What does your religion say about existing with other religions?
rufus @ rufus @discuss.tchncs.de Posts 12Comments 1,377Joined 2 yr. ago
rufus @ rufus @discuss.tchncs.de
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I don't think it is very important what exactly is written down. These books contain lots of contradictions. And they're made to a degree so people can find what they're looking for. It's all interpretation and the same book can and has been cited to start wars, kill the neighbors, sell them to slavery, torture people. Or be nice to them. Considering societal norms and killing people: It's all in there, you can oftentimes pick.
And I'm not sure what's in the old testament. As I know it, it probably also doesn't talk negatively about killing apostates. It's probably at least allowed to kill them. I haven't opened a bible in 20 years, I'd need to look it up. if it's there, it's probably with all the "their blood shall be upon them." lines in leviticus.
I'm afraid you're wrong, though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
And I've talked to refugees who fled countries in fear of being killed for who they are. Ever heard of ISIS, the jihad? islamic state or sharia law? Wikipedia tells me it doesn't happen that often in countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar... And it's mostly extra-judicial, not legal executions. But it's in the scripture. And also part of the law of a dozen countries. And I'm pretty sure there has been some genocide out of similar reasons in the wars in Syria and Afghanistan in recent times.
And regarding the christians: What's with the entire medieval times? And what was the whole point of the crusades? Christinity was in an open, bloody war against the heretics for centures. And I think they tortured apostates to death. Currently most of us don't do corporal punishment or death penalty any more. But we sometimes shun apostates and make their lives miserable.
I don't see a myth here...
Oh that's unfortunate. Something made to get things unstuck in the pipes gets itself stuck there...
100% agree. God can't be subject to the law of the universe or he wouldn't be God. He'd be a human then, have to abide by physics and logic. Wouldn't be omnipotent, not all-knowing and supernatural things wouldn't exist. Couldn't have created the universe in the first place. So he obviously can be anything and its opposite at the same time if he so likes.
In addition there are lots of religions with the same basis and same god. We just disagree on whether Jesus or Mohammed or whoever was his last messenger.
Are you something like mormon? I didn't know that there are christian(?) denominations that allow for the existence of other gods. I was raised catholic and my first of the 10 commandments was "I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have any other gods besides me." So that rules out any other gods. Along with the continuation of the story where god outlaws idols and sends plagues and burns down cities for worshipping anything besides him.
But I think I agree. Technically you're just not allowed to worship them. They may exist. It'd be a bit strange since the bible goes on and on how god created all the animals, angels, satan, humans, does all the things and some get lengthy enumerations... but somehow they forgot to mention that other gods exist... Just slipped their mind as they were writing it down.
I rarely see it but it happens every now and then. And I sometimes get paywalls or videos are georestricted. And some websites don't want to implement the GDPR and refuse service to european users.
And Project Gutenberg (the book archive) had been blocked in germany for years.
Btw there is a dedicated http error code proposed instead of just the 403: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451
Define "soul" or the answer is entirely meaningless. I'm pretty sure I'm sentient and can feel emotions and think and reason.
And we were a bit late to the party with same-sex marriage because of the party with 'christian' in the name...
What I think is outrageous is that we have denominational hospitals, schools and kindergärten, and they don't have to abide by the same labor law as literally everyone else. They can - and will - fire people for things like divorce. Or being gay. All whilst being (sometimes entirely) funded by the state or health insurance.
And in my opinion we shouldn't allow them to openly discriminate against women and gay people... Have a look at what the danish people did and force the catholic church to do same-sex marriages... and accept women as priests. I really don't get why they get a special treatment when it gets to hating on people and they're the only ones allowed to do it professionally.
That it's in other places like it is in the USA. I think being an atheist or christian here in central europe is very different to what americans experience in their lives. And it's yet another story in other countries.
I mean the Age of Enlightenment happened in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. That's a long time ago. I believe it's (still) not part of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany / constitution, where I live. It's somewhat different for the USA due to their history. But they have the more annoying conservative politicians and parts of society. I think as of now, major parts of the population don't care anymore about what the founding fathers came up with in the late 18th century. So there's no advantage there.
With catholicism you're pretty much allowed to make up anything. We just have one god. But that's obviously not enough so we made up the holy trinity, so he/she is one... But also three. And we've incorporated pagan holidays and beliefs. There it fairies, monsters etc, we just call them angels and deamons and such. And you can pray to god... Or saints or whatever you like. There is a process to it. It has to by accepted by the pope and the vatican. And it takes some time. But they're not opposed to contradicting dogma. And don't believe in logic in the first place. So I'd say go ahead... You can simultaneously have gods before and after and at the same time have it the other way around. It doesn't need to make sense. If you're catholic, talk to the pope. He's infallible. Just don't introduce "making sense" to anything. We can't have that with religion.
