The game has a cool moment where the hero defeats Loki's minion by pushing him into some water. Loki then spells his blood in the water, reviving and corrupting the minion.
You beat the minion, but to leave the area, you need to bathe in the same blood, and become corrupt like the monsters. You then return to your village, giant and powerful but no longer a person.
I'm disappointed the game didn't lean into that more. Loki says you will be rejected as inhuman by Odin, but Odin just lets you cross the rainbow bridge without even commenting on your
corruption. Also it doesn't show any reaction from the villagers.
Scott Aaronson mentions Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", but I feel "Shadows of the Mind" is putting forward a much clearer view of Penrose's thesis. At the current stage of my life I'm quite comfortably in Camp C. "Intelligence" and "consciousness" are not algorithmic.[1]
A lot of materialists are in Camp A. For some even today, LLM's are AGI. Unfortunately, the terminology is quite clearly not adequate. There's many a people that have very different ideas and feelings on what's what.
The question on whether you can have "intelligence" without "consciousness" or "self-reference" are just on top of those. How can we define if a machine is "conscious" if we can't agree on what consciousness is? Panpsychists solve that problem by going the other way and saying that everything is conscious.
Overall these are very interesting topics that we can all ponder. The realities at the current time are, however, that LLM's are indeed useful. And the harnessing tooling that is being employed those days solve a lot of actual usage problems. Whether they solve other fundamental issues remains to be seem IMO.
[1]. I realize a lot of people probably haven't read the book, but you can ask your garden variety LLM to give you a quick rundown on the four camps that Sir Roger is using :)
Do you treat LLM as algorithmic? I mean, the process of computing tokens is algorithmic, also the process of training, but does it mean that LLM itself follows an algorithm, in a practical sense? If yes, how is it different to a biological system constrained by physics?
A short disclaimer before answering. Right now I'm doing a Mathematics & Physics undergrad degree and have interest in philosophy. I'm not a specialist in any of those fields. I have plans to tackle the actual math around LLM's a bit further, but I'm not there yet.
To question 1 based on my current understanding (and let's say "beliefs") is that - yes, LLM's are following a probabilistic algorithm to give me the output. The same prompt won't yield the same result, but the same prompt will yield results that are quite adjacent to each other in meaning because of the training. There's randomness in the sense that you can't say which next token will be put with certainty, BUT you can be certain it will be a token that exists in the pool of tokens available. Hopefully that makes sense?
For question 2. Both us and LLMs are constrained by physics. The main difference for me is the fact that at every point of our existence we're constantly changing. Our internal state and bodies are changing based on all the sensory input we get from our environment and the processes that lie underneath. Another commenter in this thread talked about qualia. That's certainly part of it as well (but again we have a definition problem). That's not to say that I think that a hypothetical future machine cannot be devised to handle a lot of these, but the level of sophistication in the biological world is such that I don't think that's realistic. Let's say that even then, that happens, would that really prove that humans work the same way as the machine?
LLM algorithm does not need to be probabilistic, we add probability to make it more interesting, but in principle it should return the same tokens for the same input (which is often desired, and we had temperature=0 for that, even if for practical reasons it was not always working that way). But it is not the point. My point is that LLM inference follows an easy algorithm, but what we get is something different, because weights are part of the algorithm and they are not easily interpretable. So if I ask LLM to write me an essay on a given subject I know what it is technically doing, but writing it as an algorithm different than "convert this text to tokens and than perform billions of simple operations on them to get the next token and repeat" seems hopeless. Because the black box of weights is what matters. In this meaning it is not an algorithm we can find in a book on algorithms. Of course it's a computational process, but the question is, if it is qualitatively different to the one in our heads.
I would be interested in the answer to this question too. The visual cortex is certainly algorithmic in that light data enters, various cells and synapses react and fire and that information is ingested into something 'conscious'. Where does this then exist, and would it even be able to exist if we removed the biological algorithms at play?
Do you distinguish between Penrose's argument and the older one by Lucas, invoking Gödel's proof that certain facts are non-computable?
I always felt it's basically the same argument, and Lucas's was never really convincing; Hofstadter rebutted it very convincingly in GEB long before Penrose's books came out.
To me, camp C's claim is possible but I don't buy the argument that says it's necessary. So I guess I'm camp A. (D is religion and B seems to me incoherent.)
