alahonua

Karma: 24

alahonua 16 Mar 2026 21:00 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Alex Glaucon’s comment on: What Are We Actually Evaluating When We Say a Belief “Tracks Truth”?
I’m certain that LLM’s alone are not going to be a way to reach subjective consciousness. I think it’s still open whether or not some other tech could get there. Perhaps such AI tech could use an LLM as a language or memory module, which the greater AI would then contextualize with programming of its own.
Of course, I don’t think that a subjective viewpoint is always needed or even helpful. What if the answer to “the grass is green” depended on whether the grass on the grounds of a particular data center was currently green, and we did not know that?

alahonua 16 Mar 2026 6:04 UTC
1 point
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on: What Are We Actually Evaluating When We Say a Belief “Tracks Truth”?
Your thinking about how truth relates to AI shows good insight into what AI lacks thus far.
You might benefit a little from relating your questions to some of Tarski’s writings on truth in mathematics, which show the necessity of an outside observer for truth to have adequate meaning .Per Tarski, “The grass is green” is true, if and only if the grass is green. (Unstated, implied: as known by the observer of the proposition.)
We all have a subjective viewpoint that locates us within our map of reality, and that viewpoint is what allows us to decide if a statement is true: we use our subjective viewpoint to judge it from our subjective context, which is always going to be different from its objective context within its related literature, LLM data, etc. Perhaps some kind of Gods-eye view would be identically both subjective and objective, but we and our AI are certainly not capable of that. We humans can, however, flip between our subjective map and our analysis of presented data, and AI cannot do that.
Current AI lacks any ability to take any truly subjective stance (even though it can generate a simulation of one on request). For AI to perceive something in the concrete world as true in the sense above, it would have to place itself as a self within the broader universe and take a subjective stance for itself about the data in the LLM, which current LLM’s cannot really do. The closest we have as of 2026 would be a human acting as an auditor and interpreter for the LLM.

alahonua 18 Nov 2025 0:27 UTC
2 points
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on: Cooling the brain to boost human IQ
Preventing heat throttling makes sense, but the brain does not tolerate hypothermia well: see for example https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39884656/. The brain is likely alreA

alahonua 20 Oct 2025 19:39 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Lorec’s comment on: Final-Exam-Tier Medical Problem With Handwavy Reasons We Can’t Just Call A Licensed M.D.
You could try to motivate them to treat MRSA carrier status even if you are not overtly infected by referring to data like this: https://www.jabfm.org/content/methicillin-resistant-staphylococcus-aureus-colonization-and-mortality-risk-among-community . One thing they may want to do first is a swab or two to verify your MRSA carrier status before treatment, so I’d consider stopping the mupirocin and other antibiotics at least a few days before the appointment to best culture things. Best wishes with the pending appointment(s).

alahonua 20 Oct 2025 3:45 UTC
−1 points
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on: Final-Exam-Tier Medical Problem With Handwavy Reasons We Can’t Just Call A Licensed M.D.
You might benefit from investigating regimens for eradication of resistant staph colonization, in your case colonization of the nose / nasopharynx and skin. See for example https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666524724000405#:~:text=Nasal%20decolonisation%20is%20commonly%20accomplished,skin%20decolonisation%20(figure%203) or https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Decolonisation-treatment-for-MRSA . Note that some of these measures require a prescription, and for such I would suggest you consider a consultation with an infectious disease specialist. Note also that measures to remove staph (MRSA) colonization may fail if someone in the household or similar close contact is a carrier and passes it back to you after treatment. Perhaps you could discuss that with the infectious disease doc as well.

alahonua 28 Aug 2025 3:04 UTC
3 points
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on: Would you sell your soul to save it? ( I am NOT a Christian)
See also: https://iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/

alahonua 3 Apr 2021 20:12 UTC
1 point
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on: The Holy Algorithm
Actually, the Easter 2021 date is in May for some Eastern communities: see
https://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.asp?ID=189602

alahonua 12 Jan 2021 17:12 UTC
1 point
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on: Base rate of RCT from developing countries finding unexpected effects
The rapid availability of third world originated studies to internet searches by those living elsewhere, which has happened because of internet publishing and especially in the last three years because of openly searchable preprint sites such as medrxiv, is a new enough thing in science that I doubt there has been enough time to get a valid such likely future failure rate, especially if you are including preprints.
To get an approximate base rate you would need to check the years prior to open internet medical paper publishing. At minimum you would need to read the older years of paper versions of those nation’s journals, likely in their medical schools, and count the studies fitting your criteria over the past ten years or more, ideally even including the studies rejected by such journals if you are including preprints in your questions about the Covid-19 studies. Not an easy project, so best to take the studies you mention as proposing a hypothesis, perhaps to be tested in the future via reproducibility. Just like most other clinical studies published by anyone else anywhere.

alahonua 31 Dec 2020 22:14 UTC
1 point
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on: A Simplified Version of Perspective Solution to the Sleeping Beauty Problem
From a completely subjective view, there can be no single answer as to what day of the week it is. It is whatever weekday I decide it is. Who could gainsay it?
As soon as we allow an objective view of what day of the week it is, we implicitly allow an over-ride of the subjective viewpoint by the objective one, and the ¹⁄₃ probability becomes the better choice.

alahonua 14 Dec 2020 1:36 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Gadersd’s comment on: An argument for personal identity transfer.
One advantage to a thought experiment is that it can be scaled without cost. Instead of your sorites series, let us posit a huge number of conscious humans. We alter each human to correspond to a single step in your gradual change over time, so that we wind up performing in parallel what you posit as a series of steps. Line our subjects in “stage of alteration” order.
Now the conclusion of your series of steps corresponds to the state of the last subject in our lineup. Is this subject’s consciousness the same as at start? If we assume yes, then we have assumed our conclusion, and the argument assumes its conclusions.
If we assume for sake of argument the subject’s consciousness at the end of our lineup differs from the start of the lineup, then we can walk along the line and locate where we first begin to notice a change. This might vary with groups of subjects, but we can certainly then find a mean for where the change may start. This is possible even if in series we cannot perceive a difference between the subject from one step to another.

