PiSquared Blog
Blog about geeky stuff, computers, physics and life.
State of AI
Tags: English, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Sun, 30 Apr 2023
Human in a box
It is NOT going to be an argument that AI is sentient or have emotions. Certainly not in its current form. I will go to that point later in the essay.
However, I will be putting a human in a box as a thought experiment in learning, not consciousness. It will remind some people of the Chinese room but this will be a more cruel version so that we take away any possible learning that the human has acquired in "the real world" before being put in the room.
The following description may be difficult and emotional to follow.
Imagine a human child is put in a latex suit in a dark box in space right after birth without a possibility to interact with the world in any way, other than the described below. The latex suit limits their touch perception, space removes orientation, it's dark so vision is impaired and there is no sound. The basic physiological needs are provided to them - clean air, food, and water are gi
...moreWho wants to be conscious?
Tags: English, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Tue, 05 Jul 2022
We don't have a device that measures consciousness. That's it. Until we figure out how to make a consciousness-scale, it's useless to argue whether something is or isn't conscious. A dog can be conscious. But so can a rock. A virus, a star, the rainbow can be conscious until we figure out what the F consciousness is and how we could measure it. All other arguments would be religion for me and I'm slowly starting to get used to saying that you are "free to believe in whatever you want" but as every religion goes - I may not agree with your conclusions.
Imagine it's the day before we figured out how to measure radiation. Our human senses can't detect radiation. Perhaps some radioactive elements glow or if you wait enough time, the long-term effects are that you get a nasty disease. But, without a Geiger counter or such similar device that amplifies the nano-scopic radiation, you would not be able to weed out the materials that exhibit some characteristics of radiation but are not rea
...more1984
Tags: English, politics, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Tue, 22 Mar 2022
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
I think of this blog sometimes as Winston's diary. One day I will probably pay the price of having it and pouring my thoughts here. I can hide it but should I?
I censor myself to think thoughts that may matter. I don't talk about ideas with people around me, other than some very close circle of people that I trust are not the secret police. I'm not paranoid (yet). I enjoy and must be thankful of the freedoms I have in "THE WEST". I must feel the privilege of being a young white male. Some days I do actually feel it now.
I'm a member of the Outer party, working for one of the Biggest Brothers humanity has known. As such, I get almost daily reminder what I should support and what I should oppose. Today I must support Ukraine and hate Russia. Yesterday I shouted that people should get vaccines and raged that the ones who don't are why we still don't have our freedoms. It was so sad indeed
...moreThe eyes of the Internet
Tags: English, technology, essaysCreated on Tue, 14 Dec 2021
Note: I'm not going to talk about these eyes today. I need more pandemic to get there.
We don't know what the Internet really is. Not really. We don't have the intuition or senses to recognize it anymore. It's not like how we know what a human is.
And we don't have laws and rights at the Internet. Not really. We don't really know what is where and what can and shouldn't be done. We don't know it like we know not to poke a human in the eyes.
So when one day someone discoveres the Internet has something like an eye, a weak, soft spot - we take all the toothpicks and nails, we take all the pins and needles, all the sharp sticks and every tool around us and we try to poke it.
And then the people making the Internet scramble to "patch it", to make glasses or lenses or more accurately - to put duct tape on the eyes in the hope it protects them.
...moreНароде?????
Tags: Български, политика, мнения, лични, животCreated on Wed, 27 Oct 2021
Левски и Ботев днес са футболни отбори. Все още ги изучаваме, но вече от надрасканите фасади на сгради, обикновено предходени с разни пълни членове. Аз самият понякога се гордея колко малко помня от часовете по литература или история. Чалгата пък си я слушам, 'щото туп--та-тупцъ ритъма ми харесва повече от западния туп-тцъ-туп-тцъ поп и рок. Но съм и част от израсналото, а и почти закърмено с така наречената вече "ретро-чалга" поколение.
Всяка държава си има история. Всяка държава си има общество, икономика от някакъв род и управляващи от някакъв вид. Всяка държава си има и език - един или няколко, култура, обичаи, традиции, религия - една или повече.
