csours

I'd love to see a product comparison.

Other countries have different power and incentive structures. In Germany, both the state and labor are represented at the ownership level. In Japan, corporate and social expectations are completely different.

Companies can also 'borrow from the future' by reducing R&D or stretching a product lifecycle from 6 years to 10 or more. Over that time, they will lose some market share as people lose enthusiasm for their product. Of course, if all the car companies had a 10 year product cycle, then consumers would pay less for engineering changes etc; but everyone has an incentive to 'defect' so they can capture more market share.

It is generally believed that competition benefits consumers overall; but there is no single system that will magically improve every metric.

If you've been satisfied with blaming an organization or a person, then an explanation can feel like an excuse, because I'm asking you to pick the problem back up again with added complexity.

Imagine manufacturing like a long vine - any disturbance along the vine can cause the fruit to wither.

The overall company can run low on capital or the share price may drop too far and induce leadership changes.

The product has to reach capacity targets to pay for overheads and fixed costs.

A competitor can drop their prices.

A supplier can go out of business or have their own production issues - fires and floods happen ever year.

Many governments have ramping targets for safety and efficiency.

Any particular government can increase taxes or tariffs, causing an unplanned uprooting of production from one assembly plant to another, costing at least millions of dollars; also unknown costs due to uncertainty.

Consumers preferences change over time.

---

With all of that, the fruit that withers first is the smallest - the cheapest or leanest.

I'm sorry if this is upsetting.

Disclosure: I work for General Motors, this is solely my own opinion and experience.

> Which one returns more value to the shareholders?

I think the 'shareholder primacy' era of American capitalism has had some particularly dumb and bad effects... unfortunately I can't change that just by being angry and anxious about it. The market loves tech companies right now, which really distorts the valuation of other companies.

I think that people still vastly underestimate how difficult it is to make a physical product, how much time and attention it takes.

I saw a presentation for assembling the Chevy Cruze in Lordstown, Ohio. There was a planned market size, production volume, etc, etc. The closest it got to the estimates (if I recall correctly) was about 1/2 to 2/3 the planned production volume. After the first couple of years of production, volume dropped more.

At 1/2 volume, the plant would never make money. The fixed costs simply eat too far into revenue. The lower the volume, the longer it takes to pay off things like engineering costs - not just for the OEM (GM, Ford, etc), but also for the suppliers. Suppliers often book substantial losses for the first couple years of a new product.

> Simple cars don't make money...

They really don't make money. On the very best day, a $30,000 simple car might make $1,000 net profit to the OEM, maybe another $500 to the dealer. On a median day, the initial sale might be a small loss.

Under capitalism, there is strong pressure to move upmarket. Under communism, most people never even got the simple car, and those who did get the simple car had to wait for many years.

    > 3. Buyers generally won't reject a car for having features they don't care about, but they'll frequently reject a car for lacking a feature they deem important.

    4. Buyers have different preferences.

Yup. I don't care about the radio, and you don't care about manual windows, but you care about the radio, and I care about manual windows.

Making of (by Claudia Romeo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJKIA2sAE38

The subsequent article "So you want to PRINT a PDF" is stuck in a queue somewhere.

Well, I say 'stuck' - it actually got timed out of the queue, but that doesn't raise an error so no one knows about it.

Or even a Plausible Deniability system - you can't buy these games with currency, you have to use tokens. Here's a token store where you can buy tokens with your currency.

Writing as a person who wants the future to be a better place, the number one pass time of progressives is complaining about other progressives. The number two pass time is complaining about conservatives.

Anyway, my complaint is that a lot of DEI flavored stuff is very very lazy.

A fundamental issue is that once a person has been raised, you don't get to raise them again. You can't parent a grown person - even if they need more parenting. Social punishment only works inside a socially cohesive group. The shame and anxiety you create with social punishment may be exploited by someone else.

Anyway, I'm sure some DEI groups are coming to terms with why anti-woke trolling is so effective, and I hope they find a good way to tell that story.

There are many ways to explain or understand the US election(s) of 2024.

One way to understand the election is a rejection of complexity - political complexity, social complexity, scientific complexity, economic complexity, moral complexity - these are all out of style. People seem very happy to ditch all of these in favor of kayfabe [0].

Of course, an empty narratives doesn't last; but once people get used to an empty narrative, they sometimes just move on to the next one. Just give them a face and a heel - things are much easier to understand that way.

Anyway, I feel like things might stay this way for a while.

It's definitely a real human experience to say "I know MY job is complicated, but that thing over there ought to be simple"

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

For myself, it means that I should have some patience and humility. Of course, I don't participate in women's sports anyway, so that should be pretty easy for me.

in soil, not air.

The problem with slippery slopes is that the world is made of them. You can't leave the slippery slope, at BEST you can choose which slope you're sliding down.

Another way to think of this is 'long tail risk'. Some subset of people out there will develop real life problems from: porn, sex work, alcohol, weed, drugs, gambling, other 'moral' issues. It is difficult to meaningfully address both the median user and the problematic user.

See also decrim.

It depends on context. If you're working from a document that is otherwise correct, and you come across a mistake like this, it's worth checking.

In casual language, sure, whatever.

in-band notice or out-of-band?

