keenmaster

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is true.

However, as a suburbanite, I have no problem “commuting” to entertainment in the city once every weekend, when previously I had to commute 5 times a week for work. And when I go to the city, it’s a day full of fun/activities because I know I’m not coming back for a week. You can get the best of both worlds that way.

It’s possible for everyone to like beautiful things but not build them when given the chance.

The “problem” is, everyone has a different preference.

Let’s say I like mid-century modern, and spend $75,000 extra on building (tastefully) in that style.

Now it’s 10 years later and I want to sell the house. A potential buyer likes everything except the mid-century modern. Their favorite style is neoclassical.

To them, mid-century modern styling has a value of zero or even -$25,000. So if I didn’t build in that style, they might have been willing to pay 75k-100k more.

The paradox here is that a divergence in preferences, due to cultural atomization and the internet, has led to lower returns on investment in beauty (and atrophying of craftsmanship and the ability to build beautifully to begin with).

If you ask me, a tasteful aesthetic monoculture is a good thing, and can result in timeless beauty which will be appreciated long after that monoculture evolves/ends. Sameness is not inherently bad! See: Florence, Venice, Andalucia, 1800’s Paris, etc…

When AI gets a robot body, its ability to get what it wants will no longer be contingent on you caring.

There is an app for assistance in skin cancer detection (SkinIO) but of course it’s more limited by the cellphone’s camera vs. the device in the OP. I can see both approaches co-existing, especially as SkinIO’s database expands and mobile phone cameras and AI improve. But it would be great to have the professional device become cheap and small enough that it can be a phone accessory, or perhaps phones can pack more sensors if it somehow makes sense (ie if they can augment phone functionality in other ways).

AI is the greatest threat to Apple’s dominance. They might be spending billions on creating an AI-centric iOS and iPhone, and that would be money well spent. If Android phones put a personal secretary in your pocket, fully integrated throughout the device, then iPhone users would be very tempted to switch without feature parity.

Awesome. What are a couple examples of what this may enable (drugs that would target the same)?

We can make them turn 360 degrees like the electric G-Wagon. If upgrading the fleet of firefighting trucks to do so costs less than the value brought by tighter spacing of homes, it’s worth it.

Once ChatGPT reaches software engineer level of performance it will be trivial to get to senior software engineer.

Human-level AI will radically change everything, and superhuman AI would probably come right after, so he’s using his own definition of “change” here.

A virtual human that doesn’t need a salary? Doesn’t need breaks? Can work 24/7 at superhuman speed? Can multitask with ruthless efficiency?

That…would change the world much less than we think?

Intelligence as a bottleneck will be eliminated overnight, simultaneously, in all domains.

But sure, some things that we don’t like such as conflict and greed will still be around, and hence things will change less than expected if that’s what you’re hoping will vanish.

Labor markets aren’t totally efficient, but they’re also way more efficient, transparent, and capitalist than the healthcare system in the U.S. Enough, at least, for some of the “end run” around inefficient power structures you speak of, over a sufficiently long time frame. The most egregious counter examples are monopsony employers in small to medium sized towns with limited labor mobility - this is an edge case and not really germane to the subject.

Even attempting to drag the economy down with them (not possible) would be a waste of their time, because that is ultimately futile and they know it. What they need to focus on is how to repurpose their real estate portfolios. For example, it’s not trivial to convert a skyscraper office tower to a mixed residential and retail condo building. Now multiply that by thousands of different buildings in different locales with different zoning laws and different calculus for convert vs. keep vs. demolish. A profit maximizing commercial real estate company would put most of its effort into that, after flailing and trying to maintain the previous status quo. If it doesn’t, it will go bankrupt earlier, and new ownership will push forward changes that are necessary in the new WFH reality.

There’s just no going back, and commercial real estate has a whooping coming for it. No one likes to hold a loser in their portfolio. Wealthy, well-connected people who are invested in commercial real estate have a perverse incentive to hype up their investment before they can dump it as soon as they can. Only then will they speak with clarity about how the industry is doomed. No amount of bailouts or subsidies will save it. There will still be a need for office space, but it will be more limited AND the offices that do remain will need to be upgraded to suit their new role as an awesome, high tech, inspiring place for occasional company meetups.

The savings in time, money, and energy from remote work are investible. Resources will be reallocated from commercial office space, commuting, etc…to other more productive endeavors. We won’t see some of that play out for another 5-10 years (e.g. when mass divestment from commercial real estate happens).

There are some genuinely delicious foods that are healthier than junk food and most people would agree tastes better, but they don’t want to cook or don’t want to learn. A robot that excels at cooking can serve you a delicious, healthy meal from a different cuisine every day. Theoretically you can go for years without having the same meal twice. The robot can also take your target macros and nutrition into consideration when deciding on what to cook and how much of it.

