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Saved by @Alex1Powell

Star Wars has a simple dichotomy between good and evil. But as the stories have evolved, the nuances between these distinct poles also has acquired a richness that is hard to dismiss.

 In the latest trilogy, we discover a dysfunctional civilization even after the defeat of the empire. The argument that the remnants of the empire make is that the galaxy stills seeks a need for order. Order and chaos are at seperate poles where evil is aligned with order.
We know however from D&D alignment charts that good and evil, order and chaos can exist in many combinations:
It is also interesting that the Sith (the Evil sorcerers) only come in pairs as opposed to the Jedi that can be entire communities. Apparently, to sustain evil one has to restrict agency and individuality to just a few. A community of evil-doers very quickly turns on itself.
So at one extreme we have evil, order, individuality and at the other we have good, chaos, collective. Which brings up the question, what is the definition of evil and good? Something that we took for granted ever since the first Star Wars movie.
What is evil? Perhaps Yoda has some wisdom:
Is the opposite of evil really neutrality? Is the correct alignment chart then: individual - collective, order - chaos and the good actually implies the neutrality and hence balance?
But the need for balance exists only because there is motion.
Therefore, the definition of good is the constant practice (or process) towards balance between the individual and the collective, order and chaos.
The definition of evil is the absence of a process to achieve balance. The evil in order and the evil in chaos is the acceptance of these states without question. The evil in individuality and in the collective is the rigid application of the concerns without question.
What then is this process of constantly seeking balance? For what purpose do we seek this balance? For the purpose of good (of course). But is this not a recursive definition if good is the process?
Recursive definitions appear problematic when one cannot identify a termination condition. For processes, the termination condition is the disappearance of the process. Therefore, it is a necessary condition that the process of good is a sustainable process.
The process of good thus itself a balancing and sustainable process. It is an open-ended and evolutionary process. Balance is always in the context of change.
Therefore, when we speak about ethics (which happens to be the inquiry of what is 'good'), we realize that it also is an evolutionary process.
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Carlos E. Perez

Carlos E. Perez
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Does artificial anthropocentric intelligence lead to superintelligence?

When I use the term Artificial General Intelligence, my meaning of 'General' comes from the psychology definition of the G-factor that is tested in general intelligence tests.

It is an anthropocentric measure. The question that hasn't been explored in depth is whether a "human-complete" synthetic intelligence leads to a superintelligence. The prevailing assumption is that this expected.

I am going to argue that this assumption may not be true.

The assumption that goes into AGI automatically exploding into a superintelligence is driven by the bias that human intelligence is perceived at the pinnacle of all intelligence.
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
It's a very different perspective when we realize that our bodies consist of an entire ecology of bacteria and viruses that are also passed to our ancestors. Mammals rear their young and as a consequence transfer the microbiome and virome to their offspring.


What does it mean to treat our individuality as ecologies? We are all ecologies existing in other ecologies. Nature is constantly performing a balancing act across multiple scales of existence.

There are bacteria and viruses that are unique to your ancestry as that of your own DNA. They have lived in symbiosis with your ancestor and will do so for your descendants.

It is an empirical fact that the microbiome in our stomach can influence not only our own moods but also our metabolism and thus our weight and health.

It is also intriguing to know that brains evolved out of stomachs and that our stomachs contain hundreds of millions of neurons. Humans can literally think with their gut.
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Constructivism is perhaps the most important idea that will shape the future of humanity. The ills of society are a consequence of the willful ignorance of constructivism.

There are two important definitions of constructivism, one comes from mathematics and the other from psychology. The mathematical definition leads rejects the law of excluded middle. It's relevant in understanding causation.

The psychological definition: "Humans actively construct their own knowledge, and that reality is determined by our experiences as a learner."

The models of causality that our brains invent to navigate the world is a consequence of our progressive development in the world we live in. Robert Kegan calls his theory constructive developmental theory to emphasize two important aspects of cognitive growth.

Cognitive growth is constructive as explained above. It is also developmental in the sense that our mental models of the world make abrupt changes as we grow in maturity. The symmetries in our models break and lead to new symmetries.
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?


I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.

explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?

An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.

The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Abduction is that thought process where we renew our past, question our present, and reimagine our future.

It was C.S. Peirce, a century ago, that coined the use of this term to describe a thought process that would convey hypothesis making.

A little over 50 years ago, proponents of Artificial Intelligence, proposed that deduction would be the core feature of human intelligence. This idea was driven by the bias towards formal logical systems and the emergence of computers.

This approach was in stark contrast to cybernetics (introduced a decade early) that proposed that dynamical systems were a model for intelligence. The descendant of this approach was coined as artificial neural networks.

This dynamical systems approach was later understood as being similar to an induction based thought process. Deep Learning leads to what can be characterized as Artificial Intuition.
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What happened next was basically a rebellion, led by big directors, big actors, the big agencies and the big unions. The reason, of course, is the AT&T decision might cost them all big money.

A massive chunk of big talent compensation is dependent on box office receipts. Gross points and box office bonuses are part of the compensation package for big actors and big directors. It's a big part of their deals.

