The problem with that is that doing a thing that carries its own intrinsic value forms a poor signal because you can't tell if someone is doing it for signalling reasons or intrinsic reasons.
If you decided that a hallmark of your tribe is brushing your teeth, then when you see someone brushing their teeth you still can't really tell if they're in your tribe or not.
The best signals have either neutral or negative intrinsic value because the more costly the signal is, the more likely someone doing it values the signal.
I think most people would claim that they support the truth. Even a troll might publicly claim to speak the truth, let alone someone who has an ideological motivation to believe likely falsehoods. Flat Earthers don't typically say "I know the Earth isn't flat". The best lies come with a grain of truth. And all appealing claims build on the listener's beliefs of how the world truly is. The truth is a great hook.
I trust science; I trust scientists less, and science journalism and its readers even less. Science as a human practice has never been a shining beacon of the truth. Even ignoring results that suit politics, I don't take much stock in psychology findings nowadays. And as someone interested in learning more about psychology, it's unfortunate. Science is valuable, but it should never obscure the truth. Even perfect science is not the sole arbiter of truth.
I used to have similar concerns as you — how can anyone truly know what other people are like? Unless we’re doing research with the scientific method, we can only speculate unscientifically, right? Without science, what we say is just our belief, not established fact.
But how do you explain people who intuitively understand things? Mathematicians, for example, intuitively understand math. Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively understand people. We gain intuition through education and experience, which in turn improve our understanding and sensitivity towards the truth. Expert mathematicians, for example, _can_ have a good sense of whether a theorem is true before they prove it. And in general, people who possess scientific knowledge can intuitively know things.
I do agree with your intent, though — we need to possess humility about the accuracy of our beliefs. The author can’t factually know what other people feel and think without asking them.
But we also owe some deference to wisdom. Being wise is like being an expert darts players: you’re better able to throw darts into the bulls-eye than most people. If we develop a wisdom worth trusting, we should trust it.
I don’t think the author had a chance to interview each person they observed to see if their worried were right. That does not mean that they could not validate their observations.
You look at patterns and note them. Over years you will see similar patterns, both in people you only observe once, as well as people you get to know better. The ones you get to know better are the ones where you validate your theories. I’m not explaining it very well, but it works. It’s kind of like a sort of sparse sampling or a very long-term Monte Carlo simulation in n-dimensions (that’s an allusion and not a strict explanation)
Anyone who has had to learn social skills/cues as an adult, with analytical faculties in place of a more intuitive understanding, can attest to these seemingly universal patterns. People are ultimately more predictable than they believe themselves to be, and there are clear signs of a rich (evolutionary?) history of habit formation over many generations that in a real sense define "the human condition". One should consider themselves privileged not to have been forced to spend their cognitive efforts on understanding these patterns rather than merely be socialized into them.
I agree that repeated observation increases the confidence in a hypothesis.
But, only if it's a hypothesis that can be validated in such a way.
From OP
> By internal architecture, what I mean is, when someone talks to me, what I notice first are the supporting beams propping up their words: the cadence and tone and desire behind them. I hear if they are bored, fascinated, wanting validation or connection. I often feel like I can hear how much they like themselves.
The last part (how much they like themselves) is an interpretation or a causal speculation, and something very prone to confirmation bias.
Like, what kind of observed behavior would you make less confident in that?
The article is a mix of very good observations and some more speculative statements, which seems to trigger us, the HN commenter crowd :-)
Yeah a lot of those stood out like thorns to me cause I just don’t agree with her conclusions. Immediately set off some alarm bells i.e. that’s just, like, your opinion, man…
Feedback is better, but lack of confirmation didn't stop the Greeks from dreaming up a model of the atom...
From my own experience, with things to do with social interaction some of the most successful people forge on running purely on intuition, they don't burden their minds on things like worrying if their model of wisdom acquisition is deficient of a feedback loop
I have a friend who is a bit like the author here. He picks up on a lot of little things and seems to intuitively understand what those things mean.
For example, I invited him to a BBQ at my friend's parent's house. (He was my roommate at the time, and had met my other friend a few times so this was not a random thing)
He talked to my friend's mother for maybe 15 minutes at the BBQ. She is a cheerful and loopy sort of person, and that was exactly the sort of conversation they had. On the drive home he asked me, "that family has been through a lot of tragedy, haven't they?". Indeed, it would break your heart to hear about them.
In my experience, it comes down to matching patterns.
Here's what I think likely happened: your friend talked to other people who went through tragedy. He noticed something common in their behavior. It can be something so subtle that it's invisible to most people, but your friend notices these kind of things. Then when he talked to the current person, he found the similar pattern.
I believe that this comes from the exact opposite of what the author does. People like this can discard the irrelevant details, and find what can be put together to create a clear picture.
On key difference here is that those mathematician then go through the process of actually proving the theorem. Just having “an intuitive understanding” is never enough, no matter how many times you have been right before.
