mr_00ff00

Had this conversation with a friend, but I think as an America you can be very optimistic about the institutional strength of democracy in the country.

People are very pessimistic recently, but if anything, we are seeing that our system works well. A person got into power that a majority voted for, but when he oversteps, the courts and other institutions (even judges and fed reserve chairs he picked!) seem to hold him to the rules.

I get the pessimism, but for the most part, I kinda think the system is working.

Are you saying this is specific to the US?

I think you would be hard pressed to find a country that didn’t get involved in some war that had nothing to do with defense.

What are some of the biggest EU alternatives for US big tech?

When I Google this I find a lot of options, but not sure which are actually mature tech companies vs start-up hopefuls

This reminds of a fun fact I remember learning in university.

Elasticity is the relationship between demand and supply, and there are actually very rare instances where it can be negative (where demand increases with price).

These are called Giffen goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

Explanation (that I remember)

Inelastic demand is when a good is demanded so much, that an increase in price has little affect on the total quantity (people still demand it, think like addictive substances)

So a perfectly inelastic product would be a straight line where any amount is demanded at any price.

So having the curve keep going it would get a positive slope, where higher price makes demand go up.

If I remember the example I was given was food during a famine. Supply is already low, but an additional pressure on price is the known shortage. The idea being that as the price goes up people see it as harder to get.

It’s been so long since I studied the subject so I might have gotten some things wrong here.

1. I believe you can bet on this

2. If it’s only banned in the US, yes it pays out, you just need to get a VPN or go to another country.

Also even it’s banned everywhere, the markets are blockchain contracts so you should be able to access it without the website, which is just the frontend. (this is where my technical expertise breaks down, someone who knows blockchain is a better expert)

Yeah I guess that’s fair, but I wouldn’t say that predictions aren’t the point of the market. My point was more that the predictions must be the point, because people are paying polymarket to get that data.

They don’t make money by taking a spread, they make it by providing information.

And people bet on emotion for sure, but “wisdom of crowds” suggests that generally that will balance out to somewhat accurate odds.

Sure, but some people would get out, right?

Surely you aren’t saying that because prediction markets can’t save every single life, that it’s somehow useless to save a few.

Another example, if odds jump on a missile strike on a particular city, you might have the chance to move out of the way.

The idea is that prediction markets show the “odds” of an event occurring (that’s why it’s percentages after all).

So if a war with Iran is going to happen, and so a general bets that it will, the odds will jump and go very high.

Now at least theoretically, people in the Middle East can see the high odds, and travel elsewhere.

After seeing how many people got trapped in the UAE, I might check these prediction markets in the future for similar things.

I am familiar with this but thought it was for separating prosecutors from judges?

Is this some indirect effect of that?

Damn, is anyone an expert that can speak to the criminal law involved here?

It’s crazy that executives can jump around the law and not face any criminal charges, then the company picks up the bill (although I’m not ignorant thinking this isn’t usual)

I’m just curious to learn more about how often this is the case and you usually what happens with people afterward

Doesn’t this kinda create a problem though? Like a recession implies economic slowdown, but social wellbeing can decrease while the economy is fine.

For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.

> "Excluding new era investment, the other 89% of real private spending rose by only 1% with no job creation," the strategist wrote.

That isn’t what a recession is

We already do this with Congress, and there’s still insider trading

Haha that’s a crazy thing to say to someone.

And thank you so much for all the info. Very cool you were PM for the WiFi QR Code that people use every day.

I appreciate all the info! That gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect

Thanks for advice, and yeah that makes sense that I’ll have to learn a whole new skill set, but I enjoy learning.

When talking about a feature, am I doing basically high level system design? Similar to what a senior engineer does (aka this should be a cache, it’s best to change this to streaming so let’s remove the audit db, etc) or is it even more high level than that?

Also lol at the last line, never heard that but I can see why people might make the assumption.

Good luck, I’m sure there are roles out there

“ If models stopped advancing today, we could still reach effective AGI with years of refining harnesses.”

Unless you’re a machine learning engineer with something to share, our current models are not even close to general AGI, and won’t make it.

My understanding (as just an engineer) is that LLMs continue to improve at crazy rates, but it’s clear this is not the answer for AGI.

Well right, so like I said, in sports that’s a good thing

Maybe slightly unrelated, Would this not heavily tip off Iran that an attack was coming?

Surely that’s easy for Iran to hear about.

It seems weird to know the attack was coming and yet their leader still gets killed.

You could argue that certain prediction markets are better than the alternative. Maybe not for this, but take sports betting.

People taking sides against each other means the losers and winners are individuals.

Meanwhile sports betting is growing but the winners are “the house”, the companies.

Curious about any anecdotal evidence about this from people. I have always struggled with languages and have been trying to learn Italian for the past 6 months.

Is this 80% listening, 20% active using a good way to do it?

You could argue though Tesla isn’t targeting the average Joe, since they basically still haven’t made a affordable EV that they have mentioned they are working on (I think the new affordable cyber truck is still above the 40k promise, and they hinted the price will likely rise).

For luxury car owners or people who want the statement, subscriptions are good way to capture additional payment. Since if customers wanted to pick the cheapest option, they would have already picked something else.

Yet Tesla is trading near its all time high.

This is untrue: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/reddit-us...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/facebook-...

Reddit has far fewer users in most countries outside the US than facebook.

Also, I don’t like the current US administration, but you cannot make the claim somehow China is better, especially to minorities.

You have to know very little about China to think that it is somehow more favorable to foreigners and minorities than the US.

What the US does is bad, but somehow Americans think that means everywhere else is better.

So is Markdown a programming language? Any logic for html, is therefore Markdown as well.

But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent?

I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China.

If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.

We already ban tobacco ads on tv (in the us) is their freedom of speech violated?

I don’t think you need to count companies being able to put any message out there as free speech.

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but there was a time when Italy was the world’s Middle East (a collection of divided states where the great powers had their proxy wars)

Not a surprise to see Rome have so many based on that.

To some degree there’s something like this happening. The old saying “pics or it didn’t happen” used to mean young people needed to take their phones out for everything.

Now any photo can be faked, so the only photos to take are ones that you want yourself for memories.