It's just a few very old books with how people tried to make sense of the world back then, plus a few thousands of years of extra lore added on top, varying politics during the times and a few old men running the business.
And you can't escape this. Of course whether your neighbor goes to church on sunday is their choice to make. But in my opinion the state, schools etc should be secular. And they're not. Religion influences politicians and people to have biases, for example towards abortion, gay marriage etc. and that definitely has an influence on law, my life and that of my fellow citizens. I think lots of christians forget what the word 'evangelion' (the gospel) means. It translates to "Good News". And not not prohibition and trying to tell other people who they're allowed to marry.
I think that's baked into all the abrahamic religions. The Old Testament says so, and the Quaran also doesn't like heretics, especially apostasy is considered really bad. As far as I know the death penalty is how to deal with apostates in Islam. But it's not really better in christianity or judaism, the same tribal concept of extinguishing rival tribes is in the Old Testament and Torah. All these religions believe in the same god. So theoretically they're more compatible with each other than for example with atheists or people believing in different or multiple gods. Or people renouncing their ways.
You can have a look at buddhism, hinduism etc to find a different perspective, indigenous beliefs, pantheism or agnosticism. Or the ancient greeks, romans or egypts or maya civilization. They all have a very different view than we have with our abrahamic God.
I personally like science. Just because it's the only sane approach to knowledge. And it has proven to be the way that delivers the goods. And I think this and the observations I made contradict with the existence of any God. And we should not base our decisions on ancient tribal beliefs, so I'm not okay with any of the Gods who tell people what to do and what not to do. I link proper philosophy and progress in what we deem to be our current ethics.
Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
True. Sadly the article is over 2 years old and not much has changed since.
I think people are far too concerned with airplane seating. Concerning boarding: The plane takes off at exactly the same time, whether you're the first or the last person entering it. And upon arriving, the people are way quicker leaving. It's maybe a difference of 3-10 minutes. This might matter if you're in a hurry or want to be the first person in the customs line. I like to stay relaxed when travelling.
The noises are everywhere. There might be a minor difference and it probably really depends on the airplane model. The slight vibrations, engine noises and air-con noises are audible from front to the back. At least that's my observation. Most annoying thing I had happen is a crying and vomiting 5-year-old in the row next to me. But I don't think there is much you can do about that. I've sat right over the wings and it's fine. And I think I've read those are better concerning safety, but you don't need to worry about safety too much.
I can't find that mention of "8-bit models" anywhere in the paper, just by skimming it again I only see references and comparisons to FP16.
I know these discussions from llama.cpp and ggml quantization. With that you can quantize a model more and more and it becomes worse the lower the precision gets. You can counter that by using a larger model that was more "intelligent" in the first place... With that you can calculate the sweet spot and what gives you the best quality at a certain compute cost or size... A more degraded bigger model, or a less degraded smaller model...
But we don't have different quantization levels here, just one. And it's also difficult to compare, as with ggml you take the same model and quantize it to different levels... We also don't have that here, you can't take an existing model with this approach and quantize it and compare it to another... You have to train a new model from scratch. And then it's a different model.
I can't find a good analogy here... Maybe it's a bit like asking if the filesize of an JPEG image is more important than the resolution... It's kind of the wrong question. You can compare different compression levels of the JPEG image, or compare the size of the JPEG to a BMP file... It's really not a good analogy, but a BMP file with 20 times the size looks exactly like a smaller JPEG file on the screen. And you can also have a 7B parameter LLM model give better answers than a poor (or older) 13B model. It's neither just parameter count nor presision alone.
So if they say they can do with less than a third of the RAM and compute time and simultansously score a tiny bit higher in the benchmarks, I don't see a tradeoff here.
Generally speaking you can ask the question: What delivers the best results with at a given compute cost. Or the other way around: What has the lowest cost to arrive at a certain point. But this is kind of a different technique, same parameter count, same results, but significantly lower computing cost on inference.
(And reading all the speculation elsewhere: There might be a different tradeoff. The authors didn't talk about training and just made very small models. A more complex and expensive training process could be a tradeoff.)
They claim it performs at 1.56 bit about as good as something with 16 bits. I don't quite get your question. Seems we can do with less precision / different maths and arrive at the same quality. The total count of parameters isn't affected. But the numbers now don't take 16 bits each, but less.
But if the literal meaning of one word is important, we have to factor in the original hebrew meaning. I don't know what it says. But you cant pick an arbitrary translation you like best. My translation of the bible with "besides me" is equally as valid.