The author here does not go through that process at all. It just feels like saying: I watch people a lot so I feel like I know what I am talking about, I feel entitled to write a piece about it. Math people have those pieces peer reviewed and experimented upon before they are actually published.
Perhaps she talks to some people and learns something about their (self reported) life? I would imagine this is how these types of intuitions are formed?
> Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively understand people
I interacted with at least 7 psychotherapists (one of them is a relative) and a whole bunch of other specialists in the field. It took three decades and a push from my side for someone to even figure out that something about me was kind of strange.
Yes, experts can recognize patterns. But that has limits & biases, and tends to be unreliable for outliers. And when that person doesn't even check their results all bets are off.
I'm sorry to intrude, but this interests me very much. What was the thing that you wanted figured out about you that gave surch hard time for psychotherapists?
>Mathematicians, for example, intuitively understand math.
They can intuit all they want, and good for them if it makes them more efficient in their job. But at the end of the day, if you have to convince others of your intuitions you have to provide verifiable proof. Your intuition might help you overcome a hurdle when proving a theorem, but, still, prove it you must.
SoftBank sounds familiar… weren’t they a major investor in WeWork? With such poor investing acumen, why haven’t they gone bankrupt yet? Perhaps the $40 billion raised by OpenAI can only be spent on services from SoftBank’s other investments? Do investors ever restrict how their investments are spent?
Is “multimodal reasoning” as big a deal as it sounds? Does this technique mean LLMs can generate chains of thought that map to other modalities, such as sound and images?
From what I understood (not an expert), it seems that it's the goal, to see if the knowledge in one modality can be translated in an another one. Typically, if a model trained on sound can leverage the knowledge of musical theory, it would be quite interesting
I don’t think this is the right analysis. One should generally expect a positive return over time from investing in equities: you are giving up money now and taking on risk, and you are compensated for it by the return on investment. The word ‘speculating’ is generally referring to a different kind of activity from the kind of investing a typical person gets through paying into a pension. I don’t want to make claims about what typical people are doing with brokerage accounts, and the structure of brokerages seems to have changed enough that it’s perhaps harder to describe long term trends or the lives of ‘typical’ customers.
Fair point. There’s a real difference in attitude between speculation and saving. Most people buy stocks to save for retirement, not to speculate that they’ll have enough money for retirement.
But most people aren’t investors, either. Typical people buy stock for their returns, not for their productive capacity. My point is that’s speculation.
Most people have a speculator’s mindset. They would be happy to make a windfall on the market. For example, who wouldn’t be happy to own a plot in downtown Detroit before an economic boom raised land prices? Or stock in a startup before an established company announced they would acquire it?
Although someone who puts money in the stock market for retirement may intend to save money, since a 401k seems like just any another asset, but it’s quite different from other assets: Bank accounts fund lending to companies for productive investments. Homes provide a residence. Bonds provide money to countries and companies for investment. But when individuals put money in the stock market, it’s because they hope the asset will appreciate.
That’s because that’s all we can do. Buffet is an actual investor. His stock position allows him to remake a company if necessary. My stock position might buy some chickie bugs at Wendy’s. I have no direct control over any company I “own” and my voting position and the position of all retail investors is functionally nil.
not a lawyer here but I suspect that exercising rights as a shareholder takes some legal education and some networking.. you are right that the DEFAULT stance is what is presented.. but somehow I dont think this the whole possible story in 2024
To play devil’s advocate, the US seems to have given up leadership in key areas, so it seems natural for China to play a bigger role in the world.
(1) Industry. Why did the US government aggressively pursue a “post-industrial” economy? China was essentially given the keys to the world’s industries by US leaders in politics and businesses. It’s natural for China, as an industrial leader, to have a bigger role in the world.
(2) Key technologies. Why did the US pursue a laissez-faire approach to high-value technologies, such as solar and battery-powered vehicles? “Let things happen” is an unrealistic economic policy for areas of the market that are winner-takes-all. It’s natural for China, as a leader in key technologies, to have a bigger world stage.
(3) Public education. Why has the US allowed high-quality, regional newspapers to implode? The public is being whipped up to ever greater frenzies by increasingly poor media, which has led to increasingly low-quality leaders, for example, in the Republican Party. It’s natural for countries with more well-informed governments, such as China, to have a larger role in the world.
the current thought is that these are measurement errors not actual differences in expansion rate but even if they were actual different expansion rates, they are separated by time not space.
• Character. Is the public trusting? Are they anxious?
• Framing. Is the institution described compassionately, for example, as a national champion or underdog? Or is it described as a villain?
• Sectarianism. Are there motivated partisans who want to disparage the institution?
• Evidence. What particular evidence exists for unethical behavior?
• Ethics. What unethical behaviors have the institution done?
I am skeptical that institutions have become less ethical today compared to the past (e.g., today we would be appalled if a European country waged war against another state to sell narcotics, but Britain literally did that 150 years ago), so I have a hunch that other factors are the primary drivers for declining trust.
The author is drawing the wrong the conclusion-knowledge relationships can be asymmetric.
