1-panel SMBC comic update. A man is on the street wearing a sandwich sign that reads "AGI is HERE!" He is yelling, arms in the air, saying "the end is nigh! The end is nigh! Make sure to diversify your portfolio and be prepared to re-skill!" The caption reads "The Singularity is the most American of all apocalypses."

I read a guy saying all cognitive tasks will be automated, so it's important to stay flexible, and all I can figure is he was imagining humans would make a good building material.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nigh-2
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What do you do when you want two phrases on either side of a slash? Like you do with him/her, but you need to say something like his birthday/their anniversary? Should go in parentheses, but that appears not to be allowed.

Part 1/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic update. A young woman is praying, asking God "is it OK that I cause a small amount of pollution every day? Even though it results in some small but real increase in the incidence of cancer?" God responds "of course. The harm is infinitesimal." The woman continues her inquiry, becoming more specific. She says "OK, now suppose I work with a million other programmers, each contributing a tiny bit of code to create a torture button on Reddit. pain starts at 0, and can go up to 10 million. Each person can only press the button once. And we can prove that any press of the button causes no detectable increase in pain."

Part 2/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic update. The woman concludes "by your logic, NOTHING IMMORAL has happened! There must be some quantum threshold for sinning, and below that, it’s open season!" God asks in return "have you been reading Derek Parfit again?" to which the woman responds "it’s the handbook for tactical villainy!" The next panel cuts to later, where God is talking to an angel. The angel asks "another flood then, Lord?" God specifies "yeah, but have each angel deliver a single drop."

The funny part is every action in your life turns SOME torture dial!

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dial
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4-panel SMBC comic update. A man and his young son are standing on a hill at night beneath the stars. The son asks what's the key to a happy life, to which the father responds "achieving your dreams." He explains "so, while you're still young, still ahead of all your crossroads... Pick out some shitty *shitty* dreams." The son answers "I'm gonna be the member of the friend group who speaks only in trivia and movie quotations, and then cries at night but doesn't understand why." This brings tears to the father's eyes, who says "attaboy!"

I'm pretty sure this is how Stoicism works, just more douchey.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dreams-2
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4-panel SMBC comic update. Two men, one in a green-blue shirt and the other one with a mustache and glasses, are talking outside. The man with the green-blue shirt says the he thinks modern media is killing attention spans and making people stupid. The man with the mustache replies that people said that about all forms of media including books and the printing press. He then mentions a fire on his head, adding "is the fire growing? Maybe. But you could have said that 4 seconds ago. Or six seconds ago. Or twelve seconds ago." The other man says he was going to ask about that, as we see the man with the mustache pose for his phone, responding with "it's called content Dave."

The key is to put the self-on-fire at the beginning of the video and promise to show that it technically cures cancer, but only if you watch to the end without skipping.

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I feel like a lot of areas have this? E.g. there are people who think there's a big argument over creationism vs Darwinism, but most of the arguments are about specific backroads of evolutionary theory.

One of the interesting thing from talking to economists is the extent to which the private discourse is way more narrow than the public discourse, on e.g. immigration, rent control, and free trade. Like in immigration, the private discourse is almost exclusively pro; just a question of specifics.

Cover of book "Dr LUCY ROGERS UP - A Scientist's Guide to the Magic Above Us" It's looking up with butterflies, condors, kites, clouds etc.

It's out now!

Please send me pics of my book (Up - a scientist's guide to the magic above us) out in the wild (be imaginative if you've got it on audio book or e-reader!)

If you hadn't yet got it, it's available at all good bookstores (UK).

uk.bookshop.org/shop/DrLucyR...

One idea that was discussed in Quanta a while back is that mathematicians become more like people in the humanities--they spend more of their time curating discoveries for other human beings.

Like I could whine, but then I didn't whine when the environment was more beneficial for me, so..

Yeah, agree. My suspicion is it's just gonna mean a different type of person excels. This has kind of happened in comics, where people who are more into the various ways to hustle business on platforms now dominate, whereas that sort of thing used to be frowned upon.

There's a similar thing in writing pop sci. Like a big difference between good and bad is that bad pop sci is often just reporting what is said without having personally developed fluency in the topic. LLMs provide a theoretical shortcut, but if you can't mentally manipulate the ideas it's no good.

