As a schizotypal person, I'm unsure how more people aren't exhibiting paranoid schizophrenic symptoms in this wildly untrustworthy digital age.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
>swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
This is already being done. However it is being done in backroom deals to make sure that the individual has no control over their identity only the corporations. You are not who you say you are, you are what a corporation decides you are.
Society, in a sense, is highly dependent on trustworthy interactions. Credit, ownership transfers, banking, etc. all depend on trust. If we go back to only being able to trust in-person interactions, we'll be stepping back to a financial system from over 100 years ago.
Because of this, I believe that solutions will be developed. Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the government depends on a solution being found.
Are we even sure we understand the hardware? My understanding is even that is contested, for example orchestrated objective reduction, holonomic brain theory or GVF theory.
The problem is, neurobiology proves there are no world models.
Silicon Valley bet on the wrong cognition model, a psychological version trapped in 20th C bunk, and everyone pays the price listening to cult leaders like Scott Alexander worm their way out of consciousness.
How can you say there are no world models, when I can literally draw out a simple one for you on demand?
You can argue that's they're not the governing principle of cognition, but it seems farcical to say they don't even exist, when we are trying to explain them to eachother all the time.
No what you're describing is arbitrary and idiosyncratic. The brain doesn't use that to survive, it doesn't need them. Anything external to that is completely separate from thought. What you're describing is an arbitrary game for entertainment to fill up your time and confuse yourself and others. It has no relationship to the choices you would make to survive, and can only interfere with it. The "world model" you're describing is arbitrary fiction.
“We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.”
Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024
World models aren't linguistic. You seem to be conflating (at least) two different things, then claiming because one doesn't apply the other doesn't exist.
Edit: Also come to think of it, that quote is odd, like it's rather late to the party. The NPC meme is several years old and came from a study that most people don't have an inner voice - that they don't think with words.
Of course world models are linguistic. What working memory or neural syntax bypasses linguistic externals when the term is in of itself linguistic. The entire concept of model is linguistic in origin. Biology doesn't have models.
First off, we don't use predictions, that's another model, it's false (Spontaneous Brain Northoff or read Mofakham's papers).
In terms of words, they barely represent and never reference. Any statement like that serves primarily status gain, not know knowledge transmission (I proved this from the first statement above as well).
The reality is CS built a math model from totally false premises as it relates to communication and knowledge. It works for efficient value trading using symbols in place of actions. Does it have a future, no.
The problem is how do we shift to a real neurodynamic system of sharing?
Words do not function as communication. You asked a pointless question. It has no function except to extract values from actions: it was subjective, arbitrary. Until CS grasps this, it is irrelevant.
All the symptoms from LLM failure rates stem from their reliance in arbitrary forms to extract value, and they are no different than the errors we experience in reality in climate, politics etc. CS didn't solve the initial conditions, it's maxing them out as errors.
You seem unable to communicate clearly what it is you are trying to say. Honestly i would be interested but I can't follow you. Your use of words is non standard. You say words are about social interelations, e.g. domninance, exchange, etc but then you also say that words don't communicate information. Of course thought is fundamentally non-verbal but since telepathy doesn't exist we use symbols, i.e. words to communicate with oth
ers. Nobody thinks words ard thoughts. The represent thoughts. Your part about words being deception is one of many use cases. Honestly, and with all due respect, your comment fits the style of a person in an altered state of mind be it drugs, psychosis or something else. Why write words in a public forum with your weird little idiosyncratic meanings nobody else understands.
Words don't represent thoughts in any way shape or form. They externalize bias as a pretext to communication, which is arbitary. Every word is a metaphor, every word is mythological. These are empirical facts developed from Aristotle, Cassirer, Halliday into Fedorenko, yet CS takes not note of it. Language has no form that refers or represents anything in reality in any sense of concatenation. They are gibberish. This is where humanity is off the rails. Word statements are only 'about' status, dominance, control. Statements in arbitrary words do not exist as references or representations. A statement like which person makes more accurate predictions is basically nonsense, it's applying arbitrary values to events subjectively. Once we understand prediction has nothing to do with how brains work, it's basically an animal that has no relationship to others or itself except as to extract value and control. The argument is simply over your head unless you grasp the fundamentals: words do not work. Please don't pretend others don't grasp these ideas, brilliant minds have been dissecting the illusions of words since Aristotle. "Marshall McLuhan's idea of the "schizophrenic alphabet" is a provocative metaphor for his theory that the phonetic alphabet fundamentally altered human consciousness, leading to a fragmented, detached, and individualistic psychology."
I think you might be confused about the expression "world model". In this context it clearly means that a person has an understanding of reality based on "math->physics->chemistry->biology->psychology" instead of "peer pressure->group identity" or whatever you see in QAnon or cults or whatever.
If a person primarily evaluates the truth content of a statement based on identity or something instead of math/physics/etc then that person has no "world model", and vice versa.
