Forum LEVEL

looks good

Poate-mi schimb și eu avatarul.

Poate si l schimba zombie

Nu-l dau pe my boi Steve

Nice, acum tot ce mai au de facut e sa stabileasca ca radiatia Hawking chiar exista si Steve (not Zombie's boy) isi poate primi Nobelul post-mortem

Interesant interviul.

SpaceX launches Starlink mission, deploys 60 satellites

The rocket will attempt to boost 60 Starlink satellites, each 227kg, to an altitude of 440km. This is the company's first block of Starlink satellites for what should eventually be a much larger constellation

About 1 hour and 3 minutes after the launch, the entire stack of 60 satellites floated away from the Falcon 9's second stage. Slowly—very slowly, it appeared—the 60 satellites began to drift apart.

With six more launches, for a total of about 400 satellites, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the Starlink constellation will reach the point of being able to offer some initial Internet connectivity to ground-based users. A dozen launches would bring "significant" connectivity, he said, and 24 launches would bring near-worldwide service.

Breathtaking View of SpaceX Starlink Satellite ‘Train’ Triggers Wave of UFO Sightings

A satellite tracker in the Netherlands has captured stunning video of dozens of SpaceX Starlink satellites passing overhead. Launched together late last week, the chain of satellites looked like a giant, brightly lit train chugging away in the night sky—a rare sight that understandably prompted UFO sightings.

Eu nu inteleg, practic daca e stiintific imposibil sa depasesti viteza luminii nu exista nicio sansa pt omenire de a coloniza spatiul. O sa disparem pe terra. Muie la sf uri

Elon Musk, Man of Steel, reveals his stainless Starship

Three years ago, Elon Musk took the stage in Guadalajara, Mexico, to share the full scope of his Mars ambitions for the first time. He spoke of building a large, interplanetary spaceship—it was not yet named Starship— and a large rocket booster with dozens of engines that would carry 100 people to Mars at a time.

But most futuristic of all seemed the notion of a 50-meter tall spaceship that could launch into space, fly on to the Moon or Mars, and return to Earth. And yet this was what Musk put on display with the Starship Mk 1 vehicle. Soon, perhaps within one or two months, it will launch to an altitude of 20km. Simultaneously, the company is building a second prototype, Mk 2, in Cocoa, Florida. It will start work on a third version in Texas later this fall, and so on.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10 ... y-suggests
Mai era parca un studiu in care transferul de bacterii de la un soarece mai increzator la unul mai sperios a rezultat in extra tupeu pentru cel sperios.

Un mod interesant de a te uita la animale: niste shells cu rol de habitat pentru microflora intestinala. Al doilea creier e reprezentat de niste ciuperci si bacterii

Youtube going all creepy and things on me.

SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

3:30pm ET Update: The weather was good, and right on cue a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Saturday. The first stage performed nominally, and separating, it successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the second stage cruised into into orbit and dropped off the Dragon spacecraft right where it needed to be.

It will take about 19 hours for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to catch up with, and dock with the International Space Station. Ars will have continuing coverage of this historic mission.

Bach is brilliant

The interesting parts of our minds are, in my view, the parts that make models. The other thing it's the Reward Function that makes the mind subservient to the organism. To turn some general mind into the illusion of being a person and caring about things the organism needs to take a perfectly fine computational process and corrupt it with the illusion of meaning. Right? So you have this reward function that needs to be protect against the X's of the mind that would want to know "why am i doing this here?" and so the reward function gets wrapped into a big bowl of stupid to protect it against you accesing it. Right? So as soon as you try yo look at your true incentives it gets very boring or something else. You feel very guilty if you are in the early stages or very ashamed and only when you go all the way and are able to look at this things you can dissolve being a person and you wake up. And is not necessarily a good thing if you wake up. This liberation doesn't give you a direction. You just wake up and look down at your hands, and you say "Ok, i just woke up and i'm a mind, i'm not a monkey, i'm just the side effect of the regulation needs. But does it have to be a monkey that i run on?"

