The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XLIII

[Synobun]

If Baillie Gifford could make that argument, that if they full divested from fossil fuels and the Israeli military they would go bust because everyone would pull their money would that make the calls for divestment unreasonable? Fossil fuels have control over 80% of the energy market.

It is quite possible that distributing your book on Amazon makes it legal for them to machine learn it. If the judges who make most of the rules decide that the illegal thing in Generative AI is the making of the copy to learn it, and you have already given amazon the right to make copies, it may be that which dooms world literature. Does that make such a "demand" reasonable?

If my grandmother had two wheels, she would be a bike. So what? Individual choice will have no bearing on the illegal or retroactively legal scraping of content for generative AIs. And as far as I know has no relevance to this.

You can argue as much as you'd like that authors who already make a pittance should make even less. I just won't judge those authors for telling you to go away. This kind of moral purity politics is extremely counterproductive. Shockingly, it's not authors making $25 on their first books who are funding and propping up the Zionist regime. If there is a way to realistically divest without immediately demolishing your life or the potential of a better life, then it should be done, but this is (A) so small potatoes it's barely worth mentioning, and (B) targeting the people who will be most affected by boycotting.

The loss of a single sponsor could shutter an entire event/magazine; that is how precarious the industry is. Which isn't to say there is no money in it. There is. It all trickles up to the executives. The little guy, and even the middle guy, barely make a cent, and certainly not a living. Many of the magazines and presses they submit pieces to would immediately close if they lost the labour of an editor who is working for free or a low royalty. So the concept of telling an author who already operates at an incredible loss or barely breaking even to make that magnitudes worse so they can stick it to the man for a few pence is fairly aimless, unproductive, and masochistic. There isn't a point to it besides giving people an anxiety disorder.

 

[Samson]

If my grandmother had two wheels, she would be a bike. So what?

This was literally the comparison that initiated the question. I am thinking in about much more general than authors, and about the whole boycott/cancel culture thing more generally. I have actually started writing an OP of a thread on the subject, but I may not finish.

Individual choice will have no bearing on the illegal or retroactively legal scraping of content for generative AIs. And as far as I know has no relevance to this.

My understanding is one of the more promising legal avenues that is being pursued against GenAIs is the the copying inherent in the learning process is not authorised by copyright. If one distributed ones works under ones chosen licence it is likely to not allow this. I suspect the licence amazon has chosen gives them the right to make these copies.

This is kind of irrelevant to the point though; if there was such an argument, that people who published with Bezos/Zuckerbuerg were hurting themselves in the medium/long term would that make such demands reasonable?

You can argue as much as you'd like that authors who already make a pittance should make even less. I just won't judge those authors for telling you to go away. This kind of moral purity politics is extremely counterproductive. Shockingly, it's not authors making $25 on their first books who are funding and propping up the Zionist regime. If there is a way to realistically divest without immediately demolishing your life or the potential of a better life, then it should be done, but this is (A) so small potatoes it's barely worth mentioning, and (B) targeting the people who will be most affected by boycotting.

I was talking about the Bezos/Zuckerberg megacorp thing. If say one of them was directly connected to Israel that kind of turns it up to eleven, but makes it easy for me. Say the primary DRM'ed ebook distributor was CyberArk, the cybersecurity company linked to the IDF that Baillie Gifford supports. I suspect you would say it is reasonable for someone to refuse to deal with anyone who distributes ebooks through them. So what is it that makes the difference? The magnitude of the "crime"? The sort of "crime"? The magnitude of the contribution? The directness of the connection?

The loss of a single sponsor could shutter an entire event/magazine; that is how precarious the industry is. Which isn't to say there is no money in it. There is. It all trickles up to the executives. The little guy, and even the middle guy, barely make a cent, and certainly not a living. Many of the magazines and presses they submit pieces to would immediately close if they lost the labour of an editor who is working for free or a low royalty. So the concept of telling an author who already operates at an incredible loss or barely breaking even to make that magnitudes worse so they can stick it to the man for a few pence is fairly aimless, unproductive, and masochistic. There isn't a point to it besides giving people an anxiety disorder.

