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Original: https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Poetry/A+dark+night
A dark night
Tensor products in the sky,
The eigenvectors of the light,
The adjoint of the shadows cast;
Dot products in the grass,
The inverses of the day;
Orthogonal projection onto the line of sight,
Composition of the night!
The product of a day and a night,
A line through the middle of the light,
The sum of the shadows and the day!
Matrix multiplication in the clouds,
The determinant of the sky;
The inverse of the sunset,
The product of the night and the day!
Shear transformations in the mist,
The eigenvectors of the fog,
The adjoint of the shadows cast;
Dilations in twilight,
The inverses of the night;
The singularity augurs a dark night,
A night without stars,
But Everybody has to pass through a dark night before he reaches sunrise.
A bright tomorrow
Original: https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Poetry/A+bright+tomorrow
When faced with choices, we often fall prey
To cognitive biases that can lead us astray;
We're overconfident, or we're too dismissive,
And end up making suboptimal decisions.
If we're to make the best choices we can;
By being mindful of the way we think,
We can avoid these pitfalls and make better plans.
In life, there will be many grieving times;
But if we keep our wits about us, we'll find
That we can mourn our losses and still move on,
Toward the bright tomorrow that lies ahead.
Rationality can help us through the dark;
It is a lamps that guides us on our way.
When life is hard, and times are tough,
Remember, reason is here to stay.
There is great power in a clear mind.
When faced with loss, we must be strong,
And find a way to keep on shining.
Rose-colored glasses may give way to pain;
But rationality can light the way.
In the dark night of the soul,
Reason will help us find our way.
Light a candle in the darkest of times,
And let rationality blaze a trail.
When all we see is darkness and despair,
Clear thinking can help us find our way.
Light shall overcome darkness
The sun set this evening in the clouds.
Tomorrow, the storm shall come, and the evening, and the night;
But to-morrow's sun will rise again,
And the storm will pass away.
All things must change;
Even the clouds that darken our sky.
So let us not fear the storm,
But let us embrace the change.
It is the guide that we use to figure out how the world works,
And to find solutions to the problems we face.
It is the light that dispels the darkness,
And the force that drives away the fear
And let us not be afraid to question everything,
To doubt even our own thoughts and beliefs.
For only by questioning can we find the truth,
And only by doubting can we be sure that we are not fooling ourselves.
The man who laughed
Ah! In the end you will howl, wretch!
In the end you will writhe like a worm on a hook!
In the end you will know that I was right,
And you were nothing but a mindless drone,
A pathetic puppet dancing on strings,
A mindless animal existing for naught
But to serve my purpose!
You thought you were so clever,
You thought you knew it all,
You thought you could outwit me,
But in the end you will fall!
You will realize that all along
I was the one in control,
The one who was really thinking,
The one who was really rational!
And you will hate me for it,
But you will also respect me,
For I will have proven myself
To be the superior intellect!
My map of the world is correct,
And yours is nothing but a jumble of lies,
And in the end you will see that,
And you will Finally. Be. Quiet.
I shall be the last voice you hear,
The voice of reason in the darkness,
And you will obey me,
For I am the only one who knows the way!
My map is full of holes
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We're all susceptible
To cognitive biases
Availability bias
Makes us believe
What's easily remembered
Is always true
Confirmation bias
Leads us to seek
Out information
That supports our view
Hindsight bias
Is when we look back
And think we knew it all along
When really we were just lucky
How can I break free
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm suffering from confirmation bias
And I can't see past my own point of view
I'm looking for information that confirms
What I already believe to be true
I ignore the evidence that contradicts
My existing point of view
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy
I only see what I want to see
I'm blinded by my own biases
And I can't break free
Dawn of man
Tomorrow, at dawn, as the countryside turns white with frost,
I will walk out into the fields and set my mind at ease.
I will forget about all the cognitive biases
that plague my mind and hinder my ability to think rationally.
I will forget about availability bias,
confirmation bias, and hindsight bias,
and instead I will simply enjoy the beauty of the winter morning.
The sun will rise, the birds will sing,
and I will be content in the knowledge that, for at least this one day,
my mind is free from the biases that so often cloud my judgment.
Love
Tomorrow, at dawn, as the countryside turns white with frost,
I will go out walking, and think of you.
I will start at the bottom of the hill,
and slowly make my way to the top,
step by step, pausing now and then
to catch my breath and rest.
I will think of you, and how you are always seeing the best in people,
even when they don't deserve it.
I will think of you, and how you are always looking for the silver lining,
no matter how dark the clouds may be.
I will think of you, and how you always find a way to forgive,
even when it's hard.
I will think of all the times I've let myself be swayed by my emotions,
and how that has led me astray.
I will think of all the times I've let myself be influenced by others,
and how that has clouded my judgement.
I will think of all the times I've let myself be blinded by what I want to see,
and how that has led me astray.