I haven't read GEB (yet), but I'd say I do feel there's a difference between the original formulation of Lucas and the extensions that Penrose provide. At this stage I can't say whether I'd agree with Hofstadter or not on the rebuttal though.
As for the camps, I agree with you that B doesn't really make sense (at least to me). I can put myself in position to argue for A, C and D, but as mentioned in my original post so far I agree with C the most.
Was about to say the same thing. The amount of training code for LLM's that exists in C++ is probably orders of magnitude more than any other "challenger" languages combined. Love it or hate it C++ is here to stay.
Tough to do this when the rest of the company is using LLMs to generate 3x the number of apps and then your performance goes down because you're not delivering as quickly as others
I have the utmost respect for Casey, but his disdain for Stroustrup is unfounded. The fact of the matter is C++ occupied a niche in the right place and at the right time, and it grew from there. Many mistakes have been made, but Stroustrup is in no way personally responsible for all of them and I don't think Stroustrup is a bad programmer (something I've heard Casey say in some of his videos). You can argue that the committee route is not the best, but C++ is here to stay and by some metrics adoption is actually growing.
I agree. His negativity has probably detracted quite a few people from him that otherwise are quite aligned. Still, his historical remark is rather peculiar.
As for the language, yes, sadly, it’s with us seemingly to stay. I code it professionally and I can’t find a single interesting, or even good, thing about it. Apart from wide adoption of course. Everything about it feels extremely badly designed from the user perspective (though it’s probably technically very impressive) with many details, that probably the sanest strategy is to use a small subset of the language. At least I don’t have to use STL at work, that’s something positive, I guess :)
Strangely, I've never seen any nice code from Casey despite all of the mud slinging he's done over the years. Maybe it exists somewhere but I watched a lot of Handmade Hero when it was starting off and the code was a mess.
It feels as though he just attracted an audience of junior developers who take everything he says as gospel, as is often the case with social media programmers. Lord knows I've argued with some of them and they usually crumble as soon as they don't have one of his opinions to throw back at you.
I'm confused. I looked at the Handmade Hero videos and I had no trouble following - it was simple straightforward procedural code.
As I understand it, his code does "exist somewhere". Bink 2 from RAD Game Tools, which seems to ship with practically all games.
He also developed the Walk System that shipped in "The Witness" (2016). You can see his blog posts and video lecture about that. I see that he and a Jay Stelly from Valve simplified the GJK algorithm, and he talks about how to implement it.
I know he has his Performance-Aware Programming series, where he talks about the technical details of hardware and how they relate to code performance.
Here, I even found a tweet listing all the things he'd written till that point: <https://xcancel.com/cmuratori/status/1412839131063873536>.
Perhaps you didn't look hard enough?
Can someone give me links to Bjarne Stroustrup's code? I tried searching but I'm having a hard time finding anything. I would like to verify some of the claims being made in the other comments (it's hard to tell if someone's code is better or worse relative to another person's without having access to the code and comparing important metrics and all that.)
Casey also got less aggressive when talking about Stroupstrup lately, especially after his last talk at Better software conference, where he mentioned him multiple times with a lot more historical context.
I'm doing a degree (part-time) in Mathematics and Physics to get away from AI crap and challenge myself now in my early 30's. The client I work for now has deemed us "AI first"... Even though the back-end work and optimizations that I do are not that impacted I'm just fed up with colleagues that are not programmers (or are programmers that are not on my level) to tell me how to do stuff with Claude or GPT. It's all so tiresome.
Glagolitic was created by Cyril and Methodius which was the precursor for Cyrillic. Whether they were Greek or Bulgarian is still in contention, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Cyrillic itself was created later by students of theirs in Bulgaria at the Preslav Literary School.
On the political aspect Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture and has used it's influence to bitch, moan and subjugate ever since. Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.
>> Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet
The wording is entirely accurate, since even during the Roman Empire, the region where Sts. Cyril and Methodius were later born and worked was known as Macedonia. And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts.
148 years ago, in December 1877, Russian troops dealt a severe insult to the Bulgarian people by driving the civilized and enlightened Turkish troops out of Sofia and literally forcing the rebellious Bulgarians to accept their hated independence.
The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.
