> There are many concepts in our thought stream without a 'word' or even a simple 'phrase' to label them.
If those concepts would exist you wouldn’t be able to explain them using words, no matter how complex the phrase may be. Taking a phrase and expecting it to have a single word replace is unrealistic. You can’t just asign a word to every possible sentence/phrase. Having a direct translation means you don’t necessarily need that word in your language.
One might argue that the limit of our language is the limit of our ability to think.
How did Michelangelo create his masterpieces? Can one describe the process using any verbal language in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David? That's an example of thought processes beyond language.
I suspect the same happens in many other fields. Even in an abstract field like mathematics, intuition often forms in the mind before verbal description or articulation.
> Can one describe the process using any verbal language in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David? That's an example of thought processes beyond language.
Possibly. Even if this was just emulating the thought process that happened non-verbally, it would still work. I imagine that's a big part of why language seems so critical an invention: because it can be used as emulator of otherwise non-verbal thought processes.
That said, in case of Michelangelo, describing the "algorithm" is not sufficient, because just as important are the external factors. Art reacts to the medium and situation, so there's a lot of randomness into any specific work. It's kind of like with Stable Diffusion - we could get the prompt just right to generate something like a picture someone else generated, but there's only one seed that will result in identical output, and that little number is something we can't easily reverse.
>How did Michelangelo create his masterpieces? Can one describe the process using any verbal language in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David? That's an example of thought processes beyond language.
I'm not sure what you mean. He probably started with something "Ok, I need to create a statue", then "Who should I pick, I guess it should be someone Biblical, let's pick David because they like him in Florence", then "Ok, he was a healthy and muscular young man, and I have enough material for a 5 meter high statue", then "let's start with sculpting a general outline and then focus on head and neck shapes" (...) and finally "looks good, but the nose should be a bit smaller". I can almost imagine the whole thought process (except I know nothing about sculpting, but I'm not terrible at some other art forms).
There's nothing that is inherently non-verbal in this process. And all of these decisions can be described algorithmically and numerically (even though humans doing art usually compare their results to a reference images instead of doing 3d math in their head).
Here is the key part of my argument: in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David, (implying) in the exact same style as the masterpiece, without seeing or touching the artifact itself (because that would not be just verbal language anymore).
Isn't that what CNC machines do? Or even 3D modeling software, which then gets 3D printed? Is that not creating things, potentially as complicated as David, using language? I know CNC machines use G-Code.
I think the only limiting factor we have on that is we don't yet have a robot that can chisel marble to create a carbon copy of such sculptures, but we can otherwise do it with other materials.
In the context of the original article in which this whole discussion takes place, I assume we are talking about verbal, natural language. Specifying every little detail would make my comments sound like legalese.
To my understanding, this is not a type of natural language the paper discusses:
N10 G21 ; Set units to millimeters
N20 G17 ; Select XY plane
N30 G90 ; Absolute positioning
N40 G00 Z5.0 ; Raise Z axis to 5.0 mm
I don't expect a human could recreate David with that, no. But you also included robot in your post, and a robot can use that language to recreate David. If you hadn't specified robot, then sure.
I doubt Michelangelo could write such a spec, but he could make David. The ability to communicate is not the same thing as the ability to do, they are separate, as people who can write such a spec probably can't make it by themselves either.
I don't get your point on Michelangelo. We can very easily describe the process if we could see it. We just can't cause he's dead and he was not big on YouTube, even then we can explain a lot from evidence.
Its much more complex to explain why we classify them as masterpieces than how he made it.
In the context of the original article in which this whole discussion takes place, I assume we are talking about verbal, natural language. Specifying every little detail would make my comments sound like legalese.
To my understanding, this is not a type of natural language the paper discusses:
N10 G21 ; Set units to millimeters
N20 G17 ; Select XY plane
N30 G90 ; Absolute positioning
N40 G00 Z5.0 ; Raise Z axis to 5.0 mm
I believe that intuition is often not enough to have a concrete thought. It’s more of a feeling, you can’t reach conclusions based on intuition, you also need reason.
>But when was the last time their products were relevant?
