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High praise. When one gains the respect of (or criticism from) those whose opinion one has deep respect for, what else matters on social media? x.com/naval/status/1…
@aaryan_kakad Same as I recommend to everyone. Read like a textbook, slowly, making sure that you understand each point. Less a book and more a school of philosophy. The Sovereign Child is an offshoot.
Accompany with @ToKTeacher podcasts.
The Beginning of Infinity a.co/d/aVrmpfE
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Brett Hall retweeted
@Ringo496351y change their minds by being proved wrong by experience. But usually they literally have no choice. What they need is somewhere to jump to, and that comes from explanation not from evidence alone. But in this case the elites maintain a taboo against such explanation.
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Brett Hall retweeted
Myriam was a 7-year-old French Jewish girl. She witnessed a terrorist break into her school and kill two of her classmates.
She tried to run but tripped while grabbing her schoolbag, causing her ballet slippers to fall out. She stopped to pick them up. He chased her and grabbed ng her in the head at point-blank range.
The man was Mohamed Merah, and a rap song honoring him and other Muslim terrorists has become the unofficial anthem of the ‘student protests’ in France.
She tried to run but tripped while grabbing her schoolbag, causing her ballet slippers to fall out. She stopped to pick them up. He chased her and grabbed ng her in the head at point-blank range.
The man was Mohamed Merah, and a rap song honoring him and other Muslim terrorists has become the unofficial anthem of the ‘student protests’ in France.
🚨 ALERTE - Des élèves ONT BLOQUÉ le lycée François Villon, à Beaugency (45), en écoutant MRH, un titre faisant référence à des TERRORISTES ISLAMISTES.
« À la Mohamed Merah, v-esqui' les caméras. Bataclan, je l'ai shooter à l'œil, chasse à l'homme, Salah Abdeslam »
« J’ai pas l’enfer, le pacte est intact, à part Allah qui peut m’arrêter. Bataclan, faisaient les morts, allongez-vous, je vais en shooter à l’œil ».
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Brett Hall retweeted
We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.
block.xyz/dessa
block.xyz/dessa
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Brett Hall retweeted
We do not know the recipe - the algorithm or code - for a human mind.
And so we do not yet have artificial intelligence of the kind that is general - as general possible.
Universal, in other words.
~Conjecture Institute Ambassador @ToKTeacher
And so we do not yet have artificial intelligence of the kind that is general - as general possible.
Universal, in other words.
~Conjecture Institute Ambassador @ToKTeacher
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Quite right.
Why they’d call it a *free* trade deal, I don’t know. As it is, it’d require Australia to enforce EU climate policies and restrict agricultural trade, among other things, to Australia’s detriment.
Why they’d call it a *free* trade deal, I don’t know. As it is, it’d require Australia to enforce EU climate policies and restrict agricultural trade, among other things, to Australia’s detriment.
Angus Taylor brands Australia-EU free trade deal a ‘dud’.
Angus Taylor has condemned the proposed Australia–EU Free Trade Agreement as a “dud”, arguing it delivers inadequate agricultural market access while imposing climate obligations that could undermine Australia’s in future governments.
Taylor says the Coalition could only support the agreement if the climate provisions were removed and meaningful improvements secured for Australian dairy and red meat producers.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien is seeking a compromise through a legally binding side-letter that would protect Australia’s freedom to determine its own climate policies and shield Australian businesses from potential trade penalties. He argues the EU agreement goes further than the UK FTA by explicitly allowing trade preferences to be suspended over climate violations.
Trade Minister Don Farrell rejects these concerns, insisting the agreement does not compromise sovereignty and would strengthen Australia’s economic position. He argues the deal is too valuable to abandon, particularly given the EU’s importance as Australia’s third-largest trading partner.
Former Coalition finance minister Mathias Cormann also supports proceeding, arguing that an imperfect agreement is preferable to another decade of restricted market access.
On this, I disagree with Cormann. An imperfect trade agreement is not necessarily one worth signing simply because it offers some improvement over the status quo. The question is not just what Australia gains, but what we concede in return, particularly in agricultural market access, climate obligations & national sovereignty.
And once an international agreement is signed, renegotiating its terms can be considerably more difficult than negotiating them beforehand. A bad deal doesn’t become a good deal simply because it’s better than no deal.
While the agreement would make 97.8% of Australian export value duty-free from day one, the National Farmers Federation says it delivers no material improvements for key agricultural commodities. Critical minerals and services are expected to be major beneficiaries.
The fundamental disagreement is whether the economic benefits justify accepting limited agricultural concessions and potentially binding climate obligations that could restrict future Australian policy decisions.
And surely, after ten years of negotiations, Australia should be seeking an agreement that delivers meaningful benefits without unnecessarily compromising its ability to determine its own future policies.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politic… via @australian
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Another instance of the sense in which capitalism/trade is logically prior to democracy. A (rational) Parliamentary system cannot pass legislation, in general, that binds its successors.
But an international trade deal made by one can - in the sense it could incur serious financial penalties by leaving it.
But an international trade deal made by one can - in the sense it could incur serious financial penalties by leaving it.
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But given Australian governments are prone to do stuff like promise a hydroelectric project for $2 billion in 2017 that blow out to $25 billion in 2026 (and far from finished) in the name of saving the planet, they see the EU as ideological cousins.