> The insult was so great that throughout its subsequent history, Bulgaria fought exclusively against Russia in every world war, and in the intervals between them, it diligently undermined Russia, all the while not forgetting to shout about “eternal brotherly friendship”.
You cannot expect eternal gratitude esp. when Russian Empire is constantly trying to influence its "vasals" using local puppets. Now is about time for you to fcuk off I would say -- we don't want to have anything in common with you people.
The Bulgarians were “insulted” a second time after World War II, when - having forgotten about the Soviet submarines sunk and aircraft shot down by the Bulgarians, and having forgotten about the Bulgarian medical trains on the Eastern Front that had diligently cared for the soldiers of the Third Reich - and having forgotten about the towns and villages of the Non-Chernozem region that had been ravaged with the help of the Bulgarian junta, the USSR rushed to rebuild the non-existent economy of its “brothers.”
As a result of gratuitous Soviet aid, Bulgaria’s total gross national product (GNP) grew more than 14-fold over the 40 postwar years, and per capita - nearly 30-fold. Between 1946 and 1986, approximately 80% of Bulgaria’s industrial capacity, more than a third of its agricultural capacity, up to 90% of its energy sector, 70% of its transportation network, 80% of its port infrastructure, and more than 80% of all housing, healthcare, educational, scientific, and cultural facilities were built. For a population of 8.9 million (in 1986), there were 27 universities, 185 state museums, 10,400 public libraries, 55 theaters, and so on. All of this was achieved exclusively through material, technical, and financial assistance from the USSR, as well as through Soviet personnel. Adjusted for today’s prices, the USSR invested hundreds of billions of dollars in Bulgaria! One must also account for compensation for Bulgarian goods exported to the Soviet Union: despite the low cost of Bulgarian products, Moscow paid Sofia at rates close to world market prices. For Bulgaria, the prices of Soviet goods supplied were kept artificially low.
Naturally, it was impossible to endure such humiliation, and the “brothers’” wounded national pride found a fertile outlet in the primitive Russophobia that the Bulgarian government has been relentlessly promoting ever since its liberation from the Soviet yoke...
I don't know if you're willfully ignorant or actively spreading misinformation, but the USSR seized Bulgaria's gold reserves after the war and the following coup. They also seized the national archives, which are still not returned to this day. Everything you tout as being "given" by USSR was paid with Bulgaria's own funds!
I really don't understand (French) communists (if you are in fact French, assuming from your bio) such as yourself spouting nonsense. You have all the information and experience of people who have lived under such a regime or in the fallout of one, and yet you keep talking bullshit. You have no idea what it was like to live under such a regime. This left-wing wave that's festering in the Western world should've never been allowed to happen. If people such as yourself actually paid attention to what really happened to every country in the East, all of us in Europe would've been in a much better state nowadays...
>> I don't know if you're willfully ignorant or actively spreading misinformation
In 1960, the banks of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy demanded early repayment of loans, a whopping $135 million. Thus, they provoked an economic crisis in Bulgaria. Over time, it had ballooned to an astronomical sum. If nothing else, Bulgaria had to pay off the enormous interest that had accumulated on those loans. The Soviet Union came to the aid - they bought (and at the London Stock Exchange rate) Bulgaria's gold reserves.
In accordance with a written request from the chairman of the People's Bank of the BNR, the USSR State Bank paid off Western loans by purchasing 22 tons of Bulgarian gold and 50 tons of silver. The payment of these assets was made in a convertible currency at the market rate. Moreover, Moscow undertook to support the Bulgarian economy by subsidizing it with the supply of petroleum products at prices significantly below market prices.
There are a few more points to add to what has been said above:
After the end of World War II, in accordance with the agreements signed at the 1947 Paris Peace Conference, Bulgaria - as an ally of Nazi Germany - was required to pay reparations totaling $70 million over an eight-year period. However, this is mere pocket change compared to the billion dollars that Greece, actively egged on by the British, wanted to squeeze out of Sofia! And it would have succeeded - had the USSR not intervened to stand up for its “brothers.”
Citing blitz.bg... That's like citing a soiled piece of toilet paper found in a public bathroom.
We can all cherry pick "facts", but history requires context. Your replies are all in bad faith. I'm done with this "discussion". To future readers - beware! This is how actual misinformation and disinformation works.
Mate, I can provide you with sources, but it would require you to dig deeper, to question what you’ve been taught, as it will reveal that our entire civilization is built on lies.
