Links for 2022-05-28
autonomy: the missing AGI ingredient? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HSETWwdJnb45jsvT8/autonomy-the-missing-agi-ingredient
Puberty starts earlier than it used to. Some girls are starting to develop breasts as early as age 6 or 7. [New York Times] https://archive.ph/zTzhl
Altruism does not predict mating success in humans: A direct replication. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-59486-001
In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement ("people with hallucinations and delusions who want this to be treated as normal and okay rather than medicalized.") https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-partial-grudging-defense-of-the?s=r
“Although the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate today, this paper presents a simple mechanism by which a dynamical form of dark energy (known as quintessence) could cause the acceleration to come to end and smoothly transition from expansion to a phase of slow contraction.” https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2200539119
Researchers asked 100 people whether a reasonable person would unlock their phone and give it to an experimenter to search through. Most said no. Then the researchers asked 103 other people to unlock their phone and give it to them. 100 of them complied. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3369844
Wingcopter Details Plans to Deploy 12,000 Drones Across Africa https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/wingcopter-details-plans-to-deploy-12000-drones-across-africa/
New Research Shows Exposure to High-Powered Microwave Frequencies Can Cause Brain Injuries https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd8405
The Syrian refugee influx into Turkey increased crime wherever large numbers of refugees went, and at a rate higher than low-educated Turks themselves. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30070
The Biden admin is preparing to send Ukraine advanced, long-range rocket systems—known as MLRS and HIMARS https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/26/politics/us-long-range-rockets-ukraine-mlrs/index.html
German article from 2009: “In the future, all patrol officers in the country should immediately try to stop such a perpetrator instead of waiting for a special task force.” https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/panorama/justiz/neue-taktik-polizisten-muessen-bei-amoklaeufen-stuermen-a-612636-amp.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Imagine being an Indian general watching the country that equipped your military struggling to defeat Ukraine when you might have to fight a high-tech country that's 35 times bigger than Ukraine.
How long will Russia be able to supply India with arms and spare parts in a war against China? For a few days? A few weeks? Or would they refuse to do so, given that Russia is now totally dependent on China?
Even worse, Pakistan would likely fight on the side of China while India's biggest supplier of weapons has the combined GDP of the Netherlands and Belgium.
Remember, Russian drones run on Japanese consumer electronics: https://youtu.be/1sPKSMeonxg
Can Russia buy more Canon cameras than China can shoot down? Doubt 🤣🤣
If it wasn't for political correctness you could already be using awesome tools such as DALL·E 2.
Contrary to the worries of woke AI researchers and journalists, the ability to generate toxic content is a feature, not a bug. It is necessary to make such tools a commercial success since a big part of the media humans consume deals with "awful" stuff such as war. Just imagine a science fiction author trying to depict an alien invasion with cutesy pandas...
Any artistic tool that is limited to creating nice stuff is nearly useless. The world of art is full of drama, pain, nudity, and gore.