On Computers

Please note this is a 99th percentile tweet I just think it’s wrong for interesting and nuanced reasons Also follow me:

I like the videos, Mr Pizza

Practicing the persona I’m going to use for job interviews

I love this point, the historical vignette, and don't really disagree! Few additional thoughts. First for clarification, when I wrote "arbitrary" I did have in mind the sense of Turing universality, that we can *in principle* probe in whichever regions of the computational universe we want. This is, as you pointed out, to say nothing about what we actually do with them. Second, I think part of the feeling behind this post was about what's coming with AI, not about our history with computers, in that AI opens up a much wider region of this other world. And the ways in which we're familiar with computers, the ways we have used them, their role in the world, is not necessarily helpful for understanding what becomes possible with AI. Again there is a question of what of those new possibilities will manifest in our world. Overall I agree with what I sense is part of your underlying point here. Specifically that the way things flow out of the computational universe into our world is not random, but also not deterministic or somehow independent of humans. We can exercise agency over this process. Which is something I think more people need to believe.

Are you a short form video creator now

Trying it out

You're so hot

Heavily exaggerated

Nahhhhhh

Oomf is becoming a tiktok explainer guy

I can't lie I always thought you looked like your pfp, this is my first time seeing the real you

Good job not using ums and ahs and filler words. Something I need to work on

Bayes isn't using "arbitrary" in the dictionary sense of "random choice or personal whim" but in the software engineering sense, where it usually means something like "not from a pre-selected or rigidly constrained set." For instance an input into which any text can be typed, in contrast to a menu where only certain values can be selected, might be described as allowing "arbitrary text input."

Steve Jobs figured this out 35 years ago. It's a bicycle for the mind. We don't use bicycles to access other realms, right? We use them to go places

Well the ability of normal computers to hook up to the Platonic realm is being propped up by human brains. We already started with most of the technology we needed. Whereas AI is different

stop having tiktok

i think the engineering story is missed. Binary and simple algorithms can be explained to a child, but the supply chain cannot.

I don't think they are excludent

nice hair vro

But we definitely reach thru the platonic realm to achieve these practical purposes which is interesting.

I like that you look and sound exactly like how an gay white ethnic from NY who runs @number_pizza111 is supposed to look and sound like

You are right, computers were born as a tool. Someday some nerds started playing with, using out of its intended scope, and created videogames. Just like writing was born as a very pragmatic tool, and yet we also use it to write recreational fictional stories. Humans are cool

on computers? what the fuck is wrong with you? you didnt say anything of value. i fucking hate you

I think he's merely referring to the potential space of computers, not its telological purpose. I'm not sure how you saw the telology as a focal point of this message.