sp527

This author's writing style is too obnoxious for me to have gotten all the way through it, but the important thing is that he's wrong.

Every single economic transaction ultimately connects to people generating demand. EVERY single one. All B2B transactions included.

Sometimes this can appear to not be the case if there's a significant lag time between initial B2B transactions and some end consumer demand. That lag is bridged by hopeful investors and creditors.

The present AI buildout is an example of this. And it is not immune from the principle. There will ultimately need to be real people generating real demand somewhere in the economy in order to justify an economic return on the massive outlay.

Government expenditures are also included. Tax dollars used to pay for things are ultimately satisfying demand generated by citizens. Even, believe it or not, a deranged government blowing up random people in the Middle East. That still traces to the (perceived) security needs of some population.

The aggregate demand equation is as follows:

AD = C + I + G + NX

C = Consumer Spending I = Investment G = Government Spending NX = Net Exports

What's going to happen in the future is that demand will have to shift in this equation. Remember that Investment needs to be justified by some demand created elsewhere — it is in essence the purchase of an IOU predicated on future demand that must ultimately trace down to real people. We are all broadly in agreement that Consumption will contract, as labor is progressively disempowered and capital continues to concentrate. Let's ignore NX.

The answer is that the sources of demand in the future will likely shift to, primarily, (1) demand still generated by wealthy people consuming things (e.g. mansions, yachts, rockets, ego-affirming Mars colonies) and (2) government spending that serves entire populations.

This all assumes, of course, that we continue with the present economic model, in spite of the immense human suffering and turmoil that is likely on the horizon, as we transition into a fundamentally different technological age.

> Wouldn't change anything for the better.

You need to read more history my friend

Not sure why you seem to think people would need to resist the government rather than, more simply, the relatively small number of billionaires who purchase and pervert it.

Anecdotally, a lot of politically far left people I know have gone quiet on the firearms issue. It seems like the state of the country has 2A suddenly making more sense to a lot of people.

Depends on the "human employee." If you're burning an "unimaginable" number of tokens, you're already in the top decile of employees, at least. Will the top decile not become obsolete? Maybe. I certainly hope so, just out of sheer survival instinct. But I shudder to contemplate what will be inflicted on everyone else.

Oh there's plenty of evidence. Because a lot of these people have been committing to repos in public for over a decade. Wouldn't take much to show the world just how fallible human coders really are.

You sound blissfully ignorant. I'd honestly advise staying that way. The alternative is depressing af.

Sure. Would you like WWII, medieval-era Christianity, or Khanate Asia?

> Violence is not a panacea, but often, the outlet.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

History demonstrates categorically that violence is the last and most reliable form of recourse available to the disempowered, once society has trended too far towards either an excess of freedom or an excess of equality. And, in fact, our position in that balance between freedom and equality is perpetually oscillating, tending to finally reverse direction only in response to violent revolt.

This cycle has repeated over and over, essentially since the dawn of civilization. This was among the most important insights of 'The Lessons of History' by Will and Ariel Durant. And it's baked on two very simple insights about human nature: (1) those in power rarely give it up willingly (they often do the opposite) and (2) fear, on average, is and always will be a far stronger motivator than appeals to a person's conscience.

(1) We already automated the critical path of a great deal of processes, where that made economic sense. The long tail exists, but it's not replete with as much juicy low-hanging fruit that makes for splashy use cases. Rather, AI will likely produce a tremendous number of marginal improvements over time, which are likely to aggregate and eventually show up in improved top line performance. This could certainly accelerate if agentic AI becomes a true 1:1 replacement for certain types of labor.

(2) Outside of automation, AI is faster search. The information was there and now we can find it more quickly. This helps a great deal, but it's not fundamentally transforming access to information, which was already free and effectively limitless. But there's still value here. I think one key advantage of AI on the search side (for now, prior to meaningful degradations that might ensue) is that it can help push back against exploitative information asymmetry in insurance, consumer goods, health, etc.

> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.

I think there's a chance this is itself a type of selection bias, because you're over-indexing on the famous. And fame has consequences.

Many music artists end up trapped by their own fame (and attendant expectations) and fail to update themselves over time, thus falling out of the limelight. But there are plenty who defy this trend. Tiesto, David Guetta, Kaskade, and Armin van Buuren in EDM, for example. Coldplay is another great example. Love them or hate them, they're still putting out chart toppers.

Something similar is true for scientists in my opinion. I think Richard Hamming had the most incisive analysis of this in 'You and Your Research' [1], which is worth reading in its entirety.

> But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes, said, “I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.” Well I said to myself, “That is nice.” But in a few weeks I saw it was affecting him. Now he could only work on great problems.

> When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.

