Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

MO to SF to LA. I type on computers until the tiny lights blink correctly. I like wilderness backpacking, music theory, trivia, and other things too! Los Angeles, CA Joined April 2008

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

6 hours ago

@kenwheeler Just in time for all homelab parts to be 5x more expensive!

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@ToKTeacher @janhesters @DavidDeutschOxf Would you also say that we don’t know enough about physics to simulate (even in principle) a biological human accurately enough for it to be an AGI? If we had very large quantum computers, couldn’t we do it (up to the “accuracy” of quantum theory)?

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

17 hours ago

@ryanflorence @Austen I got automatic IRS extensions for so many years due to wildfires that I’ve honestly kinda forgotten the normal rules

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

19 hours ago

@ryanflorence I’m not suggesting he personally is trying to rig stuff. It could be completely good faith but still confirmation bias leaking into the prompts and thus the results. Also the “Rust got extra commits” thing obviously spoils the experiment.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

19 hours ago

@ryanflorence And in general I don’t think there’s a lot of value in a programming language being “good at vibe coded apps.” At least not until human expertise is truly obsolete. Of course a human expert in Language X is going to be better at prompting for that language than a novice.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

19 hours ago

@ryanflorence That framing might be valid if the prompts were made public and we’re all consistent. In reality, I bet what’s happening here is that they were more familiar with Rust and wanted it to win (maybe subconsciously) and thus prompted and tweaked the Rust build better.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

23 hours ago

@patio11 @clairlemon The pizza at the door framing is interesting but it’s also kinda close to “human civilization could be destroyed by ink” because someone could write a letter to the leader of a nuclear power convincing them to launch the ICBMs.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

23 hours ago

@sporadica The thing is, humans can also decide what they find beautiful, and we often do that with things that violate previous concepts of beauty. That’s why that square packing image is such a strong meme: we find it beautiful *because* it violates traditional senses of beauty.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

24 hours ago

@crtr0 @andrewparker @levelsio It can be a solution in the same sense that humanity solved the Black Death.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

24 hours ago

@AlexGodofsky @moultano Only wormhole mouths that are stationary relative to one another, right?

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

24 hours ago

@Benthamsbulldog But what’s philosophically notable about this explanatory gap? Once we figure out how to do it, we’ll just say “here’s how the computer implements consciousness” just like we can currently say “here’s how the computer finds the shortest paths between nodes in a weighted graph.”

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

a day ago

@USpiaggia @wolftivy @insurrealist We’ve already proven that every problem in P is polynomial-time reducible to every NP-complete problem.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@ryanflorence This is a pretty huge update. Like only-reason-to-upgrade-from-my-2023-base-Model-3 huge.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@jonnym1ller @levelsio Yeah coastal is awesome but also risky for many reasons. Plenty of areas in the foothills of obscure mountain ranges with solid weather year round.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@mistah_boston @JoshuaBarzon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_… and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexic…

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@AStratelates @samjohnson_phil I have. How much do you know about it? The only problem is that there’s no general closed-form solution. It’s absolutely computable. Computers can numerically integrate the relevant equations to arbitrary accuracy.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@AStratelates @samjohnson_phil Which part don’t you understand? Cmputers can simulate any finite physical system to arbitrary access.

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Thomas Shaddox @tshddx

2 days ago

@AStratelates @samjohnson_phil Where would the inaccuracies come from in the simulation? A finite quantum computer can simulate any finite physical system.