akarma

> There is an irreconcilable conflict between AI safety and AI openness. If you create a dangerous program, and you know it's dangerous, then it would be insane to release it.

If you remember OpenAI's creation, the whole idea was that AI safety comes from democratizing AI. Their idea of AI safety was AI openness.

It's like how some would describe the Second Amendment in the US — by democratizing these dangerous weapons, there may be more chaos but people will be safer from some overlord who holds all the dangerous weapons.

This isn't to say that I agree, but what you're suggesting as their mission is in fact antithetical to what they claimed to be their mission.

I was going to say "for a nonprofit all about making AI more open, maybe!" but then...

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprof...

We also have many traditions around general morality, consideration, respect, tolerance, and so forth.

To give no consideration to tradition is a terrible idea for society; it devalues the work and thought of those who came before us, and it leads to throwing out hundreds of babies with the bathwater.

We're in agreement on the fallacy of "it goes without saying...," but many people in society today show no consideration to history or tradition, and see no value in attempting to understand it enough to see its advantages.

In other words: this 100% can be a fallacy, but in modern society, we're currently in more danger of forgetting the value of history and tradition, than the danger of valuing it too much.

> Probably (the “on your property” bit is pretty irrelevant here, the chickens are the relevant property.)

What I read from this is that I'm unfree to even own livestock on my own property, meaning that I hardly have property of my own.

> the government would require the enterprise employing labor outside of the individual worker/owner (or possibly family) to be either public or collective ... The penalty, if any, for a prohibit wage-labor contract (besides the contract itself being void) isn’t really a matter of general Marxist theory but of the praxis of the particular society in its context.

What I read here is essentially maybe and maybe. The government would take my land and/or my chickens away because I needed help with the chickens, or at the least, the employee I choose to hire after all my labor and investment will receive half my business.

Additionally and more importantly, it's not really a concern of your theory whether I'm executed or disappeared into a labor camp. That just depends on each society, so punishment can vary. (As a Russian, I think it especially eerie you don't find this problematic or view it as a gaping hole in the theory - this is why people perish in it, and the deadly conclusion seems to logically follow from your general theory which necessitates giving the state oppressive power).

This page is full of 'fallacies' that are technically correct — they are sometimes used fallaciously, but simultaneously, many are fair considerations that are often used correctly.

It is fun to read and healthy to be aware of these, but I hope that, in reading these, one doesn't paint broad brush strokes and declare that any appeal to nature, or pity, or tradition is fallacious.

As one example:

> 12. The Appeal to Tradition

A lack of any respect for tradition is a serious issue for a society. It's not fallacious to give credence to tradition, meaning to tread carefully around it.

If people before you designed a system in a certain way, it's important to be able to fairly note the advantages and disadvantages of their system, and why they designed it the way they did before changing it. Use the principle of charity. Assume that they, intelligent and resourceful as you, had considered your option and decided against it. Why? Is there anything you're missing?

In support of it being a fallacy, there are people who cling to clearly disadvantageous things based solely on tradition regardless of objective consideration, but there's just as many people who think through the pros and cons of the new and old and use tradition healthily. These days they're often labelled as fallaciously appealing to tradition for even giving the past consideration.

Thank you for sharing. I read your blog and it was really well-said and moving. I shared it with a friend who thought it was poignant and fantastic writing. If you ever create a Substack or something of the sort, I'd certainly subscribe.

I understand what you're referring to, but was aiming to explain the difference between the US and France in a more approachable way. The US could block a protest from occurring, but the legal basis would be much tougher than that in France (it's more protected in the US).

In the US, a court won't simply forbid a protest ahead of time because the issue was protested several years ago in the same neighborhood and it led to a riot.

25 Americans last I read. Almost all if not all were killed by fellow civilians, not police.

> even during BLM when protests were just declared as "riots" to then crack down on them with the full force of a militarized police arresting thousands of people

Many Americans actually died in these events in addition to dangerous fires (with people still inside buildings!) and random acts of violence, so the riot characterization has at least in some cases been fair. It makes sense thousands of people would be arrested when hundreds of crimes have occurred.

