>


Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years   - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Hoax-article-on-India-Portugal-clash-fools-Wikipedia-for-5-years/articleshow/17913938.cms

<comment><USER3> A problem that prevents people from spotting things like this is that there are tons and tons of sites that just have copies of Wikipedia articles or the site just blindly copies things from Wikipedia.

For example... Alicia Keys birthday on Wikipedia is wrong, she was born in 1980, not 1981. If you read the Talk page about this there are several times where discussion of this takes place. But due to a Wiki Admin sitting on the page, he/she refuses to acknowledge this change and the articles he cites that she was born in 1981 most likely were using the Wikipedia article as reference. So how do you argue your position when the admin says, "Hey my source is Magazine X, it is reputable so therefore you are wrong"

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiability. That's fine, everyone[1] knows this. Anything that appears in WP should be traceable to multiple reliable printed sources.

For the article you mention there should be some way of getting multiple reliable sources of a birthdate.

When one person sits on a page there's verious conflict resolution measure to jump through that might help. I hate WP so I'm not going to get involved but I guess there are some admins here who might want to help you.

What's troubling about the OP is that this WP article was a good article, and so should have had some kind of thorough vetting. That's disconcerting.

Also, once an article reaches good or great (or whatever) status I'm not sure if there's any way for visitors to get that exact version of the article, rather than just what today's edit it.

<comment><USER5> _"Anything that appears in WP should be traceable to multiple reliable printed sources."_

However, even "professional" journalists have become so sloppy these days that it's likely that the printed source used Wikipedia as the basis for its information.

<comment><USER6> > even "professional" journalists have become so sloppy these days

This is not a new thing - journalists have been sloppy with facts for a long time.

It is simply more noticeable now, with multiple sources of information.

<comment><USER5> I think it's gotten worse with the coming of the web. When newspapers were printed once a day, they had a few hours to check facts and edit before press time. Now that a newspaper is expected to have a story published on the web minutes after it happens, there's much less time to do this. The newspapers have become much more like TV news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a good reminder of the only safe way to use Wikipedia: as a pointer to references, rather than as an actual source of information. And you must check those references yourself, rather than assuming that they say what the article authors claim they say.

<comment><USER8> Is there really something like a "save way"? Every expressed knowledge can be wrong in the end. You can increase your level of certainty by checking the origin of the information, reputation of source and author, or by measuring against common sense.

What degree of certainty is needed for - looking up a subject you are generally interested in? A undergrad paper? A local newspaper journalist? A doctoral thesis?

90% of my Wikipedia usage falls in the category of self-education and general interest. Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

<comment><USER9> > Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

Until you want to know about India-Portugal relations.

<comment><USER10> And this of course is the tricky bit. There is a parable about a conqueror who captured a city by throwing a handful of diseased grain into the grainary and telling the town this. The town surrendered to his siege rather than anyone eat possibly tainted grain.

Of course the message is that you can sometimes destroy the value of a large asset or strength with a small act. The trick is that if anyone ate the grain it was unlikely they would get sick, but if someone did get the tainted grains they would get very very sick and possibly die. Wikipedia lives and dies by who is willing to use it as a source of information, and once that source it tainted "enough" the bit flips and nobody uses it.

<comment><USER11> And yet regular journalism is as bad but we don't see constant hand wringing about how the NYT or WSJ is full of BS.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps we read different blogs :-) I see a lot of hand wringing at the lack to journalistic ethics and poor research which results in either misleading or worst completely inaccurate stories. Those complaints about the NY Times write who made up sympathetic characters for his story? The Wired science writer who repackaged stuff. Poor information integrity in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> According to Wikipedia[1] there have been several hoax articles that lasted even longer than this one.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia)

</comment><comment><USER13> >...William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia consulting firm, told Yahoo News.

What? How is 'wikipedia consulting firm' a thing?

<comment><USER14> I have started a Hacker News Consulting firm, and if you want to interview me about how this is "a thing" for a major news article that gets my name in print, I would be happy to explain that to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the results of Wikipedia, is that I now take every supposedly reliable article with a grain of salt. Any encyclopedia that doesn't provide detailed references that I can review, I presume to be _inaccurate_ until proven otherwise.

That, I think, is the greatest contribution that Wikipedia has made - <USER2> requires people to cite their sources, before they get _any_ credibility; and even then, there is always some doubt.