Но каква е тази нация, в която явно близо 80% от хората смятат, че са експерти по микробиология и епидемиология, а в същото време смятат, че ракията ще ги спаси? Как ние сме единствените, които имат уникален поглед върху истинските световни конспирации? Какво - чакаме българите да оцелеем като не се ваксинираме и да се смеем над гр
...moreI change my mind all the time
Tags: English, Български, политика, politics, мнения, opinions, лични, personal, life, животCreated on Thu, 21 Oct 2021
I believe you should have the freedom to change your mind as often as you would like, especially when new facts come your way. But also if you would like to experiment with something, even if you think it's bad or wrong. That's part of the reason I now have an instagram.
Yesterday I wrote a blog post in Bulgarian that I deleted less than an hour after publishing. It regarded the situation around the certificates of vaccination becoming a requirement for certain amenities in my home country. It was quite emotional and I decided that it's not worth it to put more fuel in the already fiery situation (although IRL I usually like doing that).
But I also removed it because I realized I disagree with my statements. More accurately - I was pointed out by a friend that my argument may require a bit more thought about some aspects that my monkey brain didn't remember when initially writing the post. I usually don't delet
...moreOnline security
Tags: English, technology, hacksCreated on Wed, 20 Oct 2021
Last week I wrote about a hypothetical Facebook messenger and Whatsapp breach which would give the world access to everyone's chats - including yours, your friends', your parents, everyone you know or don't - indexable, searchable by everyone. A truly privacy is over type of situation. I argued that this is what people really cared about - a personal hit, not bombs and terrorists or some unknown John in a three-letter agency reading your chats. Someone you know - or everyone you know - reading your personal communications with other people.
Scale it down
Alright, maybe leaking all of Facebook's chat would require literal trucks and months of unmonitored leakage due to the sheer amount of data. Text is not so big - the whole of English Wikipedia is merely [20 GB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikip
...morePrivacy is over: Everyone's chats on Facebook and Instagram have leaked online
Tags: English, technology, opinionsCreated on Thu, 14 Oct 2021
A massive trove of data has leaked online in one of the most exhaustive data dumps in the last decades. Facebook's chat application Messenger and image sharing service Instagram have been breached this Monday following multiple worldwide outages and controversies brought forward by whistleblowers in the past month.
More than 2.6 billion people's conversations, including the text, photos, videos and voice messages for the past two years are organized in a collection of torrents that are circling dark web forums such as 4chan and reddit.
The Guarrdian has verified that chat history seems to end a week before the accident - namely until 28 Septmber 2021. The leak data frame spawns between September 2019 and end of September 2021. Chats between journalists, political officials, celebretie
...moreI want to walk naked!
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Fri, 24 Sep 2021
Walking naked is natural. Putting clothes on a person is a form of fascism. Today if I try to just walk naked, outside of my bathroom, my flat (if I live with roomates) or some very small beaches - I will be told off and potentially arrested. How come?
Clothes have an obvious primary purpose - the human body is not too well adapted to live in the extreme colds in some areas of the world. But for some complicated historical, theological, anthropological and/or societal reason almost all of the world's people and civilisations have decided that wearing clothes has at least the secondary purpose to cover mainly our primary and almost always - secondary reproductive organs.
It has reached a stage where not wearing clothes in public space is a sign of some sort of craziness or activism for some cause. Even though it can be argued that not wearing clothes is the more natural way of handling the human body, especially on the summer hot days. (I will ignore the issue with sunb
...moreНяма пък!
Tags: Български, мнения, животCreated on Fri, 17 Sep 2021
Наясно съм, че следното няма да убеди никого, който вече не се е убедил. Пиша си го за мое успокоение и 'щото блогът си е мой. Вместо да водя едни и същи разговори, пиша пост и пращам линкове на хора, които ми твърдят неща, които, както казва един приятел "просто не са така". Може би щеше да е добре да е на английски, ама мисълта ми тия дни тече на български по тая тема и ще разчитам на компанията-майка за преводи.