Australia's most troubled energy project is facing an eye-watering cost blowout. It's still three years away, but the bill for the Snowy Hydro 2.0 has now rocketed to $25 billion, 12 times the original forecast.
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Brett Hall retweeted
Conjecture Institute is honored to announce our newest Advisor, Julian Barbour!
Barbour is a theoretical physicist whose work on the foundations of dynamics, quantum gravity, and the nature of time has challenged core assumptions in physics.
Best known for arguing that time is emergent illusion arising from change, he developed a relational approach to classical and quantum physics in which the universe is described solely in terms of relative configurations of matter without an external time parameter.
Barbour is the author of The End of Time, which presents a timeless account of the universe consistent with quantum cosmology; The Discovery of Dynamics (on the history of absolute versus relative motion); and The Janus Point, which proposes a two-directional origin of time from a low-entropy “Janus Point.”
Barbour is a theoretical physicist whose work on the foundations of dynamics, quantum gravity, and the nature of time has challenged core assumptions in physics.
Best known for arguing that time is emergent illusion arising from change, he developed a relational approach to classical and quantum physics in which the universe is described solely in terms of relative configurations of matter without an external time parameter.
Barbour is the author of The End of Time, which presents a timeless account of the universe consistent with quantum cosmology; The Discovery of Dynamics (on the history of absolute versus relative motion); and The Janus Point, which proposes a two-directional origin of time from a low-entropy “Janus Point.”
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Brett Hall retweeted
"I am a computer program!"
Embodiment is basically irrelevant for consciousness, so says @DavidDeutschOxf... and he brings the proof.
Embodiment is basically irrelevant for consciousness, so says @DavidDeutschOxf... and he brings the proof.
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Brett Hall retweeted
I just got my own copy in the mail. I presume this constitutes a valid existence proof.
Happy Publication Day!
According to my publisher, the 2nd edition of The Book of Why should now be on the shelves.
Can't wait to get my own hard copy -- it's always a soft touch of "love at second sight."
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Agreed. And hence why isolationism is morally, logically and strategically a mistake.
France is a Thermonuclear Democracy with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. As is the UK.
Think. Do the math.
The pathological weakness of France must always be very much our business.
I am sorry to say this. I wish it were otherwise.
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Brett Hall retweeted
With enormous gratitude, Conjecture Institute is pleased to welcome our first Platinum Donor!
Their anonymous gift has already helped us bring on @mboudry as our first Senior Philosopher and taken us past halfway to our 2027 budget.
Our plans for 2027 below👇
Their anonymous gift has already helped us bring on @mboudry as our first Senior Philosopher and taken us past halfway to our 2027 budget.
Our plans for 2027 below👇
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Brett Hall retweeted
...the problem of ‘squaring a circle’—given a circle, how can one construct a square with the same area as the circle?—was first asked by the thinkers of ancient Greece, well-known for their study of geometry.
Mathematicians would continue to work on the problem for the next two thousand years within the framework of geometric theory without success.
The problem was finally solved in 1882, when German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann stepped outside of geometry and approached the problem from abstract algebra.
The puzzle of squaring a circle had its origins in geometry, but its solution had its origins in an altogether different mathematical field—and one that the Greek geometers had never even imagined.
AI could not have helped the ancient Greeks in solving this problem, trapped as they were in the prevailing mathematical paradigm.
No amount of automation could have discovered the solution within geometry, since the solution was not in that theory but in an altogether different theory whose discovery would require genuine creativity.
In short: if a problem requires either a new method or a new theory, then AI as it is currently constituted is hopeless to solve it—and no amount of increasing its efficiency or computational power can overcome this limitation.
~Conjecture Institute Fellow @PaulRRobichaud & President @ChipkinLogan 👇
Mathematicians would continue to work on the problem for the next two thousand years within the framework of geometric theory without success.
The problem was finally solved in 1882, when German mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann stepped outside of geometry and approached the problem from abstract algebra.
The puzzle of squaring a circle had its origins in geometry, but its solution had its origins in an altogether different mathematical field—and one that the Greek geometers had never even imagined.
AI could not have helped the ancient Greeks in solving this problem, trapped as they were in the prevailing mathematical paradigm.
No amount of automation could have discovered the solution within geometry, since the solution was not in that theory but in an altogether different theory whose discovery would require genuine creativity.
In short: if a problem requires either a new method or a new theory, then AI as it is currently constituted is hopeless to solve it—and no amount of increasing its efficiency or computational power can overcome this limitation.
~Conjecture Institute Fellow @PaulRRobichaud & President @ChipkinLogan 👇
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The High School teachers behind some of the unrest in France - via @WTSmith17 youtu.be/aqWd_0CU3Ho?si…
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Brett Hall retweeted
Alex is a philosopher worth listening to.
Yesterday I taught a group of CEOs how to use AI agents to improve their lives.
I ended with a tribute to what I love most about AI: it "allows you to spend more time in the way you would ideally want to, and less time in the way that you don't."
I hope it inspires someone.
⬇️
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Never mind the broken windows and burning historic architecture - bad as that all is - @Jacob_Rees_Mogg warns about the dire economic straits France finds itself in…and by extension the EU and €uro. youtu.be/jdkAleidU2k?si…
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