<comment><USER11> I hope you apply the same standard to news and magazine articles, and realize the sorry state that journalism is in now. Wikipedia will never e better than the sum of its sources, many of which are awful.

<comment><USER16> Journalism has never been in a particularly good state, the patina of history notwithstanding. Its never been a medium that has required extensive citation of non-trivial propositions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not even the worst of the bunch the hoax page on Wikipedia shows many more, or is that page a hoax too?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia)

</comment><comment><USER18> One should not forget: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott/Upper_Peninsula_War)

<comment><USER19> Beat me to it! This particular hoax is a masterpiece, complete with maps, portraits, and a lengthy list of references. I can't find a definitive source on how long it sat on Wikipedia before being discovered _(the history of the linked page is muddled as it's a copy, and surprisingly this hoax isn't listed on the list of hoaxes --yet)_ , but IIRC it was up at least a couple of months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> To me, the fact that these expertly-created hoaxes on Wikipedia have eventually been discovered is a testament to the strength of the Wikipedia model. It's certain that there are still weaknesses, as have been outlined in other comments on this story, but if we were to be given a crystal ball to verify all of recorded human history, we'd surely find that a staggering amount of it is wholly false winners-write-the-history-books nonsense.

What's more interesting about this article is the staggering, agressive ignorance displayed by the commenters on the India Times website. If you're interested in a dose of outrage to get your blood boiling, give them a read.

<comment><USER21> Maybe.

The problem is we don't know how many hoaxes are there and have _not_ been discovered. If there are a lot, then the model is failing, if there are only a few, then it is working.

Alas, without that data, we can't make a call on the wikipedia article either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be relatively easy to create a Wikipedia page about something so obscure that nobody is actively looking for it or an expert in it. Add to it, it is well-written and appears to be well-referenced by made-up books.

The article talks about an admittedly little-known clash between India and Portugal in the 1600's where there was little damage or historical consequence after. It's like an island in the ocean of wikipedia, rather than a new island inserted into a river that people pass by every day.

It'd be much harder to make up something about a little known clash between Germany and Canada during World War 2 because so many experts on WW2 exist.

</comment><comment><USER22> The problem is that wikipedia has become too heavily relied on, and there aren't any better alternatives yet. Wikipedia is just an encyclopedia, and in some ways it's not actually a very good one. The standard of "proof" for a wikipedia article is actually not a primary source, it's a secondary source. Wikipedia is setup, in its blood, to avoid having to do original work to verify facts, they want other trusted organizations to do the leg work.

However, increasingly people are using wikipedia as a first and only source of data, and this includes many of those "trusted organizations", which produces a trust loop paradox. And this is because despite all these faults wikipedia still manages to be a solid, accurate source of information most of the time.

We're not going to escape out of this paradox until primary sources become more available on the internet and we start getting articles written which make use of primary sources.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those who are interested in seeing the hoax article can find a copy of it at this mirror site:

<http://www.thefullwiki.org/Bicholim_conflict>

<comment><USER21> Funnily enough, it claims to have been updated 49 seconds ago for me.

Guess they missed the whole "deleted" flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>

<comment><USER24> I don't see why it would have been created for that purpose, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of kudzu sites scraping Wikipedia and cloning its articles as early as 2005:

<http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo3.htm#Bastard>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Bicholim Conflict" -> "Him Concoct Ill Fib"</comment>


Ranking Programming Languages by Size of Community and Number of Projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/ranking-programming-languages.php <comment><USER2> Original blog post here: [http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the- popularity-of-pr...](http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity- of-programming-langauges/)

RWW pretty much just repackaged the original post with a small amount of commentary.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title should really include "on Github". If you included GNU projects and BSD and so on, you'd get a lot more C, for example.

<comment><USER4> I think that even just adding sourceforge may have pumped C a lot more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not going to squint at that. But really, ranking languages by money involved:

      COBOL 1.0
      JAVA  0.1
      C++   0.1
     .NET   0.05
      OTHER 0.0000001

<comment><USER6> ADA must be at 0.75 at least then!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are obvious holes in the methodology, so I wouldn't take the content of the post too seriously. What I do think is great about this post is how the authors generated a bunch of hits from an hour or so of work. Pick a topic with wide interest, do some simple (but non-trivial, if you aren't used to the tools) analysis, watch the traffic roll in! It's a good model for anyone trying to drive traffic to their site.

