Alright, friends – my NEW Apple Vision Pro app Metaballs: Spatial has launched! 🤯 This was SO much work, and would mean the world to me if you share, and go download it today!

Daniel Dennett's writings on consciousness seem particularly relevant and interesting the context of the current debates. Haven't really seen much reference to his work though in all the arguments.

Apple season on the farm. This is just one tree out of MANY.

Midwit meme where the left and right sides are just "I'm nice to the computer"

Turns out that formulating a theory of consciousness (hard problem, “why are there qualia”) without at least one crazy-sounding implication is pretty hard. They’re fun to list though: - Consciousness is just an illusion - There’s an immaterial soul that pushes atoms around in your brain - Your thoughts/decisions do not drive your actions, even if you think they do - Electrons are conscious - Only particular carbon processes can be conscious - A properly wired network of walkie talkies among the citizens of China could be conscious For this reason I don’t think that mocking someone’s views of consciousness without offering one’s own is respectable. (I do think the scientific questions regarding consciousness are mostly orthogonal to the hard problem)

Most people think of the Voyager image or Sagan's poem when they here "A Pale Blue Dot". But it's also a fantastic book he wrote about humanity's continuously shattered ego, and our need to explore and understand the universe. Dated, but still so relevant.

The new AI writing tell is stuff like: "One button. Infinite options."

Morning on the farm. Repair of an ancient drain tile. Perennial mix going in this year. Hopefully the deep rooted fescues break up the hard pan a bit. Over time our goal is to turn this field regenerative.

"In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And God said, 'Create a universe full of animals and people, make no mistakes.'"

gorgeous

Shoot, I must have missed the part where we determined what makes humans feel 'conscious', where that feeling originates from, and why it's particularly unique to us and our dogs and cats.

I asked Claude Sonnet to make a SimEarth inspired planet simulation

Omygourd

I guess I shouldn't be altogether surprised that AI has become as polarized as anything else. But, I dunno – it seems kinda obvious that AI is super powerful but also has some real sharp edges and risks. Can we seriously not come together in a serious way on this?

A huge percentage of anything cool you've ever used has come from playful experimentation. That's why I think it's dumb to look at the current explosion in creativity and say "yeah but where's all the productivity?"

Job interviews in 2027

Side effect of owning a Great Pyrenees is an absolute explosion of wildlife that now lives on the farm because her radius of protection has kept predators from even considering coming near.

I'm an environmentalist who's also pretty bullish on AI's potential. I think if we're going to say that cars are a necessity in society I don't see how you can say that compute is not. And the latter is way easier to power renewably / sustainably.

I wonder if data centers could just be built underground and use geothermal primarily. Reduces noise, more renewable source of cooling. You can build parks on top.

My pipe dream is that instead of arguing about data centers both political parties could just agree that the government should fund a massive renewable energy expansion (nuclear is fine too) and a new grid. (and It's good for national security if you don't care about climate.)