You’re betraying your ignorance of how biology works and illustrating that you have absolutely no business debating this subject.

Have some humility and willingness to learn.

Efficiency is not the primary fitness function for evolution, it’s survivability.

I didn’t say it was the primary function. I guess all that talk about straw men was just projection. You don’t trust me, fine. Then what about Darwin who literally said, “Natural selection is continually trying to economize every part of the organization.” Now please go and read some introductory texts on biology before trying to explain to me why Darwin is wrong. There’s so much going on when it comes to the thermodynamics of living systems and you’re clearly not ready to have a conversation about it.

Here’s a concrete example for you of just how much of the brain isn’t actually essential for normal day to day function.

You’re baseless assuming that hydrocephalus causes the brain to lose a substantial amount of its complexity. Where is the evidence for that? In most of these cases it seems much of the outer layers of the cerebral cortex are in tact. It’s also really telling that your citation’s first source is an article titled “Is Your Brain Really Necessary” which is followed in the Journal by another article entitled “Math and Sex: Are Girls Born with Less Ability?”. But hey neuroscience hasn’t really advanced at all since 1980 right? The brain is totally redundant right? There’s no possible way a critical and discerning person such as yourself could have been taken in by junk science, right?!!

That’s literally the whole context for this thread, it just doesn’t fit with the straw man you want to argue about.

I took issue with specific statements you made that stand apart from the rest of your comment. That’s not a straw man. Although honestly this is on me. What can I expect from someone who thinks LLMs and the Human Brain are operating on similar principles? You’re so wound up in a pseudoscientific fiction there’s nothing I can do. You might as well start believing in the astrology, crystals, and energy healing. At least those interests will make you seem fun and quirky instead of just an over confident tech bro.

The straw man is you continuing to argue against equating LLMs with the functioning of the brain, something I never said here.

I’m not claiming you ever said they functioned exactly the same way. Im simply stating that you’re way off base when you claim that they appear to operate using the same principles or that all evidence suggests the human mind is nothing more than a probability machine. That’s not a straw man. You literally said those things.

There is zero evidence that all the complexity of the brain is inherent to the way our reasoning functions.

You’re betraying your own ignorance about neuroscience. The complexity of the brain is absolutely linked with its ability to reason and we have plenty of evidence to show that. The evolutionary process does not just create needless complexity if there is a more efficient path.

Again, we don’t have a full understanding of how the brain accomplishes tasks like reasoning. It may be a lot more complex than what LLMs do, or it may not be. We do not know.

This is such a silly statement especially when you’ve been claiming that both the brain and AI appear to work using the same principles. If you truly believe the mind is such a mystery then stop making that claim.

You decided to ignore that to focus on braying about tech companies and LLMs instead.

I don’t really care about your arguments concerning embodiment because they’re so beside the point when you just blowing right by the most basic principles of neuroscience.

I bring up tech companies because they’ve had a massively distorting effect on how many computer scientists think the world works. You’re not immune to it either simply because you’re a critic of capitalism. A ruthless criticism of that exists includes the very researchers whose work you’re taking at face value.

our brains appear to work on similar principles.

Sure in the same way that a horse and a motorcycle operate on similar principles and serve the same function.

Maybe try engaging with that instead of writing a wall of text arguing with a straw man.

Where the straw man? You’ve missed my point entirely. LLMs and the human mind operate on categorically different principles. All the verbiage used to describe neural network models has little to do with how the brain actually works. That’s honestly wasn’t a problem until Tech companies started purposely misusing those terms and now far too many people seem to think “AI” is something it’s not.

All the evidence suggests that our own minds are also nothing more than probability engines.

This completely understates the gulf between what we call AI and how the human brain actually works. The difference is so severe that acting as if they’re quantitatively comparable is basically pseudoscience. You might as well start claiming that we’re not far off from building a Dyson sphere just because we invented solar panels.

Most “AI” these days are built using linear feed forward networks. The brain is constructed using nonlinear recurrent networks which are can do far more with less. Now you could theoretically create the same output from a linear feed forward network but it’s way less efficient and would require many more neurons to achieve such a result. Which is wild when you consider that there are orders of magnitude more synapses in just the regions of the brain associated with language than there are parameters used in even today’s most advanced “AI” models. Now consider that human synapses rely on over a hundred qualitatively different neurotransmitters and not just a single 16-bit number. It’s also not just the scale of the signal that transmits information in a human synapse but the pattern too. Would you be surprised to know that there are a whole variety of signaling patterns neurons use? Because that’s true too. I haven’t even gotten into the differences in complexity in terms of how neurons process the information they receive. As of now there is no “AI” system that comes anywhere close to replicating that kind of complexity. It’s absurd to suggest where dealing with qualitatively similar machines here.

The squad was born in the original Trump administration so it shouldn’t be that surprising to see a return of these kinds of progressive candidates.

WhyTF do we even have primaries then! If they are not going to play by their own rules of their special little club, let’s just extend Ranked Choice Voting to cover the general and scrap the primaries altogether!

Because the US doesn’t really have a true democracy. It’s always going to be weighted against the actual interests of the people. The more success candidates the Zohran have, the more the established politicians will stack the deck against them. The good thing is that the more the game is rigged the more obvious it all becomes.

This is why I think China’s bet on renewable energy technology, manufacturing, and infrastructure is going to be a major geopolitical advantage for them in the coming years. You can’t conceivably cut China off from the sun, wind, and rain. Their major weakness is still going to be a naval blockade that could cut them off from access to raw materials. However, they’re also addressing that issue as well through various sustainability initiatives and military capacity.