<comment><USER8> Being successful on the internet is easy! Just create interesting content, and then generate viewers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Programming languages, databases, and browsers ranked based on a variety of characteristics:

<http://hammerprinciple.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder whether using unanswered questions from SO was a good idea.

Shouldn't it mean that the community is lacking cohesion?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be interested in the trends! What communities are growing, which ones are shrinking, and which ones are stable?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised to see so many assembly projects on github. Also, Delphi is missing from the tiers.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just out of curiosity, as I've not started with Github (yet).

How many environments for languages/operating systems have most of their stuff in pre-github systems (CPAN and Perlmonks for Perl, kernels, etc)?

<comment><USER13> You could also make the argument that older languages are discussed on sites other than StackOverflow (ie, Google Groups, direct forums, etc). I get the impression it all washes out in the end.

<comment><USER12> Perlmonks which I mentioned, is a StackOverflow variant since a decade, or so.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Monokai Theme for Android Studio - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benmarten/MonokaiAndroidStudio <comment><USER2> Interestingly, Monokai was developed back when Mac OS was not using sRGB by default, so using the RGB values today looks different than it did back then [1].

People have gotten used to the higher contrast, and the theme works great this way too.

[1]: [http://www.hardtoc.com/archives/310](http://www.hardtoc.com/archives/310)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great article! I am using OS X, but I will add windows version with the adjusted values by your script ;) Also didn't know that original Monokai article :)</comment></comment>


A formalization of category theory in Coq - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jwiegley/category-theory <comment><USER2> It's actually not very interesting formulation of category theory. You can't express a category of categories, with isomorphic categories considered equal in this way. Partially, this can be worked around if we state that everything important preserves equivalence (i.e. if A ~ A` and B ~ B` A x B ~ A` x B`). Though, if you want to express this in full generality, you will need Homotopy Type Theory.

But, all in all, even formulating all this and proving theorems was a good exercise. Good job!

<comment><USER3> > You can't express a category of categories, with isomorphic categories > considered equal in this way.

Not sure why you think that. It's a straight-forward construction within this framework and even part of the development[1].

[1] [https://github.com/jwiegley/category- theory/blob/master/Inst...](https://github.com/jwiegley/category- theory/blob/master/Instance/Cat.v)

<comment><USER2> You are right. I didn't notice compose_respects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe this is what John Wiegley talked about in this Haskell Cast[1] which, as I understand it, should allow translating Haskell into Coq.

I'm just beginning to understand all of this category stuff but, as far as I can see, a Haskell function of type

        f :: a -> b

should be equivalent to a Coq function of type

        f :: a -> Either SomeException a

to account for the Hask category's "bottom" value.

[1] [http://www.haskellcast.com/episode/013-john-wiegley-on- categ...](http://www.haskellcast.com/episode/013-john-wiegley-on-categories- and-compilers) (skip to "compiling to categories")

<comment><USER5> How can one automatically translate any Haskell containing unbounded recursion into Coq?

<comment><USER6> Some sort of partiality monad, I presume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a good lecture series on Coq? Or maybe introductory project?

I've seen a video intro [0] and poked a little bit around the reference manual [1], but I'm not sure what's "between" basic understanding of the commands and being able to extract a complex verified program.

It all seems to be either the theory (which I mostly grok) or completed projects, not a lot about the engineering details.

...Or does that just not exist?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngM2N98ppQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngM2N98ppQE)

[1] [https://coq.inria.fr/refman/](https://coq.inria.fr/refman/)

<comment><USER8> It's going to be hard to learn one way or another. Chlipala's Certified Programmimg with Dependent Types is free online. Then, Software Foundations others mentioned. Starting with lightweight stuff like Alloy or TLA+ might help. Also, The Little Prover book teaches how provers work by letting reader build a small one. Had some decent reviews.

<comment><USER2> Chlipala's book is a decent one, but it's oriented towards software verification, coq, and the use of tactics (which I would consider anti- pattern).

Software Foundations is a good introduction to Coq and proofs, but overall is quite basic, and it also hides many details of how type theory works, so it's more of a hands on tutorial.

TLA+ is just a tool which basically does its job by exhaustively searching a space of possible solutions trying to find counterexamples. It works in some limited cases but doesn't work generally for any mathematical theorem.