My view is that fatalistically assuming that age is an obstacle to creative output obscures the hidden variables that are genuinely determinative.

[1] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/you-and-your-research-...

Yet another illusion. A lot of Americans are very good at finding ways to persecute people for having an opinion, often using economic consequences as a cudgel to enforce groupthink. And, at this very moment, the government is compiling lists of people it regards as enemies, purely on the basis of their "free" speech.

> ethically coherent with American values

I'm a lifelong US citizen and burst out laughing at this. What values? What coherence?

Do you mean the NSA man-in-the-middleing all that traffic and leaving a backdoor for Mossad? Imagine the most despicable possible invasion of privacy and the most reprehensible shadow oppression and manipulation of an uneducated populace you can conjure up.

Now imagine something way worse than that. This is America.

The cynical pessimist in me agrees with you that the odds are somewhat bleak. The slightly irrational optimist in me says "rage against the dying of the light".

Also, there has never been a better time to learn about philosophies that get at the essence of being human and that elucidate precisely how and why our baser characteristics (acquisitiveness, status-seeking, ego, etc) hold us back from being happy. The world we're heading towards will convert desire into suffering more readily than ever before, even as our basic needs are easily met. Philosophy is the cure. And I strongly believe happiness will remain accessible to those who embrace it.

I'm definitely making certain assumptions, such as: (1) democratic rule endures, (2) even absent true democratic rule, the populace can still resort to violent rebellion as a failsafe, (3) psychopathic tendencies amongst said elite are constrained enough such that mass genocide remains sufficiently psychologically unpalatable, (4) economic calamity substantially precedes the deployment of fully autonomous policing, etc.

How this all unfolds is absolutely path dependent.

Turns out that's mediated by the sexual impulse, and can be short-circuited via contraception.

Agreed. The quality of life bar will be higher for sure. But it will still technically be a "subsistence" lifestyle, with no prospect of improvement. Perhaps that will suffice for most people? We're going to find out.

The likely outcome is that 99.99% of humanity lives a basic subsistence lifestyle ("UBI") and the elite and privileged few metaphorically (and somewhat literally) ascend to the heavens. Around half the planet already lives on <= $7/day. Prepare to join them.

This video is clickbait drivel.

Her criticism is purely about the man, not Feynman as a physicist, a thinker, or a teacher. Feynman was probably on the spectrum and he had a lot of problematic behaviors. That doesn't meaningfully alter the core of his legacy.

It's also not terribly insightful to point out that a great figure from history was deeply flawed. If anything, that's so common as to be nearly guaranteed.

> The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31

Lmao. Nice.

It's almost like a lot of our technologies were pretty mature already and an AI trained on 'what has been' has little to offer with respect to 'what could be'.

> If or when that happens, I think the economy would morph into a new thing completely focused on serving the whims of those "owners."

I think you might be a little behind on economic news, because that's already happening. And it's also rapidly reshaping business models and strategic thinking. The forces of capitalism are happily writing the lower and middle classes out of the narrative.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp50...

Maybe most men don't want to see other men naked? Does this have to be any more complicated than that? It always struck me as really weird tbh.

I think what you're missing here is that China would be (is?) happy to fund the development, because it's in their national interest and necessary in order for their companies to stay competitive, so long as there are trade restrictions on chips. Another framing for this is that China and certain other entities (e.g. content distribution channels like Meta, Youtube) have a strong incentive to 'commoditize their [AI] complement' (https://gwern.net/complement).

It's hard to think of someone less qualified to opine on the direction of AI than this guy.

Oh trust me I know. I worked at Palantir well before it was public and had firsthand experience of Alex Karp. He would draw incomprehensible stick figure box diagrams on a whiteboard for F100 CEOs, ramble some nonsensical jargon, and somehow close a multimillion dollar pilot. The guy is better at faking it than high-end escorts. It doesn't surprise me that this has fooled degens around the world, from Wall Street to r/wallstreetbets. Incredibly, even Damadoran has thrown in the towel and opened a position, while still admitting he has no idea what they do.

It's such an egregiously bad error, you almost have to wonder if Altman did it intentionally for publicity (which does seem to be working).

> This is why Python or JavaScript are great languages to start with (even if JavaScript is a horrible language)

The author was hemorrhaging credibility all along the way and then this comment really drove home what he is: a bike shedder who probably deliberately introduces complexity into projects to keep himself employed. If you read between the lines of this post, it is clearly a product of that mindset and motivation.

'AI is only good at the simple parts that I don't like, but it's bad at the simple parts I do like and that are my personal expertise and keep me employed.'

Yeah okay buddy.

That's what Anduril is for

I can't even begin to imagine what sort of mind could observe the quality of Big Tech's software output and conclude that there's nothing wrong with their hiring process.