atheists-from-france

"The analogy I've been using is the fact that perhaps an equivalent event in the history of humanity to what might be provided by Generalization of AI assistant is the invention of the printing press. It made everybody smarter."

"The direction of history is that the more data we get, the more our methods rely on learning. Ultimately, the task use learning end to end. That's what happened for speech, handwriting, and object recognition. It's bound to happen for NLP."

"My problem with sticking too close to nature is that it's like "cargo-cult" science... I don't use neural nets because they look like the brain. I use them because they are a convenient way to construct parameterized non-linear functions with good properties. But I did get inspiration from the architecture of the visual cortex to build convolutional nets."

"Every reasonable ML technique has some sort of mathematical guarantee. For example, neural nets have a finite VC dimension, hence they are consistent and have generalization bounds... every single bound is terrible and useless in practice. As long as your method minimizes some sort of objective function and has a finite capacity (or is properly regularized), you are on solid theoretical grounds."

"The vast majority of human knowledge is not expressed in text... LLMs do not have that, because they don't have access to it. And so they can make really stupid mistakes. That’s where hallucinations come from."

"AI is going to bring a new renaissance for humanity, a new form of enlightenment, if you want, because AI is going to amplify everybody's intelligence."

"[Large language models] require enormous amounts of data to reach a level of intelligence that is not that great in the end. And they can't really reason. They can't plan anything other than things they’ve been trained on. So they're not a road towards what people call “AGI.”"

"[Can a commercial entity] produce Wikipedia? No. Wikipedia is crowdsourced because it works. So it's going to be the same for AI systems, they're going to have to be trained, or at least fine-tuned, with the help of everyone around the world. And people will only do this if they can contribute to a widely-available open platform."

"Don't get fooled by people who claim to have a solution to Artificial General Intelligence, who claim to have AI systems that work "just like the human brain", or who claim to have figured out how the brain works (well, except if it's Geoff Hinton making the claim). Ask them what error rate they get on MNIST or ImageNet."

"Many of the papers that make it passed the review process are [good but boring] papers that bring an improvement to a well-established technique... Truly innovative papers rarely make it, largely because reviewers are unlikely to understand the point or foresee the potential of it."

"I try to stay away from all methods that require sampling. I must have an allergy of some sort. That said, I am neither Bayesian nor anti-Bayesian... I think Bayesian methods are really cool conceptually in some cases... but I really don't have much faith in things like non-parametric Bayesian methods..."

"I don't like to call [human intelligence] AGI because human intelligence is not general at all."

"[AI progres is very dependent on Moore's law.] The one thing that allowed big progress in computer vision with ConvNets is the availability of GPUs with performance over 1 Tflops."

"Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer."

"The dream of every cell is to become two cells."

"Kojeve learned from Hegel that the philosopher seeks to know himself or to possess full self-consciousness, and that, therefore, the true philosophic endeavor is a coherent explanation of all things that culminates in the explanation of philosophy. The man who seeks any other form of knowledge, who cannot explain his own doings, cannot be called a philosopher."

"A Revolution is nothing other than the replacement of one given type of Authority with another."

"A brilliant Russian émigré who taught a highly influential series of seminars in Paris. Kojève had a major impact on the intellectual life of the continent. Among his students ranged such future luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron."

"It is from Eternity that the representatives of God on earth derive their Authority."

"God is always, more or less, a custodian God: He is some sort of a 'cause' to the social or political group that 'recognises' His Authority. He is the one who guarantees continuity ('filiation') – that is to say, the unity of the group – and fixes its 'personality', its 'individuality' (that is distinct from others), by determining its origin. Hence the 'traditional' character of the divinity of the (sacred) divine: God is always the God of ancestors ('the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob'). Hence also the (sacred) divine character of every 'tradition': the past that determines the present is generally reduced, eventually, to a divine origin."

"In all times and ages, political crimes have always been punished more severely than others – even in the degenerate State of Nicholas II. The fact that in modern 'democracies' we lean towards political clemency proves only one thing: the loss of any sense of the 'political' in general."

"Kojève is the unknown Superior whose dogma is revered, often unawares, by that important subdivision of the "animal kingdom of the spirit" in the contemporary world—the progressivist intellectuals."