I have the InnoCN OLED and I love it. I had to do a double take when I saw the price on Amazon and bought it immediately.

Couldn’t you make some educated guesses and then stop when you arrive at a K that gives you meaningful clusters that are neither too high level nor too atomized.

Right, that’s just bonkers logic though. When the stakes are higher, controls should be stronger.

Self-regulatory bodies are usually centralized and separate from any individual corporation. They also tend to answer directly to a government agency and cannot be disciplined by a corporation. While there can still be issues such as a strong revolving door and potential indirect pressure to be nice to the regulated entities, it’s not as terrible as what Boeing and other airplane manufacturers get to do (inspect themselves in lieu of regulatory inspections). That’s strange, because lives are literally on the line, more so than some other industries with more independent examinations.

2 will be solved by arbitrage (the discount will evaporate). 1 can be solved by competition, assuming GBTC holders actually switch to lower fee ETFs once they see the discrepancy in fees.

“average lawyer in France or Italy will never make the money of the average plumber”

My disbelief requires more suspension than the Golden Gate Bridge. Most reputable sources will disprove this. Also, it’s not a given that the bottom 30% of lawyers (who pull down the average) would be good plumbers - I have a hard time imagining a worse population to pull from to work with their hands on piping and lug around tools in their pickup truck.

I think these “facts” come from blue collar cosplaying. A survey asking “On a scale of 0-100, how much do you want to be a plumber?” would have a disproportionately massive mode at 0.

Good, that means more people are getting an education. I’ve seen too many hot takes online from people who attended college and vastly benefited from college who tell others that university isn’t as great as you think, go to trade school and learn something practical, etc…with a complete and utter lack of self-awareness or sense of irony.

This post reminded me to cancel before my signup offer expires, so I tried via a chat agent. They claimed that they were having technical issues and told me to contact Sirius customer service again in 2 hours. I said that the “technical issues” were a lie, and that they can cancel now. All of a sudden they were able to cancel for me without technical difficulty, but only after refusing one more promotion.

It looks like they use sentiment analysis to assess whether they can use poor excuses to hassle you out of cancelling.

By your estimation, what does this practically mean in terms of: we may be able to do X Y and Z in ______ years now because of this development and other recent innovations in quantum computing.

I’m more curious about this from a consumer angle - anything with at least a downstream consumer impact that is exciting? And even if no consumer impact for the foreseeable future, is there anything “cool” or more tangible than massive encryption breaking?

Game theory predicts the “race to biggest” vehicles. The only way to stop it is through regulation and disincentives.

However, it’s important to consider future trends in automotive technology. Eventually, every new car sold will be an EV - so the pollution issue becomes much less of a concern, with a few pedantic caveats. Cars will also become self-driving.

Solve for the equilibrium. People will want rooms on the road - a self-driving, self-charging boat of a car that you can sleep in while it takes you from LA to Lake Tahoe overnight. It’ll even reach into the drive-thru window at McDonald’s and put your breakfast on a table for you to eat while facing your family members on a comfy sofa. Cars will become like miniature, smart, electric RVs minus the bathroom and ugly clunkiness. And since people won’t be driving them, and theoretically they can achieve super-human reaction time and sensing, maybe pedestrian safety will become less of an issue.

So regulation is tricky. I do think there should be an extra tax to price in the negative externality of large vehicles, but the government shouldn’t go too far with that and it shouldn’t preempt innovation in vehicle format.

Intelligence makes almost everything better, so maybe salt is a better analogy than chocolate (especially once the hallucination rate of LLMs becomes more acceptable).

They might have actually been thinking of Portugal

Ah, the plebeians are the problem. With more information, the plebeians will make incorrect decisions that make them more miserable. It is better to keep them in the veil of ignorance for their own good.

All the grumbling about too much screening doesn’t pass my sniff test. No one can convince me that detecting cancer earlier isn’t, on average, a good thing. The real problem is how expensive our healthcare system is - the cost of even basic screening procedures makes them into a much bigger deal than they need to be.

That intuitively makes sense to me for everything except higher-level goal selection. If someone works at an NGO instead of FAANG because they want to do good for the world, how can that be explained in terms of prediction? If someone minimizes consumption to reduce global warming, how did prediction result in them caring about global warming? I picked those examples on purpose, because they run against some core instincts. Maybe they’re predicting what maximizes peer approval, which optimizes other outcomes too? (Jk :D )

“Far better driving dynamics than gas cars”? No way. Go throw a BMW 3-series around some corners and compare to the Model 3 - you will feel the weight of the batteries. I would have said compare to a Porsche but that’s a different price range.

Note: I’m a big fan of EVs. I’m just saying that handling is one of their weaknesses until battery density gets a lot better.