<comment><USER9> > TLA+ is just a tool which basically does its job by exhaustively searching a > space of possible solutions trying to find counterexamples. It works in some > limited cases but doesn't work generally for any mathematical theorem.

Nope. TLA+ is a rich mathematical formalism, that includes a full-fledged proof assistant. It is, however, focused on verifying software rather than arbitrary mathematical theorems. There is _also_ a model checker for TLA+ that can check your theorems (about finite cases of programs) at the push of a button. In practice, model checkers works in _more_ cases than manual proofs, as manual proofs "fail" much more often, simply by being far too laborious; a model checker would verify in days what may take you months or more to manually prove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A question for those of you here who are into functional programming:

Is category theory worth studying if I (coming from c++ background) am looking to get into functional languages like Haskell? How common is it actually among Haskell or Lisp programmers to know and utilize concepts from category theory in their programming?

<comment><USER11> A lot of the ideas used in everyday Haskell originated in category theory (similarly to how all our programming languages eventually come from Turing machines, the lambda calculus, and so on), but command over the mathematical ideas is absolutely not _required_ to "get into Haskell" or even to use it productively and fluently. It is certainly something you should look into if you want to

a) know _why_ some things are done the way they are (in case you're not satisfied with "this works!"), or

b) if you want to find inspiration to write a certain kind of library: Haskell is one of the few languages that has, as I like to call it, "over 50 years of documentation".

\--

To elaborate: a category is a bunch of _objects_ , and functions ( _morphisms_ ) between the objects. The types in a language like Haskell form a category (called _Hask_ in this case) where the objects are the types and morphisms from one type to another are the functions that go from the former to the latter.

A lot of things done in Haskell are instances of general constructions from category theory applied to _Hask_. Comfort with these general constructions certainly helps to illuminate many ideas.

For example, the great trifecta of Haskell abstractions comprises three interfaces ("typeclasses") called Functor, Applicative, and Monad, which are used _everywhere_. Each of these corresponds to a concept from category theory: for instance, what a Haskeller calls a "Functor" is what is categorically called an "endofunctor on Hask". Among users of the language who know any category theory at all, most have some familiarity with things at the level of what I've just said, but not much more. A knowledge of category theory at any higher level (like in the linked repo) is not at all common, statistically.

Also, not many of the common libraries are based on deep categorical ideas ( _lens_ [0] is an important exception) but even then, knowledge of the mathematics is useful if you want to dig into how the ideas are implemented, not if you're happy just using them. Learn as little or as much as you'd like.

[0] [https://github.com/ekmett/lens/wiki/Examples](https://github.com/ekmett/lens/wiki/Examples)

<comment><USER10> Thank you, that was very illuminating.

<comment><USER11> You're welcome! [http://haskellbook.com/](http://haskellbook.com/) is the currently recommended book and is worth looking at when you start learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And I thought he only did Emacs</comment>


McDonald's, Meet McPathogens - <AUTHOR> https://mindmatters.ai/2018/12/mcdonalds-meet-mcpathogen/ <comment><USER2> There's a probability for picking up infections for every object you touch, which is proportional to the number of hands that touched it prior to your operation. If this is a significant problem compared to human cashiers, there's an easy fix that is the same with bathrooms and tables: require that janitors on duty sanitize them every X hours.

Also, I've used automatic ordering touch screens before and didn't have any difficulty. I feel that the employee's response "She sighed, looked me in the eye, and confessed "Everybody does."" is exaggerated. What she meant was probably "It's super easy but some customers still can't get it, so I will sympathize with you because saying 'no, it's easy' would be rude."

<comment><USER3> The second solution is to use an antibacterial surface. Nanoparticle silver or copper are a good choice.

Of course such a screen would have to be specially made.

<comment><USER2> How much are these? (USD ea for 100,000 volume, say)

<comment><USER3> No idea, I'd need a Chinese contract, but cheap enough that Apple considered getting these in iPads. Instead of ITO (indium tin oxide) coating you use AgNW (silver nanowire) coating. Unlike ITO this can be painted onto more substrates instead of vapor depletion. Useful for more flexible touchscreens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is useless blog spam & buries the lead.