Ma fascineaza si pe mine subiectul, o alta corelatie interesanta este intre Google Deep Dream, si halucinatii. Sunt 90% sigur ca modelele actuale de computer vision replica fidel ce se intampla in cortexul vizual - layere de procesare, care detecteaza mai intai linii, apoi forme, apoi combinatii de forme, apoi obiecte. Era si un articol interesant pe https://slatestarcodex.com/ in care era expusa o teorie conform careia perceptia noastra a realitatii este data de un loss function, practic noi incercam sa ghicim cum e realitatea in mod constant (Asta ar fi partea de perceptie), si in functie de diferenta intre perceptie si realitate (loss function) perceptia este ajustata ca sa fie cat mai fidela realitatii. Psyhedelicele prin afectarea sistemului serotonogic, ajusteaza acest loss function astfel incat perceptia devine mai putin rigida, lucru care explica de ce Google Deep Dream arata atata de... familiar celor care stiu cum e o asemnea experienta

Imi pare rau doar ca articolul nu mai e disponibil, due to the NYTimes threating to dox Scott Alexander, sunt sigur ca n-am explicat cum trebuie si ca am incurcat cativa din termeni

Despre computer vision: https://cs231n.github.io/convolutional-networks/

edit: mi-am amintit de waybackmachine

Articolele relevante de pe Slate Star Codex:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200527231 ... -matching/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200113090 ... hic-brain/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200107202 ... certainty/

Tangetial: O teorie personala legata de "why are psyhedelics useful in treating depression" ar fi ca depresia este cauzata (si) de o perceptie (despre sine, despre lume) care a ramas blocata intr-o minima locala daunatoare, schimband loss function-ul respectiv, creierul este din nou liber sa gaseasca o minima globala mai adecvata.

Din moment ce pentru mine nu e foarte clar nici macar care e diferenta dintre butonul de "edit" si ala de "quote" (multumesc cui a facut curat) e clar ca partea tehnica ma depasteste total dar subiectul asta (how the brain generates the world and the mind) e interesant pentru oricine se intreaba "what the hell am i?". Bach crede ca filozofia e...erm, daca nu moarta atunci cel putin intr-un impas "datorita" modului in care a fost integrata in mediul academic si a traseului pe care trebuie sa il urmezi pentru a-ti "face un nume" si a avea o cariera in acest domeniu. Nerzii care lucreaza in domeniul AGI au potentialul sa umple golul de "filozofie autentica" de care nu doar Bach se plange.

Faptul ca creierul se foloseste de informatii incomplete pentru a genera o imagine cosmetizata dar coerenta a lumii e destul de bine stabilit, din cate stiu (otherwise we would see everything upside-down and with a big black spot in the middle).

Si nu sunt sigur ca "perceptia este ajustata ca sa fie cat mai fidela realitatii". Cred ca este ajustata ca sa ofere o imagine care sa fie cat mai utila supravietuirii ceea poate coincide cu un grad ridicat de fidelitate dar cele doua obiective nu coincid mereu. De exemplu nu suntem foarte buni la a diferentia granulele discrete de nisip intr-un desert dar suntem foarte buni la a diferentia trasaturile fetelor.

Mărar wrote: 10 Jul 2020, 12:30
Tangetial: O teorie personala legata de "why are psyhedelics useful in treating depression" ar fi ca depresia este cauzata (si) de o perceptie (despre sine, despre lume) care a ramas blocata intr-o minima locala daunatoare, schimband loss function-ul respectiv, creierul este din nou liber sa gaseasca o minima globala mai adecvata.

First 3 minutes, he says somtehing similar

Foarte interesanta conversatia, imi place mult Joscha, si rezonez profund cu multe din chestiile pe care le spune. O sa continui cu celalalt video postat mai devreme. Mersi de recomandare

Pe Lex in schimb imi vine sa-l iau la palme de fiecare data cand pune o intrebare

Ma super amuza titlul topicului pt ca a ramas o replica de a mea faimoasa printre niste prieteni: "chem stiinta!"