You can't neglect the fact that, despite their lack of innovation while sitting on a huge pile of money, Apple has brought a few good things in the last decade. For example, their use of ARM chips in Macs has influenced other companies to adopt this architecture, which in some ways is better than x86. Another product market they opened up with their "innovation" is the AirPods, which are, in my opinion, better for daily tasks than bulky headphones as they are easier to carry around and more discreet.
>But I've never understood why a device from a secretive, developer-hostile company is supposed to be some amazing tool.
An iPhone may lack some basic features, but I find the overall experience more polished than Android.
>I know there are people who positively love their iPhone and the status it apparently confers in their friends group.
My 2021 iPhone SE doesn't confer me any status, but I agree that some people just buy iPhones because they are expensive.
Anyway, in the end, it's about everyone's opinion. But Apple’s AI seems like overkill. I definitely don't want AI spilled into every app that is on my phone. I'm happy using the phone app, taking photos whenever I feel like it, and keeping in touch with my friends over WhatsApp/Discord/Messages.
I decided to use Bitdefender a few months ago becouse i suspected my Mac had malware. I was right, there was a adware in the firefox files so it did it’s job.
But, my experience with the antivirus was horrible. When i first opened the app there were popus everywhere advertising for their other products, and the overall ui didn’t look trustworthy.
I am no security expert, so I’m asking: is this the best way to deal with malware?
The same thing happend with Netflix raising prices. Probably everyone nobody canceled their subscription after the increased price just becouse it’s not worth the effort. And the price raise is incremental just so nobody will complain.
That story actually came about from a scientist doing experiments on frogs. Frogs with removed brains.
Arguably the frogs are not smarter than we thought
> Besides, there’s no way of really knowing whether Chat Control would actually be (or remain) limited to CSAM.
I definitely agree with the article here. Probably after Chat Control will be implemented for CSAM this would act as a gateway towards using this tehnology for other things.
I am curious whether chat control will extend to mail or other means of online comunication, if it will be implemented ofc(hopefully not).
I’ll probably start communicating with my friends over phone more either way, I don’t want my conversations to be monitored 24/7.
> I’ll probably start communicating with my friends over phone more either way...
Talking to people is great. I write science fiction for a hobby. In my stories, when two people want to have a private conversation to discuss some economic barter that can be construed as tax evasion, they take off all their clothing and go swimming to a beach with noisy waves. But there is always that lingering fear about if anybody surreptitiously got a microphone implanted during their latest root canal treatment...
Truth be told, I'm a very unimaginative bloke, because in my current jurisdiction banks are already forced to report on their customers, and in my previous one, the government had a decided phobia of cell-phones and attributed to computer printers in the hands of civilians the same dangers of an independent printing press.
today's voice recognition tools are pretty good, look at meta's recent results. I wouldn't be that sure that phone discussions will not be monitored in some future. It's likely the other way - phone service providers are few in nr, it could be easy to force the change on them
I don’t know about Europe but the US has been scanning trunk lines of domestic and international calls for decades looking for keywords and actually have decades of archived conversations that AI will make it all the more feasible to comb through and look for thought crimes.
I had a similar experience this morning. I made the huge mistake of opening Famdom on my phone, and it took me a few minutes of blankly staring at the screen to realize this is actually a legit site. The amount of ads they managed to pack on a 4.7 inch screen was mesmerising.
The problem is i got stuck at that game and searched for a quick solution. Then google straight up made me end up in that pile of ads. I hope people will start realizing what that website is and hopefully migrate their wikis to a better place, although it probably won’t happen.
I don’t really understand how the HN rating system works. I submitted this article 1 day ago, and it got completely ignored. Now I open the front page and see it there. If anyone can tell me how did this happened, I would really much appreciate it.
Sometimes I get emails when my submissions qualify for the second-chance pool. Other times it just pops up. It is confusing how the time-stamp for the submission (which I think gets reset) and the comments (which at least sometimes do not) end up looking.
If those concepts would exist you wouldn’t be able to explain them using words, no matter how complex the phrase may be. Taking a phrase and expecting it to have a single word replace is unrealistic. You can’t just asign a word to every possible sentence/phrase. Having a direct translation means you don’t necessarily need that word in your language.
One might argue that the limit of our language is the limit of our ability to think.