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<p>Marcus -</p>
<p>Even though I play the Luddite most of the time, I am in fact
fascinated with the possibilities of post/transhumanism, at least
in the sense that it feels "inevitable". With the implied
magnitude of qualitative change in Homo this-n-that to <i>Homo
postHomo </i>or maybe <i>Homo Cyborgis</i> or quite possibly
Homo goneBabygoneNevertobeSeenAgain along with all
mammalian/warm-blooded/vertebrate life, depending on our
overshoot, it seems worth a second thought or two as to what we
*might* have some control over.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>We are about to enter a chaotic maelstrom of change, and while
that can seem hopeless, I do believe that extreme sports
enthusiasts are very precise about the line they enter their
maelstroms from/on. (Surfing, skiing,
Niagra-Falls-Barrel-Diving... etc) <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Regarding the augmentation of LLMs... we were all born in a time
of huge augmentation in the form of libraries and books and most
saliently perhaps reference books for our language (dictionary,
encyclopedia, etc) and reference books to our myriad specialties
(Technical Libraries). *IN* my lifetime I have participated in
the digitization of most if not all of that matter as well as
adapting the professional and plebian workplaces to those changes,
whilst adapting our personal lives (e.g. handheld device connected
to the "global brain" 24/7) to those changes. We can all
probably conjure a 1000 utopian/dystopian vignettes
supporting/undermining any determination of whether this is "for
the good" or not. I'm almost completely habituated to this
"modern era" but old enough to still have intellectual inertia
making paper maps, newspapers, magazines, etc. at least *quaint*
items if I almost always defer to the other. I recently gifted my
1903 Blackies Encyclopedia set to a HS History teacher to use in
his classes to give his students a snapshot of time *in the
original text and atoms* for whatever that is worth.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>I'm not likely to be an early adopter of neural interfaces
(unless I face an acute disability in that area) but I am already
a fairly regular GPT4-whisperer. I can't say it has improved any
of the practical aspects of my life (yet), but it has been an
interesting correspondent in the way I usually burden *this group*
with my maundering speculations. GPT4 is infinitely patient,
broadly and deeply informed, and only occasionally fails to
provide me with some interesting feedback.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>I recently funded a Kickstarter for a powered exoskeleton (Lower
extremety only) which may return to me a little more mobility than
megadosing NSAIDS and velcro-strapped stabilization belts for my
hips... I don't know that this will be anything more than a
novelty or if it will be as (relatively) good as the Oculus (I've
been playing with VR since before it was called that and was
totally blown away by the "value" Oculus represents).</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><ramble off></p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:BYAPR11MB3830D69692C8B9F21958162AC54DA@BYAPR11MB3830.namprd11.prod.outlook.com">
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I don't mean "we" as in FRIAM, I mean "we" as in nations. A
benefit of capturing knowledge with LLMs, or similar technology,
is that people wouldn't need to be educated about the same
material over and over, especially if these systems are
integrated into our neural systems. Why not have individuals
inherit a common database so that their lives can be spent on
differentiated activities? There's so little that tie together
individuals besides their fears and superstitions. When I see
chatGPT emit passable conversations like this, it seems kind of
absurd to waste years of a young person's time covering the same
old ground. (Actually, it already seems that way to me.)
Countries like Israel and Greece have mandatory military
service. Some believe this instills in them values greater than
themselves. In this case of the Borg, care of the collective is
care of the self and vice versa. The common practice in the
open source LLM community of fine tuning pre-trained LLMs is so
much more efficient than what humans do to educate.</div>
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%" tabindex="-1">
<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt"
face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> on behalf of Jochen Fromm
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net"><jofr@cas-group.net></a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:17 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism</font>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">Discussions with large language models are new.
But you are right, we had discussions of similar topics
before. Maybe I was hoping I could inspire Nick and/or Eric to
write a summary of their ideas and what we have discussed
before ( such as the solution to the hard problem of
consciousness, the nature of subjective experience and what it
has to do with path dependence, complexity science and James'
radical empiricism ).</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">-J.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div><br>
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align="left">
<div>-------- Original message --------</div>
<div>From: Marcus Daniels <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:marcus@snoutfarm.com"><marcus@snoutfarm.com></a> </div>
<div>Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00) </div>
<div>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a> </div>
<div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism </div>
<div><br>
</div>
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<div class="x_WordSection1">
<p class="x_MsoNormal">The conclusion I draw is that these
conversations have all occurred before. So I wonder, why
have them?</p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"> </p>
<div>
<div style="border:none; border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;
padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of
</b>Jochen Fromm<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism</p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"> </p>
<div>
<p class="x_MsoNormal">ChatGPT now allows sharing
conversations. I've asked it about William James book
"Essays in Radical Empiricism"</p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><a
href="https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b</a></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="x_MsoNormal">-J.</p>
</div>
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<p class="x_MsoNormal"> </p>
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