Not an expert, but my understanding is that modern models do a lot more self-play and synthetic stuff, somewhat closer to how AlphaGo beat humans at chess.

For the visual, I think if you just took a passage from the book and described it, you'd get what you want.

Was reading a book recently that claimed it's somewhat generationally. People my age tend to dislike it, whereas younger people don't care as much. But that may be about age more than generation?

Most engineers/coders/etc. I suspect, feel the same way. The end matters more than the means. For artists, I suspect, it's a bit more complex.

I was talking to a developmental economist once, and asked how he'd feel if AI superceded him completely. And he said he'd be overjoyed because his job is figuring out how to help impoverished economies. For him, the work IS the goal.

Meaning like... if AI does all the hardest math, there's a loss of meaning for mathematicians. But, part of why people go into math is the pure desire to know beautiful things. And the things aren't "created" in the same sense as a poem, but they have perhaps more poetic latitude than the sciences.

The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived | Quanta Magazine AI is being used to prove new results at a rapid pace. Mathematicians think this is just the beginning.

Quanta, as usual, has a good thoughtful article on the recent AI developments in math: www.quantamagazine.org/the-ai-revol...

I find math interest here psychologically. Like I have a toe in the community, and my sense is it's neither the repulsion the arts have or the enthusiasm the engineers have?

Like, in particular, suppose you're pro AI regulation, but you know the size of check you get each month is tied to AI profits! I suppose stuff like this likely happens with Alaska's oil dividend?

In my head if you say "Je m'ambiance" it'd be "I ambiance myself" which doesn't quite parse in English, but it's conceivable it could enter the lexicon.

Or like in these zany AI proposals, I guess you just tax the purportedly about-to-be-huge AI profits, but now you have a problem where every citizen is an investor in AI, which creates all sorts of perverse incentives.

I guess I also don't see how, like, you don't wildly distort the market? If I try to imagine just how large of a permanent fund you'd eventually need to provide every American more than a pittance, that fund would have enormous power, no?

So I've been reading about the variation on UBI where you essentially have a gigantic permanent fund, similar to what they have in Norway and Alaska. Something I have trouble wrapping my head around is how it would change people's behavior around public policy?

Learned a great French verb today: s'ambiancer. (the s' makes it reflexive). It's like a verb form of ambiance, and I guess you'd have to translate it as something like "get in the mood of things" or maybe just "vibe" because as far as I know, no form of English allows you to ambiance as a verb.

2-panel SMBC comic update. A cartoon beaver and a duck are meeting in the day of night. The duck asks "you forgot to bring a condom?" to which the beaver replies "come on, baby. We're not even in the same clade." Later, both cartoon animals are seen sitting in a modern living room surrounded by baby platypus. Both parents look depressed.

Later it turns out the duck was getting with a porcupine and had a litter of echidnas.

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Good Parent mug Looking for dinnerware that expresses your quality as a parent clearly? This is it! Available in 11 oz. and 15 oz. with your preferred work description (mom, dad, or parent). Credit goes to Richard Mc...

BAM smbc-store.myshopify.com/products/goo...

A white ceramic mug featuring a bell curve chart. The peak is labeled “Good Dad” and a dashed arrow points to a spot left of center labeled “You,” implying the owner falls below average as a dad. The other side of the mug says "Not significantly different from a good dad"

A white ceramic mug featuring a bell curve chart. The peak is labeled “Good Dad” and a dashed arrow points to a spot left of center labeled “You,” implying the owner falls below average as a dad. The other side of the mug says "Not significantly different from a good dad"

My new coffee mug arrived! #smbc (ping @zachweinersmith.bsky.social)

Daniel, Kelly, and Katrine talk about biofilms, and how they can be delicious, adorable, and bad. For the bad ones, we discuss current tactics for overcoming them.

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

False.

Infinite suffering is a countable infinity, and infinitely preventing suffering is an uncomfortable infinity (no I will not elaborate).

(2) is for me why math is uniquely exciting for current Ai. It's the one area where in principle you get perfect feedback.

(3) Is possible, but worth noting that real mathematicians had worked on the problem and in the area of the problem, and were still surprised by the solution.