Eram la o berica cu baietii acum niste ani si eu eram mahmur ca fusesem la o berica si in ziua precedenta. Probabil de la mahmureala sau nu stiu de ce, mi s a parut mie la bauta de a doua zi ca nu ma mai imbat bausem niste beri si imi parea ca n am nimic. Si am zis ba eu chem stiinta, gen sa ma analizeze, se intampla ceva, nu ma mai imbat desi beau. Fireste, la vreo ora dupa aceasta revelatie istorica deja incepeam sa fiu crengi

Cool story bro

Possible Marker of Life Spotted on Venus

It's actually happening? Va trebui sa asteptam vreo cativa ani sa ajunga o proba si sa confirme daca e chiar asa, dar indiciile de pana acum par foarte promitatoare.

Totusi cam dezamagitor ca primii extraterestrii pe care ii intalnim nu vor fi niste omuleti cu sprancene groase si urechi ascutite ci doar niste microbi plictisitori si inutili.

Cand insomnia imi f**e somnul la 3 dimineata dar ma loveste inspiratia

The Copernican Principle gone awry.

One of the most twisted and sick ways in which people choose to interpret the current crisis is that "we are the real virus and COVID is the cure the Planet has made to defend itself from us".

While the factual claim this stance implies (a self-regulatory Gaia-like Earth) is highly dubious what i find even more baffling is this self-deprecating conceptualization of humans as "viruses", "cancer", etc.

What underlines this ungenerous attitude towards our own species? I think that it is a misinterpreted and corrupted version of the Copernican Principle compounded by the ecological disaster we have inflicted on the biosphere.

This may seem a little far fetched since a lot of people endorsing this type of world-view probably never even heard of the Copernican Principle in the first place. No matter: ideas, (even from seemingly esoteric fields such as quantum mechanics or philosophy of science in this case) have a funny, and perhaps generally unhealthy, way of seeping into popular culture.

So what is the Copernican Principle? Quoting Jim Baggot's "Farewell to Reality":

The Copernican Principle. The universe is not organized for our benefit and we are not uniquely privileged observers. Science strives to remove ‘us’ from the centre of the picture, making our existence a natural consequence of reality rather than the reason for it. Empirical reality is therefore something that we have learned to observe with detachment, without passion.

Simply put the idea is that the Universe doesn't revolve around us. This is one of the starting assumption on which the scientific project rests upon since it's very early modern stages when that strange polish priest (Mister Copernic himself) wrote that strange little "book that no one read" ("On the revolution of the celestial spheres") and kicked us self-aggradizing apes out from the centre of Universe.

Subsequent developments in all kind of scientific fields have reinforced that assumption (organic chemistry showed that we are just regular "stuff", evolutionary biology showed that our ancestors are "microbes and muck", psychoanalytic theories suggests that we don't really know what goes on in our own head etc, etc). As Carl Sagan puts it: "Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop." The problem is that many persons take this humble attitude, now seemingly endorsed by science and therefore made somehow respectable, too far and in wrong directions. Hidden masochists more than happy to glide on the slippery slope of self-flaggelation. Now not only are we, humans, really not that special after all: we are in fact the worse thing that ever happened to this planet ! (An attitude which paradoxically makes us special, albeit in a very bad way, and violates the principle from which it stems)

What Sagan said was only half of the story. Contained in the "voyage into the uknown" image is another, more bright and heroic, face of humanity: we undertook this voyage in the first place and we didn't shied away from it in the face of all the "lessons in humilty" we have been served. The very fact that this voyage was possible: that we desire to and that we are capable of, understanding and explaining the world should suffice in putting us back on a more elevated place in this strange Universe.

There are other arguments against the "humans as viruses" analogy but i'm running out of words and patience.