The hype about the new Alzheimer’s drug Donanemab has gone too far – we’re still years from a cure https://inews.co.uk/news/the-hype-about-the-new-alzheimers-drug-donanemab-has-gone-too-far-were-still-years-from-a-cure-2484528 [https://archive.is/Yuwqd]
“What makes it hard for robots to generalize to new environments? In our study, we broke down the notion of an “environment” into smaller, more manageable factors of variation, such as lighting or camera placement.” https://sites.google.com/view/generalization-gap
AI Agents With ‘Multiple Selves’ Can Rapidly Adapt to a Changing World https://singularityhub.com/2023/07/11/ai-agents-with-multiple-selves-can-rapidly-adapt-to-a-changing-world/
Unleashing Cognitive Synergy in Large Language Models: A Task-Solving Agent through Multi-Persona Self-Collaboration https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.05300
Large Language Models as General Pattern Machines https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.04721 (check this tweet for a summary: “GPT can do complex 2D pattern recognition, fit a sinusoid, predict robot grasp, and even control an inverted pendulum in an online feedback loop.” https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1679898692307005440)
Large Language Models for Supply Chain Optimization https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03875
AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning https://animatediff.github.io/
Scent of a Woman: Hand Odor Can Reveal a Person’s Sex With 96% Accuracy https://scitechdaily.com/scent-of-a-woman-hand-odor-can-reveal-a-persons-sex-with-96-accuracy/
In his typical fashion, Trump is seeking to blackmail Ukraine and Russia into making a deal. He says he will threaten Russia by telling Putin that America will give Ukraine's "honorable" President Zelenskiy "a lot" of weapons and money. Trump says "we'll give them more than they ever got" from Biden "if we have to." https://youtu.be/Ct2Vl-NO6Og?t=160
Rationalists have the most extraordinary discourse. I love it!
As yesterday's second attack on the Kerch Bridge, the destruction of Nord Stream 2, or several Mossad-style assassinations show, Russia has only three options:
1. Withdraw from Ukraine.
2. Occupy all of Ukraine and pump huge amounts of resources into securing it against Western intelligence-backed guerrilla groups.
3. Accept permanent and increasing attacks.
Ukraine's drone program is just beginning, with dozens of companies soon mass-producing various attack drones, including long-range drones that can reach Moscow. Its intelligence services will increasingly target Russians in Russia and abroad.
Marinka, Ukraine after 9 years of war:
One of the most interesting things about believers in disinformation, is the social nature of such belief. I think this is often neglected in the cognitive psychology approach to these issues, along with recommendations for countering it like providing context, pointing out disinformation sources, and the like. Put simply, the social basis of belief - how much we believe something because our family/economic class/WoW guild believes it - is very often dominant wherever the costs of being wrong and the benefits of being right are (personally) miniscule, and the social benefits of belief and costs of disbelief are high.
So when we hear people promoting views that seem contrary to what we regard as fact, we need to be patient and tolerant. They are appearing not to us, nor even really engaging us in conversation. They are demonstrating their beliefs and allegiance to their social group, directly or indirectly. Compare the door to door missionary work of Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses: the point is not winning converts to their faith, but demonstrating to their tribe, and to themselves, their allegiance. Fad diets and health trends are the same: I don't need to tell everyone I know that ibuprofen works for my headaches, but people into keto, paleo, gluten-free, vegan, whatever really seem to need to reassure themselves they are doing the right thing by trying to convince others.
Of course, reflection on this should make us epistemically humble: because it is the fact that vast amounts of what we believe, while true, we believe based on weaker evidence than we would if we had a wealth or poverty, life or death involvement.
This is why I mostly read mathematics and computer science these days, if I'm not reading fiction. Few people have strong allegiances based on the Pythagorean Theorem or quicksort vs. merge sort on N > 5000 element lists. And it's pleasing to learn how to get things done without regard to the temperaments and social allegiances of others.
Apologies for the self-promotion, but more details here: https://mflood.substack.com/p/two-cheers-for-confirmation-bias
Ugh. Who links to mainstream media’s YouTube videos? You’re not meant to watch those. You’re supposed to scroll past their boundless promotion because they’re inherently trash by nature.
No one needs to blackmail anyone; we just need to stop providing funding and weaponry. It’s over in a minute at that juncture.
We would do this to save lives. We would do this because Ukraine has zero chance of anything resembling victory—in fact, the more they persist, the worse it gets for them (and we know this, but we really want dead Russians and spent rubles). We would do this because the Donbas deserves self-determination as much if not more than Kosovo. We would do this because we acknowledge the heavy provocation program undertaken by the West for several decades, exemplified by the stated desire to lure Russia into doing exactly this (as outlined by RAND in 2019).
We would do this because energy and food security (as well as actual security) should come before geopolitical gamesmanship and atomized profits. We would do this because Ukraine is ridiculously corrupt and the furthest thing from a “democracy,” having no opposition parties or media to speak of, having banned a significant portion of their population from using their first language, having scores of Nazis in the ranks of their government and military, having arrested, disappeared, or killed countless dissidents, activists, and journalists, and having intentionally bombed their own civilians for 9 years now while turning a blind eye to targeted massacres and ethnic hate crimes.
It’s not blackmail. It’s intelligent statesmanship.