What happens when there's no box office? Take a wild guess. These are tentpole releases. High risk, high reward. The actors, directors and agents are going to take a big hit relative to their expectations.
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Superhero movies thread.... Which is your favorite from each?

1. AVENGERS VS X MEN


2. DARK KNIGHT VS CAPTAIN AMERICA


3. BLACK PANTHER VS DEADPOOL


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5. THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN VS MAN OF STEEL
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Most exciting upcoming movies

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I've been watching the Netflix chess show and it reminded me of the time I beat Garry Kasparov. A thread 👇 1/

So it was back in the old USSR (I gave that title to my old friend Bruce for his songs) in the late 80s. As usual, there were 24 games. On the opening day I sat across the table from Garry and tried to out psych him with my famous penetrating stare 2/

I was shocked by his audacious first move: Queen's pawn to Q4! Outrageous! Especially since he was playing black... I left immediately and spent the rest of the day in my hotel, consoling myself with some delicious Cos D'Estournel Grand Cru 1988. 3/

By day two I had drunk so much high quality wine that I was barely able to focus on the board and was seeing double. However, with two sets of chess pieces at my mental disposal, I was able to access hitherto unknown forms of play. 4/

I began with the "Triple Bishop Castle", and followed with "The pawn Tsunami". For those who are eager to learn, the latter move is when all eight of your pawns reach the opponents side of the board and are simultaneously converted to Queens. 5/
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desert wanderer
desert wanderer
@top_shelf_loosh
We can all agree the bad guy in Mandalorian is Michelle Obama right?

We can at least establish that right?

What's the next season Jedi school?

The parallels are palpable. This is like that 2011 movie Another Earth
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👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!


This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?


One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.


The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.
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Anu Satheesh
Anu Satheesh
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Beautiful story of Shri Krishna, Mata Rukmini & Satyabhama which teaches the importance of Bhakthi.
Devotion is important than anything.
#bhakthi
🕉
Satyabhama, royal princess was very proud of herself. Rukmini was very humble, her devotion was pure to Shri Krishna.


One day, Rishi Narada( Kalahapriya) arrived in Dwaraka and met Sathyabhama. In between the conversation he hinted that Krishna exhibits affection more to Rukmini than her. Worried Sathyabhama asked what can should be done to gain Krishna's undivided attention.
@SriramKannan77


Narada asked Satyabhama to make a vow, that she will hand over Krishna to him as a slave, if she cannot trade wealth equivalent to Krishna's weight. Narada thus convinces Sathyabhama that Krishna will admire her for sacrificing all her wealth for him.


Sathyabhama was sure that she have enough wealth to balance Krishna.

She went to Krishna and told about her vow to Narada. Krishna patiently listened to her and accepted the challenge. Satyabhama arranged to bring large scales to weigh and brought all her precious jewels.


Krishna patiently sat on one plate of the Scales (tula). Sathyabhama started piling up the gold, jewels on the other plate. She kept adding more and more wealth, but the pan with Krishna did not even budge. Even after keeping all her jewels the scale did not move a little
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Antonio García Martíne...
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Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
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Steve
Steve
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Ivor Cummins has been wrong (or lying) almost entirely throughout this pandemic and got paid handsomly for it.

He has been wrong (or lying) so often that it will be nearly impossible for me to track every grift, lie, deceit, manipulation he has pulled. I will use...


... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


Example #1: "Still not seeing Sweden signal versus Denmark really"... There it was (Images attached).
19 to 80 is an over 300% difference.

Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


Example #2 - "Yes, I'm comparing the Noridcs / No, you cannot compare the Nordics."

I wonder why...

Tweets: https://t.co/XLfoX4rpck / https://t.co/vjE1ctLU5x


Example #3 - "I'm only looking at what makes the data fit in my favour" a.k.a moving the goalposts.

Tweets: https://t.co/vcDpTu3qyj / https://t.co/CA3N6hC2Lq
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श्रीमाली हितेश अवस्थी ...
@HiteshAwasthi89
#Thread
An interesting story of Kamala Devi hazarika for all Sanatanis...🙏

A Xtian missionary was sent to Assam for the promotion of religion. His name was Cruz. He came across to one the boys from an influential family in Assam to teach him English.
@noconversion

Cont 👇


The p@stor slowly began to study the house and he learned that the boy's grandmother was the most influential person in the house. So he thought 'Corrupting the grandmother's mind can make the whole family Xtian as well as the whole village.

Cont 👇


The p@stor began to tell Grandma the stories of how J€$u$ cured leprosy of lepers, how He gave sight to the blind, etc..But after listening to him, the strong Sanatani grandmother said. A stone turned into a living woman (Ahalya) for our Rama when he touched the stone.

Cont 👇


She spoke of Rama setu where stones floated in sea just by writing his name on the stones and that they are still floating today.
The p@stor continued his efforts but all his tricks went in vain.

Cont 👇


One day he had brought a cake from the church and he thought of offering it to grandmother but he was doubtful that she would eat it. But contrary to his expectation, she took the cake and ate it.

Cont 👇
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