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765 points MindBreaker2605 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.422s | source
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numpy-thagoras ◴[] No.45897574[source]
Good. The world model is absolutely the right play in my opinion.

AI Agents like LLMs make great use of pre-computed information. Providing a comprehensive but efficient world model (one where more detail is available wherever one is paying more attention given a specific task) will definitely eke out new autonomous agents.

Swarms of these, acting in concert or with some hive mind, could be how we get to AGI.

I wish I could help, world models are something I am very passionate about.

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sebmellen ◴[] No.45897629[source]
Can you explain this “world model” concept to me? How do you actually interface with a model like this?
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natch ◴[] No.45898143[source]
He is one of these people who think that humans have a direct experience of reality not mediated by as Alan Kay put it three pounds of oatmeal. So he thinks a language model can not be a world model. Despite our own contact with reality being mediated through a myriad of filters and fun house mirror distortions. Our vision transposes left and right and delivers images to our nerves upside down, for gawd’s sake. He imagines none of that is the case and that if only he can build computers more like us then they will be in direct contact with the world and then he can (he thinks) make a model that is better at understanding the world
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BoxOfRain ◴[] No.45898490[source]
Isn't this idea demonstrably false due to the existence of various sensory disorders too?

I have a disorder characterised by the brain failing to filter own its own sensory noise, my vision is full of analogue TV-like distortion and other artefacts. Sometimes when it's bad I can see my brain constructing an image in real time rather than this perception happening instantaneously, particularly when I'm out walking. A deer becomes a bundle of sticks becomes a muddy pile of rocks (what it actually is) for example over the space of seconds. This to me is pretty strong evidence we do not experience reality directly, and instead construct our perceptions predictively from whatever is to hand.

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scoot ◴[] No.45898676[source]
Pleased to meet someone else who suffers from "visual snow". I'm fortunate in that like my tinnitus, I'm only acutely aware of it when I'm reminded of it, or, less frequently, when it's more pronounced.

You're quite correct that our "reality" is in part constructed. The Flashed Face Distortion Effect [0][1] (wherein faces in the peripheral vision appear distorted due the the brain filling in the missing information with what was there previously) is just one example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashed_face_distortion_effect [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37991-9

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BoxOfRain ◴[] No.45898782[source]
Ah that's interesting, mine is omnipresent and occasionally bad enough I have to take days off work as I can't read my own code; it's like there's a baseline of it that occasionally flares up at random. Were you born with visual snow or did you acquire it later in life? I developed it as a teenager, and it was worsened significantly after a fever when I was a fresher.

Also do you get comorbid headaches with yours out of interest?

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1. scoot ◴[] No.45899262[source]
I developed it later in life. The tinnitus came earlier (and isn't as a result of excessive sound exposure as far as I know), but in my (unscientific) opinion they are different manifestations (symptoms) of the same underlying issue – a missing or faulty noise filter on sensory inputs to the brain.

Thankfully I don't get comorbid headaches – in fact I seldom get headaches at all. And even on the odd occasion that I do, they're mild and short-lived (like minutes). I don't recall ever having a headache that was severe, or that lasted any length of time.

Yours does sound much more extreme than mine, in that mine is in no way debilitating. It's more just frustrating that it exists at all, and that it isn't more widely recognised and researched. I have yet to meet an optician that seems entirely convinced that it's even a real phenomenon.

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2. BoxOfRain ◴[] No.45900038[source]
Interesting, definitely agree it likely shares an underlying cause with tinnitus. It's also linked to migraine and was sometimes conflated with unusual forms of migraine in the past, although it's since been found to be a distinct disorder. There's been a few studies done on visual snow patients, including a 2023 fMRI study which implicated regions rich in glutamate and 5HT2A receptors.

I actually suspected 5HT2A might be involved before that study came out, since my visual distortions sometimes resemble those caused by psychedelics. It's also known that both psychedelics and anecdotally from patient's groups SSRIs too can cause a similar symptoms to visual snow syndrome, I had a bad experience with SSRIs for example but serotonin antagonists actually fixed my vision temporarily - albeit with intolerable side-effects so I had to stop.

It's definitely a bit of a faff that people have never heard of it, I had to see a neuro-ophthalmologist and a migraine specialist to get a diagnosis. On the other hand being relatively unknown does mean doctors can be willing to experiment. My headaches at least are controlled well these days.

3. cricalix ◴[] No.45903662[source]
scoot, you may find the current mini-series by the podcast Unexplainable to be interesting. It's on sound, and one episode is about tinnitus and research into it.

https://www.vox.com/podcasts/467048/unexplainable-hearing-au...