If one really needs to demonstrate some measurable effect no individual boycott is going to be reasonable because there are too many people in the world, and so few people buy each thing. If everyone boycotted either Bezos/Zuckerberg it would have a massive positive effect. It seems difficult to meaningfully draw line through the things we can boycott that can be said to divide those that have a point and those that do not. Successful boycotts work and have a point, unsuccessful boycotts do not work and may not have a point.

In my opinion for a boycott to be really unreasonable I think it needs to be based on bigotry, but I understand I may be a bit extreme on this point. The person who does the boycott likely lose at least as much as the seller (?), and if they feel strongly enough about something they should be quite free to use their purchasing power towards that goal.

 

[Synobun]

The BDS movement has a list of companies to boycott regarding the genocide in Palestine. They tackle the question of which boycott is productive and meaningful and which isn't. Their focus is to minimize impact on the consumer while maximizing impact on the corporation, and they understand that boycotting anything that may conceivably support Israel is a quick road to nowhere.

Get Involved | BDS Movement

bdsmovement.net

What about those boycott lists with tens of products?​

The global nature of today’s economy means that there are thousands of companies that have links to Israel and are complicit to various degrees in Israel’s violations of international law. However, for our movement to have real impact we need our consumer boycotts to be easy to explain, have wide appeal and the potential for success. That’s why globally, while we call for divestment from all companies implicated in Israel's human rights violations, we focus our boycott campaigns on a select few strategic targets. We also encourage the principle of context sensitivity, whereby activists in any given context decide what best to target and how, in line with BDS guidelines. There is a lot of information online claiming that some large companies give money to Israel, some of which turns out to be false. BDS has built a reputation for strictly adhering to established facts and producing the most accurate information.

Right now, they're focusing on a boycott of HP, Siemens, AXA, Puma, SodaStream, Ahava, and Sabra. If you, individually, want to boycott more, then great. For example, McDonald's and Starbucks have gotten some heat due to a grassroots movement to boycott them, and it had some effect. But it's good to be tactical and to not light yourself on fire (probably a bad idiom given the self-immolation cases about this topic) to spite a company that likely won't be truly affected by the act. You are correct that everyone simultaneously boycotting Jeff Bezos would have an incredible effect, but how are you going to make that happen, and also make it happen in a way that doesn't obliterate the lives of many of those boycotters? It's a romantic but unrealistic notion.

 

[Samson]

Yes, it is.

If you, individually, want to boycott more, then great.

So it is unreasonable to boycott an author based on Bezos/Zuckerberg megacorp, but it is great to boycott "more" for Israel. There is a line there, but I do not know where it is.

Right now, they're focusing on a boycott of HP, Siemens, AXA, Puma, SodaStream, Ahava, and Sabra. If you, individually, want to boycott more, then great. For example, McDonald's and Starbucks have gotten some heat due to a grassroots movement to boycott them, and it had some effect. But it's good to be tactical and to not light yourself on fire (probably a bad idiom given the self-immolation cases about this topic) to spite a company that likely won't be truly affected by the act. You are correct that everyone simultaneously boycotting Jeff Bezos would have an incredible effect, but how are you going to make that happen, and also make it happen in a way that doesn't obliterate the lives of many of those boycotters? It's a romantic but unrealistic notion.

I am tempted to say the last sentence is just about enough to make some reasonable in and of itself, if we cannot be unrealistic romantics then what have we got?

Slightly more seriously, it seems a really high threshold for activism.

 

[Kyriakos]

I want to ask if one can solve the following basic triangle "puzzle" using not the standard graph functions but probability. The riddle goes: "if you cut a line at a point gamma, what is the probability that the next cut will produce segments that can form a triangle?". The graph solution is simple(in the spoiler), and the result is that the chance is 1/4 (corresponding area within the triangle with perpendicular sides l,l).

