Suppose we granted that punishing certain acts is an intrinsically good thing. If the above it were true, it would seem hard to deny that punished crimes create less net-badness than otherwise identical unpunished crimes. This is because they are associated with an intrinsic good (punishment) that unpunished crimes are not. Presumably, if there are … Continue reading A repugnant implication of retributive punishment
If Faust had but loved- a collaborative poem with GPT-3 through Dungeon AI
(Superficially this work is about 50% mine and 50% GPT-3's, but neither of our contributions look like they would have, had we been writing alone, so I prefer to think of it as 80% mine and 80% GPT-3's. It's not a very good poem, but I wanted to publish it to encourage you to experiment … Continue reading If Faust had but loved- a collaborative poem with GPT-3 through Dungeon AI
Felix Biderman of Chapo Trap House interviews Donald J Trump through the magic of AI Dungeon
It nails Trump's tone amazingly well. Apologies for the stale writing of the prompt, but I figured given the way GPT-3 is consituted it's best arranged to work with strings of cliches. Prompt: Felix Beiderman is a dark-haired, muscular Jewish man in his early thirties with a strong and honest face who podcasts with the … Continue reading Felix Biderman of Chapo Trap House interviews Donald J Trump through the magic of AI Dungeon
In light of the GPT-3 buzz, I’m reposting an essay I previously wrote on NLP, philosophy and speculation on the possibility of a “linguistic path” to general intelligence.
If you enjoy this article, please check out my free book by clicking Here: “Something to Read in Quarantine: Essays 2018-2020.” Natural Language Processing (NLP) per Wikipedia: “Is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, information engineering, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to … Continue reading In light of the GPT-3 buzz, I’m reposting an essay I previously wrote on NLP, philosophy and speculation on the possibility of a “linguistic path” to general intelligence.
Perspectival fever: On being shot through with philosophical desire
ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat I I have a recurrent experience where something I’ve done, or something I am, appears to me to be better than I know it to really be. I pause and try to break through, to see it from the outside, but I can’t. When I write, what I’ve … Continue reading Perspectival fever: On being shot through with philosophical desire
Backlash
If you enjoy this essay I have a free book form PDF of my best essays titled “Something to read in quarantine: Essays 2018-2020”. you can grab it here. I Predicting the future is stupid etc. etc. but… I believe, although obviously I cannot know, that there’s about to be a successful cultural backlash to … Continue reading Backlash
Meet the spectre: Read the communist manifesto
If you're a young scholar and you want to understand debates in social theory, sociology, literature, political philosophy, history and the history of ideas, one of the most important and time effective things you do is read the communist manifesto if you haven't already. It's also one of the easiest things you can do. It … Continue reading Meet the spectre: Read the communist manifesto
Vengeance is thine: Miscellaneous thoughts about punishment
I.עַ֚יִן תַּ֣חַת עַ֔יִן The Lex Talonis- "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". We're taught that our society rejected it as barbaric and harsh, and inclined itself further to mercy. However the maximum prison sentence in New York for felony assault is at least 3 years, and frankly, I'd rather lose … Continue reading Vengeance is thine: Miscellaneous thoughts about punishment
Scott and the New York Times
Many of my blog readers are probably also readers of Slate Star Codex- or, perhaps, were readers, as the blog has been taken down. A NYT journalist wanted to do a story on the blog- fair enough- but they insisted on printing Scott's True Name, a very dangerous thing for a practising psychiatrist with a … Continue reading Scott and the New York Times
Reflections on a doomed subreddit: ?Vale r/Chapotraphouse
r/Chapotraphouse has been banned. Even the people who posted there seem to agree this is a net good (edit: although a reader objects this is likely just them pretending to be not-mad, rather than their real position). I often disagreed with Chapo but it was the largest far-left subreddit and so by extension the largest … Continue reading Reflections on a doomed subreddit: ?Vale r/Chapotraphouse
DePonySum 