greed

 greed is just fear

LLM Humor

Why don't large language models seem to be good at humor?

The question is profound and deeply insightful. If we figure out how we as humans do humor, we might also be able to supplement whatever LLMs are lacking in insight and creativity. We should think deeply about this! (both technically and philosophically)

My hypothesis: Humor is, generally, "surprising" and thus one capable of humor must be capable of thinking outside of the box (i.e. give statistically unlikely responses), yet such statistically unlikely responses must still be highly relevant to the topic (albeit not necessarily in the expected manner)

LLMs are currently statistical machines. Asking it to do the statistically unlikely is basically giving it a task it fundamentally not designed to do.

There's also an esoteric aspect to this. Many people who channel spirits say that they are super funny. Somewhat cheeky even.  The stark contrast seems to suggest that there is a qualitative gap between statistical intelligence and spiritual intelligence. The former takes averages, while the latter makes choices.

"Choices" are "inconsistent" if you apply statistical methods on them. But they are what makes things interesting. What makes choices "not random noise"? It is the choosing of something interesting. Finding the right thing at the right moment. Synchronicity. We can't do this with statistics.

(btw, it's also interesting how women seem to use humor as a proxy for reproductive fitness as well [more-so than "raw intelligence")

When they say, the gods breathed spirit into humans... what did they actually do?

Anthropic CEO to singularity 撚s - they have no idea what they are talking about

A lot of these people who write down differential equations who say AI is going to make more powerful AI who can't understand how it could possibly be the case that these things won't change so fast, I think they don't understand these things.  -- https://youtu.be/ugvHCXCOmm4?si=F1jLApzy2F98g75N&t=8200 

冬菇

 尋日啲冬菇超級入味

我懷疑係炒完落𧐢油再落咗生粉打芡收完汁之後再雪咗佢一日先拎嚟做食材所以先咁撚入味。啲生粉係可以幫手鎖住啲「肉類」嘅汁等佢 juicy 啲。

unless ⋯ 另一個我唔排除（但機會好低）嘅原因係：我浸完啲菇之後擺咗冰格雪咗幾日。照計唔關事，但紀錄埋佢日後可以確認

無肉茄子

落好多油

煸一輪啲四季豆

落蝦米  落少少鹽

再煎多陣

落茄子 (~ 3 隻切條)

落醬料 （沙爹王送贈辣醬幾好，再唔係豆瓣醬、沙茶醬都應該ok）

落少少蠔油

兜兜兜

OK

可以最後落多兩隻蛋兜下佢

本身諗住落啲冬菇但冇浸好。菇可以茄子半熟嗰陣落

Multidimensional Chess

It is mind-blowing that in 2024, we still do not have a consensus of what COVID-19 was about.

What caused the symptoms, true infection rates, whether vaccines were effective... you'd have thought if there was such a thing as "objective truth" one would have found it by now.

But we haven't. There are compelling reasons (see e.g. Fighting Goliath by Fenton and Neil) to doubt the official narrative.

Yet as the "pandemic" slowly fades into "history", the so called "objective truth" becomes even more blurry, as does everything that fades into the past.

One might be tempted to "do justice" to our history and set straight the "facts". But by now we should know that the past does not "truly exist" but is only a projection of the present. And the future essentially develops based on a reading of our fields of belief.  Belief generates actions and actions shape the future. Once the future arrives, the ex-present becomes the past. There is no objective fact, but what you believe is true is true.

And thus, while this thing is supremely amusing, I've relegated myself into mostly an observer role. One simply cannot determine truth for every single controversy.

The lack of certainty is often scary for people used to intellectual authoritarianism. But the truth is we actually don't know anything at all. At least not with complete certainty. And with much less certainty than people would like you to believe. In fact, we can change our minds on pretty much anything, and we have done so in the recorded past.

There are layers of truth, where one layer says one thing, and the other layer says another. Both can be true. When faced with a decision, we sometimes get into a dilemma since we have to decide which one is "truer". Of course either way is fine, but it does feel limiting.

Is there a way to act so that all layers and all possibilities have a "harmonized" outcome? Perhaps not every perspective or path has the best outcome, but at least increase the total "utility" in some form? (though being aware that "utility" in a subjective world is meaningless ultimately). That is the great question I have at this moment.

Is math and computation subjective too?

I've been wondering for a while, whether solutions for NP-Complete problems are subjective.

Or more generally, whether results of computation can be subjective. Or even (in a parallel universe sense) divergent.

From basic principles -- how do we know about the other? The computation is so complex. There is probably something to say about co-NP vs NP, but generally, it's hard to tell whether you're in a universe where there is no solution to a particular NPC instance, or where you just haven't found it yet.

Of course once you've found the solution it's hard to "go back", but as long as you haven't found any solution it's hard to tell (actually it's impossible to tell by definition and by the context)

Practical engineering issues also apply -- even if a computer completes an exhaustive search, you don't know whether the computation is flawless or not. Especially computations that take years to run -- who says there weren't subtle bit flips and made the computer skip over the answer?

Given that there is a process of transitioning from a state not knowing which situation we're in into a state of knowing, it seems that if we apply the same principles of decision making math and computation could be subjective too.

In fact it _should_ be.

But that doesn't make sense in the classical sense.

Which in itself is a very interesting thing.