That's not what world model means, neither in psychology or artificial intelligence — two fields Scott writes a lot about so he should know how the term is used or define how he uses it if he uses a non-typical definition.
No it's neurobiological, psychology and particularly cog-sci is in error, as both place language ahead of concepts. Our understanding of reality per language is post hoc, it's an illusion. Life is always ad hoc, any violation of a narrative model is easily evaded for survival. This is simple stuff folks!
It only makes sense to scientific thinkers who think in correlation, and know how degraded words and sentences are. Anyone who accepts word statements as valid is at loss. The only role of language is to refute itself.
Neurology has not proven any such thing. Our knowledge of neuroscience on the cognitive level is super limited and we don't have a good understanding about how any higher-order cognition works.
That's irrelevant. Cog-sci is largely folk psychology, and the problems in automating inference in AI demonstrate the model would eventually collapse. Question is how do we toss this model aside for an irreducible form of post-symbolic relationship between brains and machines?
I appreciate your gumption but I really think that you don't understand things as well as you think you do. Maybe read someone other than Paul Churchland.
Both Churchland's are out of date. Note the references above, this is a neurobiological, dynamic approach they're not party to. If you don't know what those are or optic flow, neural reuse are, then study them. Trad Neuroscience and cog-sci is no longer applicable.
We have a substantial grasp of the allocortex to make significant probes into working memory that relate to semantic memory, episodic thought, emotion and certain senses.
The very idea we understand that Sharp Wave Ripples encode this and that various scales of waves integrate to create memories and action is the beginning of bypassing existing computational frameworks.
Does anyone have any advice for someone that is curious about moving from Google to LibreOffice? I work in a collaborative environment where everyone immediately having access to the same data on different environments (including mobile) is desirable.
Collabora Online may be what you are looking for. It's commercial, but it is LibreOffice (Collabora is a major contributor to LibreOffice). https://www.collaboraonline.com/writer/
I don't agree with puritanical laws like this, but I do believe that the quantity and quality of porn consumed in the US constitutes a non-trivial public mental health crisis, and I hope that this will drive into people the serious risks of taking your dopamine receptors for constant, convenient, quick rides that scratch an itch without providing the experience of genuinely connecting with another living, breathing human being that cares.
Real, vulnerable connection can provide meaning in a way that manufactured fast porn can never give, and I believe that connection can be an important aspect of self actualization towards a meaningful existence.
I'm not claiming that rare, conscious consumption of pornography can't be integrated into a healthy, fulfilled life, but that the way it's mindlessly consumed by so many is keeping us from that fulfilled life.
Why do you think porn is a replacement for a relationship? A relationship is about a lot more than just sex. And real sex is way better than masturbation. Even when I'm between relationships I need that too (and pay for it in those cases). Porn is just a minor passtime. A relationship affects every aspect of your life.
Ps: I see this got flagged but just wanted to clarify that I'm in Europe and this is legal where I live (unlike in most US states I believe).
I just think paying for it is a lot more fair than trying to get random girls in bed for a one night stand like a lot of guys do. I don't really court someone unless I have a serious interest in the person, not just their body.
But my point was that porn doesn't displace relationships and not even the need for real sex.
A relationship is hard to find, cultivate, and maintain. It's sort of analogous to a healthy diet. People choose junk food over healthy food options for convenience/cheap thrills even if there's obvious benefits to healthy diets, and people choose porn over genuine human connection.
Death is just the name we give to the moment when the condensed energy that is moving this system that calls itself a body breaks down into a temporarily simpler state.
At some point I'll get caught up in some whirlpool of energy and find myself crawling out of some uterus again as I have time and time again for all of eternity.
So you define yourself as energy? Not your conscience? Because your conscience and sense of self is what most people would describe as gone when you die, and that's where the fear comes from. Energy has no feelings, no conscience, no self...
It is not an idea that one needs to have given to them. It is the simple conclusion of known physics. However, the claim that "energy has consciousness" is a non-obvious idea, which can't be derived from the evidence and mathematics we use to describe the universe. It should be supported if you believe it. It would be an important learning about the universe. That, or you're redefining "energy" as "any system that contains energy," (including a human being, which very few would define as "pure energy").
Is there any meaning to this position you're taking? Does it support predictions about the world? Does it change how you think about the world?
I like to distinguish investing from speculating. Investing is putting money into a business which actually makes money. Speculating is buying something because you think the price will go up.
investing is not just that. its putting money where you expect the business to make MORE money in the future. if they dont, you dont make money in the end.
When the stock/crypto goes up 100% people will gladly take their profits and go on with their lives, instead of waiting for even bigger profits.
When the stocks starts its fall towards 0 people will do incredible mental gymnastics, clinging to any shred of hope that things will turn around and they will revert their losses, so it takes them much more time to get out of the bad investment.
I transfer it to people on the slowest method for 1st borns baby shower. I used it on furniture at Overstock.com while they allowed it. I gamble with it. I have donated with it.
For me and probably many others, when expediency isn't an issue, BTC works great.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.