"As for the Minority, its very existence proves that it does not recognise the Authority of the Majority, since forming a minority means precisely being opposed to the majority, and so 'reacting' (in one way or another) against its acts. But, where there is no Authority, 'reactions' can only be removed by force. Therefore, wherever the Majority claims a sui generis would-be 'Authority' resulting form its sheer number, it is in fact claiming pure and simple force. (A regime that is based purely and solely on a majority is a regime founded on force only. The 'majority' regime can therefore be contrasted with the 'authoritarian' one; the latter rests on Authority, while the former rests on force.)"

"There has to be a risk of the death sentence in order for 'mastery' to exist."

"If, in order to make someone get out of my room, I have to use force, I have to change my own behaviour to realise the act in question, and I show through this behaviour that I have no authority; things are completely different if I do not move and this person leaves the room, that is to say, changes, as a result of my simply saying 'get out!' If the given order provokes a discussion, that is to say, forces the one who gives it to do something himself – namely engage in a discussion – as a function of this order, then there is no authority. And even less so if the discussion leads to giving up the order or even to a compromise, that is to say, precisely to changing the act that was supposed to provoke an outward change without itself changing."

"The being invested with authority is then necessarily an agent, and the authoritarian act is always an absolute (conscious and free) act. However, the authoritarian act is distinguished from all other acts by the fact that it does not encounter opposition from the person or persons towards whom it is directed. This in turn presupposes both the possibility of opposing it and the conscious and voluntary renunciation of realising this possibility."

"Obviously, absolute Authority in the strong sense of the word is never realised in fact. Only God is held to possess it."

"True, since the Minority is necessarily weaker (physically, that is to say quantitatively) than the Majority, its power can only derive from its Authority (minority regimes are necessarily 'authoritarian'). But this Authority never derives from the fact that the Minority is a Minority. The 'justification' ('propaganda') is always of the kind: "even though we are only a minority, we . . ." The Authority that is endorsed by a Minority 'justifies' itself or explains itself by 'quality' and not by quantity. (Even the 'snob' claims to belong to the elite and not to the minority.)"

"Given that God incarnates the summum of authority, it is no surprise that we find in the theological theory all the four pure types we have enumerated. God is for man 'Master' and 'Lord'. The Authority of the Master is therefore an integral element of global divine Authority. But God is also a 'Leader', the 'Lord of hosts' (Seboath), the political leader who guides his people while having knowledge in advance of their destinies. The element of the Authority of the Leader, therefore, is also involved in divine Authority. At the same time, 'divine Justice' is a religious category of primary importance, God being always conceived as the supreme Judge of man, as the sovereign embodiment of Justice and Equity: divine Authority integrates, therefore, also the element of the Authority of the Judge."

"The Authority of the 'man of the moment' pertains to the fact that it is he, par excellence, who represents 'actuality', the Present, the 'real presence' of something in the world (Hegel's Gegenwart), as opposed to the 'poetic' unreality of the past and the 'utopian' unreality of the future."

"Starting with "I think," Descartes fixed his attention only on the "think," completely neglecting the "I." Now, this I is essential. For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Consciousness, but also—and above all—Self-Consciousness. Man is not only a being that thinks—i.e., reveals Being by Logos, by Speech formed of words that have a meaning. He reveals in addition—also by Speech—the being that reveals Being, the being that he himself is, the revealing being that he opposes to the revealed being by giving it the name Ich or Selbst, I or Self."

"All those who were acquainted with Hadamard know that until the end of his very long life, he retained an extraordinary freshness of mind and character: in many respects, his reactions remained those of a fourteen-year-old boy. His kindness knew no bounds. The warmth with which Hadamard received me in 1921 eliminated all distance between us. He seemed to me more like a peer, infinitely more knowledgeable but hardly any older; he needed no effort at all to make himself accessible to me."

"The systematic study of the singularities of analytic functions was begun by Hadamard. In 1901, a very valuable account of his own investigations together with those of other early workers, as Fabry, Leau, LeRoy, Borel and others, was presented by Hadamard in his now classic little book La Série de Taylor et son Prolongement Analytique published in the Collection Scientia (No. 12)."

