And in addition to variance among institutions, there variance in practice at each. The best groups have a consummate professional's focus on reducing their own. But even at another "one of the best", let alone at the merely good... my impression was "there's lots of holes in the cheese around here", and left me wondering whether/how a transient outsider might usefully help folks towards more of a safety culture. It seems a reoccurring opportunity.
providing top-level medical care requires a very rare combination of incredible technical skill, organization, humility, and life-long dedication to the craft. i would wager that it's largely a numbers game. how many humans on earth have that combination of skills and traits?
>For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures.
better, yes, but there will always be inherent risk. even if you don't die, there will often be injuries from years of strain
No idea about which is more likely, but I'm rooting for Yang-Mills. It's absurd that fundamental physics has formulated its most precise currently known theory way back in the seventies and since then, even a tiny subset of it can't be proven to be actually well-defined. If we got out of that morass then something good would come out of this at least.
Of course, as with all of those, it's about the broader program, e.g. section 7 here (https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf), where Scott Aaronson wants to ask about whether quantum computers using quantum field theory could gain any speed advantage over regular quantum computers, but can't even formulate the question because quantum field theory is mathematically ill-defined.
Just solving Yang-Mills because that's what the prize is attached to would be useless.
There was a recent rumor about the Hodge Conjecture. I'd keep an eye on that one. But like the other person who replied, I'm also rooting for Yang-Mills. That has massive potential for unlocking a series of physics results.
interesting, i haven't heard anything about that. i don't know much about the hodge conjecture, all i really know is that it's incredibly abstract and obtuse - not sure if that has any implication for solvability by an AI though. do you have any source for the hodge rumor? curious to learn more
So far it's just anonymous accounts on X and Reddit during the past few days, no "official leak" or anything like that. But the rumors about Navier-Stokes being solved started the same way. If somebody really solved it, the incentive is to come forward soon before being scooped by another team. We'll see.
>be able to sort through research and come to conclusions on complex geopolitical/sociological topics (e.g. theorize on whether AGI will result in mass poverty or mass abundance and be able to argue persuasively)
i'm not sure what makes you think AI cannot do this already. in my experience, this sort of deep research is something AI is quite good at.
I understand that what it came up with sounds impressive (especially since I know 0 about Myanmar), but on the topics I do know about its analysis routinely have very fundamental problems (even this Myanmar analysis has % that add up to > 100). There's a chance it's just parroting the majority opinion on Myanmar, or making stuff up (and perhaps you could ask it to write a strongly worded opinion in the other direction that would sound equally plausible).
For example I asked it to do a full analysis on the AI bubble, and a full analysis on the risks of Glyphosate, and it came up with a lot of things that sounded credible, but within a few minutes of questing was admitting it hadn't even really checked for internal consistency in its positions, and even doing a 180. It certainly was much faster at gathering sources and reading but it fundamentally doesn't seem very effective at creating a consistent worldview.
And of course the funny thing is it says it did a 180 on one of these topics, great, except whatever it concluded will be discarded because it cannot learn. It's just bonkers to me pretend this is AGI, it probably couldn't even hold its own in this very discussion.
Regarding this specific case, the analysis is sound. It is the majority opinion on Myanmar, but that majority opinion is held for good reason, e.g. China's desire to keep Myanmar together, complicated ethnic boundaries, desires of current EAOs.
The % responses adding up to over 100 makes sense, because the 25% outcome (formal secession attempt) and the 10% outcome (completed secession) could both occur, so it's implying that if secession is formally attempted, there's a 40% chance it will be completed. The numbers are broken down more clearly at the end - it is a bit confusing at first glance though.
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