alahonua 13 Dec 2020 22:33 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Gadersd’s comment on: An argument for personal identity transfer.
Almost all gradual-brain-to-device replacement arguments are indeed sorites arguments. You assume:
Plucking one or three hairs from a beard that has 10000 hairs beard is too small an action to change a beard visibly
Plucking 2 hairs from a beard with 9998 hairs is too small a change to see (true)
Plucking 2 hairs from a beard with 9996 hairs is too small a change to see (true)
...
plucking 2 hairs 4000 times from a beard is too small a change to see (false)

alahonua 15 Nov 2020 19:20 UTC
2 points
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on: Examples of Measures
Read this online classic paper about geometric measure theory, because it’s really entertaining:
https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~tl/docs/Schanuel_Length_of_potato.pdf

alahonua 4 Nov 2020 6:47 UTC
0 points
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on: Sleeping Julia: Empirical support for thirder argument in the Sleeping Beauty Problem
I think that OP is confusing expected value with probability.
The expected value formula is the probability of an event multiplied by the amount of times the event happens: (P(x) * n).
This explains the P(B) = 1.5 the OP put above—he means the expectation is 1.5, because P(waking with any one coin flip result) = ¹⁄₂ and the times it occurs is 3.
So the halfers believe the expectation is ¹⁄₂ for waking with heads and ¹⁄₂ for waking with tails.
The thirders have the expected values right: 1 for waking with heads, 2 for waking with tails.

alahonua 11 Jul 2020 7:34 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Rudi C’s comment on: Born as the seventh month dies …
This is correct, if you are excluding the case where both are boys both born on Tuesday. Otherwise you would not subtract p(A and B). But, you did not say only one, you said _at least_ one.

alahonua 10 Jul 2020 17:21 UTC
3 points
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on: Born as the seventh month dies …
I don’t think you have the dependencies quite right, because you can actually use more of the information than you do above to restrict the population from which you draw.
The real underlying population you should draw on seems to to be the population of fathers with exactly two children, of which one might be a boy born on Tuesday.
p(a two boy family given one brother was born on Tuesday) = (p(one brother born on Tuesday in a in two-boy family)) (p(two boys in 2 person families)) / p(out of all two person families, having one be a boy born on Tuesday)
which is if we say Tuesday birth is ¹⁄₇ and boy is ¹⁄₂,
(2/7) (1/4) / (2/14) = ¹⁄₂ so the Tuesday datum drops out.

alahonua 16 May 2020 20:38 UTC
6 points
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on: Do any mammal species exhibit an immune response in some of the herd in response to the infection in other herd members?
It is not a crazy question at all. In fact it has a variety of answers: I will summarize with a “no,” a “yes,” and a “no.”

1. No, exposure of others to Covid-19 may cause them to become specifically immune to that virus, but it will not cause us to also become specfically immune unless we are similarly exposed to virus components themselves, not just the persons involved.

2. Yes, the fact that people near us are in distress because they are sick will probably cause us, as we too are distressed by the situation, to secrete stress hormone and related responses that will somewhat alter our immune system, for example by raising the count of neutrophilic white cells in our blood somewhat.

3. No, that particular kind of nonspecific change in our stress hormones and related effects on our immune calls is not likely to prevent Covid-19 infection in us.

alahonua 9 Mar 2020 6:38 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Bucky’s comment on: Help me with bayesian thinking re:coronavirus?
Yes, true. The exact numbers are very uncertain, but the qualitative point remains that someone who feels fever many days per winter has less chance of a similar day with fever being from covid than someone with a fever today who has had no fever for over a year.

alahonua 8 Mar 2020 18:01 UTC
6 points
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on: Help me with bayesian thinking re:coronavirus?
To answer properly you need to know the prevalence of fever of any kind. In particular, you might use the number of days with fever per year you had last year / 365, for example. If you literally never get a fever for years, I’d worry more then if you did.

P(19coro | fever) = P(fever| 19coro, about 0.5??) * P(19coro, perhaps 0.001??) / P(fever)
What links here?
- Coronavirus Quantitative Reasoning Thread by Elizabeth (8 Mar 2020 22:58 UTC; 6 points)

alahonua 12 Jan 2020 1:46 UTC
9 points
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on: Is it worthwhile to save the cord blood and tissue?
1. Not very valuable. Handling and storage costs far outweigh acquisition costs.
2. Unmatched, easy; well matched, somewhat difficult.
3. Generally it depends on the specific inherited immune characteristics of mother and child, similar to these factors in kidney donation.
4. For decades, yes, for a lifetime no.
⁵⁄₆ No and sort of yes.
If you are going to donate cord blood for others, as a humanitarian thing, check with your OB/GYN about whether they know who would need to be there to ship the donation.
If you are going to save it for family use, I would do so only if you are aware of a known risk requiring use of such a donation in the baby or family, such as an inherited blood disorder or similar risk factor. If there is none, the cost-effectiveness of banking with a commercial outfit is poor unless you have inexpensive access to a liquid nitrogen-level freezer for long term storage. If the family has such an inherited disorder, check with the physicians treating it for instructions.

alahonua 6 Feb 2013 19:05 UTC
0 points
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on: How to avoid dying in a car crash
I know no one is likely to do this, but consider the safeguards taken by auto racing drivers. They are required to wear a helmet. For high speed driving helmets on all in the car would cut the death rate. That said, I doubt anyone will do this, as the inconvenience is great for a small payoff.