The difference in the US is that these events could not be stopped from occurring, and people were not immediately arrested and water cannoned and so forth by police. It was only after the event grew and escalated and changed in nature.

That is where France differs — a protest can, from the beginning, be declared unable to occur, and police respond to it accordingly.

This is not at all to say that these events were all wrong or created with ill intent, but that there is a clear advantage and disadvantage to the right to freedom of assembly in the US.

As an American happy to live in a country with all our protected freedoms, there are some parts of the Constitution that other reasonable countries don't agree with, and that's fine. There are other cultures with other value systems and they're no less valid.

(1) Freedom of Assembly, part of our 1st Amendment, is one example.

A French court recently decided a protest in Paris could not take place. The court rationale was that a previous protest a few years ago in the same area on the same issue led to violence and destruction of property.

The French Constitution allows freedom of speech, but not freedom of assembly, and Americans are often confused by that. The freedom to write and say what you want does not equate to the freedom to protest in the streets. Not allowing freedom of assembly would have saved many lives in the protests that have swept the US, though potentially at the cost of slower social progress.

(2) Right to bear arms, our 2nd amendment, is another example.

The vast majority of first-world countries don't agree that the right to bear arms is an inalienable human right in today's society.

As Americans, we may prefer the added protection against government tyranny and our personal ability to protect ourselves and our belongings. Unarguably, however, it comes at the cost of mass shootings, and additionally, though many factors are responsible for our uniquely high homicide rate, easy availability of firearms certainly does not help to curb it.

--- All this to say, many of our protected rights have clear, substantial disadvantages. It's not our place to tell every other country in the world how to operate.

Agreed and it's expected, but the question posed was whether there's actual current instances of crypto helping people in the third-world, or whether it's just a bunch of hypothetical future promises of value.

> coming from a third world country, the promise of a decentralized, permissionless market seems extremely promising

> A very basic usage: using Curve.fi to swap between tokenized USD (USDC) and tokenized EURO (EURS) with minimal slippage and fees, all permissionless, all freely accessible.

As a sibling comment noted, this is hypothetical usage, and a future 'promise,' not actual usable by or providing value to the average person.

I went to curve.fi, and from a first glance, anyone not first-world, techie, and extremely familiar with crypto would be completely bewildered by this.

"Select a wallet to connect to this dapp" — what is a wallet and what is a dapp?

"Swap using all Curve pools" — what's a Curve pool?

"Trade routed through alusd" — what does this even mean?

"Base APY" — what? I thought I was exchanging currency, not opening a bank account?

"veCRV holder/LP ratio (based on fees): 28.74" — This is where even first-world, college-educated people close the website in confusion.

> No, the Marxist prohibition on “private property” isn’t actually a prohibition on having an ownership interest in any particular kind of thing, even if it is used for profit. It is a prohibition on the relationship by which one has a claim on the produce of others labor produced through the use of particular property.

(1) So it's okay for me to sell the eggs from the chickens on my property, as it's not using others' labor?

(2) Now if everybody likes the eggs, and I start paying a neighbor to help out with the chickens because it's too much work for me alone, would the government then take my land / take me away?

(3) Assuming the answer is yes to the above, what if I decide to automate the work instead, so I can profitably produce eggs without using anyone else's labor? Am I allowed to accumulate wealth, considering no other labor is involved, or should that be taken away?

> “Private property” as used here refers to profit-driving ownership, i.e. the reference to “means of production”. It doesn’t refer to what would be called “personal ownership”, property which belongs to individuals for their personal disposal and discretion.

This is a blurry line as a sibling comment noted. If I want to start raising chickens on my property, do you take it away from me? What if I start selling the eggs from the hens to my neighbors, do you take it away from me then? Somebody will eventually have a more efficient production idea compared to the big government, and then they want to build it on their own property. Should their property be seized? Should they be imprisoned if they attempt it again?

All this to say: If I'm not relatively free to do what I want - barring the harm of other people - on my property, it's not really my property.

Separately, it's interesting how much further away from reality this is sounding as technology continues to improve and absorb more of GDP. When the world's largest companies deliver value by writing code on laptops, and are often started by a couple kids who think 'it would be cool if this existed,' how do these restrictions on physical property fit in? How could that be equivalently taken away from them?