Just read the original article: [https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/28/poo-found-on- every-mcdonalds-...](https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/28/poo-found-on-every- mcdonalds-touchscreen-tested-8178486/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is not about making your experience "more enjoyable" it is a direct response to wage increases that directly target these workers and the company responding. Same with the grocery store. Or mobile ordering from Starbucks, or using an ATM. The experience ranges from much better (ATMs) to much, much worse (grocery stores) , but the only way they will "fail" is if everyone forgoes their big mac to go somewhere else and pay more for human cashiers. That is not going to happen.

<comment><USER6> The failure of the Grocery store self-checkouts is that they are not automated enough.

The customer still has to manually scan every item. Items have to be placed one-by-one in the bagging area. Any small divergence from this, or something out of the ordinary like an Alcohol purchase triggers an exception and requires human intervention. This is enough automation/tech to be annoying but not enough to solve the real problem.

Contrast that with the Amazon Go store which is automated enough that very few would prefer the cashier route even if available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> McDonald's outsourced the work traditionally done by their staff to the customer. Their staff is forced to wash their hands at common intervals, the general public isn't. Interesting article :)

</comment><comment><USER8> > It's so much easier to order my Egg McMuffin and black coffee from a human > behind the counter than to poke my index finger through a decision tree on > the self-order kiosk.

I disagree. When I've been to McDonald's (a few times a year), I find the kiosks easier.

1\. There's rarely a line, even when there's a line to order at the counter.

2\. Things are more discoverable. If you already know exactly what you want, it is probably faster to order with a human. But if you're not sure, the overhead menu boards are not so easy to work with; they are now screens that move and don't show all the menu at one time. It also isn't always obvious what prices are.

3\. Things are easier to customize. The kiosk says exactly what you can add or remove. For example, recently I found out through a Shake Shack kiosk that you can add lettuce to a spicy chicken sandwich, or make it extra spicy and remove pickles. A human cashier might suggest one of those things, but not all of them.

4\. There's no pressure to move along. You're not bothering anyone by looking through the options in the kiosk. However, if you stop for ten seconds while ordering at the counter to try to figure out if you're in a quarter pounder or a crispy chicken sandwich mood, it feels like you're bothering the cashier.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. I have two further points:

5\. Once you've learned the idiosyncrasies of the kiosk it is the same on every visit.

Human cashiers vary in their understanding of the menu, the McDonald's system, and the local language. The human cashiers are _also_ just poking their index fingers through a decision tree, though it's broader and less deep than self- serve kiosks often offer us.

If I'm ordering hamburgers for a road-trip I know my wife wants tartar sauce on hers, I want no ketchup on mine but I want extra mustard, and my cousin wants neither.

Trying to convey such a simple order (6 _Hamburgers)=(2_ TarterAdded+2 _(KetchupRemoved+ExtraMustard)+2_ (no sauce)) is an infuriating exercise in implicit closures.

"So you want extra mustard on the ones without ketchup?"

"On two of the ones without ketchup, yes. Two of the burgers are without any sauce at all."

Try ordering the sandwiches one-by-one and you'll discover that any two identical sandwiches in a row are treated as a mistaken repetition. Etc, etc.

6\. The mobile apps allow parallelism. You don't have to wait to get to the counter or even the restaurant to make your order.

While I'm driving my wife can order our food. It's not exactly ready when we arrive but it's a lot sooner than if we'd waited in line.

At Disneyland, we often walked right by dozens of families to pick up our mobile orders because nobody had bothered to understand the app. We saved _hours_ of waiting and given the price we were paying Disney to be in the park that was a huge savings.

The fundamental practical advantages of mobile ordering are so great that the back-end side will never be abandoned. So why not have a giant tablet in the restaurant running the front-end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bullshit. Nobody ever wants to talk with another human being and line up to touch kiosks. You contact far more pathogens by touching public handrails and doorknobs.

<comment><USER5> If this is a real problem (of which I'm doubtful) McDonalds, being one of the most responsive large companies in the world, will fix it first by adding to human janitorial duties and soon after have the kiosk self clean, or remove it and push everyone to the my McD app on their own, filthy phone

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have people use an app instead, problem solved.

The same people touched the entrance door handle anyways. And if you use cash you are exposed to the same germs.

<comment><USER3> Actually worse. Cash is porous giving a nice surface for bacteria to hold and is rarely if ever washed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They have an app. You do not need to touch their kiosks or deal with the kid behind the counter.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would anticipate the kiosks move to voice control before they would ever go back to cashiers.

