I wonder if the interference-based-blue of the morpho butterfly evolved because it's difficult to make blue pigment for some reason having to do the chemistry of our biosphere, or if it's an evolutionary response to humans who may have captured the blue ones and ground them up for pigment (much like we did with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple snails).
I'm not aware of any record of us having done so, but it's absolutely the kind of thing we would do, and there's much more pre-history than history when it might've happened.
There are differences in receptor behavior across species, but they are understandably clustered around the parts of the spectrum in which sol is most luminous. An earth-like planet orbiting a different star would likely have evolved photoreceptor arrangements which match that star instead. So after scratching the biology itch we'll probably need to talk about fusion byproducts in sol-like stars.
> An earth-like planet orbiting a different star would likely have evolved photoreceptor arrangements which match that star instead.
No, not really- the limitation is chemical, not evolutionarily-driven. Earth is very well lit in infrared, but it's very difficult to make a chemical that is biologically useful for seeing infrared because the wavelengths are just too long. Its very challenging to do more than the most primitive kinds of sensing in infrared. If our sun was much dimmer, we would probably be blind, but if not our eyes would still not see in far infrared. Same goes for ultraviolet- the energy is too high and molecular bonds are too weak. Seeing in visible light is a reversible reaction, but ultraviolet wouldn't be.
What you're saying is true of ocean animals, especially in the deep sea. They don't see red very well or at all, but the evolutionary pressure against seeing red is not terribly high except very deep where food is very limited.
There also is evolutionary pressure on our vision, but it has nothing to do with the sun. We're twice as sensitive to green since it is so common and important, but green comes from photosynthesis and not from the color of the sun. In a way, we are most sensitive to the least important color of light- the color that is not absorbed by plants. The wasted, useless byproduct of sunlight is what lets us identify food.
Plus, we actually basically only see in blue and green. The overlap between rods and red/green cones is huge. "red" and "green" as we perceive them are mostly fabrications of our neural circuits- if we were seeing them how our photoreceptors actually receive light, all shades of green/red would be very strongly mixed together. All shades of red would look significantly green except for the very farthest reds, which would look very dark because of low sensitivity.
dogs see violet better, so "normally" our sky would be blue to them. But because their eyes have only two types of color receptor, they see violet as blue, and our sky is also blue to them.
I'm not sure if intensifies is the word. AI just has awkward time dynamics that people are adapting to.
Sometimes you end up with tasks that are low intensity long duration. Like I need to supervise this AI over the course of three hours, but the task is simple enough that I can watch a movie while I do it. So people measuring my work time are like "wow he's working extra hours" but all I did during that time is press enter 50 times and write 3 sentences.
Of all the ways to treat the cancer that is advertising, I think encouraging stricter moderation by the payment providers is the one with the scariest side effects.
Glad you pointed this out because I actually considered the argument for a moment. However, Visa blocked donations to a porn actor who opened a donation page for a serious illness (can't remember what). We don't need these companies doing moral-policing.
Hold the ad companies responsible. They are the most complicit.
Or that time PayPal shut down WikiLeaks donations.
The last thing we need right now is some political party declaring their opponents a scam and turning off their donations. Not that I'm a fan of political donations, its just that I'm even more troubled by policies that would give an edge to incumbents.
I think we'll eventually find a way to make the cycle smaller, so instead of writing a stackoverflow post in 2024 and using a model trained on it in 2025 I'll be contributing to the expertise of a distributed-model-ish-thing on Monday and benefitting from that contribution on Tuesday.
When that happens, the most powerful AI will be whichever has the most virtuous cycles going with as wide a set of active users as possible. Free will be hard to compete with because raising the price will exclude the users that make it work.
Until then though, I think you're right that open will lag.
In anticipation of the "no, because intellectual property..." answer. Sorry, but I'm one of those property-is-theft types. By "ethical" I mean that they don't fund violence.
Bonus points for having carbon neutral datacenters.
You may also have to write your own OS and build your own hardware. Oh, and good luck finding the minerals to build your batteries without enabling questionable labor practices in 3rd world countries.
A better strategy would be to configure multiple profiles and when they ask you to unlock your phone you use the pin that unlocks the boring one.
We just need a UX which makes it impossible to know how many profiles a phone has configured. Not some kind of sneaky hidden mode that you can be labeled a terrorist for having enabled, just that's how it works--you have to know a profile exists in order to log into it.
Of course it's not going to stand up to forensic scrutiny, but that's not what the feature is about anyhow.
For an organization, a better strategy is to never store anything of value on the phone, and have a remote server in a safe place. The phone acts as a thin client to access server. The key in turn is easy to hide in a plausibly-deniable way or simply memorized. The server can also revoke the key, rendering it useless even if it is revealed at a later date.
This is famously used by Uber to protect their systems from the French police, for instance.
I'm not aware of any record of us having done so, but it's absolutely the kind of thing we would do, and there's much more pre-history than history when it might've happened.
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