Andrew Burns

Karma: 51

Andrew Burns 27 Apr 2024 1:54 UTC
7 points
2
on: Andrew Burns’s Shortform
So the usual refrain from Zvi and others is that the specter of China beating us to the punch with AGI is not real because limits on compute, etc. I think Zvi has tempered his position on this in light of Meta’s promise to release the weights of its 400B+ model. Now there is word that SenseTime just released a model that beats GPT-4 Turbo on various metrics. Of course, maybe Meta chooses not to release its big model, and maybe SenseTime is bluffing—I would point out though that Alibaba’s Qwen model seems to do pretty okay in the arena...anyway, my point is that I don’t think the “what if China” argument can be dismissed as quickly as some people on here seem to be ready to do.

Andrew Burns 12 Apr 2024 5:40 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Baometrus’s comment on: I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA &| Offer Advice
Wait...your children are on the Mormon path? Oh boy.

As a non-parent, I have no idea how it is to be a parent. It must be exceptionally hard and require making difficult compromises. However, having realized that Mormonism is not the path to reason...aren’t you terrified that your children are headed toward a dead-end, believing irrational things and perpetuating those beliefs unto the next generation? How do you handle that? I would be looking for any signs that my kids wanted out...looking for them to send me an SOS so I would be justified in swooping in and telling them it’s all baloney and they don’t need to take any of it seriously. That would probably land me in family court and alienate me from my children, who, having grown up in the community and imbibed the teachings like mother’s milk, have become integrated into the hive mind, but the temptation to cry BS must be overwhelming, no?

Andrew Burns 4 Apr 2024 13:54 UTC
−11 points
−12
in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex

Andrew Burns 30 Mar 2024 3:51 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: Modern Transformers are AGI, and Human-Level
Less than a year. They probably already have toy models with periodically or continuously updating weights.

Andrew Burns 29 Mar 2024 14:49 UTC
6 points
4
on: Addressing Accusations of Handholding
Sure, the topics in this piece are dealt with superficially and the discussions are not especially thought-provoking; when compared to the amazing creative works that people on this site produce, it is low-mediocre. But Claude writes more coherently than a number of published authors and most of the general public.

Andrew Burns 23 Feb 2024 3:22 UTC
8 points
6
in reply to: StartAtTheEnd’s comment on: Gemini Has a Problem
He doesn’t mean politically conservative, he means that Google has traditionally been conservative when it comes to releasing new products...to the point where potentially lucrative products and services rot on the vine.

Andrew Burns 20 Feb 2024 14:09 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Abs-E (or, speak only in the positive)
Good point, although I used Esperanto precisely because it is a language for which the OP’s approach is transparently difficult. The Greek word for light (in weight) is avaris...not heavy. So in Greek, one must say “This object is easy to lift because of the lowness of its weight,” but in English one can say “This object is light.” Seems arbitrary. I appreciate what the OP is trying to do, though.

Andrew Burns 20 Feb 2024 3:33 UTC
1 point
0
on: Abs-E (or, speak only in the positive)
Most of the time English has an antonym that does not involve a negative prefix or suffix.
- It is not warm. ~= It is cool.
- It is not new. ~= It is old.
But this is not the case in other languages. Consider Esperanto:
- It is not warm. → Ĝi ne estas varmeta. ~= Ĝi estas malvarmeta.
- It is not new. → Ĝi ne estas nova. ~= Ĝi estas malnova.
Because mal- is equivalent to un-, it is forbidden, and you have to resort to periphrasis:
- Ĝi estas alia ol varmeta. (It is other than warm.)
- Ĝi estas la malo de varmeta. (It is the opposite of warm.)...oh, wait, this contains mal- too.

Andrew Burns 19 Feb 2024 5:10 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: StartAtTheEnd’s comment on: The Altman Technocracy
People who eat seafood, but not the flesh of other terrestrial animals are pescatarian. Ethical (as opposed to environmental) pescatarians say fish and other marine life aren’t complex enough for fear or pain. Perhaps they call themselves vegetarians just to avoid having to explain pescatarianism.

Andrew Burns 19 Feb 2024 0:00 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: StartAtTheEnd’s comment on: The Altman Technocracy
I’m puzzled by your use of the word “intelligence.” Intelligence refers to a capacity to understand facts, acquire knowledge and process information. Humans are presently the only members of the set of intelligent self-regulating systems.