Spoiler :

But I wish to ask you if it is correct to state as a solution that the first cut was to a side of the halfpoint of the line (inevitable), thus the second cut will either be to the same side of the halfpoint or not, and moreover be either more distant from its own halfpoint of the line than the first cut was from the opposite edge of the line or not. This means that there are 2(2) possible cases, and only one of them (second cut was to the other half, and more distant from its own halfpoint of the line than the first cut was from the opposite edge of the line, thus 1/4.

Both solutions use the same principles; the triangular inequality and the given length (l) of the line. Is the second solution correct?
(spoiler for a demonstration of the probability solution)

Spoiler :

 

[Gori the Grey]

Of the premises of modern neuroscience, would the following phrasing be unobjectionable?

"Modern neuroscience holds the basic premise from physics that something immaterial (electrical impulses) can run through something material (neurons)"

It's the "immaterial" that I'm particularly concerned is correct. Is electricity properly spoken of as "immaterial"? (It seems that way to a layman. Well, this layman, anyway. I would call electricity "physical" but not "material.").

(Farm Boy's "interplay of electrical impulses across the meat of our bodies")

 

[Narz]

Of the premises of modern neuroscience, would the following phrasing be unobjectionable?

"Modern neuroscience holds the basic premise from physics that something immaterial (electrical impulses) can run through something material (neurons)"

It's the "immaterial" that I'm particularly concerned is correct. Is electricity properly spoken of as "immaterial"? (It seems that way to a layman. Well, this layman, anyway. I would call electricity "physical" but not "material.").

(Farm Boy's "interplay of electrical impulses across the meat of our bodies")

Are material and immaterial even scientifically valid terms?

 

[Samson]

Of the premises of modern neuroscience, would the following phrasing be unobjectionable?

"Modern neuroscience holds the basic premise from physics that something immaterial (electrical impulses) can run through something material (neurons)"

It's the "immaterial" that I'm particularly concerned is correct. Is electricity properly spoken of as "immaterial"? (It seems that way to a layman. Well, this layman, anyway. I would call electricity "physical" but not "material.").

(Farm Boy's "interplay of electrical impulses across the meat of our bodies")

There is an element that what is really happening is information moving down the axon while the actual movement that a physisict would measure is perpendicular to that direction, with ions moving across the membrane.

I am not really sure how different that is from say sound waves, where the air molecules are moving "randomly", but in their aggregate movement there is a backward and forward motion, and changes in the pattern of this backward and forward movement encodes information moving from the speaker to the listener.

This seems different to writing something down and that travelling. If that is adequately captured by material / immaterial is I guess the question.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Are material and immaterial even scientifically valid terms?

I'd be happy to learn one way or the other. There is a field of study called "material science."

Thanks, @Samson. I worried that you'd provide me an answer that made the thing I'm trying to think harder to think (by pressing deeper into my ignorance of science) rather than easier to think. (But I'm still super happy to get your answer.) But if it works your way, then I can still say that something immaterial (information, rather than electricity) is moving along something material (a set of neurons), no?

 

[Kyriakos]

Since there were no takers for my question, I wish to make a single follow-up with a proposed solution and see if anyone with formal knowledge can help ^^

From a brief discussion at reddit, I have formed the view that I can express the solution as follows:

We can say that the length l is 2m, thus any cut on it will produce a coefficient in the integer range 0-1, and we name that coefficient x, and also a decimal coefficient, y, in the open interval 0-1, while the second cut can only have the other allowed value in the integer coefficient and in the decimal one can either be larger or smaller than the one of the first cut as it is inferred that the decimal part cannot be equal since if it was it'd overrule the triangular inequality as then x(m)+y(m) (this is the first segment) +y(m) (this is the second segment) won't satisfy the triangular inequality with the remaining third segment being (1-2y)m as 1-2y+y (this is second segment plus 3rd)<1+y (this is the first segment).
So the probability is 1/2 (x being 1 or 0) times 1/2 (y of the first cut being larger or smaller than y of the second cut) = 1/4.
I think it should be the correct answer, maybe @Comrade Ceasefire can be asked now that I suspect it only needs checking?