I don't know if you're aware of the details of the DA you mentioned previously, but he won't prosecute these crimes, so they'll be back to steal again in a few hours.

He won't even prosecute DUIs or home robberies; they're 'victimless'.

Someone who committed robbery was out committing another robbery, and DUI, on New Years Eve and fatally ran over two young women in a hit-and-run. [1]

A prominent investor, Cyan Banister, has delayed deleting Twitter solely to help the Recall Chesa campaign [2], because the DA is still in office, destroying the city and countless lives.

I genuinely believe that Chesa's parents being found guilty of murder and not being around to raise him [3] likely impacts him and his policy to this day; that's more than a kid should ever have to go through. I hope he finds peace, but not at the cost of an entire city [4].

[1] https://abc7news.com/pedestrian-safety-sf-san-francisco-hit-... [2] https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-burglary-da-chesa-boudin-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin [4] https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/lawlessness-in-san-fra...

While gamifying trading is dangerous for society, the onus for that is more on society's current obsession with memes overlapping into reality. Uneducated retail investors will lose a lot on Gamestop and Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin, and whatever the TikTok, Reddit, etc., community hype up next, not because they haven't learned options terminology.

When I was young and started investing in individual stocks, I would've appreciated "I think the stock is going to go up/down" (as an intro as Robinhood uses it) instead of needing to google and memorize put/call. Knowing a put vs. a call added nothing useful as a retail investor. It didn't change my hypothesis about the stock or my decision to trade.

The Middle East is very complicated, but this is hard to read as anything but misinformation.

In the last legislative election in Palestine, Hamas received 44.45% of the vote to Fatah's 41.43% and gained a majority of the seats in the PLC [1].

Although Palestinian trust levels for Hamas are even slightly lower than Fatah, Hamas's actions over the past month are gaining broad Palestinian support [2]. There's people on both sides who want to see the conflict end, and people on both sides who are approving of the conflict (more so on the Palestinian side which feels scorned over the past 80 years).

It is Hamas rocket fire and IDF rocket fire. There are other sides against this conflict and escalation, but to claim that this is not government action or approved of by large swathes of the population is incorrect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2021/0517/For-Ha...

Sure thing, I added an email to my HN page

I've been through this and can definitely offer some advice, assuming you are pursuing a partnership:

- Buy a domain for your email and have a website; the website can just claim it's "coming soon" and look modern and promising.

- Ensure your email is personalized and targeted, and include direct propositions to how you will increase revenue or decrease cost or offer growth — something, anything — to the company. Super short cold emails don't work as well for startups in my experience.

- Address your emails to everyone relevant you can find, but surprisingly, C-level execs appear more likely to respond than lower-level people. They'll often forward your email to the most relevant person who will then feel obligated to reply and hear you out.

- Once in meetings, your advantage as an early startup is your flexibility. Know what you're capable of, and then listen well. Tell them what they want to hear as long as you're capable of building it and it's worth it to get them on board.

If you want to talk further on this, let me know and I can send you an email if you put it in your HN profile, and good luck!

A social startup only being available in a certain country would be a substantial hindrance to adoption in most cases.

I've seen nothing about the Spotify update, but it was so terrible that I've actually tried to start using Apple Music after being loyal to Spotify for 5+ years.

The update was so bad that it not only made everything users want several extra taps away in a way that nobody I've spoken to ever wanted (and screwed up a lot of prioritization and spacing), they even broke my recommendation algorithm! I started getting song recommendations for songs that were already on the playlist, repeatedly. I triple checked this - that there were no identical albums etc - because I was so astounded.

This started off quite well and it's valuable to think about the manager's perspective but:

> Take credit for your work (use pronouns I and Me when talking about your work, not We)

This doesn't apply to everyone but having worked in Product and in a team lead and managerial capacity, I can't imagine this coming off well at all.

> do not allow others to take credit for your work

Of course that's dreadful, but there's a difference between a coworker taking credit and a manager taking credit. In some tech companies and many older-style companies (law firms I can say with certainty), the latter is super common and it may be bad for your career to protest too hard.