Какви са основните аргументи?
- Ваксината не е тествана достатъчно - Над 3 млрд. (3 000 000 000) човека са ваксинирани с пълен курс на ваксинация. Това е повече, отколкото населението на света през 1960та. Почти 6 млрд. единични дози са поставени. При такива огромни числа неща, които се случват с честота 1 на милион ще се случат хиляди пъти (примерно 3 000 x 1 000 000 = 3 000 000 000). Това също е най-наблю
Глупости
Tags: Български, мнения, животCreated on Fri, 10 Sep 2021
Един астролог е починал днес. Не съм съгласен с израза "За умрелите или добро, или нищо".
Давам линк от уебсайт, един от най-големите български ежедневници (понякога наричано със старинната дума "вестник", ако това все още съществува). Защо от този сайт? Защото в заглавната му част, най-отгоре, до заглавието, на абсолютно всяка страница от уебсайта - е лицето на друга популярна астроложка. А ако го видите на мобилна страница или свиете ширината на прозореца - всичко друго се свива, но лицето остава. Сякаш тя самата списва вестника. Това е най-популярното лице, с което един от най-популярните ежедневници се гордее. Не с журналисти или редактори. С астролог.
Какво правят астролозите?
Ще се опитам да съм възможно най-доброжелателен. [Вече писах защо не ги харесвам](https://blog.pi2.dev/blog_post/20180929_bullsh8t_01_astrology
...moreОще ли сте ЗА електронното гласуване?
Tags: Български, политика, технологии, мнения, хаковеCreated on Thu, 09 Sep 2021
В края на април тази година написах пост защо онлайн гласуването НЕ Е добра идея.
След усилени "хакерски атаки", Националният Статистически Институт (НСИ) вчера (2021-09-08) временно ограничи достъпа до електронната система "Преброяване 2021". Оригиналната идея беше онлайн преброяването да започне от 7 септември и да продължи десетина дена, а междувременно да се пуснат хора по стария начин - този от каменната ера - където преброяването става с камъни и тояги.
Какво стана?
Ето какво представлява тази хакерска атака, цитирана като "Отказ от услугата" (Denial of Service или DoS):
Представете си автобус от градския транспорт. Капацитета на автобуса е примерно 100 човека (сутрин едно време беше около 7000, сега не знам как е по пандемийно време). Имаме примерно 10 човека на една спирка, които искат да се качат - всичко окей,
...moreConspiracies
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 19 Aug 2021
I've been listening to a lot of arguments lately about the "safety of the vaccine", "the lie about the Corona". My last five or so blog posts (since about 3 months ago) are all about me going as deep as I can tolerate into some conspiracies and questioning truth, reality and authority. Now, I am spending my summer vacation in the worst country in EU regarding vaccination rate (~15% fully vaccinated as of writing of this post in August 2021) but also one of most corrupt - 69th/180, and with least press freedom - 112th. Correlation doesn't imply causation of course. So let me causate it using my observations.
In my view there are three types of conspiracists. Take "The Earth is Flat" conspiracy:
- The first group might be schizophrenics and other categorically mentally ill people for whom is hard to discern reality. This is not a small group of pe
I'm an average idiot
Tags: English, personal, lifeCreated on Wed, 30 Jun 2021
"What if YOU are wrong? What if you’re not a Galileo Galilei, but an Andrew Wakefield?".
(source)
This ^ woke me up. Andrew Wakefield is the dude that started the initial conspiracy of "vaccines cause autism" back in the 90s. This long (but deservedly so) video explains in more detail that you ever wanted to know:
On the other side, the argument about being "Galileo" (which I also referenced in my last post) is refering to this article by Heather Heying, who usu
...moreCan YouTube be wrong?
Tags: English, technology, opinions, life, politicsCreated on Tue, 29 Jun 2021
No. This is simply, mathematically impossible.
YouTube (Google/Alphabet) is not made of people. It's made of omniscient gods. I am one of them, therefore it must be true.
So when YouTube puts this in their guidelines:
It is impossible that they (we) are wrong.
