The only reason I don’t currently is that my phone’s VPN connection doesn’t handle network switching gracefully. Otherwise I try and tunnel all my traffic through my home network.

As a useful side effect, I need to expose far less of my IoT devices .

The worst bit is, it seems to work. At least if it blows up in trump’s face, it’s fairly unambiguous. I’m sure America’s right wing media would spin it otherwise, but it at least makes that harder for them.

The biggest risk would be the bubble holding together and the democrats getting into power, only for it to blow up in their face immediately.

While they might deal with it a bit better than trump, the damage he is already doing could tie their hands a lot.

We all know the right would get decades of mileage out of “look look, it was all awesome under trump, then the democrats broke everything”.

AI can be a force multiplier for humans, but often can’t replace them. The current usage is often idiotic at best.

E.g. excluding the issue of data misuse, an AI system could be extremely helpful to doctors. It could flag possible issues, complications and unusual conditions in a way that would otherwise require a deep dive by a specialist doctor. A doctor or nurse could then parse the results for useful points, while filtering out hallucinations.

AI can be a force multiplier for doctors. The catch is it needs to be doctor led. It’s quite trivial for a doctor to dismiss the obvious hallucinations. If it also points them towards more subtle signs they would potentially miss, then that’s a net win.

That is pretty much my view on things. I don’t like it, but it’s what the evidence suggests. However, my internal thoughts still assume I have free will. It’s a useful lie.

Discworld’s Death put it quite well, in Hogfather.

All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

It’s a case of running out of terms. I was using it here as apparent, but not a “real” thing.

It’s a bit like a lot of visual illusions, we can often all see them consistently, but they don’t exist in the image itself.

In this case, consciousness is likely related to keeping our own mind functioning coherently. Providing a common virtual ground for the various parts of our brain to interact. There is no seat of consciousness, it’s akin to the operating system on a computer. Not required, but makes a lot of tasks massively easier.

I’m not expecting anything any time soon either. Though I can see someone like musk pumping far too much money into it at some point.

My point was however that the difference is just one of scale. We don’t need to predict the firings, just run it and compare it to nature. From what I’ve read, it behaves like a fly, including walking and grooming itself. This means there is no magic mystical difference between a real fly’s brain and a virtualized one.

Projecting further, there is no difference, other than scale, between our brain and the fly. Implying there is nothing mystical about consciousness.

If a human brain can be conscious, then a virtualized human brain can be conscious. If a virtualized brain can be conscious, then so can the computer it runs on.

The question then becomes do we WANT consciousness in an AI, what would it look like, and how can we detect/measure it?

There’s fundamentally not much difference between our brain and a fly’s, at the cellular level. We have fully simulated a fly’s brain already. When given a virtual body, it promptly started acting like a fly.

I don’t think LLMs are conscious or sentient. However, consciousness is likely just an internal illusion. There’s no obvious reason we can’t scale up from a fly to a human brain, other than difficulty. At that point you have a fully virtual brain that believes itself to be conscious, and can demonstrate sentience.

The problem is they end up built into specialised boards with ridiculous requirements, but no good for most tasks.

A few people might get one working, but I can’t afford the power bill to keep one running full tilt 24/7

Think about it like trying to use mining vehicles as a car.

The worst thing is, the format needed for data centres isn’t compatible with home use. A lot of the ram and SSDs will just be scrapped.

It happens in the UK too. Kids play in the street, and get out of the way, if someone needs to drive through or park. Conversely, car drivers keep the speed down and give the kids time to get out of the way.

Everyone wins, and no, it’s definitely a road not a path.

They also happen to be a (retired) nurse themselves. It’s uncommon, but not that uncommon. Most nurses would have seen it before. Its only for 5-10 seconds after waking up. Coming from a relatively skinny woman is quite a bit more unexpected. She also has unusually good aim.

I know someone who has had quite a few general anesthetics. They’ve taken to warning the nurses involved that they are a puncher. Several have not taken it seriously and ended up with some impressive bruises (including black eyes).

I saw a talk from someone working in the field a few years back. The “fusion is only 10 years away” had a small proviso “if fully funded”. The actual funding was barely enough to keep the lights on.

That has now changed. It’s gotten close enough that private investment has decided it’s worth investing in. I believe the only really big problem left is the wall material. The neutron flux transmutes the elements making it up. This makes it difficult to maintain a hard vacuum, since the wall can start leaking and/or outgassing, forcing a shutdown to replace them. On a minor plus side, if you dope the walls with mercury, it transmutes to gold, in commercially viable amounts!

Fusion has several advantages over fission. The biggest is the impossibility of a meltdown. The very difficulty in balancing the reactor means that it shuts down fast and mostly clean. This would let them be placed far closer to population centers. They could provide a base load supply, in the way nuclear could/should have.

The bacteria don’t need to be identical.

Think of it like rolling a dice. Any given roll can only have a single number. However patterns can be detected by combining multiple rolls. E.g. a biased dice.

As for larger things. It’s possible, but the speed required goes up with mass, and not linearly. In theory a person could go through. They would be moving a significant fraction of the speed of light however. Catching them alive on the other side would be… difficult.

Only 1 bacteria ever arrives. It’s the probability wave that interferes with itself.

With the Young’s double slit experiment, if you fire a single photon, you get a single photon arriving. It looks just like how a cannon ball flies. It’s only when you let hundreds go (either collectively or individually) that the interference pattern appears.

The end pattern is the probability that the photon (or bacteria) arrives at any given point on the receiver screen.

Anything moving has an associated wavelength. If that wavelength is long enough, you can do the young’s double slip experiment on it.

It was a few years ago, so the details are hazy. A scientific team accelerated a particularly small and sturdy bacteria fast enough that their speed produced a viable wavelength. They then sent the stream through 2 slits. They then captured the bacteria in aerogel (I think) to slow them back down.

Most didn’t survive, but some both survived, and ended up somewhere they couldn’t without interfering with themselves. They successfully reproduced afterwards. The debris also followed the classic ripple pattern of the experiment.

Basically, there is nothing special about “life” when it comes to quantum mechanical effects, other than it’s on the big side.

They have also experimentally tested an equivalent experiment with bacteria. They survived a trip through the double slit experiment.

There doesn’t seem to be an issue with it, other than it’s difficult and impractical.

There are 2 parts at work. The focus reflex and the blink reflex. The window between them is the dangerous part. If the pulse is fast enough ( a few ms) then the eye can’t focus, and it’s fairly safe (unless you were already focused on the emitter). If the pulse is low enough power then the blink reflex kicks in and protects your eye.

Hitting a mosquito is a hard task, tracking one is even harder. It’s better to use an ultra short pulse, with a bit more power. You can also shift the frequency. If it’s an infrared laser then the eye won’t lock onto it, and will struggle to focus it dangerously.