Recent submissions

Comment · 19 days ago
Not to mention how casually they talk about changing jobs. As though there weren’t pressures (and desires) keeping people at one workplace, and that those people form a large enough percentage of the population that their resentment of inflation has political force.
Comment · 25 days ago
Syntax highlighting does go, but at least on iOS the reader still uses a monospace font for the code blocks.
Comment · 1 month ago
I think the original point was that cancer 80+ is better than cancer at 45, so you should still try to avoid habits that make it more likely earlier, even if the chances remain 100% at sufficient time scales
Comment · 1 month ago
You assume that the money that was invested in AI wouldn’t have been invested elsewhere.
Comment · 1 month ago
That means that all new investment has been in AI (trading in other sectors is a wash). So a bubble burst would sweep up all that growth.
Comment · 1 month ago
Large index funds that most people’s portfolio inevitably includes substantially invest in AI-adjacent stocks. Not to mention the fact that bubble bursting is not by any means guaranteed to have its effects limited to one sector.
Comment · 1 month ago
People whose retirement funds might be impacted by a bubble burst, or who might lose their jobs (or struggle to get a first/next job) in a post crash economy.

You seem to be neglecting the economic impact question and assuming only the ai companies themselves are impacted in a burst.

Comment · 1 month ago
A good parallel in English is actually “going to (or being at) school.” While you can say you’re at “the” school or “a school”, they mean different things than just being at school. Ditto for UK “to hospital.” (Cf. to university, to college, to city hall, in government)

Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.

Comment · 1 month ago
I think we are being sold AI as expert only when given tools (although that is not emphasized). The (quasi?) miracle of AI right now is that you can get an agent to accomplish the task of a team of intelligent but not exceptional humans at speeds far exceeding what the human could do. Which makes it “cheap” to throw (effectively) dozens of teams at a problem for the equivalent of hundreds of man hours.

That may not be the AI of sci fi fantasy but it’s still a game changing reality.

Comment · 1 month ago
The objection is not too far from criticisms of the use of passive voice: a man was injured at the factory vs a faulty saw blade snapped and injured a man vs after the company loosened safety inspection policies, etc.

Which way you say it shifts the framing. And it’s not that one is less accurate to the facts, necessarily. It just is that one less aptly captures the moral and political relevance of the scenario.

For my part, I think it makes good sense to anthropomorphize in some contexts and not others. Generally when responsibility is at issue, you probably want the framing that tunes anthropomorphism down to near zero, since it’s the human dimension you care about.

Comment · 1 month ago
> the lack of consequences

Not saying the article is right, but the point is supposed to be that social norms used to (or should) be sufficient. People should feel and be made to feel shame for flagrant disrespect of core principles that their participation in a system would seem to entail (like playing to win).

Speaking for myself, shame has certainly sometimes been enabling, sometimes disabling. Wanting to live up to an image I have of myself and what I should be (and feeling ashamed when I don’t) is a pretty core part of how “I” work. I agree shame can certainly turn toxic, but there are times when it is fair to say, “you should feel ashamed of yourself” (including in some circumstances, “for driving that kid to suicide by making him feel ashamed of who he is”).

Comment · 1 month ago
They definitely get glares and annoyed looks from fellow passengers. And they must be oblivious if they’ve never noticed other people distractingly listening to music next to them or whatever.
Comment · 1 month ago
Yes but diagrams aren’t abstract paintings (or interpretive dances), which I assume the original commenter meant as intentionally artsy and indirect forms of art.
Comment · 1 month ago
It’s not clear that doing an abstract painting can make you reconceptualize in the way that reframing in other words does. The point about putting in other words is that you may stumble on a clearer, more tractable, more extensible framing. The kind of reframing an abstract painting does is very different, more like changing your attitude or way of looking. But I don’t think it ever leads to a place where you will suddenly find yourself with a sharper understanding that helps you communicate with others more effectively.
Comment · 1 month ago
I don’t think it solves for novel thinking. I don’t think it will make better decisions than an informed and engaged human. But I don’t think there are any decisions a human is forced to make (unlike with a calculator) so people can offload any decision in particular, which is encourages, in aggregate, atrophying. And on top of that, you may find it increasingly difficult without extended time working with someone to identify them as the kind of person who has offloaded all important decisions in this way and just maintained the minimal awareness needed to keep sounding plausibly able.

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