I agree with Chiang. Reminds me of Searle and The Chinese Room (I agree with Searle too).
I do think that at some point everyone is just arguing semantics. Chiang is arguing that "actual reasoning" is, by definition, not something that an LLM can do. And I do think he's right. But the real story is not "LLMs can't do X special thing that only biological life can do," the real story is "X special thing that only biological life can do isn't necessary to build incredibe AI that in many ways surpasses biological life".
> Does no one remember that in the 2010s, Zuck went around trying to advocate against the calls for censoring "disinformation", arguing free speech shouldn't be regulated by a company?
Nope! I remember it too. It was impressive at the time. All the CEOs standing in line acting like there's no problem with a ministry of truth approach, and Mark was the only one who said the obviously correct thing. I've liked him since then.
Hating Mark Zuckerberg is like a barometer for someone having no mind of their own. We've been told that Mark was responisble for Trump in 2016 and teenagers having low esteeem. It's so laughable.
He seems like a fine guy to me. His quasi-embrace of Trump reflects the wider public realizing that, first, Trump has some plus-sides (dismantling DEI is one of them). And second, the whole "resistance" thing really didn't pay off. I didn't vote for him, but he's president, and moping about it isn't useful.
Zuckerberg and people's attitude towards him also represents progressives quite nicely, especially in their relationships with tech. Turns out "we hate you so much, you are awful and evil" is a good way to drive people away.
edit - I will also say that Mark was the only tech CEO who impressed me in front of Congress, when he pushed back on the whole misinfo/disinfo craze.
Ordered it; can't wait till it arrives Saturday. FWIW, I find HN book recommendations/mentions a constant source of mostly arcane titles I'd never come across anywhere else. True for movies as well.
I thought this was better than most essays in this vein.
I do fundamentally disagree with the author. People can think poorly of you for whatever reason they want. If someone hates trans people, they can, and you can't stop them. The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it.
Adding on, the trans issue isn't simple. There are real questions about bathrooms, women's sports, and when medical interventions are called for. Of course, there are also just bigots. The proper response to bigots is not to banish them, ban them, shadowban them, etc. That didn't work. The proper response is -- in the spirit of the new era of free speech -- to firmly state your opposition to their beliefs.
> The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it.
This is a myopic view. You are obviously correct that you cannot legislate that someone think in any particular way or otherwise force someone to change their minds, but the idea that collectively deciding that a viewpoint is not longer tolerated within the broader society and then making efforts to support that at all levels is ineffective and not worthwhile is absurd. Threats, physical violence, and murder have always been illegal, but used to occur with much higher frequency against many minority groups toward which society tolerated hatred and abuse. It's plainly obvious what changed is the idea that it would be brushed under the rug, that others would at worst turn a blind eye to the perpetrator if not support them, that there would be no real consequences whether legal or in social circles - this environment in which people act on impulse rather than thinking twice about what they're doing - went away. We must remember that progress isn't permanent, that civil rights must be maintained and won't protect themselves, and that there's probably someone out there that hates someone each of us loves and cares about for some arbitrary reason and would act on that if only society gave them permission.
> There are real questions about bathrooms, women's sports, and when medical interventions are called for.
Yes there are real questions, but there are also real answers. Currently, 99% of people asking questions have literally zero interest in answers. They do not care about what research say or whether there is harm or not. They ask questions to convince the audience about their political project.
They do not care about whether medical interventions are good, bad, safe or unsafe. They want to convince you that that they are unsafe. They want to stop the interventions regardless of their impact. They do not care about safety of bathrooms, they want you to punish transgender people in the wrong bathroom. They do not care about women sports either, in fact they are the same people arguing against women sports whereever it matters.
> People can think poorly of you for whatever reason they want.
And it should be my god give right to call them sexist and racists if they think of me poorly because of those reasons. But somehow that is supposed to be a taboo. We are all supposed to pretend there is no sexism, that there was no historical sexism, so that someone feels good about themselves. Again and again, sjws pointed out someone is sexist/racist, there was an outrage in response, they were painted crazy stupid exaggerating. And I actually believe the response, multiple times. Except that it turned out, multiple times, that they were right all along.
