David Piepgrass @dpiepgrass@schelling.pt

"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." - Bill Gates

(I endorse this as CTO)

---
RT @GergelyOrosz
Those channels were public by accident: because the people creating them didn’t realize Slack works like this. They discussed things like how Elon expects a list of ppl to be fired per org (+ linked it) and suggested to query for lines committed.

They later realised the m…
https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588907407002185729

The main argument against AGI catastrophic risk is a lot like the main argument against humans causing global warming: it's all too complex! it can't be predicted! therefore there's nothing to worry about!
---
RT @GregAttilaKiss
@VesselOfSpirit
https://twitter.com/GregAttilaKiss/status/1646756795497553921

Original stories:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/29/ukrainian-pow-castrated-by-russians-in-sickening-video/
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-authorities-identify-defiant-ukrainian-pow-executed-by-russians/
https://nypost.com/2023/04/12/video-appears-to-show-russian-troop-beheading-ukrainian-pow/

I certainly wouldn't want Ukrainians to respond in kind, but: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-un-execution-prisoners/32333852.html

Ukrainian soldiers must all be asking themselves:

If three executions of POWs (probably by three different groups of Russians) were posted on the internet, how many others weren't? How many torture sessions?

"Best not to be taken alive," one might think, grenade in hand.

If American soldiers did this, I think we'd be hearing about it for years (remember the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse?)

But since Russia did it, Americans will probably forget within a month (as with Tymofiy Shadura). Bucha will be remembered better—but was a much larger atrocity...
---
RT @visegrad24
The Russians have just published a video of them cutting the head off a captured Ukrainian soldier as he tries to struggle for his life.

Uk…
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1645912822289768449

there's no way to resolve the disagreement.

2. Evidence and reason work and are broadly accepted and uncontroversial, so "all other beliefs MUST be based on evidence and logic" is a good axiom. This axiom isn't sufficient to derive morality, though; hence the previous axiom.

Ultimately though, people do choose their own beliefs. Why choose my axioms, then? Again, I would only point out that

1. every axiom is an irreconcilable difference that can cause human conflict. Bob insists Axiom X is true, Joe insists X is false. Since axioms are unprovable,

Still, I was a Mormon. Basically for 30 years I *badly wanted* to believe in it, yet it turned out to be false. I think this gives me a unique perspective on the dangers of choosing beliefs according to taste. My life was a cautionary tale on believing things you want to be true.

Okay, but all ideas including monadal consciousness and evidence-based reasoning are themselves memes. So isn't my own belief system "meme-based reasoning" just like everyone else's?

It seems like there's some truth to that, since I've always had a taste for reason and logic.

These two seem to be enough, and perhaps if The Hard Problem of Consciousness were solved, we would only need one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

The word "MUST" is included because without it, you'll tend to adopt other axioms. Axioms are bad because they cannot be proven and they tend to lead to inherently irreconcilable conflicts with other people who believe different axioms; therefore, it's best to have few of them.

Likewise for evidence—I don't know how to prove the importance of evidence, it's just evident that (Bayesian) evidence-based belief formation "works better" than everything else people propose. It allows belief convergence of isolated groups, rather than the usual divergence.

(2) is axiomatic because logic cannot prove its own correctness or its value in reality. Its value and correctness can be seen inductively, but not deductively. If you deduce the correctness of logic using logic, you end up relying on circular reasoning, which is a logical error.

(1) is axiomatic because there's no separate evidence for this "phenomenal consciousness", and I believe it because it is the foundation of my morality.