Professor of Upstairs Neighboring. https://youtu.be/8s9TjRz01fo?t=1128

NASA wants space to feel non-militarized.

US Service Personnel don't follow the civilian process for Customs, so making astronauts actually follow the civilian process reinforces the non-militarized feeling for space.

Following this line of thought - this is may be the exact analogy that NASA wanted to counteract.

> Anything Musk says is simply not trustworthy.

I have a boss who speaks in "future tense" - they say how they think things WILL work. In my boss' case it's not lying, it's how their brain works. If you ask carefully, you can tell that they understand what's going on, but it takes some work to get there.

It's annoying, but not terrible in my case - it is good to have someone who can look towards the future.

I think people in general, and some people specifically, have hard time telling the difference between what IS true and what SHOULD Be true - especially when they are speaking informally.

I also think that billionaires are very hard to educate.

Anyway, you are absolutely correct, I also do not trust Musk.

Also yes.

It appears that 'alignment' may be very difficult to define.

Unfortunately, while generated images still have an uncanny valley, generated text has blown straight past the uncanny valley.

Also unfortunately, it is much MUCH easier to get

a. emotional validation on your own terms from a LLM

than it is to get

b. emotional validation on your own terms from another human.

Oh dear, he's already at it with this one too

The researcher's purported threat model mainly consists of professional bike racing.

Basic trolling is not precluded, or perhaps a targeted attack on an individual person.

Yes, I am using the word 'rationality' somewhat informally.

I have come to believe that there is no such thing as 'true rationality' in the universe. There are true events and true facts, but rationality is a shared framework for communication. Rationality exists between people.

People always have a framing story or perspective or viewpoint or system prompt for how they understand facts and events.

If you want to influence beliefs you have to understand the framing story that a person is using - even when that framing story is invalid or untrue.

Also, if you want to influence beliefs, you have to provide some emotional validation. You can't remove a load bearing core belief from someone's story, you can only replace it.

---

Another partial explanation is trauma - you can think about 'conspiracy theories' in a number of ways, but these low information, high satisfaction theories often arise after traumatic experiences. You can't properly address the facts of the situation while a person is hurting.

We should expect to see more conspiracy theories after natural and unnatural disasters. Think wildfires caused space lasers, floods caused by cloud seeding, storms caused by radar installations, melting of steel beams by various means. The people who believe these things are generally not having a good time in life.

---

BONUS Link: Tim Minchin - Confirmation Bias

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1juPBoxBdc

Excuses and explanations can feel the same. I do not intend this to be an excuse, but a partial explanation. Before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, there was a feeling of a possibility of peace in some form; in this context, those laws could be viewed as the stick of a carrot and stick approach.

At this point in time, you can make your own determination about how that has worked out.

Sometimes I imagine that I am a time traveling space alien so I can get a bit of emotional distance from what's going on. I imagine that I can leave this time and place [technically, I am leaving this time and place, but no faster than anyone else].

If I was a time travelling space alien I would find it very funny that the Conservative Republican party is not conservative or republican in any recognizable way.

A party that pushes for a unitary executive cannot be republican.

An executive that carelessly breaks existing government functions cannot be conservative.

If I could say one thing to MAGA and have them hear and understand it, it would be this "Donald Trump is a politician". Understand that he is not a Savior. He is not a hero. He does not care about you any more than any other politician.

There are many ways to understand this administration; here are a couple that I wish people would use more often:

1. MAGA is a cluster of ideologies and special interest groups draped in a flag, wearing a crown. The cluster of ideologies and interest groups are not particularly well aligned. There are at least two distinct genres of America First. You have MAHA vs Corporate Interests. Traditional Hawks vs Isolationists. etc etc.

2. Trump uses psychological manipulation without shame. If your reply is that all politicians do this, see my one message above.

~~~

I've just re-read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.

There's a lot there, and it's honestly a bit painful right now; one thing I keep thinking about is "God is Change". There's a lot of ways to interpret that, but the one that I keep thinking about is: In an information game, playing the game changes the game.

Political and economic moves change the game of politics and economics. When you plan your moves (IF you plan your moves), consider not only where you are going on the board, but also how the board will look when you get there.

Google Street view of the facility:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/6ssyJfjVn1fUGaG2A

> The other option besides blame is shared responsibility and humility, but it feels like people are not very good at thinking that way right now.

Whatever policy we pursue, whatever decision we make, is not forever (at a society level).

When people die, we change policy. When people feel like they cannot get the treatment they need, we change policy.

Unfortunately, this is very complicated and emotionally heavy, and it is much easier to set down the burden on someone else's shoulders, in the form of blame.

We want the FDA to do life critical, complicated and contradictory things, so it's easy to create a narrative that blames the FDA.

The other option besides blame is shared responsibility and humility, but it feels like people are not very good at thinking that way right now.

With Vera Rubin's Large Synoptic Survey Telescope coming online, we'll likely see many more of these. It seems like it would be very difficult to physically intercept any large percentage; what is the next best alternative to physical interception? Lasers? Masers? Comet trail sampling? Pre-staged interceptors?(Interstellar Interloper Interceptor? I'd be interested in entertaining the possibility)