I would think that your claim about "99% of people asking questions have literally zero interest in answers" applies more to 'both sides' than one might initially think.
Is either side open to being told "no", or at least "wait, we need to be more cautious about this"? Or do both sides just want their demands to be accepted?
Would either side actually back down if the research said that what they were doing was harmful or ineffective?
> "wait, we need to be more cautious about this"? Or do both sides just want their demands to be accepted?
I think that yours "wait, we need to be more cautious about this" or is this just another "I do not care about answers, I just want to pretend so".
> Would either side actually back down if the research said that what they were doing was harmful or ineffective?
Research is there and it is saying current clinics were not harmful and were not ineffective. So yes, one side cares about research and the other is not.
>I think that yours "wait, we need to be more cautious about this" or is this just another "I do not care about answers, I just want to pretend so".
I don't know what you're referring to, but if you would like to get specific about it, many authoritative medical organizations, such as the one that presides over Sweden, have declared a halt on procedures such as prescribing puberty blockers to minors. This is an example of a "wait, we need to be more cautious about this", saying that the risks outweigh the benefits.
But here you are implying that the science is already "settled" and that there is no harm. So when you say that one side cares about the research and the other does not, are you completely sure about that?
I am completely sure about that, yes. Because even your "many authoritative medical organizations" thing cherry picks one organization saying maybe and ignores any positive results entirely.
You do not care about which procedures were actually done nor about what it took to get them. Puberty blockers for minors are not something new or done to transgender kids only. They have been used for years for non-transgender kids and they are not the only treatment constantly under attack.
If you cared about puberty blockers safety, you would care about also about when they work, you would care about accessibility when they do work ... and you would not act as if they were so easy to get in the first place.
It's not just Sweden, I could list other countries too, such as Denmark, Finland, England (outside of trials), Wales and Scotland. Norway calls it "experimental". All this information was found on the homepage of the same site I linked earlier.
But you don't seem to be open to discussion on this issue, and that's the double standard I'm pointing out. "They do not care about what research say or whether there is harm or not" is what you've said about others, and it seems like it applies equally to you as well.
And since you don't seem to be open to discussion on this issue, I'm going to leave it here. I think my point has been made.
In my local city there was conservative article about unisex bathroom putting framing it as transgender thing.
The bathroom was unisex when I was a kid, when trans were universally mocked. Bathroom is unisex, cause there is exactly one toilette in a small cafe in a super old building.
> The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it.
I don't understand any of this. It feels like you live in a different information bubble than mine.
What was the "war on hate", and who is turning away from it?
What would it mean to say that the "war on hate" worked? That there was no more hate, or that the situation improved somehow? What does it mean to say that it didn't work?
> If someone hates trans people, they can, and you can't stop them. The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it.
It is disingenuous to suggest that anti-discrimination laws for trans people are attempting to legislate away the hatred held in people’s hearts, instead of access to healthcare, public facilities, protections against workplace discrimination — things you describe as having “real questions,” but which are, in fact, the parts of a full and dignified life that bigots would deny to trans people in particular. If you pretend like it’s trying to legislate “thoughtcrime,” it’s much easier to distinguish anti-discrimination laws for trans people from rulings like Obergefell or Brown v. Board — far easier to say “look, those were good, but this particular civil rights legislation is simply unreasonable.”
To platform these beliefs is to afford them a legitimacy they do not deserve. To suggest that bigotry, when amplified, will be in some way countered or reduced is naïve beyond belief. Instead, it becomes easier for bigotry to find an audience of receptive listeners and willing conduits for further transmission.
The author isn't talking about abstract "hatred" in the sense of people's internal, personal experiences. They are talking about hate speech, a specific concrete act with external material consequences.
> The proper response is -- in the spirit of the new era of free speech -- to firmly state your opposition to their beliefs.
