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Hi Michael, welcome to V.
The halting problem shows that no algorithm can correctly decide, for every program and input, whether the program will halt. Yet we can understand why such an algorithm is impossible, and we can determine the answer in particular cases.
Yes, we can, but note the switch from knowing such an impossible algorithm to understanding why such an algorithm is impossible. Those are two different things.
What exactly is being claimed to be unknowable here?
A universal halting algorithm.
… if the discussion itself is clear and concise …
Sure but often they’re not…
I might do that too. It arguably already falls under the rule against sabotaging debate. But the rules already explain the need for disclosure as well.
I don’t understand why you’re fighting this rule so hard. It’s not like you’re not allowed to use AI. You are. Just disclose it.
Kitty Comes Home: my first game made with Claude Opus 5.5.
You play as a little kitten trying to find your way back to your mom.
Play for free here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/kitty-comes-home
Teaser trailer: https://youtu.be/bcM2BI-41cY
This takes me back to my startup days in Berlin. It was common knowledge among founders that anyone overly worried about telling people about their great idea because someone might ‘steal’ it was a newbie founder. It’s almost always a mistake not to tell people, for several reaasons:
- Your idea probably isn’t new anyway. Somebody has probably already tried it before you and realized why it doesn’t work.
- If you don’t share your idea, you don’t get any critical feedback. You’ll make more mistakes. It will be harder to launch it.
- Most people don’t care. They have their own problems. They’re not looking to copy ideas.
Tik Tok did reels and then Instagram copied the feature. Arguably, Instagram does it better now. Imagine the founder of Tik Tok getting angry with Zuckerberg and trying to shame him online. That would be ridiculous.
As Ben points out, reels go all the way back to Vine! Which corroborates point 1 above: the idea probably isn’t new. And your customers don’t care either way. They only care that your product solves their problems better than the competitors’ products.
People get angry because they hope to control more than they actually can. Ideas spread; we can’t control people’s speech. One can’t expect secrecy from people who didn’t agree to secrecy. If it’s important, like industry secrets or product launches, one should make people sign NDAs. If something is truly secret, the only person you should tell is your lawyer. Aside from that, sharing generously and openly is more profitable for you 99% of the time anyway.
It also pays to be brief: the more you write, the more text there is to criticize. It’s in Vincent’s own interest to be less verbose. Not sure he realizes that.
It also pays to be concise: the more you write, the more text there is to criticize. It’s in Vincent’s own interest to be less verbose. Not sure he realizes that.
I guess, the point I'm trying to make is really that it should not be coming with any form of punishment (like that this does not count for badges) IF the AI assist is clearly done in good faith.
Absence of a reward != punishment
These three paragraphs could be shortened to: ‘basing badges on non-AI use may discourage non-native speakers.’ Verbosity is a recurring issue
Midnight Ride: Production Errors That Fix Themselves (Almost)
This takes me back to my startup days in Berlin. It was common knowledge among founders that anyone overly worried about telling people about their great idea because someone might ‘steal’ it was a newbie founder. It’s almost always a mistake not to tell people, for several reaasons:
- Your idea probably isn’t new anyway. Somebody has probably already tried it before you and realized why it doesn’t work.
- If you don’t share your idea, you don’t get any critical feedback. You’ll make more mistakes. It will be harder to launch it.
- Most people don’t care. They have their own problems. They’re not looking to copy ideas.
Tik Tok came up with reels and then Instagram copied the feature. Arguably, Instagram does it better now. Imagine the founder of Tik Tok getting angry with Zuckerberg and trying to shame him online. That would be ridiculous.
People get angry because they hope to control more than they actually can. Ideas spread; we can’t control people’s speech. One can’t expect secrecy from people who didn’t agree to secrecy. If it’s important, like industry secrets or product launches, one should make people sign NDAs. If something is truly secret, the only person you should tell is your lawyer. Aside from that, sharing generously and openly is more profitable for you 99% of the time anyway.
We’re talking about a friend of yours who you think might have a problem, but who hasn’t even signed up never mind voiced that concern to me directly. This is all hypothetical. I’m not gonna relax the rules just because one person who isn’t even a member might possibly not feel accommodated. If some day ten non-native members actually try and make an effort and then all tell me the same thing, now that would be a good reason to relax the rules.
