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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Hi Will!

    Now that you’ve tried out directing as well as acting, which side of the camera do you prefer?

    Are there any things you’ve learned from the experience of directing that you think will help in future acting roles? Additionally, is there anything you would do differently about directing Kodar if you got to start over from scratch today?




  • Gravity and vacuum are not mutually exclusive - you always have to deal with gravity forces, although they become negligible pretty quickly when you get into and then leave orbits.

    As to the specific claim, I suspect that the experiments they are currently doing (in vacuum chambers on earth) have gotten to the point that they are measuring the propulsion system producing more thrust than it’s own weight (T/W >1), which would technically be enough thrust to overcome gravity. Even if it wasn’t practically useful for actually getting to orbit, that amount of thrust on a reactionless motor would be incredible, and would totally unlock the solar system for us.


  • When you say “university staff”, do you mean professors, or some other technical support staff?

    If professors, then reaching out by email is probably a good way to start. They may get a lot of emails though, so your best chance to get a response might be timing the email right at the start of summer when they hopefully don’t have any ongoing classes.

    In terms of payment - most professors would happily talk about their areas of study with interested people for a short time (for free). If you needed a significant time investment from them though, then you might start having issues.


  • But intelligence is the capacity to solve problems. If you can solve problems quickly, you are by definition intelligent

    To solve any problems? Because when I run a computer simulation from a random initial state, that’s technically the computer solving a problem it’s never seen before, and it is trillions of times faster than me. Does that mean the computer is trillions of times more intelligent than me?

    the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)

    If we built a true super-genius AI but never let it leave a small container, is it not intelligent because WE never let it manipulate its environment? And regarding the tests in the Merriam Webster definition, I suspect it’s talking about “IQ tests”, which in practice are known to be at least partially not objective. Just as an example, it’s known that you can study for and improve your score on an IQ test. How does studying for a test increase your “ability to apply knowledge”? I can think of some potential pathways, but we’re basically back to it not being clearly defined.

    In essence, what I’m trying to say is that even though we can write down some definition for “intelligence”, it’s still not a concept that even humans have a fantastic understanding of, even for other humans. When we try to think of types of non-human intelligence, our current models for intelligence fall apart even more. Not that I think current LLMs are actually “intelligent” by however you would define the term.





  • Yes, but notably you can design to reduce the risk of leaking hydrogen. If the areas around the tanks are designed to allow any leakage to vent before it reaches dangerous levels, you can reduce the risk. Yes hydrogen is flammable, so tanks of it are dangerous. Jet fuel is also quite flammable, and we’ve used that for a long time.

    This is all in contrast to the design of the Hindenburg, which was specifically trying to hold onto a bunch of hydrogen in the flammable regime