Links for 2022-03-14
“We're already in AI takeoff. The "AI" is just running on human minds right now. Sorting out AI alignment in computers is focusing entirely on the endgame. That's not where the causal power is.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LbyxFk8JmPKPAQBvL/we-re-already-in-ai-takeoff
Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z
People’s desire to be in nature and how they experience it are partially heritable https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001500
Atlantic piece from 2000 on people obsessed with becoming amputees: "stuck in the wrong body"; uses "the language of identity"; "this is who I am"; socially contagious; exposure to the idea of the condition, spreads the condition; Internet grooming; doctors perform voluntary amputations: "no doubt was doing the correct thing"; belief that surgery is necessary to avoid self-harm if patient's desires unfulfilled https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/
“…when determining somebody’s economic value, ask yourself: “What’s the counterfactual?”” https://perell.com/note/the-counterfactual-theory-of-value/
Team Chosen To Extract Oxygen From the Surface of the Moon https://scitechdaily.com/team-chosen-to-extract-oxygen-from-the-surface-of-the-moon/
Which is Bigger, the Sun or the Earth? Check it Yourself! https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/03/09/which-is-bigger-the-sun-or-the-earth-check-it-yourself/
DEEP DIVE: Covid Myths. How the medical establishment AND skeptics failed. https://maximumtruth.substack.com/p/deep-dive-covid-myths?s=r
What’s the chance a smart London resident dies of a Russian nuke in the next month? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D5xzR7M7jkGMY6EJv/what-s-the-chance-a-smart-london-resident-dies-of-a-russian
How to evaluate the risk of nuclear war https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220309-how-to-evaluate-the-risk-of-nuclear-war
Interview with a former KGB boss: “In an exclusive interview with NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, Oleg Kalugin talks of Putin’s mindset and motivations behind the war in Ukraine and why the United States and other allies should not take his threats of nuclear attacks lightly.” https://youtu.be/bL7Sm_gXgUI
Analysis of how Putin's invasion of the world will re-order the global world, largely for the better. By a leading Chinese policy thinker, in Shanghai, originally written in Chinese. https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/
Perplexing:
“The large drone flew for at least 350 miles (560km) apparently undetected by air defences in Croatia, Hungary and Romania, all members of the western military alliance.”
Why are drones so difficult to detect and destroy? Israel has to scramble fighter jets against Hezbollah drones that cost a small fraction of a single jet because Iron Dome fails to shoot them down. Russia still hasn't managed to destroy the Ukrainian Bayraktar drones. In 2019, drones harrassed Navy ships for several weeks, sometimes following them for up to 90 minutes, even maintaining a hovering position over the helicopter landing pad of a ship. Yet the US Navy failed to figure out who sent them!
Sources:
See also:
“Mathias Rust is a German aviator known for his flight that ended with a landing near Red Square in Moscow on 28 May 1987. A teenage amateur pilot, he flew from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet Air Defence Forces and civilian air traffic controllers, as well as Soviet Air Force interceptor aircraft. The Soviet fighters did not receive permission to shoot him down, and his aeroplane was mistaken for a friendly aircraft several times. He landed on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the Soviet Union.”