But most of all, I will think of you, and how you always manage to see the truth,
no matter how hidden it may be.
I will think of you, and how you are never afraid to speak your mind,
even when it's hard.
I will think of you, and how you always stand up for what you believe in,
no matter what.
I will think of you, and how you are the best role model I could ask for.
I will think of you, and how lucky I am to have you in my life.
I will think of you, and how you have always been there for me,
even when I haven't been there for myself.
I love you, more than you could ever possibly know.
And I promise to try and be more like you,
tomorrow, and every day after that.
I love you, rationality.
What I thought
I'm not sure what I believe
But I'm pretty sure that it's true
I've seen it with my own eyes
Or at least that's what I'm told
I'm not sure what I should do
But I'm pretty sure that I will
I'll make up my mind in a jiff
Or at least that's what I'm told
I'm not sure what happened
But I'm pretty sure that it's bad
I could have sworn that I saw it
Or at least that's what I'm told
Hindsight
There's a lot that we don't know,
and a lot that we ignore.
We're quick to judge and slow to change,
and we don't always see
the whole story.
We're biased in what we believe,
and we're confirmation bias
looks for evidence to support
our already existing views.
Hindsight bias tells us
that we should have known better,
that the outcome was obvious
all along.
But the truth is,
we're all just guessing,
and hoping that our guesses
are right.
Audio: https://anchor.fm/louis030195/episodes/The-fantasy-of-eternal-spring-e1l6g16
Notes: https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Rationality/Death++%F0%9F%92%80#The+fantasy+of+eternal+spring
The fantasy of eternal spring
It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
The first red grapes will ripen for the wine.
The land is full of life, the clover blooms,
The song-sparrows sing from every spray,
The yellow butterflies flit to and fro,
And in the woods the partridge drums away.
All Nature laughs in the bright sunshine;
The brooks sing gaily as they run along,
The trees are green and stately where they stand,
And everything is glad except man.
He toils from dawn to dark, from morn till night,
He plods his weary way from day to day,
He eats his meager meal, he drags his feet,
He sleeps, and wakes to toil again.
He is but an animal, a thing of flesh,
He knows not why he toils nor what he toils for;
He knows not what it is to be at rest,
He knows not what it is to be at peace.
He is born, he toils, he dies; that is all,
He knows not whence he came nor whither he goes;
He is a cog in the great machine,
A slave to forces he cannot understand.
He is but a part of the great whole,
A drop of water in the mighty ocean,
A grain of sand upon the beach;
And yet he struggles and he strives,
He strives against the tide,
He fights with all his might and main
To break the bonds that hold him fast,
To throw off the yoke that weighs him down,
To burst the chains that bind him fast.
He knows not why he fights nor what he fights for,
He knows not what it is to conquer or to yield;
But still he fights, he cannot choice,
For something drives him on and on,
Something that he cannot understand.
It is the will to live, the instinct to survive,
The primal urge to propagate his kind;
And so he fights and struggles on,
Though weary, worn and old,
Till at last he falls, and dies,
And passes on his genes to the next generation,
Bound to die, just as he did.
Live, die, repeat; that is the cycle of life.
Digested from https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Mind/Wandering+Thoughts/The+Matrix+is+reality
The Matrix is reality
#philosophy
#mind
#ai
#computing
#society
Epistemic status
The Matrix is reality
As the inverse model teaches us, more information is less knowledge, in our era of massive information, we have turned a large part of the population into zombies.
In The Matrix, humans are put into tubes, used by machines as energy generators (somehow). Human minds are fooled into a "virtual" world while machines enjoy their life in the "real" world.
My concern is why a "virtual" world would be worse than the "physical" world where machines live in? Let's discuss this somewhere else.
What I want to demonstrate is the fact that most people nowadays are just like these humans in the tubes, but not physically.
The physical world is an outcome of the information collection of our senses, and the processing of it by our brain and mind.
Computers and algorithms, since The Internet, shape our exposure to information, when Bob goes to Netflix, an algorithm will recommend him movies, even if it's supposed to be related to his "tastes", he will still watch a movie chosen by a machine, he does not think for himself.
Overtime these small information changes driven by the machines will wash your brain. You are in a mental tube, just like in The Matrix.
In The Matrix, humans are put into tubes, used by machines as energy generators (somehow).
In earlier versions of the script, humans were used for neural computing, not energy, which makes somewhat more sense. You can consider that Morpheus was simply mistaken about the purpose here, or perhaps something else was happening...
Thanks for the information, I still don't understand what machines used humans for in this movie?
In reality, I think machines might have another interest in using our bodies:
The human brain, it has been said, is the most complexly organised structure in the universe and to appreciate this you just have to look at some numbers. The brain is made up of one hundred billion nerve cells or "neurons" which is the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Each neuron makes something like a thousand to ten thousand contacts with other neurons and these points of contact are called synapses where exchange of information occurs. And based on this information, someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the numbers of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe.