 

[Samson]

But if it works your way, then I can still say that something immaterial (information, rather than electricity) is moving along something material (a set of neurons), no?

I think so. I am slightly worried someone will come along and say what is actually travelling is photons representing the depolarisation of the membrane, and those photons are moving down the axon carrying the information. I think that is a stretch, and your formulation would be more informative to most people.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thanks, Samson.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

I'd be happy to learn one way or the other. There is a field of study called "material science."

Thanks, @Samson. I worried that you'd provide me an answer that made the thing I'm trying to think harder to think (by pressing deeper into my ignorance of science) rather than easier to think. (But I'm still super happy to get your answer.) But if it works your way, then I can still say that something immaterial (information, rather than electricity) is moving along something material (a set of neurons), no?

Samson is correct that ions move down the outside of the dendrites creating what is known as the activation potential (AP). When the AP reaches the region close to the soma, it can then be passed on to the axon if strong enough, or it is blocked if not above a certain threshhold and the "signal" goes no further.

The "signal" then passes along the outside of the axon, but there are gaps in the outside membrane called the "Nodes of Ranvier". Ions can move inside that outer membrane, or outwards.

The outer membrane is made of myelin and its function is to act as a kind of insulator, in a similar way to the plastic coating on electical wires. If that sheath is very thin, or damaged, then the signal passing along the axon weakens as it progresses towards the end of the axon, and may be too weak to create an impulse at the end so that the "signal" does not get passed onto downstream neurons. That is one major symptom of multiple sclerosis.

One of the ways electrical impulses can move along dendrites and axons are through microtubules. They are present in every cell and they participate in many different biochemical and biomechanical processes. For example, they can be marshalled by various organelles (e.g. mitochondria) inside cells to create spindles which pull apart
chromosomes during cell mitosis.

Mitosis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In most cells, microtubules are formed and do not last in the tubule state for very long, except in one very important case. In neurons they last in that state for the life of the neuron.

Roger Penrose had the idea that there could be quantum effects inside the tubules. I'm not going into that because it immediately brings up notions of "quantum conciousness" and a lot of associated woo.

There is, however, a way for protons (H+ ions) to move along the inside of microtubules. Water is usually thought of as H2O molecules, but that is very misleading. Those molecules are dynamic entities that are splitting into H+ and OH- and recombining over very short time periods (on the order of 10^-13 sec.).

When water is confined to very small regions, for example inside microtubules, they undergo the same splitting process and can form H+ ions (protons) and OH-, and the H+ ions can also combine with H2O to form H3O+ ions. The H+ ions can pass along the tubule through a process known as the Grotthuss Mechanism.

Grotthuss mechanism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In effect, if you "push" a proton into one end of the tubule, it can cause another proton to exit the other end of the tubule, so that is a way of an electrical impulse to move along a neuron. I'm trying to build that process into artificial neural networks, but there is little background material I can call on because of the assumption anyone doing that type of work is a quantum consciousness wu merchant!

It is also important to keep in mind (nyuk, nyuk) that all the process take place in water, or mostly water laced with a myriad of biochemicals. When you also take into account that there are microtubules floating around the outside of neurons (in huge numbers), and they can move protons from one region to another very quickly, (in effect just changing the pH of the fluid they are in) it almost sounds like Asimov's "positronic brain" idea that he used in his robot novels.

If you, or a friend of the family, are looking for a good time travel candidate, Grotthuss is my first pick.

Theodor Grotthuss - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

How the hell did he come up with the idea around 1803 before atoms were an established fact? He worked with Alessandro Volta, so that was an obvious huge influence. Shortly after that he went home to Lithuania and committed suicide.

Or maybe that's just what the Time Lords want us to believe.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thanks, @Comrade Ceasefire for, again, more than my untrained mind can actually process.

Does my immaterial/material survive intact in any way in what you have laid out (e.g. "signals" are immaterial) or as Narz floats, is that distinction meaningless once one gets to the level of tubules and quanta?

