cecinestpasunbot

You’re betraying your ignorance of how biology works and illustrating that you have absolutely no business debating this subject.

Have some humility and willingness to learn.

Efficiency is not the primary fitness function for evolution, it’s survivability.

I didn’t say it was the primary function. I guess all that talk about straw men was just projection. You don’t trust me, fine. Then what about Darwin who literally said, “Natural selection is continually trying to economize every part of the organization.” Now please go and read some introductory texts on biology before trying to explain to me why Darwin is wrong. There’s so much going on when it comes to the thermodynamics of living systems and you’re clearly not ready to have a conversation about it.

Here’s a concrete example for you of just how much of the brain isn’t actually essential for normal day to day function.

You’re baseless assuming that hydrocephalus causes the brain to lose a substantial amount of its complexity. Where is the evidence for that? In most of these cases it seems much of the outer layers of the cerebral cortex are in tact. It’s also really telling that your citation’s first source is an article titled “Is Your Brain Really Necessary” which is followed in the Journal by another article entitled “Math and Sex: Are Girls Born with Less Ability?”. But hey neuroscience hasn’t really advanced at all since 1980 right? The brain is totally redundant right? There’s no possible way a critical and discerning person such as yourself could have been taken in by junk science, right?!!

That’s literally the whole context for this thread, it just doesn’t fit with the straw man you want to argue about.

I took issue with specific statements you made that stand apart from the rest of your comment. That’s not a straw man. Although honestly this is on me. What can I expect from someone who thinks LLMs and the Human Brain are operating on similar principles? You’re so wound up in a pseudoscientific fiction there’s nothing I can do. You might as well start believing in the astrology, crystals, and energy healing. At least those interests will make you seem fun and quirky instead of just an over confident tech bro.

The straw man is you continuing to argue against equating LLMs with the functioning of the brain, something I never said here.

I’m not claiming you ever said they functioned exactly the same way. Im simply stating that you’re way off base when you claim that they appear to operate using the same principles or that all evidence suggests the human mind is nothing more than a probability machine. That’s not a straw man. You literally said those things.

There is zero evidence that all the complexity of the brain is inherent to the way our reasoning functions.

You’re betraying your own ignorance about neuroscience. The complexity of the brain is absolutely linked with its ability to reason and we have plenty of evidence to show that. The evolutionary process does not just create needless complexity if there is a more efficient path.

Again, we don’t have a full understanding of how the brain accomplishes tasks like reasoning. It may be a lot more complex than what LLMs do, or it may not be. We do not know.

This is such a silly statement especially when you’ve been claiming that both the brain and AI appear to work using the same principles. If you truly believe the mind is such a mystery then stop making that claim.

You decided to ignore that to focus on braying about tech companies and LLMs instead.

I don’t really care about your arguments concerning embodiment because they’re so beside the point when you just blowing right by the most basic principles of neuroscience.

I bring up tech companies because they’ve had a massively distorting effect on how many computer scientists think the world works. You’re not immune to it either simply because you’re a critic of capitalism. A ruthless criticism of that exists includes the very researchers whose work you’re taking at face value.

our brains appear to work on similar principles.

Sure in the same way that a horse and a motorcycle operate on similar principles and serve the same function.

Maybe try engaging with that instead of writing a wall of text arguing with a straw man.

Where the straw man? You’ve missed my point entirely. LLMs and the human mind operate on categorically different principles. All the verbiage used to describe neural network models has little to do with how the brain actually works. That’s honestly wasn’t a problem until Tech companies started purposely misusing those terms and now far too many people seem to think “AI” is something it’s not.

All the evidence suggests that our own minds are also nothing more than probability engines.

This completely understates the gulf between what we call AI and how the human brain actually works. The difference is so severe that acting as if they’re quantitatively comparable is basically pseudoscience. You might as well start claiming that we’re not far off from building a Dyson sphere just because we invented solar panels.

Most “AI” these days are built using linear feed forward networks. The brain is constructed using nonlinear recurrent networks which are can do far more with less. Now you could theoretically create the same output from a linear feed forward network but it’s way less efficient and would require many more neurons to achieve such a result. Which is wild when you consider that there are orders of magnitude more synapses in just the regions of the brain associated with language than there are parameters used in even today’s most advanced “AI” models. Now consider that human synapses rely on over a hundred qualitatively different neurotransmitters and not just a single 16-bit number. It’s also not just the scale of the signal that transmits information in a human synapse but the pattern too. Would you be surprised to know that there are a whole variety of signaling patterns neurons use? Because that’s true too. I haven’t even gotten into the differences in complexity in terms of how neurons process the information they receive. As of now there is no “AI” system that comes anywhere close to replicating that kind of complexity. It’s absurd to suggest where dealing with qualitatively similar machines here.

I want to be clear, I think it’s totally okay for DSA to spend time on electoral campaigns. I even think it’s good actually even if some members still believe in the idea of voting their way to socialism. I just think they need to act more democratically and in a more coordinated fashion.

They need to do more than activate members though. They also need to engage members in the actual practice of running a party and making decisions together in a cordial and democratic way. People in the US generally have almost no experience doing anything like that which is unfortunate because it’s a necessary precondition for any kind of vanguard party.

If DSA becomes something akin to say the Sunrise Movement where members are just volunteers and staff run the whole thing then it’s not going to legitimize any sort of future vanguard. This is a real risk because frankly most people joining DSA have more familiarity volunteering and running liberal non profits than they have experience with the real participatory democracy of a vanguard party. So yes it’s great if DSA can attract more members. However that’s not sufficient for it to be a meaningfully stepping stone towards socialism.

DSA isn't exactly a political party though as much as I wish it were. That said, I think it's still good people are joining. There are a lot of political lessons people will never learn unless they actually get involved in organizing work.

The problem is that DSA and Zohran are not actually organizing for anything other than getting Zohran elected. They do not work hand in hand nor are they likely to once he's in office. This is pretty much a universal issue across all of DSA high profile elected officials. That often means DSA is used as a pool of eager volunteers for a campaign but nothing more. It also means that when the pressure to capitulate is particularly acute, DSA elected officials have a history of betraying some of DSA's core values. AOC and Jamal Bowman are key examples here but it happens at the local level too. This all unfortunately means that people are never brought into DSA because candidates aren't proud and open about their membership. It also generates a lot of internal strife within DSA which causes a lot of good organizers to burn out and leave the organization. Neither of those things is good for the development of the socialist movement.

Just to be clear though this is meant as a constructive critique. It's not unique to Zohran and it's been a problem in DSA for years. They might resolve it but I'm not entirely sure they will or if Zohran's win will help. That said, I still like DSA and Zohran. It's pretty cool seeing a sex pest cretin humiliated by some social democratic muslim guy from queens. Even if this isn't a stepping stone to socialism, I think it's fine to celebrate. It's kind of like watching cops pepper spray themselves or billionaires getting crushed in a wildly unsafe submarine. It just reminds you that the people with power are vulnerable and that's always a good feeling.

The squad was born in the original Trump administration so it shouldn't be that surprising to see a return of these kinds of progressive candidates.

WhyTF do we even have primaries then! If they are not going to play by their own rules of their special little club, let’s just extend Ranked Choice Voting to cover the general and scrap the primaries altogether!

Because the US doesn't really have a true democracy. It's always going to be weighted against the actual interests of the people. The more success candidates the Zohran have, the more the established politicians will stack the deck against them. The good thing is that the more the game is rigged the more obvious it all becomes.

Honestly even if the only difference between Zohran and Cuomo is that no women get sexually harassed by the NYC mayor I think that's a win.