This doesn't really work because social networks are designed to amplify the most "engaging" things, which often means "controversial". Reasoned debate is often drowned out - this happens even here on HN for particularly controversial topics.
If social media was just people following their friends and interacting with them (I remember when FB was basically like that), we maybe wouldn't be in this horrible polarised mess.
>The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred
You can't forbid it but you can absolutely make it socially unacceptable. "Free speech" doesn't mean letting people spew hate and doing nothing; choosing not to hand them a megaphone, support their business, etc. is entirely valid.
It became so socially unacceptable that its proponents won the US presidency and took control of Congress and globally famous business leaders are bending the knee to them without repercussion? What definition of "can absolutely" are you using?
The popular vote does not determine what is right. The US elected an incredibly racist Richard Nixon by a Landslide in 1972, but that doesn't mean society couldn't make progress on making it unacceptable to use racial slurs in public.
There is a danger to hating something so much, that it goes underground. A major reason why President Trump won the first time around was because hatred against Trump and his supporters was so strong, that many people being polled were afraid to tell the pollsters who they were really voting for, for fear of being destroyed. This is a major reason why Trump outperformed his polling.
In the meantime, when people are lied to by every avenue of culture, they are convinced everyone else believes in the lies, so they feel alone and in the minority, even though they may very well be in the majority. So long as this spell can be maintaned, the dictator can hold his grip on power.
But what happens when that spell was broken? When something happens, and all of the sudden, everyone realizes they've been in the majority all along? This is how dictatorships topple -- and the toppling can happen very swiftly, as Ceausescu discovered in Romania.
Elon Musk acquiring Twitter and taking out the censorship is what initially cracked the spell this time; and when Trump was elected not just by Electoral College, but by the Popular Vote, the spell was broken completely. It's why we're seeing so much change now, and why it's so rapid.
I intended to include something that I now see I forgot: this phenomenon is called a "preference cascade", and it's a big reason why we see dramatic shifts in power in oppressive regimes.
You’re wrong that a so-called “war on hate” doesn’t work. More correctly, it doesn’t work in the US because of the first amendment and the few limitations on it.
Many other countries have robust anti-hate speech laws that are effective, although less so in the age of the internet.
People broadly conform to the society in which they live, and the rules of the society are broadly set by the laws they adhere to. So in countries where hate speech is disallowed, people conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and hateful people are the exception.
In the United States, it is clear that hatred is the norm as long as it is permitted by law and by leadership.
> People broadly conform to the society in which they live, and the rules of the society are broadly set by the laws they adhere to
Well this can work very differently from what you imagine I believe. Like late Soviet Union where certain things were said in public and other things were said in private or in "trusted environments". For years and years... From what I hear this is in part what goes on in large multinationals where the pressure to conform is quite tangible.
> it doesn’t work in the US because of the first amendment and the few limitations on it.
This isn't clear to me. For instance, Meta was free to forbid hate speech on their platforms, or not to promote it in their feed algorithms. I don't think first amendment would force them to authorize hate speech. They do it to align with power in place (freely or coerced, not clear), but it's not a legal enforcement.
> So in countries where hate speech is disallowed, people conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and hateful people are the exception.
"Maja R was sentenced to a weekend in jail after her comments because she had a previous conviction for theft and had not attending the court hearing for the case."
Whatever you can say about the suspended sentences, merely "given harsher sentence than rapist for calling him ‘pig’" is not true by your own article.
> The court did find the two men guilty of wrongly making and distributing the sex video and fined them 1,350 euros ($1,500) each. But it reserved its gravest punishment for Lohfink, levying her a fine of 24,000 euros for falsely accusing the men.
If we're talking about the same story, it has nothing to do with "war on hate".
How can you disagree with the author, they are doing exactly what you suggested, firmly stating their opposition to PG's beliefs.
It seems you didn't read their post. Also, yes, if someone hates you, you can definitely change their minds. The weapon in the war on hate is love. And there is a lot of love in the author's essay. Love for others in their position.