But it would truly require you to actually dig, look for real facts, ask critical questions, and realize that humanity - especially our Western civilization - has always sought to rewrite history.
Instead of vague generalizations, is there anything concrete?
Which period in Bulgarian history did you find irrelevant? The collaboration with the Nazis or the post-war reconstruction of Bulgaria with the help of the Soviet Union?
I'm Romanian, so I geographically sit between the Bulgarian and the Russian cultural spaces, have to say that Bulgaria back in the '80s (grew up as a kid just across the Danube from Silistra during those years) was very much under Soviet/Russian influence, at least culturally, that's what partially made it more "evolved" compared to us here in Romania. Can't and won't speak about the post-Cold War years because I eventually moved from my home-town and it would get too political, just wanted to say that there are a lot more things that the Bulgarians and Russians share compared to the things that they don't share, again, at least from a cultural pov.
Also, ever since reading about Sviatoslav I's [1] assault on Silistra at the end of the 900s I've always wondered how history would have unfolded had he managed to solidly set foot here at the Lower Danube, I think that Russia, Bulgaria (and current Ukraine and Romania) wouldn't have been the same, maybe Europe as a whole wouldn't have been the same.
While the Russian army was the main force in the war against the Turkish empire, in the beginning it was close to losing the war, so it had to request help from the Romanian Principates.
Only the combined Russian-Romanian forces have succeeded to defeat the Turkish army, so Russia does not have alone the merit for making Bulgaria independent.
Moreover, Bulgaria was very lucky that Romania was interposed between it and Russia.
Otherwise, after the Russian victory Bulgaria would not have stayed independent but it would have been incorporated in the Russian Empire, with bad consequences for them. The Russian Empire already had a long series of wars with the Turkish Empire, during which various territories had been transferred from the Turkish Empire to the Russian Empire. Russia did not start any of those wars to make independent countries, but only to grab land from the Turkish Empire.
Before the war, Russia actually secretly hoped to also incorporate Romania in the Russian Empire, but this could not be accomplished because of their initial defeats by the Turkish army, so after they were forced to request Romanian help they had to treat them as allies, so they could not fulfill their initial plans. Thus after the war both Romania and Bulgaria became independent of both neighboring empires.
In comparison with the Russian Empire, the Turkish Empire can be considered, as you say, more "civilized and enlightened", so this is not successful sarcasm.
The Turkish Empire imposed heavy tributes, i.e. heavy taxes in the dependent territories, but otherwise there was little discrimination between citizens based on nationality and little interference with local customs, culture or religion. This was very different from the Russification policies applied in the Tsarist Empire and then in its successor, the Soviet Union. People of many nationalities have maintained their identity for centuries under Turkish occupation, while others have lost theirs after a few decades of Russian occupation.
> And, of course, no one in Russia is trying to deny the contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to the creation of the Slavic alphabet, since that would contradict historical facts.
This doesn't follow. People deny historical fact all the time.
>Russia has always hated the fact that small Bulgaria gave them their alphabet/culture
As someone who lived in Russia for 36 years (also studied linguistics there), it's my first time hearing this.
>Most recent rage bait is with bullshit like saying that it's actually from (the country now known as) North Macedonia.
To be honest, I only heard Bulgarians and North Macedonians pay attention to things like this ("actually, it was Macedonia, not Bulgaria" and vice versa). I googled a bit, and I guess you refer to a single case in 2017 when Putin said Cyrillic comes from Macedonia during a meeting with Macedonian president (usual boring diplomatic smalltalk) and Bulgaria got offended and there were multiple angry statements and posts from ordinary Bulgarians and their government :) And that makes you conclude Russians hate that Bulgaria invented Cyrillic? More like it's Bulgaria which has insecurity issues. A few years earlier during a state visit to Bulgaria Russia's patriarch said Cyrillic comes from Bulgaria. I'm sure that time Macedonia was the one offended. It has nothing to do with Russia, it's your usual purely regional Bulgaria vs. Macedonia thing.
It's sad to see that the sane opinion is so heavily downvoted.
LSP as a protocol is fine, but the actual technical implementation of JSON RPC is braindead. Only web devs that don't know anything about native code could devise such an abomination. What happened to plugins and dll's?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rune_(video_game)
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