ZhuanXia

I was not intending to be antisemitic. I just think is a salient example of a religion that no longer believes in God. Christians tend to profess a belief in God right up until they become atheist, at which point they no longer attend church.

Then those resistant to conversion will be selected for.

Bear case for self-driving: in 1 million miles of driving, roughly the number between major human accidents, do we really think these cars will not encounter one AI-complete problem.

A few years before I started working, I read Average is Over. Made a good case that labor power's decline would ramp up ever further. People like to poo-poo AI, but I have been following AI since the dark times before 2012. Winograd schemas, style transfer, GTP-2, image recognition - it is hard for people now to understand how impossible these tasks seemed at the time. The rate of progress is insane and it is foolish to bet against it.

Perhaps we are approaching a time where capital can be converted directly into labor in a way that scales. If this is the case the market is ridiculously undervalued, almost comically so.

I have maintained high savings rates and acquired capital ever since I read that book, regardless of valuations. I consider my portfolio insurance against this scenario.

Would not want to be Graphcore right now.

I find monetary policy a hard subject to reason about. It is too complex for me to understand. Yet the political economy of it is such that I would expect the expert classes to be corrupted in some way. Still, I just act like I believe the experts have it under control. The phrase "epistemic learned helplessness" comes to mind.

Julia Galef remains the best interviewer I have ever heard. She is so incredibly sharp. Her guests will make a point about an abstruse philosophical/economic/statistical topic and she will reply with a perfect, novel, challenging question that betrays an immediate understanding of the complex idea she just processed. Shame the show is on hold.

McNamara’s Folly is a great book on one of his more idiotic policies, and a great meditation on the dehumanizing cruelty that results from basing policy on false but ideologically pleasing assumptions.

I see. Just a c-style loop absent conditions. I find it kind of ugly for some reason.

Not a Perl guy. What are the semicolons in that if statement all about?