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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Yeah, my starting position would be that it was obvious to any competent physicist at the time (although there werenā€™t that many) that the potential energy release from nuclear fission was a real thing - the ā€œonlyā€ thing to do to weaponise it or use it for peaceful ends was engineering.

    The analogy to ā€œrunaway X-risk AGIā€ is thereā€™s a similar straight line from ELIZA to Acausal Robot God, all thatā€™s required is a bit of elbow grease and good ole fashioned American ingenuity. But my point is that apart from Yud and a few others, no serious person believes this.





  • Back when I was an undergrad I saw a letter addressed to the department from a German gentleman who claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine (this was the department of mechanics). I remember the letter being quite typographically florid and especially the authorā€™s likeness in silhouette.

    My advisor had fun finding the flaw in the proposal. Took a few minutes.

    I often wondered if demolishing a PM suggestion would be a good extra credit question on an exam.