Andrew Burns 18 Feb 2024 5:04 UTC
−1 points
−1
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Social media use probably induces excessive mediocrity
Whenever someone uses “they,” I get nervous.

Andrew Burns 17 Feb 2024 21:27 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: StartAtTheEnd’s comment on: The Altman Technocracy
This and other communities seek to transcend, or at least mitigate, human imperfections. Just because something is “human” doesn’t mean it contributes to human flourishing. Envy, rage, hate, and cruelty are human, after all.

Andrew Burns 12 Feb 2024 15:17 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: AnonAcc’s comment on: Sam Altman’s Chip Ambitions Undercut OpenAI’s Safety Strategy
Lex Luthor vibes.

Andrew Burns 11 Feb 2024 7:12 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: FallibleDan’s comment on: Believing In
“To believe” in German is glauben, also from Proto-Germanic. Was this meaning also colored by Greek?

Andrew Burns 11 Feb 2024 0:38 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Jon Rowlands’s comment on: Believing In
I don’t know that an opinion that conforms to reality is self-reinforcing. It is reinforced by reality. The presence of a building on a map is reinforced by the continued existence of the building in real life.

Andrew Burns 10 Feb 2024 23:57 UTC
5 points
0
on: Andrew Burns’s Shortform
When I was in middle school, our instructor was trying to teach us about the Bill of Rights. She handed out a paper copy and I immediately identified that Article the first (sic) and Article the second (sic) were not among the first ten amendments and that the numbers for the others were wrong. I boldly asserted that this wasn’t the Bill of Rights and the teacher apologized and cursed the unreliable Internet. But I was wrong. This WAS the Bill of Rights, but the BILL rather than the ten ratified amendments. Everyone came away wrongly informed from that exchange.

Edit: I wrote before that I identified that they were not in the Constitution, but article the second is, as the 27th amendment, and I knew that, but it wasn’t among the first ten.

Andrew Burns’s Shortform

Andrew Burns10 Feb 2024 23:57 UTC

2 points

2 comments1 min readLW link

Andrew Burns 10 Feb 2024 18:23 UTC
4 points
2
on: AI #50: The Most Dangerous Thing

Sam Altman: is there a word for feeling nostalgic for the time period you’re living through at the time you’re living it?

Call it “nowstalgia.”

Andrew Burns 7 Feb 2024 1:15 UTC
−2 points
0
in reply to: Lucius Bushnaq’s comment on: On the Debate Between Jezos and Leahy
First, I suggest that people pay heed to what happened in the movie “Don’t Look Up.” I don’t remember the character names, but the punk female scientist, when confronted during an interview by unserious journalists, went absolutely bonkers on television and contributed significantly to doom. The lesson I got from this is if you do not present serious existential threats in a cogent, sober manner, the public will polarize based on vibes and priors and then lock in. Only the best, most unflappable, polished spokespeople should be put forward, and even then, it might be no use.

Second, you cannot have a meaningful exchange on Twitter. Twitter encourages the generation of poorly reasoned emotional responses that are then used to undermine better reasoned future arguments. I would recommend people just avoid that platform entirely because the temptation to respond to raconteurs like Jezos is too high.

Andrew Burns 1 Feb 2024 4:14 UTC
6 points
−2
in reply to: Jiao Bu’s comment on: Notes on Innocence
I think this disagreement stems from a failure to distinguish which meaning of innocence we are talking about. By my reckoning, there are three major meanings: legal innocence, moral innocence, and naive innocence. Legal innocence is the lack of criminal culpability. Moral innocence is the lack of moral culpability. Naive innocence is the lack of knowledge about sensitive topics.

“Innocent as a dove and shrewd as a serpent” is referring to moral innocence and means: be clever, but only so far as is morally acceptable. Naive innocence, however, which is the topic the OP seems to be discussing, isn’t a virtue, it is ignorance, and curiosity is the virtue which seeks to extinguish it. An innocent listener who doesn’t understand the racial joke should be curious and ask probing questions and do research to better understand what the racial joke teller was trying to say. Then, the next time someone talks in a similar manner, the now savvy listener can make an informed decision about whether that person is the sort of person the listener wants to associate with.

Andrew Burns

An­drew Burns’s Shortform

Andrew Burns’s Shortform