 

[Farm Boy]

Isn't it more if you consider patterns in spacetime to be material or immaterial? Strictly speaking they seem to be physical, but common usage of the thought-term doesn't always contain the temporal component to a thing, seeing it instead as a snapshot. Water is water. Ice is ice. Humans are humans. Grass is grass. Dirt is dirt?

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Thanks, @Comrade Ceasefire for, again, more than my untrained mind can actually process.

Does my immaterial/material survive intact in any way in what you have laid out (e.g. "signals" are immaterial) or as Narz floats, is that distinction meaningless once one gets to the level of tubules and quanta?

You'd have to define more clearly what you mean by material and immaterial.

I'm only interested in biochemical reactions and processes as metaphors that I can use in constructing algorithms to solve certain computational and and engineering problems of interest to me. I abstract out any notion of real reactions and mechanisms.

You may have heard terms like "evolutionary algorithms" in computer science, which use ideas gleaned from real evolution. They are only remotely like real evolution which is infinitely more complex.

I have no great interest in ideas about consciousness and IMO the current trend in AI and machine learning, which use large language models based on text, to be hopelessly misguided if their proponents believe they are the path towards human-like intelligence.

They are brilliantly successful at solving some problems when constrained to small "worlds", but they are not going to get anywhere close to human intelligence through sifting text.

The main reason for my skepticism is that people don't think in words and sentences, let
alone with an underlying grammar. You might when trying to write a limerick.

But when you are mooching around the house looking for scissors and making little gestures with your index and middle finger, I bet your inner monologue is not grammatically perfect. And that's a simple, prosaic concrete example. When thinking about abstract ideas, I bet there are barely any phrases that you are aware of. I don't know what they are when I'm thinking. To me they are like inchoate lumps of word-like "somethings" that bubble up from somewhere in my brain, have some effect, sometimes, and then burst like bubbles and disappear.

TL;DR: the distinction between material or immaterial is not something that interests me atm, as much as where I
left my effing scissors.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TL;DR: the distinction between material or immaterial is not something that interests me atm, as much as where I
left my effing scissors.

Sissors are the kind of item where it is far easier to buy ten pairs and place them all around the house so you never have to look for them: a pair is always nearby in a known location. I think we have at least one pair in every room including the bathrooms. The room I am in at the moment has two pair, one on each desk.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Sissors are the kind of item where it is far easier to buy ten pairs and place them all around the house so you never have to look for them: a pair is always nearby in a known location. I think we have at least one pair in every room including the bathrooms. The room I am in at the moment has two pair, one on each desk.

We have 5 rooms in our apartment. I suspect I know where they are, but I am married to a lawyer and I need evidence, not immaterial thought bubbles. It's 3am and we are not like America where there are Scissors'R'Us open 24 hours on every block.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You'd have to define more clearly what you mean by material and immaterial.

Made up of stuff/not made up of stuff. Pure "common usage." Again, I would submit if told that two such distinct things don't exist any more.

(Though I might write a limerick about that).

The main reason for my skepticism is that people don't think in words and sentences, let
alone with an underlying grammar. You might when trying to write a limerick.

I start with one word. The last word. Then I build sentences backward from that (or forward to that). Drawing in grammar as necessary to the task.

Setting aside limericks. I know for certain that I don't think in sentences. I catch myself imposing sentences on pre-sentence thought. But I do think in words.

With you on the AI bit. I think we will never plumb how disorderly the human mind is, or the extent to which thought is a function of that disorderliness. We'll keep thinking we've reached the level where "now things are orderly, so I could routinize them." But we'll be wrong. There will be a chaos beneath that. And a chaos beneath that one. Chaos all the way down.

 

[Birdjaguar]

We have 5 rooms in our apartment. I suspect I know where they are, but I am married to a lawyer and I need evidence, not immaterial thought bubbles. It's 3am and we are not like America where there are Scissors'R'Us open 24 hours on every block.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go out tomorow and buy enough pairs of sissors to put one pair in each of your five rooms. Your choice of the style of sissors to buy should consider that you are married to a lawyer and that sissors can be a deadly weapon; when in easy reach, an impulsive act can result in bloodshed.