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The "Trigger Effect" episode ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcOb3Dilzjc ) that set off Connections:I was one of the finest hours ever produced for television. It influenced my family and I in the years to come. Hope for the best, while preparing for the worst.

It begins at South Tower of the World Trade Center, and as Burke enters an express elevator (Car 6 or 7 if you must know) he says in effect, "Do I worry about ascending to the top in a steel box? Of course I don't! We take going up in the world like that for granted." When an elevator later goes dark he says. "We expect this to happen sometimes so what do we do? We strike a light and look around in the dark for an emergency button to push and if we find one, we press it." In this discussion of single takes, note what the temperature of the butane lighter must have been by the time he finishes his speech. Ouch!

Also interesting to note in the realm of happenstance: the airliner portrayed in trouble over darkened New York was flight 911.


In an episode that opened in the World Trade Center towers.

That is an awesome set of coincidences.

... or perhaps the series influenced OBL ...


We have grown used to the old rambling responses of Eliza, that wonder-tool of a bygone era. We are too easy impressed by semantics and subtlety of language.

The one thing Dawkins might not be aware of, in his turn-based exchange is how many actual watts are being expended to polish Claude's presentation. There are whole datacenters worth of iron being hidden behind this exchange. Is this level of 'intelligence' sustainable in the long run when pitted against the 12-24 watt human brain?

It's a hell of a better thing to do than cryptocurrency tho. Proof of work for max greed was not sustainable either.


Watts and sustainability were never part of the Turing test, of course. It was conceived as more of a philosophical argument than a practical test.

For instance, consider Searle's Chinese Room counter argument [1]: Millions of humans emulating a computer program isn't the most efficient use of resources either, off course.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room


Googling I got the a power use estimate as Standard Query (Sonnet): ~0.84 Wh

Assuming Dawkins made 100 queries over the the weekend we have AI power use 84 Wh, Dawkins brain at say 20W x 48 hrs = 960 Wh.

Of course when you include the rest of the cost of powering a Dawkins including food and heating his house the human energy use goes higher.


Do corporations get drawn to AI from a compulsion to make a move addressing it?

"Fear of missing out"


I think Perfect Forward Secrecy has a great deal to do with how things have turned out. In the days of Room 641A, copying and diverting fiber traffic to somewhere like Utah even before it could be read, would have conferred an advantage if it was encrypted (and important enough for other attacks like black bag jobs on servers). PFS has turned ephemeral encryption into the garbage it deserves to be.


Now that 'tough guy' Chuck Norris has departed this world...

The AIs are looking for new defs for tough.


A wall or a goat?


A cat is fine, too.


gray goo of the future


This is accompanied by a 'shocked Pikachu face' when people discover that other countries' militarizes have deployed low bidder AI without guardrails. The illusion of moral superiority is the best tool of paralysis in warfare.

At least the AI push has saved the human race from an uncomfortable obsession with cryptocurrency.


I tend to give the lack of credible ready to deploy asteroid response for Earth defense 41 years after consensus was reached on the KT boundary, 70 years since the 'space age' began, much greater weight.

Motivation for retiring IPv4 completely would NOT be to make the world a better more route-able place. It would be to deliberately obsolescence old products to sell new.


This laundry list is THE CHEF'S KISS. No, that one wasn't in there


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