"... Let a perturbation be produced anywhere, like sound; it is not immediately perceived at every other point. There are then points in space which the action has not reached in any given time. Therefore the wave, in that sense a surface, separates the medium into two portions (regions): the part which is at rest, and the other which is in motion due to the initial vibration. These two portions of space are contiguous. It was only in 1887 that Hugoniot, a French mathematician, who died prematurely, showed what the surface of the wave can be; and even his work was not well known until Duhem pointed out its importance in his work on mathematical physics."

"... Professor Hadamard concludes that the general pattern of invention, or, as it might also be put, of original work, is three-fold : conscious study, followed by unconscious maturing, which leads in turn to the moment of insight or illumination. Thereupon another period of conscious work ensues, the purpose of which is to achieve a synthesis of several elements: the novel idea, its logically deduced consequences including proof, and the traditional knowledge to which the new item is added."

"In the case of partial differential equations employed in connection with physical problems, their use must be given up in most circumstances, for two reasons: first, it is in general impossible to get the general solution or general integral, and second, it is in general of no use even when it is obtained."

"... In the case of ordinary differential equations, the arbitrary elements being numerical parameters, we have to determine them by an equal number of numerical equations, so that, at least theoretically, the question may be considered as solved, being reduced to ordinary algebra; but for partial differential equations, the arbitrary elements consist of functions, and the problem of their determination may be the chief difficulty in the question. ..."

"Just after the discovery of infinitesmal calculus, physicists began by needing only very simple methods of integration, the problems in general reducing to elementary differential equations. But when higher partial differential equations were introduced, the corresponding problems almost immediatelly proved to be far above the level of those which contemporary mathematics could treat."

"We are going to speak of the role of analysis situs in our modern mathematics. This theory is also called the geometry of situation. It is the study of connection between different parts of geometrical configurations which are not altered by any continuouse deformation. For instance, a sphere and a cube are considered as one and the same thing from the point of view of the geometry of situation, because one can be transformed into the other without separating parts, or uniting parts which formerly were separated."

"Those childless by choice love children as much, if not more, than their fertile breeders. When asked why he does not have children, Thales replied, "because of my concern for children.""

"Is not the cruel will of adults, by causing birth, condemning children to work, discipline, obedience, submission, frustration in a nursery, primary school, middle school, high school, university or army, and then in a factory, in a workshop, in a company or in an office? Should we call love transmitting this vileness to the body from our own body?"

"Why make children? In the name of what? To achieve what? What legitimizes pulling a being out of nothingness, disturbing its peace, only so that it would have to take a short walk on this planet, leading back to the nothingness from which it was pulled out?"

"[W]e must admit, with the same frankness, that we are ignorant whether matter has in itself the faculty of feeling, or only the power of acquiring it by those modifications or forms to which matter is susceptible; for it is true that this faculty of feeling appears only in organic bodies. This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others which have been mentioned; and this was the hypothesis of the ancients, whose philosophy, full of insight and penetration, deserves to be raised above the ruins of the philosophy of the moderns."

"We know in bodies only matter, and we observe the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?"

"Ancient philosophy will always hold its own among those who are worthy to judge it, because it forms... a system that is solid and well articulated like the body, whereas all these scattered members of modern philosophy form no system."

"We have now but to prove a third attribute: I mean the faculty of feeling which the philosophers of all centuries have found in this same substance. ...[T]he Cartesians have made, in vain, to rob matter of this faculty. But in order to avoid insurmountable difficulties, they have flung themselves into a labyrinth from which they have thought to escape by this absurd system "that animals are pure machines." An opinion so absurd has never gained admittance among philosophers... Experience gives us no less proof of the faculty of feeling in animals than of feeling in men."

"The Christian Scholastics... might have shown that God Himself said that He had "imprinted an active principle in the elements of matter (Gen. i; Is. lxvi)."

"There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter."

"It is not enough for a wise man to study nature and truth; he should dare state truth for the benefit of the few who are willing and able to think."

"The ancients, persuaded that there is no body without a moving force, regarded the substance of bodies as composed of two primitive attributes. It was held that, through one of these attributes, this substance has the capacity for moving and, through the other, the capacity for being moved."