Science

Last edited Tue Sep 9, 2025, 06:59 AM - Edit history (2)

The problem I am having is over who gets to define what is malicious and how. The mechanisms of malice have to be highlighted beyond the stale, limited set of ideas we normally sample (though some of those apply).

I look at shit like this and go, this is wrong (the stuff about ChatGPT having an internal model of the world) :

https://www.quantamagazine.org/world-models-an-old-idea-in-ai-mount-a-comeback-20250902/

In a way I almost feel it’s the sort of shit that violates laws of physics in ways that one can only vaguely allude to when one is not a charlatan and gets how overpopulation here in the Global South, overconsumption in the Global North and overgrowth are driving a perfect storm. We can’t mine our way out of this.

I was reading about a weird scientist selling something called the law of infodynamics and those crackpot theories like “simulation theory”. The human cost of such experiments is passed on to people who are least likely to complain and when people want to complain not really know how to go about it without adding to the same worthless nightmare.

Yan LeCun remains the one AI scientist who reminds me of real scientists not people covertly selling intelligent design and creationism merely expanding out to eastern mysticism, animism etc.

I always was godless but lately the influence of religion where it is not mild but aggressive can be seen everywhere. Religion has always hated science and increasingly tries to co-opt it/
Our treatment of the planet and non human animals ignoring their cognition is based on Dominion Theology and Descartes’ outright wrong ideas.

https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/animal-ethics-three-philosophies-animal-ethics

Even in innocuous articles like these I cringe when I see the term “creators”:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/analog-vs-digital-the-race-is-on-to-simulate-our-quantum-universe-20250905/

(I couldn’t even stand those Thronglets and their drivel about a creator and presents ;-/. I don’t like dominion theology creeping in).

The enlightened rationalist worldview is under attack and distractions clutter everything. I disagree that necessity is the mother of invention. Lately I have been cleaning my head of non-innate ideas and frameworks forced on one by barbaric methods.

Sorry Bernardo De La Paz ;-/. I am not making much sense because I saw something that frightened me in a philosophical sense as a (mediocre but not insane) scientist.

We need more Norbert Weiners and Yan LeCuns in AI and fewer Alexandr Wangs and so on.

This is cool though:
https://neurosciencenews.com/infomorphic-neurons-ai-learning-28520/

(It’s the Max Planck institute so it can’t be sleazy).

Made me think of this somehow:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism

One of Edelman’s students studies consciousness.
But I have yet to understand any of it. Just interesting stuff I keep in my DU journal for later.