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Cake day: March 31st, 2025

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  • Sorry, I can see why my original post was confusing, but I think you’ve misunderstood me. I’m not claiming that I know the way humans reason. In fact you and I are on total agreement that it is unscientific to assume hypotheses without evidence. This is exactly what I am saying is the mistake in the statement “AI doesn’t actually reason, it just follows patterns”. That is unscientific if we don’t know whether or “actually reasoning” consists of following patterns, or something else. As far as I know, the jury is out on the fundamental nature of how human reasoning works. It’s my personal, subjective feeling that human reasoning works by following patterns. But I’m not saying “AI does actually reason like humans because it follows patterns like we do”. Again, I see how what I said could have come off that way. What I mean more precisely is:

    It’s not clear whether AI’s pattern-following techniques are the same as human reasoning, because we aren’t clear on how human reasoning works. My intuition tells me that humans doing pattern following seems equally as valid of an initial guess as humans not doing pattern following, so shouldn’t we have studies to back up the direction we lean in one way or the other?

    I think you and I are in agreement, we’re upholding the same principle but in different directions.


  • But for something like solving a Towers of Hanoi puzzle, which is what this study is about, we’re not looking for emotional judgements - we’re trying to evaluate the logical reasoning capabilities. A sociopath would be equally capable of solving logic puzzles compared to a non-sociopath. In fact, simple computer programs do a great job of solving these puzzles, and they certainly have nothing like emotions. So I’m not sure that emotions have much relevance to the topic of AI or human reasoning and problem solving, at least not this particular aspect of it.

    As for analogizing LLMs to sociopaths, I think that’s a bit odd too. The reason why we (stereotypically) find sociopathy concerning is that a person has their own desires which, in combination with a disinterest in others’ feelings, incentivizes them to be deceitful or harmful in some scenarios. But LLMs are largely designed specifically as servile, having no will or desires of their own. If people find it concerning that LLMs imitate emotions, then I think we’re giving them far too much credit as sentient autonomous beings - and this is coming from someone who thinks they think in the same way we do! The think like we do, IMO, but they lack a lot of the other subsystems that are necessary for an entity to function in a way that can be considered as autonomous/having free will/desires of its own choosing, etc.




  • So then can anything that produces dopamine be addictive? Can I get addicted to hugging my girlfriend, or addicted to reading books, or jogging? Or is there some threshold? Does the intensity per time matter, or just the intensity, or just the time? What about the frequency of exposure? Does any amount of dopamine release make me slightly more addicted to whatever it is, or is there some threshold that needs to be exceeded? Do dopamine-based addictions produce physical withdrawal symptoms, always, never, sometimes? Depending on what? And are physical withdrawal symptoms necessary to constitute addiction or are there different tiers of addiction?

    You see what I’m getting at. There’s sooo many questions that need to be answered before just saying “this produces lots of dopamine therefore it’s addictive and bad and should be limited”. While I appreciate and empathize with your sentiment about people cherry-picking the studies they like (sounding like an LLM here lol), it’s not as if science doesn’t know how to deal with that problem, and it certainly isn’t a reason to stop caring about or citing studies at all, or say “well you’ve got your studies and I’ve got mine”. Just because both sides have studies that give evidence in their favor doesn’t mean both sides are equally valid or that it’s impossible to reach an informed conclusion one way or the other.

    My next biggest question (and what I’m trying to drive at with the semi-rhetorical slew of questions I opened with) would be what makes something an addiction or not? Am I addicted to staying alive, because I’ll do anything to stay alive as long as possible? That seems silly to call an addiction, since it doesn’t do any harm. And how do we delineate between, say, someone who is addicted to playing with Rubik’s Cubes vs. someone who just really likes Rubik’s Cubes and has poor self-control? Or what about someone with some other mental quirk, like someone who plays with Rubik’s Cubes a lot due to OCD, or maybe an autistic person who plays a lot with Rubik’s Cubes out of a special interest? Does the existence of such people mean that “Rubik’s Cube Addiction” is a real concern that can happen to anyone who plays with Rubik’s Cubes too much? Or perhaps Rubik’s cubes are not addictive at all, and it is separate traits driving people to engage with them in a way that appears addictive to others.

    I know I’ve written a long post and asked lots of questions. It’s not my intention to “gish gallop” you, just to convey my variety of questions. The Rubik’s example is the one thing I’m most curious to hear your thoughts on. (There I go sounding like an LLM again)






  • People thought “Gulf of America” was just Trump being ridiculous and egotistical, but to me it now seems clear that it was intended to lay the groundwork to ban press like AP. I believe that was a multi-step plan. The administration is not stupid, they’re getting everything they want. Everything is working out in their favor. That is not by accident, that is not the result of stupidity.

    It’s worth pausing and considering what kind of non-stupid, multi-step plan would call for a large accumulation of likely Trump-supporting soldiers with military equipment at Washington D.C.

    Is that what this is? Who knows. But I think it’s naive to attribute any of these actions to just ego-stroking.



  • Surprisingly solid article especially given CNN’s initial propagandistic coverage of the Luigi story. They actually quote people they interviewed, they seemed to cherry pick a representative sample rather than a few crazy people. I don’t think this really says much about CNN though, but it is uplifting in the sense that the social narrative around Luigi is becoming so solidified that even mainstream media can’t dance around it without looking totally idiotic. I suspect the crowd also had very clear talking points in mind that made it difficult to find a bad look to cherry pick. Very nice to see such a clear message here, especially on strong talking points like the clearly unequal treatment vs school shooters, and best of all - this article even mentions the line of reasoning that the CEO was effectively a mass murderer. Surely a more contentious angle, but definitely one with some validity to it. Very pleased to see that make it into this article.