The US however is playing the same old game of trying to control the world’s fossil fuel supply. However, they’ve done nothing to hedge against the inevitability that renewable energy will devalue fossil fuels almost entirely. They’re structurally incapable of doing anything else and it’s going to bite them in the ass.

It could be the business was borderline insolvent and cash from the checks acted as a short term loan from Walmart.

That or he was trying to create the create the illusion of cash flow in order to get the business to qualify for certain kinds of loans. The money from the loans he could subsequently embezzled. Then if the company went bankrupt the creditors would be at a loss.

If you end up integrating LLMs in a way where it could impact patient care that’s actually pretty dangerous considering their training data includes plenty of fictional and pseudo scientific sources. That said it might be okay for medical research applications where accuracy isn’t as critical.

As expected, every one of their accusations is just projection.

I imagine Israel actually has control over their nukes but I doubt they can use them in any offensive way without the US backing the decision. So in effect it would still be the US who maintains control, for now at least.

If that were true Iran would have almost certainly taken some of the actions I’ve described. They’re trying to use that as a threat to get the US to back down and reign in their attack dog.

They could believe in their longterm capacity for success in a war with Israel and the US but still want to avoid all of the destruction that would entail. If they blow up Saudi oil fields, close the straits of hormuz, and attack US bases then any hope of deescalation is lost.

It really depends on how far both sides are willing to escalate.

Israel appears to be emboldened for a variety of reasons. Nobody is stopping their genocide. Hezbollah is on its back foot. Netanyahu sees political gain in a war with Iran. Trump is reckless enough to not reign Israel in.

However, Israel cannot wage all out war without the backing of the US. Iran knows this which is why I think their responses to past Israeli attacks have been fairly measured. These attacks are a serious escalation though and it’s hard to say how Iran may decide to respond.

If they seriously think the US is ready to back Israel in an all out war then we’re going to face consequences globally. Iran has the capacity to obliterate much of the middle east’s oil infrastructure, which the US is heavily invested in. That could cause energy prices to spike and create all kinds of downstream havoc for the global economy.

Haha speak for yourself. Understanding the underlying mechanics makes it obvious what comes next and I kind of wish we could just skip that part. 😅

That doesn’t matter when ICE isn’t giving people their right to due process which they have regardless of their immigration status.

Yeah honestly. Instead of just suing the administration, why hasn’t he given the national guard contravening orders to stand down? If Trump’s orders are indeed illegal then that’s seems to me like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Again, it seems like you have a really vague notion of what value actually is which is what makes you incapable of understanding the concept of labor exploitation. You need to understand the difference between marginal theories of value, which is defined by a circular logic where price determines value and value determines price, and labor theories of value, where people interact with the material world to modify it in some way that gives it added utility.

How is it that simply by being an employer, you are exploiting staff?

It’s not that simple. You can be an employer and not exploit the people that work for you. However, doing that means you will not have a profitable business. Profits come from exploitation. Please understand that when I use the word exploitation I’m not making an inherently moral argument about whether exploitation is good or bad. Exploitation is simply a material phenomena. I believe it only becomes a moral issue when undue suffering occurs as a result of said exploitation.

Is the guy selling kabobs down the street from me exploiting his staff?

He might be. Small business are often some of the most exploitive workplaces because of how unprofitable they can be. It’s not uncommon for a small business to be forced into situations where they really have no choice but to exploit their staff if they want to continue operating. This is why so many restaurants in the US rely on undocumented immigrants who they can pay less than the minimum wage. It’s a flaw in the way our economy works.

I mean, I admit I’m totally being exploited at my current job but I’ve had other jobs where I was paid extremely well and given great opportunities.

This happens to a lot of people in industries where profitability declines. When profits are high, workers in those industries often get paid that they can afford their basic needs. However, as profits wane investors look to bolster them by taking more from their employees. What’s happening in the tech sector is a prime example of such a phenomenon. Unfortunately, this is a tendency that’s baked into the our economy. It prevents long term sustainable from being achieved in industries that are key to our economy but where the opportunities for new markets or innovations are lacking.

You guys are either being dishonest with me or dishonest with yourselves. Or you really have no idea what you’re talking about and just regurgitating what you’ve heard other people say.

Have you thought that maybe you’re the one who’s more confident that you really should be? I get that a lot of what I’ve said may contradict vague notions about how the economy works that you may have absorbed simply because you exist within a world steeped in corporate propaganda. However, your beliefs are not ones that any worthwhile economist would take seriously.

That’s an ignorant response. Do you even understand what I mean when I say exploitation? This is literally Econ 101 stuff. Exploitation in our current economic system means that working people who must sell their labor in order to pay for basic necessities are not compensated for the full value of their labor.

Now frankly if the working people in question were able to work reasonable hours and if they had access to all the resources they need to live a happy and fulfilling lives, I wouldn’t have a serious issue with exploitation. However, that’s just not how our economy works. Sick and dying people are taken for all they have because they literally have no other options. Working people are forced to sell their labor because if they don’t they generally won’t be able to house and feed themselves or their family. People are literally dying in the street because they can’t pay the egregious rents landlords are charging.

All of that pain and suffering is what makes profit seeking and wealth hoarding morally objectionable behavior. We literally have super yachts trolling on by waterfronts where people are forced to live in tent cities. These disgusting displays of gluttony should make anyone with a heart realize how morally bankrupt the wealthy truly are. Do you have no heart?

It’s not the type of change people want. However if violent retribution is all that’s on offer it makes perfect sense that someone would eventually take that deal and that people would celebrate it.