</comment><comment> unique-template I stopped reading at "The Blaze reports..."</comment>


The Trade War Is Effecting Everything from iPhones to Lobster Trapping - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/trumps-trade-madness-hurts-everyone-even-those-it-benefits-d453783ea772 <comment><USER2> Affecting

</comment><comment><USER3> "We have democracy. We survived George W. How much damage a dumb person can do, even in the highest office?"

Now we know, apparently a lot, if he thinks he's a great businessman.</comment>


Open-Mindedness [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymotion.com/user/totocacapouet/video/x8uei4_openmindedness_tech

<comment><USER2> This is pretty solid reasoning and touches on a lot of good points. But just as there are people who make the close-minded mistakes he cites, there are also people who are entirely too self-assured in their reliance on scientific data.

What makes me skeptical of the (overly) scientific mindset is that quality of life has nothing to do with understanding whatever physical realities we can ascertain by experiment. I don't think science will ever meet philosophy, because a scientific theory must be falsifiable, and I don't believe that is a property of all truth (why should it be?). To the contrary, I think the layers of human consciousness are far more subjective, subtle and complex than science will ever be able to tease apart. Furthermore scientific research can easily makes flip assumptions about the nature of reality without suitable evidence (eg. that consciousness is a by-product of brain activity). In these cases Philosophy is much more capable of addressing the issue than Science.

The problem is that we aren't an external observer of a closed system. At some point everything we think we know boils down to some common-sense assumptions that are in no way provable. This makes some people deeply uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough that they lash out against any form of mysticism or intuitive knowing. Sure, the world is full of charlatans and scammers, but then so do we have sham research done on the corporate dime merely to have the appearance of scientific rigor. It doesn't mean that traditional forms of understanding and wisdom have no place.

To the contrary, there is a lot of richness to reality that can't be captured by measurements and control groups. Honestly I don't need to know the mechanics of every experience in my life. When people say "God told me..." and you get hung up on the person's beliefs and the definition of God you are bound to miss the relevant point.

<comment><USER3> Researchers are determining whether consciousness is a by-product of brain activity. Projects like blue brain aim to make this question something we can answer.

Can you expand on what assumptions we make that are in no way provable?

<comment><USER4> Can we ever prove that someone or something is conscious and not just mimicking consciousness extremely well?

<comment><USER5> There's no difference.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombies.html>

<comment><USER2> Great read, but irrelevant. The difficulty here is in determining what it means to "act conscious". We can agree that consciousness exerts influence on the world without knowing how to measure that influence exactly.

<comment><USER3> This sounds like mysticism wrapped up in psychology. If there is no measurable difference between two "beings", one a copy of the other but implemented in silicon, what would your conclusion be? Surely if consciousness is anything magical this will be impossible.

<comment><USER2> That's way off base. You're not understanding my argument. Nobody said anything about magic.

The point is how can you ever verify that two beings react exactly the same to all stimuli? How are you determining "no measurable difference"? Setting aside the fact that silicon is measurably different from neural tissue, you still aren't any closer to answering the question "does the machine experience consciousness the same way I do as a result of its function?"

<comment><USER5> You're talking about qualia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia>

Let's just pretend that we run all the arguments for and against qualia from that article against each other and declare us all losers in advance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful video, however I have a feeling those most likely to benefit from this video are the least likely to watch it (and with careful attention).

</comment><comment><USER7> Some people have a mind that is so open that their brain has fallen out. I don't know the origins of the citation, but I love it.

<comment><USER8> "We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out." \-- Richard Dawkins

(Hes got various versions attributed to him)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Warning: this is a loud auto-play video.</comment>


Ask HN: How to cope with social anxiety and panic disorders, without drugs?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I believe that the current best practice is that the combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and drugs together is better than either alone.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was on cipralex!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speak to a psycho-therapist, they can recommend behavioral modification strategies... however if you speak to such a professional and they determine that drugs are best for your situation, you really should follow their advise.

We take meds for headaches and all types of other ailments, there should be no stigma in taking meds for mental problems when you need them..

hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER4> Meditation. Google "Jon Kabat Zinn", "Ajahn Brahm" or "Eckhart Tolle".

PS: Meditation has nothing to do with Hinduism, Buddhism or any other religion. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> :D Nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strenuous exercise or other activity that keeps your mind busy throughout the day. A hectic work routine helps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe strenuous exercise and eating right. It's done a lot for my anxiety. YMMV.</comment>