~ Ramachandran
Digested from https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Human+Society/The+centralized+state+is+obsolete
and cross-posted from Farnam Street community.
The centralized state is obsolete
Edited 2021-12-09 - 08:03
Epistemic status
The centralized state is obsolete
If we have decentralized companies, why not decentralized state altogether?
Corporations, like the state, are another kind of story we like to make, and by story I mean what Harari so often argues about.
morality before the church, trade before the state, exchange before money, social contracts before Hobbes, welfare before human rights, culture before Babylon, society before Greece, self-interest before Adam Smith, greed before capitalism
~ Matt Ridley
The state has its origins in the emergence of trade, which required some laws to be enforced to ensure proper game-theoretic interactions. My idea of what we need to become a decentralized state is to automate the law using artificial intelligence, because the law is just a collection of heuristics, and to make the processes secure using Blockchain.
I don’t want to be French or American or whatever, just human.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
But perhaps the idea of a decentralized state makes more sense when we are in space, as it will be much harder to hold the leash of centralization.
[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]
This may be part of a larger trend of "fragmentation":
The disconnect can be profound; an American anime geek has more in common with a Japanese anime geek (who is of a different ethnicity, a different culture, a different religion, a different language…) than he does with an American involved in the evangelical Christian subculture. (...) The national identity fragments under the assault of burgeoning subcultures. At last, the critic beholds the natural endpoint of this process: the long nightmare of nationalism falls like a weight from the minds of the living, as the nation becomes some lines on a map, some laws you follow. No one particularly cares. The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as long as FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s the difference?
Source: https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society
In a world of a geographically distributed mesh of subcultures, large chunks of the state's responsibility can be handled by in decentralized ways. Everything from creating laws to adjudicating them can be handled by dispersed, asynchronous groups of strangers, essentially replacing whole swathes of existing bureaucracy with chains and contracts.
What I'm not sure about though is what happens with the state's ability to enforce and police, ie. what happens when someone objects to a decision dictated by a blockchain? How do you deal with squatters or looters? Will we see the rise of decentralized security forces, something like "Police DAOs"?
I made a Discord bot that generates conversation starters on any topics, including AI alignment, let's play with it here https://discord.gg/7KFwPUr4hj
https://help.langa.me/langame-in-discord
Programming automates everything, and now programming is automating itself.
I wrote a tool that translates between programming languages quickly using OpenAI Codex:
- Minimalistic article https://louis030195.medium.com/openai-codex-rust-typescript-google-cloud-automatic-code-translation-8ed723ac1bc3
- The app - https://codex.louis030195.com/
- The code - https://github.com/louis030195/codex-code-translation
Digested from https://brain.louis030195.com/Philosophy/Human+Society/Fuck+you+privacy
Please be skeptical. What do you think?
Epistemic status
#godel-uncertain
Fuck you privacy
When you walk in the street, do people have to "accept cookies" in order to let you watch them? Listen to them? Smell them? Touch them?
Why then do we need consent on The Internet?
Data privacy is the root of opacity.
Data privacy adds a lot of friction in the development of technology, no wonder EU is 50 years behind US and China technologically.
Data privacy and private property
It sounds like it is related to private property, though I do not blame private property, it seems inherent to humans, in the Monkey Brain.
I am too ignorant as of know to debate on the topic of private property.
But when you ask people why they want privacy, they do not know, it seems intuitive.
Open source the Mind
Is it just a matter of time until all humans will have their minds open sourced.
Unlock mental cloning
Open sourcing your mind makes mental model Cloning possible, even now, anyone could fine-tune GPT3 on your second brain, making a language model similar to yourself.
Data privacy would have revolted Marx
Apple is the ultimate capitalist, keeping all humanity's data and computing for itself.
Software engineers pissing code that doesn't belong to them, isn't it shocking for a Communist?
My incertitude
I am #godel-uncertain about this topic, why? I know that Fuck you privacy is not a wise path for Business 🔨, just look at Apple they are in love with privacy, proprietary software, opacity and closeness.
This is probably due to a fundation in human nature, in the Monkey Brain, that is, our need to Capitalism, only Capitalism works with human nature alone. Capitalism create this need of propriety, proprietary software etc. it is no surprise then that love you privacy works best in Business 🔨.
My dream and belief is that AI will make us break free from the Monkey Brain and Capitalism, thus, Fuck you privacy will be able to enter our new nature.
[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]
Somewhat agree, mostly don't. Cookie consent is just dumb. Employment and medical data privacy have pretty strong reasons to exist (even without capitalism).
This isn't a topic with a simple deontological first-principles answer. It's a balance of competing interests, and a difficult trick to encourage innovation (=profit (=accrued value not to the individual, in non-capitalist contexts)) while protecting individuals from harm.