So you too can join the War on Hate by showing love to the author and letting PG know he is wrong, so very wrong.
Hatred is extremely infectious, especially in difficult times. If you do not extinguish it, you can end up in a country like Nazi Germany, where it even became encouraged.
It's fine to question that "great men" are the prime movers of history. But you're taking it too far by saying something like "all discoveries would have been made by someone else so individuals get no credit". First, that's obviously not true -- we can't know that every bit of knowledge would have been discovered by someone else. Second, it's beside the point -- the discoveries weren't made by someone else.
"Great men" vs. "impersonal historical process" is one of those dichotomies that will never be resolved. If you find yourself at either extreme, you're making an obvious error. Find a comfortable place somewhere in the middle.
For some people at that time, smoking was a non-trivial part of their identity. Or even a significant part of what it meant to be a proper Englishman (that and tea). Fisher strikes me as that sort, just look at pictures of him.
The (fairly obvious) lesson here is that people lose their objectivity when it comes to fighting over stuff that involves their identity.
My first thought was that obviously he was a smoker.
I loved cigarettes. I haven't smoked in almost 15 years and I might say I still love cigarettes. There really is no replacement for the feeling of being a smoker, waking up in the morning and drinking coffee with a cigarette as the sun comes up. That is a large part of what makes the addiction so bad.
I say this even with the benefit of knowing how horrible they are for health. It is why I quit eventually.
It is really hard to be objective about your partner when you are in love. A highly abusive partner at that.
I suspect the only thing stronger in humans than love is denial. The combination can be especially deluding.
I can never relate when I hear this perspective. I’m an ex smoker and the idea of having a cigarette first thing in the morning makes me feel sick. There’s zero nostalgia for me. I now find smoking purely revolting.
Insurance isn't a good industry to "get insanely rich". It doesn't have high profit margins. For one thing, the ACA mandates that insurance companies can't keep profits past a certain point.
My sense is that people expect too much from their health insurance. Subconsciously, we expect to experience no pain and live forever. When this inevitably doesn't happen, we blame insurance companies for not bankrolling infinite healthcare.
The miracle of US healthcare is how at every step, work is done to minimize every party's ability to either use market power to lower costs, or to make people cost-conscious about their own expenses.
Insurance, in a vacuum, detached from an industry is a perfectly sensible way to try to spread risk. And as you say, this fair, reasonable insurance isn't about getting extremely rich, but about being the best at identifying where the risks are, and using market power to lower costs. But with healthcare, and especially with the US peculiarities, we manage to get minimal value out of it.
People getting care don't know their options, and how different the pricing can be. Insurers are capped by a percentage of services paid, so they really are happy if everything is very expensive. Providers band together into conglomerates that make sure it's hard for insurers to lower reimbursement rates. Pharmacy benefit managers build complicated schemes that let them take a bigger piece of the pie. They even purchase pharmacies, and restrict the expensive purchases for themselves, while the local pharmacy is squeezed. All in all, it gets very expensive, with minimal control of spiraling prices, and nobody that can lower costs is incentivized to do so.
We blame insurers because that's the people that get paid first, but yes, it's not really a matter of just insurers. It's a kafkaesque system that is basically impervious to significant reform. And for good reason: Every dollar we overpay is someone else's salary. A decrease in costs per person for the same care to match, say, Spain would involve a whole lot of people making a lot less money, including many losing their jobs. Not exactly a political winner, even though the country would be better off with more efficiency
The article is about insurance company malfeasance, but this boils it down to mis-aligned consumer expectations about living forever in total bliss. That feels like a strange disconnect.
I do think that at some point everyone is just arguing semantics. Chiang is arguing that "actual reasoning" is, by definition, not something that an LLM can do. And I do think he's right. But the real story is not "LLMs can't do X special thing that only biological life can do," the real story is "X special thing that only biological life can do isn't necessary to build incredibe AI that in many ways surpasses biological life".