The forward relationship of a fact (What is Tom Cruise’s favorite color? Green) may be worth knowing, but the reverse relationship (Who’s favorite color is green? A billion people, including Tom Cruise) may not be worth knowing.
Are you saying that if "Tom Cruise's parent is Mary Lee Pfeiffer" then "Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer the parent of?" is asymmetric? That Mary Lee Pfeiffer is NOT the parent of Tom Cruise?
You’re right—both directions are true. But my point is that only the forward (or reverse) direction of a fact may be worth knowing.
We frequently only posses recall for one direction of a fact. Why? One direction may be important (what is Tom Cruise’s favorite color?), but the other direction may not (whose favorite color is green?).
So if we inquire into whether LLMs actually possess intelligence, their asymmetric knowledge seems similar to human knowledge and hence seems consistent with intelligence, rather than problematic.
A good analogy is ice. We all use “freezer-grown crystalline water,” but prior to the invention of refrigeration, we harvested natural ice from frozen lakes and stored them in ice houses for use throughout the summer.
Sure, there’s some romance from hand-harvested ice, but you can’t beat the price and purity of ice from a freezer.
It has little, if anything, to do with the water. Ice made in a freezer is cloudy because of air bubbles. There are techniques for making clear ice using directional freezing. Here's one way: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cocktail-ice-cubes/
No, being able to see through it has nothing to do with water purity (unless your water is so muddy that it's not clear even as a liquid), it's to do with the formation of the ice and the incorporation of air bubbles. You can make clear ice pretty easily with molds.
I did a bit of Googling and pretty much every article on the subject of clear ice includes impurities other than air:
> The most common impurities found in tap water include lime (also known as limescale), calcium, fluoride, nitrates, magnesium and certain other organic elements that are practically impossible to remove with regular filtration methods. So, when water freezes, the impurities that were evenly distributed in the water, tend to congregate near the middle, making ice cubes the whitest at their center. [1]
> But the reality is, most of the “impurities” found in your freezer ice cube are more likely nothing more than the minerals present in your tap water. Tap water commonly contains minerals such as: Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium [2]
Do you have a citation to back up the claim that it's only air bubbles?
There are other impurities than air, but they don't contribute making the ice cloudy. The only thing making ice cloudy is the bubbles. And you can verify it experimentally in your own freezer just by using a different freezing technique to create perfectly clear ice: https://youtu.be/E1G1I1LJjrI
I don't think this video is really sufficient to prove your point that "the only thing making ice cloudy is the bubbles". The directional freezing technique is essentially a filtration method - the H2O freezes first into the growing crystalline structure and all the other impurities (various minerals AND dissolved air) get "pushed down" and concentrated into the liquid water below.
As evidence that directional freezing can filter out impurities other than air, I would point out that the directional freezing process is an effective enough filtration method to filter salt out of sea water in sea ice. [1] So my assumption is that those other minerals commonly found in water (lime, calcium, fluoride, magnesium, etc) are also being filtered out in the process - and it certainly seems plausible to me that filtering those out contributes to the clarity of the resulting ice.
So my intuitive understanding, along with what I could learn with a bit of googling, is that there are a number of impurities which can make ice appear cloudy including (but not limited to) dissolved air. A number of people here seem to be adamant that it's just air bubbles, so I'd honestly like to know why they believe that to be true (e.g. sources, some clear explanation, etc)? So far the only justification I've seen is "because directional freezing works" - but as explained above I really don't see that as being a sufficient justification since it filters out a number of impurities other than air.
When you said the water was "impure" in your previous comment, no one thought you meant it was sullied with... air. While not technically incorrect, if you honestly thought "impure" was a good way to describe water with air dissolved in it, the best I can say is to watch out for your subtext when using a word much differently than basically anyone else does.
I don’t think referring to dissolved gas in water as an impurity is all that uncommon. To quote wikipedia:
> Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, biological contaminants, suspended solids, and gases from water. The goal is to produce water that is fit for specific purposes. [1]
Other sources list carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen as impurities that can cause corrosion in pipes [2], or can form bubbles in systems where there are major changes in pressure or temperature, blocking pumps, fine tubing, filters, etc. [3]
So it’s a bit context dependent, but there are situations where it is totally reasonable to view dissolved gases in water as an impurity. And this context - the discussion of what makes ice clear or cloudy - is one of them.
How can you claim so confidently that “no one thought” something, or that the parent is “using a word much differently than basically anyone else”? If you honestly think that you speak for all 1.35 billion English speakers in the world - or even all the people reading this thread - the best I can say is speak for yourself.
Yes, I used very slight hyperbole with "no one". Counterexample found, film at 11. A few highly technical contexts don't change the point: If someone holds up a flask of water and says "this is impure", what's at the top of the list of possible impurities in your mind, and how far down the list is air?
If by purity you mean any sort of "alien substance" whatsoever, stick with liquid water. And I hope you don't like any colored minerals, as those all have "alien substances" inside.
