alexashka

> Doesn't that prove too much?

No :)

Philosophy departments are like economics departments. They engage in long, complex, useless theoretical discussions that have nothing to do with reality whilst pretending that they are connected to reality.

This has caused a lot of people to waste years of their lives trying to understand what the hell is going on and many to mindlessly propagate idiotic, harmful ideas these departments 'teach'.

Anyone that talks of 'consciousness' and how it's baffling is in the midst of being misled by philosophy and/or neuro-'science' departments, much like anyone who even mentions free markets is being misled by economics departments.

It's only bold if you don't know anything about the subject matter.

How many books one would purchase from the philosophy section of a book store have you read multiple times and what were they?

Can you learn anything about 'why 8?' or 'how 7?'.

If you pose an incoherent question, the answer is 'that's not a valid question', rather than 'oh wow, how baffling'. The baffling is coming from forming what seem to be valid questions that aren't.

Another example of it is that famous who cuts the barber's hair (Russell's paradox):

The barber is the "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves". The question is, does the barber shave himself?

Here's an LLM explaining it:

the philosophical/logical lesson is: sometimes a description that sounds grammatically fine does not actually describe a possible thing. The contradiction is in the premise, not in our failure to find the right barber.

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For clarity, consciousness is like free will - if you invent a thing that doesn't exist and proceed to ask questions about it, the problem is you having invented a thing, not that you are then having difficulty answering questions about it.

What do small companies do?

Rhetorical question.

> The Trumpist Republicans fundamentally believe only they are allowed to rule and everyone outside their group is an enemy

Both parties believe it. It's why you only have two parties.

Your country's only real God is making a quick buck and everyone believes it their duty to do so. The immigrants, the non-immigrants, the politicians, the business people, everyone.

There's money to be made in cruelty, so there's money being made in cruelty. There's money to be made in being outraged about someone making money from cruelty, so there's money being made from being outraged.

Your only God is a quick buck, remember. Nothing else. Nothing.

Reality check: this guy worked on "Mocha is an online AI powered app builder. It allows everyone to build web apps, no coding required"

He 'loves' building. Building what? Crypto thing when crypto is hot and AI thing when AI is hot? Is there a word to describe this behaviour that we may be familiar with?

It's been true my entire adult life.

When I came to Canada almost 30 years ago, IT-job immigrants, let alone people who've grew up in this system were already doing 'buy real estate, rent it out, profit' and their day job was just a means to finance becoming a permanent rent seeker.

Pikachu surprise face that a culture that thinks rent seeking is great ends up doing it everywhere, all of the time, including Amazon.

If only someone had written by many considered the greatest philosophical text about it, freely available online at project Gutenberg :)

They call it The Republic.

> why would they need consumers anymore?

That was the exact line of thought, coupled with resources are limited (marketed as climate change), that led to the 1 child policy in China and many other decisions that shall not be spoken of.

Is it just money laundering?

The entire tech sector seems to amount to entrenched mega corps and finance bros who know how to fill out the forms to automatically get a fancy university graduate with a CS degree a few million and split it 3-ways, 1/3 for finance bro, 1/3 for nepo baby cs graduate and 1/3 for the losers who implement 'the idea'.

Cool. Signed up for Lovable, chose a web template, got this:

"When remixing a template, I agree to take responsibility over project security, compliance, data, and operations. The templates are provided for educational purposes and do not guarantee functionality or security out of the box."

With copy/paste disabled, so I had to type it out.

I rest my case, your honor.

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Update: Spent 2 more minutes - I cannot believe anyone invested a penny in this. It makes those other dozen failed web site editor things look very well made and thought out.

It makes Squarespace look like a good product!

When I express a slogan, I am fully aware that it lacks nuance and is not to be taken literally.

Pedantry is not a counter argument, it's a deflection. We are not in court.

She probably had the epiphany that life is short and she's already rich.

It takes a surprising amount of time for nepo babies to realize life is about more than making sure you're doing at least as good as other nepo babies you grew up with.

Or, just ban advertising.

Humans are only now figuring out pointy shoes are bad for people's feet. This species is wrong about almost everything when it comes to its own well being and like pointy shoes - it's a completely unnecessary self-own that barely benefitted anyone.

> A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth

Good. No more growth.

There is nothing anyone needs to 'intellect' more of to make anyone's life better. Nothing. You can stop the inner monologue :)

Nothing.

There's wage slave layer, nepo baby layer and the in-between.

Author has discovered that his 'working hard' to be at the bottom of the in-between layer pales in comparison to the invites others receive for simply showing up.

That's how it goes.

The real bitch is when you get to spend some time with the hot folks or the nepo babies and realize there's no substance - all they have is a mastery of surface level pleasantries and an incredibly thin skin.

> Your brain is a prediction machine

It's not.

> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function

It isn't.

> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable

Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.

The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.

> Why even read?

To understand.

For most everyone else, it is to momentarily feel some sort of way. The difference is what the parent describes as a revelation, to him.

You see, for people who crave to understand, living among people who just want to feel this and that feels like living in an insane asylum where the people inflicting harm upon themselves and others will do nothing but distract themselves long enough to forget and go on to inflict harm on themselves and others again, forever.

As for 'might as well quit' - most everyone I've known who's not an idiot has already done that. Even the idiots aren't having children by the way :) Living in a matrix pod? You mean a modern city? Anyhoo...

You are using 'basic' economics to predict the future with 'absolute' certainty?

Rhetorical.

> It's very easy to make lazy, shallow dismissals that leaders like Dario/Demis/Sam are acting purely out of self-interest

Pointing out the endless stream of lies and self serving half truths these terrible people engage in helps the younger generation understand the world they were born into.

It's constructive and helpful. It's why I'm replying to you.

You interpreting it as 'shallow dismissal' is shallow dismissal on your end. You're the shallow dismisser, not the people calling terrible people terrible.

As for your little petition. It's as good as eliminating plastic straws to save the environment.

Terrible people with power they don't deserve doing pathetic little, tiny 'good' deeds to sleep better at night needs no explaining.

The 'arguments' are not meant to persuade, they are meant to establish and entrench an overton window (regarding 'AI' in this case).

> I just don't know why it would actually be true that everyone at the top is a villain

History.

Also, nobody said 'everyone' or 'villain'. How Paul Graham of you.

Now do factory farming. Just another room, right?

> The free market fundamentally doesn't have a good response to this problem

Free markets don't exist.

The problem isn't what you think it is. It's Dunning-Kruger effect and 99% of the population is living it loud and proud.

The moment you realize most people's thinking is no better than a hallucinating LLM :)

Thank you. Before you said it, I didn't know what to do but now I know to compare and decide for myself what is useful and what isn't.

I hope my newfound way of life is not oversimpifying it to the extreme.

If you have a thing people want that you spent a decade making that isn't easily replicatable, the rest doesn't matter.

If you don't have that, the rest also doesn't matter. Unless you're obsessed with money, in which case, you are very confused and should not be guiding anybody to anything.

Guides regarding minutiae from lottery ticket winners are tiresome. I think anyone over 30 has learned what these 'guides' amount to from looking at Paul Graham.

Your post seems to assume anyone in power is acting in good faith and wants a fair system.

They have pressure to hire lawyers and consult them regarding swatting techniques. That only costs money and money is like blood to humans - you don't even think about it, whereas it is all mosq

Employee - Large organization.

Mosquito - Human.

You don't swat a mosquito out of fear, you swat it out of preventing a minor nuisance.

A whistleblower is a mosquito that's bitten a human. The most likely outcome is an imminent, violent swat, resulting in career destruction.