Links for 2022-09-05
Consciousness Actually Explained: EC Theory https://gdoc.pub/doc/e/2PACX-1vQ3eNh4TyhFKgDLHIbYW2Q6u7UbuOEVT8dH60dHNKJCfITET9LPrKEA6tKNwi3Ev-f_CZmPCOHAaeVJ [discussion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KbRnXMoyBGrEu9kou/consciousness-actually-explained-ec-theory-1]
Will we ever define the conscious mind? https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/consciousness-defining-conscious-mind/
On its own, a new machine-learning model discovers linguistic rules that often match up with those created by human experts. https://news.mit.edu/2022/ai-learn-patterns-language-0830
An AI-generated Artwork’s State Fair Victory Fuels Arguments Over ‘What Art Is’ https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/1/23332684/ai-generated-artwork-wins-state-fair-competition-colorado
Scott Aaronson comments on a Financial Times opinion piece entitled The Quantum Computing Bubble https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6670
Undeclared pools in France uncovered by AI technology https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62717599
“…the elasticity of official GDP figures to nighttime lights is systematically larger in more authoritarian regimes.” https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050022018/original/Nightlights.pdf
“In the past decade, Sweden has gone from having one of the lowest per capita rates of deadly shootings in Europe to the highest, according to data from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention...it is the nationalist Sweden Democrats who appear to be benefiting from the focus on crime, having long warned that the country’s open immigration policies up until 2015 would lead to growing violence.” [Financial Times] https://archive.ph/VYkz8
"But, they did liberate a heavily fortified place this morning — and that atop of mauling 3–4 Russian BTGs, and liberating some 4–5 other villages, nearby. And mind: that’s just this sector of the frontline: I’m not even trying to discuss the Inhulets Bridgehead or southern Kherson." https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-4-september-2022-ukrainian-attacks-in-kherson-oblast-ed25239f3116
I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia, I had an hours talk tête-à-tête with him. And, he spoke English much better than you would have expected, the whole conversation was in English. I expected it to have been in German, but I found that his English was quite good. I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be.
He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited.
I disliked one other thing about him which was his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be, and one of them was “You profess to be establishing socialism, but as far as the countryside is concerned you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship which is a very different thing from agricultural socialism”.
And he said, “Oh dear me no, we’re not establishing peasant proprietorship”, he said “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, ah hah hah HAH HAH”. I didn’t much like that.
— Bertrand Russell, Speaking Personally: Bertrand Russell Interview with John Chandos (12 April 1961)