"OK, " - a mere mortal might ask - "Why are they (you) claiming this? Joe Rogan invited that guy that you talked about the other week and this new doctor dude to talk about some medicine. They seem calm, rational and calmly talking about evidence-based research, just look:"
Ah, so you are watching this outside of the exclusive deal [that Rogan
...moreWhat would convince me to NOT vaccinate? (part 3)
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 17 Jun 2021
So, part 1 - Why I got vaccinated and part 2 - What is True are my attempts to figure out how to find truth in this day and age. My conclusion: it's hard.
Today, I play the devil's advocate. My usual conversation when someone presents me with a conspiracy theory is to ask "What would convince you otherwise?". So, let's play this game on me today - what would convince me that the vaccine is NOT safe?
My response is that first, I trust the World Health Organization (WHO), European Medicines Agency (EMA), the [US's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2
...moreWhat is true? (part 2)
Tags: English, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Sun, 13 Jun 2021
Edit: see part 1 - Why I got vaccinated and part 3 - what would convince me NOT to vaccinate for progress on opinions in this article.
I want to continue talking in this blog about truth, facts, miss- and disinformation, propaganda. Today - a YouTube video from New York Times, talking about "Operation InfeKtion":
... which is NOT about the Corona (video is from 2018). It's rather about an operation back in the 80s sponsored by the Russian KGB aiming to spread a story that the HIV virus was secretly created by the US, starting at a single newspaper story in India.
The video is extremely worth watching in this day and age where misinformati
...moreWhy I got vaccinated? (part 1)
Tags: English, opinions, essays, personal, learning, lifeCreated on Fri, 04 Jun 2021
Edit: see part 2: what is True and part 3 - what would convince me NOT to vaccinate for progress on opinions in this article.
TL;DR: Because I care about myself, my parents and friends and I believe vaccination is the best way to protect myself and them, in order to resume any kind of "normality". I believe the risk of vaccination outweights the risk of not vaccinating, I trust the process of vaccination approval and testing by the various national and supra-national organizations, I trust the scientists and (even though I don't have to) I understood the relative simplicity of the idea of the vaccine and immune response generated by it. I find it unlikely that there is a larger conspiratorial picture for control, even if the vaccine has not naturally occured but it turns out it has been produced artifically on purpose for some geo-game or by accident by l
...moreThe Great Asymmetry
Tags: English, lifeCreated on Tue, 18 May 2021
The Random (or destiny, God, Universe, luck) has crossed my life path these days with an unlikely person that makes me think outside of my box. It is possible of course that I make myself think outside of the box, or the box got smaller, or my thinking larger. It is also possible that I'm reinventing the wheel, getting more bored at work or COVID/knee injury isolation is making me nuts. But it's kind of romantic to think it's a person. And isn't it almost always a certain somebody that makes you think strange things and change your direction in life? Anyways.
I lose some sleep every once in a while thinking about a certain great asymmetry that science around me never seems to talk about (or I am not in those circles at least). Not physics, not biology or chemistry.
Why am I exp
...more"НЕ" на задълижителното машинно гласуване
Tags: Български, политика, технологии, хаковеCreated on Thu, 06 May 2021
В предишния ми пост обясних защо не трябва да позволяваме електронното гласуване. Депутатите миналата седмица, обаче приеха задължителното гласуване с машини в секции над 300 избиратели. Това също е огромен проблем ако искаме доверие в демократичния избор.
Елементарната аналогия
Ето какво правим: връщаме се в дните, когато кутиите за пускането на бюлетините не бяха прозрачни. Преди може би 15 години вече решихме, че така може да се манипулира кутията, като се пуснат гласове предварително или някой да подмени кутията без някой да гледа. Въпреки, че твърдим че минаваме в "дигиталната ера" или се "модернизираме" истината е, че тази стъпка със задължителното машинно гласуване е огромна стъпка назад що се отнася до доверието в изборния процес. Вижте предишния ми пост относно как технологиите ускоряват както добрите, така и лошите неща. В случая в този пост ще защитя идеята, че този вид дигитализац
...more