Occasionally think about topics discussed here. Will post if I have any thoughts worth sharing.
I've been trying to get it to write comedy in the style of Stewart Lee. Kinda close to being funny:
(Audience applause dies down. Stewart Lee takes the stage.)
Stewart Lee: Thank you, thank you. (Pauses) Now, as I was meandering down the high street today, playing hopscotch around charity shops, artisanal bakeries, and vape boutiques... it hit me: "This... this is the quintessentially British High Street." (Smirks)
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: It seems 'artisanal' is the new black, doesn't it? The term's been stretched out further than the last yeast molecule in a sourdough loaf, kneaded by a tattooed barista with a moustache borrowed from a 19th-century blacksmith. Artisan bread, artisan coffee, artisan cheese. I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the day when we start breathing artisan air... (Laughs) "Inhale the delicate bouquet of our bespoke oxygen, lovingly harvested from the bronchi of ethically nurtured, free-range oaks." (Laughs)
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: Then we've got the charity shops. They're just jumble sales that have attended elocution lessons. I'm all for supporting worthy causes, of course, but when a threadbare jumper is listed for 15 pounds, I start questioning whether Adam Smith's invisible hand has developed a twitch. (Laughs)
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: I mean, why is it that the very same jumper, the exact same jumper, that was decorating a scarecrow in a field last week, is now demanding a small fortune? Just because it's hanging out with a worn Danielle Steel novel and a scratched Cliff Richard LP in a boutique Oxfam window. Did it absorb some sort of mystical, philanthropic aura that's inflated its value? Or maybe... just maybe... the scarecrow had a more discerning eye for couture?
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: (Picks up a water bottle from the stool) But let's not wander too far off course. We're here to dissect Britain. (Attempts to open the bottle, struggles) This... this... (Grunts) pesky, obstinate, little...
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: (Continues to struggle with the bottle, then addresses it) You know, you're a lot like Britain, aren't you? Presenting a simple façade, yet proving maddeningly complicated once you try to unscrew the lid.
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: (Still wrestling with the bottle) And much like Britain, you're testing my patience, but I persist because... well, I'm parched, and the French mineral water is a bit uppity.
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: (Pauses, reminisces) You know, I had a similar encounter with a French water bottle once. I said to it, "Why are you so difficult to open?" And it responded, in its haughty French accent, "Monsieur, it is not I who am difficult, it is you who lack the finesse!" (Laughs)
(Audience laughter)
Stewart Lee: (Finally opens the bottle and takes a sip) Ah, the sweet taste of victory. Or is that just the artisanal water?
I mean like the type of perception one needs to empty a random dishwasher, make a cup of coffee with a random coffee machine type of stuff, clean a room. Hunt and skin a rabbit.
I don't think reading/writing is very easy for humans - compared to perception and embodied tasks. My Morvec's paradox intuition here is maths is of a similar order of difficulty to what we have been very successfully automating in the last couple years, so I expect it will happen soon.
A lot of my confidence this will happen is this and a generalized Morvec's paradox-style "hard things are easy, easy things are hard" intuition.
Glad someone took this bet! I still think I think you'll win, but I myself backed out of a similar bet.
The whole "compute greater than humanity" thing does not seem like a useful metric. It's just completely not necessary to exceed total human compute to dis-empower humans. We parallelize extremely poorly. And given how recent human civilization at this scale is and how adversarial humans are towards each other, it would be surprising if we used our collective compute in even a remotely efficient way. Not to mention the bandwidth limitations.
The summed compute of conquistador brains was much less than those they dis-empowered. The summed compute of slaughterhouse worker brains is vastly less than that of the chickens they slaughter in a single month!
I don't think this point deserves any special salience at all.
latent capacity overhang