Article from Open Philanthropy: Focus on what's new. An enduring moral atrocity is sadly not a news story. Journalists need a news "hook." This could be a new study on animal sentience or animal agriculture's climate impact; a new scandal about food safety or animal cruelty; or new events like factory farm fires or a legislative initiative.
But how? Many measures have shown that pigs are smarter than dogs and cats, yet we humans still like to assume the later can feel more than prior, because we pet the latter but eat the prior.
Can there be a subjective consciousness within the supposed "conscious realm" of another one?
More detail: I've been having this abstract and absolutely unreasonable thought lately - I dreamt of a person opening his eyes and realizing that he was living in my dream. But the "realization" here can be inferred as subjective experience, therefore supporting the claim above. Yet, if one consciousness can exist within another, then to what extent does this relationship last? Can this large conscious entity exist in an even larger one? That said, what if my dream was instead my personal realization that I'm living in someone else's "conscious realm", just like the person in my own one.
This is largely reflective and unrealistic, but I still think the dream was cool.
No wages, no prestige, pure passion and contribution. This is fundamentally different from most organizations, but it can be a good thing.
Is there an ultimate nature of reality, a mathematical one, perhaps? (Inspired by Max Tegmark’s book “Our Mathematical Universe” and “Life 3.0”)
Chomsky on universal grammar - can it be falsified by LLMs or statistical approach to language modeling?
As machine learning models advance further, will their features become so abstract that they're incongruent with human intuition?
Why did large language models refuse a seemingly innocent request?
Dec 18, 2024 Update (Wow, this page is actually useful for looking back on my thoughts):
Pessimism is the sales item of the day, and we are facing a different crisis every decade.Yet, the one thing Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves" taught me is that the world isn't perfect, but it's getting better.
Our capacity for good is never outweighed by our destructive instincts. Our progress is shifting from being driven by competition alone to by millions of people choosing to work together and trade fairly. This fundamental goodness is evident in the very fabric of modern society, where mutual benefit drives daily interactions.
In my view, humanity’s most remarkable aspect isn't simple reciprocity, but to collaborate through specialization. We have a collective brain that allows us to focus deeply on specific skills, creating a vast network of expertise. A smartphone represents this perfectly – combining various innovations from electromagnetic principles to user interface design.
As tasks become more specialized, humanity grows better equipped to tackle complex challenges. Climate change, resource scarcity, public health, even the emergence of hallucinating artificial intelligence – these aren't just problems, but opportunities for collective innovation. Since Ridley wrote the book in 2010, time has consistently proven him right. Through continued collaboration, we are living beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors, and it is up to us to shape ours. This pattern of progress makes genuine optimism not just possible, but rational.