> If it's a teamwork situation with other people on your level, don't do most of the work, because the credit will end up being split 50/50 in the eyes of the bosses even if you did most of it

There are ways to privately and without placing blame make clear that you did most of the work in a way beneficial to your career. I can't imagine trying that hard to not do more than 50%.

I'm certainly not an expert on unions, so thank you for the detailed reply!

> There are a number of well known counterexamples, sports and acting unions/guilds for example.

I can't imagine how promotions would apply to areas like sports and acting the same as it applies to typical careers that have ladders, so I wouldn't cite it as a well-known counter-example.

> I've yet to see any tech union advocate for this position, and they generally advocate against it. Tech Workers Coalition and the Alphabet Workers Union are the two I know of in this case.

With regards to the Tech Workers Coalition, they want "explicit criteria to achieve (promotions)" [1] which would necessarily involve more red tape and likely a seniority-basis, as not every employee can be promoted.

> Despite that the most sought-after biglaw companies use a mostly-tenure based compensation process.

This is a reason why I elected not to go to law school, and a contributing factor for several people I know who moved from law to tech. The lack of this is what makes tech unique and adopting the homogeny of another un-meritocratic industry should certainly be avoided.

[1] https://techworkerscoalition.org/bill-of-rights/

Nearly every major union I've seen supports seniority-based promotions.

I imagine that this is not popular with many employees, and so it cannot be a part of their initial pitch — as you said, not the only approach unions use.

If established unions support seniority-based promotions but nascent ones don't publicly support them, it would follow that they must develop into supporting seniority-based promotions. This is possibly one of those issues where a union gets power and then takes overarching, unpopular measures that rid the company of anyone who wants to work harder and be promoted faster.

If you have evidence that unions don't support seniority-based promotions, I would love to see it! I haven't had a chance to gather data, so I'm only speaking anecdotally.

> Their ship requiring multiple-stage launch from earth, but taking off without similar assistance from subsequent planets?

I haven't watched Interstellar, but this would certainly make sense given Earth's escape velocity (11.19km/s) is over 2x that of Mars (5.03km/s), and nearly 5x that of the Moon (2.38km/s).

> If a hiring manager really wants someone and they can't pay them more, they can hire them at a higher level.

Yes, this is how it should work! Their role will then involve a higher level of responsibility and expected output that they better be prepared for, and they'll be compensated more for that.

It makes much more sense than people getting higher/lower compensation for the same level of responsibility and expected output based on their competing offers at the time of signing, doesn't it?

If you're ambitious, this doesn't hurt your ability to join Coinbase and grow quickly, which is an important factor in the tech industry and its appeal of opportunity. A union would.

This offers a more level playing field for employees to begin their time at the company without stringent rules around who can get promoted and when and other red tape. Seems like a great decision.

From what I've seen, much of the delta in pay is actually the result of lower profit margins.

Facebook, as an extreme example of profitability, can pay its directors and EMs $1m+ per year in total comp, but it's not top-heavy - it pays its engineers ~$200k out of undergrad and >$350k after a few years.

By contrast, I know of many cool hyped-up hardware unicorns and biotech companies, and none can compare to FAANG in pay because software scales in a way that other businesses can't. (One hardware unicorn pays its new grad SWEs $60-70k).

Unless the biotech company is actually a biotech-focused SaaS company, it's inherently going to have a higher unit cost that prevents software-level comp. It's a disappointing effect of the current system we live in.

There was no sense of urgency because the closest to reaching the limit aside from Berkshire is several factors away. Also, Berkshire stock has surged ~30% in the past ~6 months which is far above usual performance.

Those aspects together probably allowed it to be deprioritized until it would be closer to being necessary (a classic tale).

It is rather funny to imagine Warren Buffett sitting there mumbling about stock splits and the incompetence of it all, and how in his day, you could buy a share for however much cash you wanted to without worrying about integers and bits and code.

That's really kind of you and has made my day! I've been thinking about one but haven't found the time; this definitely nudges me towards that so thank you.

If you ever want to chat about something though, feel free to reach me at the email in my profile. Always great to meet new people, especially in these times. :)