A very dangerous is game of chess

[Tomasz Rola]

Oh well.

[

"In world first, Russian chess player poisons rival’s board with mercury"

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024/08/in-world-first-russian-chess-player-poisons-rivals-board-with-mercury/

]

--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomas...@bigfoot.com **

[PGC]

You would think that chess players are capable of some amount of conditional reasoning. "If I poison my opponent, then there'll be all kinds of scrutiny on my person! Including camera footage used against me." But at any level lower than Top 10 or 20 in the world, making a living is very difficult, when they have to pay for travel to tournaments, accommodation etc. while the top guys get everything for free.

Thanks for your reply on the LLM subject in the other thread, Tomasz. It does seem to be a bubble from some points of view. At the same time, it seems a matter of national defense for others. 

[smitra]

It depends on what mercury compound was used, e.g. dimethylmercury is
extremely toxic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury

"Less than 0.1 mL is capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning
resulting in death."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_death

"Wetterhahn would recall that she had spilled several drops of
dimethylmercury from the tip of a pipette onto her latex-gloved hand.[8]
Not believing herself in any immediate danger, as she was taking all
recommended precautions,[9] she proceeded to clean up the area prior to
removing her protective clothing.[8] However, tests later revealed that
dimethylmercury can, in fact, rapidly permeate several kinds of latex
gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds.[7] Her exposure was
later confirmed by hair analysis, which showed a dramatic jump in
mercury levels 17 days after the initial accident, peaking at 39 days,
followed by a gradual decline.[8]

Approximately three months after the initial accident Wetterhahn began
experiencing brief episodes of abdominal discomfort and noticed
significant weight loss. The more distinctive neurological symptoms of
mercury poisoning, including loss of balance and slurred speech,
appeared in January 1997, five months after the accident.[8] At this
point, tests proved that she had severe mercury poisoning.[5][6][9] Her
blood and urinary mercury content were measured at 4,000 μg/L[7] and 234
μg/L, respectively—both many times their respective toxic thresholds of
200 μg/L and 50 μg/L (blood and urine reference ranges are 1 to 8 μg/L
and 1 to 5 μg/L).[8]

Despite aggressive chelation therapy, her condition rapidly
deteriorated. Three weeks after the first neurological symptoms
appeared, Wetterhahn lapsed into what appeared to be a vegetative state
punctuated by periods of extreme agitation.[8] One of her former
students said that "Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked
if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain
could even register pain."[9] Wetterhahn was removed from life support
and pronounced dead on June 8, 1997, less than a year after her initial
exposure.[8]"

Saibal

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 06:34:23AM -0700, PGC wrote:
> You would think that chess players are capable of some amount of
> conditional reasoning. "If I poison my opponent, then there'll be all kinds
> of scrutiny on my person! Including camera footage used against me." But at
> any level lower than Top 10 or 20 in the world, making a living is very
> difficult, when they have to pay for travel to tournaments, accommodation
> etc. while the top guys get everything for free.

Yeah, the story is strange. One would expect that chess players be
more rational. She could not possibly dream of poisoning her way to
the finals, right?

> Thanks for your reply on the LLM subject in the other thread, Tomasz. It
> does seem to be a bubble from some points of view. At the same time, it
> seems a matter of national defense for others.

I am reluctant to call it a "la bulle", even if it quite possibly is
one. But using a word suggests that something less significant had
beed inflated. However, I think that actually there is some
interesting tech burried under the pile of this optimistic-
-pessimistic- -horroristic- -slur. This interesting something could,
with long lasting dedication (say, ten years?) and certain amount of
money (but nowhere as big as what is being inveshted by inveshtors),
could deliver some interesting results. Interesting like, maybe some
kind of progress - better understanding, better processing of Universe
etc. Not in a sense that it would have paid for many yachts.

"La bulle" is a term, I believe, coming from inveshtor-sprache. They
are meat, think like meat, do not care much about progress. They know
how to pump, dump. cashout and run away, so they probably would be
inclined to think of business as something akin to crime rather than
gardening (how does it look, to pump a garden and expect it to deliver
ten or hundred times as much - I say it looks cretinish and garden
will be fuctked). OTOH, perhaps all humanity is like this, just not
everybody has money to perform inveshting. And humanity does not seem
to care too much about progress either.

So even if it could have been prevented from poof...

Also, this is nice summary of where we are at the moment, at least
from my point of view:

[

The future of AI/ML depends on the reality of today – and it's not
pretty

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/27/opinion_ai_ml/