Eh. Being a non-native speaker myself, I have no sympathy for other non-native speakers. Tell your friend to work harder and get better at English. Badges are rewards for personal effort, and I can’t reliably tell that apart from AI usage. The badge logic stays until further notice.
I’m not using AI for this response and will not do so moving forward on Veritula to respect the rules and what seems to be the sentiment behind these rules (unless they change).
As written, the forum rules don’t ban AI. They say to disclose it. Someone may voice a preference about AI use and it’s up to you to honor it. Their preference doesn’t bind you like the forum rules do. But members will make decisions about who to spend time discussing with. Our discussion about animals, if you choose to continue it, will probably go better if you don’t use AI.
That said, it’s a good idea, especially for new members, to get a feel for the platform, study the rules, and understand the culture better before going full-steam ahead and submitting dozens of AI-assisted ideas. It’s best to exercise care when entering a new space and prove that you’re worth engaging with. (I’m not only talking about you specifically, I mean new members in general.) Checking a checkbox indicating AI use is a small cost, and it’s a good way to be transparent with readers of one’s ideas.
To that end, it pays to show an understanding that Veritula isn’t a debate club, and that the goal isn’t to win an argument (although winning and losing do happen here, in an objectively recognizable sense – though finding an error is rarely an actual ‘loss’). The goal is to find a bit of truth. It pays to show that you can change your mind, eg by saying things like ‘I never thought of it that way – you’ve given me a new way to look at things.’ Having your AI say something like that on your behalf obviously carries less weight than if you said it yourself. And excessive use of AI gives the impression that someone is just trying to win an argument. (Not saying you specifically – again, this is about the forum rules in general.)
My English is not great but the English from a Spanish friend of mine is considerably worse, and I wonder if I should tell him about this platform, because he would usually use AI to polish his English.
Your English is fine. Clearly good enough to have discussions. As for your friend, he can enlist the help of AI to translate ideas. Again, he’d just need to disclose it.
AI-generated text is notoriously verbose regardless of who came up with an idea.
Summary feature proposed in #4727 is for discussions not ideas.
It doesn’t play the whole codebase at once. It walks through the code line by line, and when a file changes, it jumps to the changed lines and plays an accent made from them, rising or falling with that file’s health. So a small change in a big codebase is as audible as one in a small codebase. What’s quieter in a big codebase is the overall stage, and that’s on purpose: one long function shouldn’t make a whole healthy codebase sound sick. Bugs are the exception, since they count in full. One syntax error drops even a huge project from beautiful to meh.
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Veritula welcomes a wide range of discussion topics. Generally speaking, people have free speech here. Unpopular topics will not automatically get people banned. The goal of moderation is to preserve productive, truth-seeking discussion.
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Content written with AI may be submitted, but only if disclosed: when posting, tick “Text written with AI?” if AI wrote any part of your idea, including polishing or translating your own writing. Veritula is a place for genuine discussion and truth-seeking, so we’d prefer to avoid talking to meat proxies without realizing it. AI content is notoriously verbose – don’t flood discussions with it. In addition, it’s your responsibility to ensure that AI detectors give negative results for content you don’t mark as written with AI. Repeat submission of content written with AI that is not disclosed and/or overly verbose is a bannable offense.
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organization of information processing
What does this mean if nothing physical? You mean the structure of their code?
In fact, if a future MacBook became sentient, it would be very interesting to investigate its predecessors (probably) ONLY if they shared a sufficiently similar organization of information processing.
But we already know both current and future MacBooks will have von Neumann architecture. We already know it’s only different programming that could matter re: consciousness.
And that's exactly what I've been talking about: humans and other animals share evolved mechanisms with significant continuity in how information processing is organized.
I disagree. I think there’s an important break/jump in human evolution: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-neo-darwinian-theory-of-the-mind
… I never argued that the physical substrate was what mattered.
As I understood it, you argued that it mattered insofar as it was part of evolutionary continuity. Did I misunderstand you there?
… I find your sleepwalking example particularly interesting in this regard, because it seems to support the possibility that these capacities don't need to go together. In the video, you yourself point out that the woman can recognize objects and taste, including recognizing that rice cakes are dry, even while asleep.
She’s unconscious for all of that! It shows the opposite.
Your hypothetical "I'd know it when I see it" seems to test whether an animal possesses universal creativity…
More needlessly complicated language.