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I agree with you of course, people should be ethical. But if every human exists on a spectrum of evil <-> good, and we can't change this, then regulation/law serves a critical function. Proper legislation should at least create an effective floor for what's possible to profit off of. Otherwise we're pretty much at the mercy of the least scrupulous capitalist - and let me tell you, they will always exist.

For AI the argument is: if we regulate ownership back to the creators then China will eat our lunch. This is a morally bankrupt position pretty much by definition.

> Garrett: At the highest level, nothing would make me happier than if we had state-by-state regulation on this type of technology. That to me is so crystal clear, because the lack of regulation on this type of technology just shows that our elected officials need to move faster than they have historically.

Agreed. We've had a lot of this - tech companies begging for tech regulation. Without the regulation it seems we'll always get these competitive races to the bottom of what's possible within the confines of the laws that do exist as less and less scrupulous companies enter the fray.

> in 2014, [Graham] had recruited Altman to be his successor as president.

> [Graham's] judgment was based not on Altman’s track record, which was modest, but on his will to prevail, which Graham considered almost ungovernable.

One thing I don't understand is why Paul Graham offered YC to Altman if he knew how slippery he was..

As a Pittsburgh resident who exclusively used bus for 5 years, this certainly seems like a reasonable take. In Oakland and Squirrel Hill the bus almost stops every single block - which always seemed kind of crazy. It's a _very_ common sight to see a beleaguered student miss their bus and successfully chase it down across multiple city blocks.

I will give the PRT (formerly Port Authority) a shout out though:

1. Bikes are quick and convenient to bring along

2. The numbering system is intuitive enough that you can almost guess how to get to new neighborhoods

3. Accessibility is clearly a priority, and they successfully serve many disabled people

The post script was pretty sobering. It's kind of the first time in my life that I've been actively hoping for a technology to out right not deliver on its promise. This is a pretty depressing place to be, because most emerging technologies provide us with exciting new possibilities whereas this technology seems only exciting for management stressed about payroll.

It's true that the technology currently works as an excellent information gathering tool (which I am happy to be excited about) but that doesn't seem to be the promise at this point, the promise is about replacing human creativity with artificial creativity which.. is certainly new and unwelcome.

> Ofc teens should be kept away from this for obvious biological reasons.

Why of course? Is the reason this is obvious to you unique to teenagers? When they turn 18 (or 20) do the reasons to restrict their freedoms immediately go away? Is there no possibility the 'obvious' reason in your mind couldn't occur for a different person in a different age bracket?

These are not fair analogies to wealth inequality unless you think all people who have more than you got it by cheating people. A better analogy would be the movie Moneyball, about baseball's inequality.

Effectively the problem is that wealth is an inherent feedback loop that naturally creates Pareto distributions instead of normal distributions. People don't have to be 'unfair' for this phenomenon to occur.

It seems to me that democratic society runs best where the distance is minimized between individuals with maximum agency vs. individuals with minimum agency. Agency is power, the ability to move other people to get things you want done, to make purchases, to amplify certain viewpoints over others.

In this regard, I usually think of wealth as a proxy for agency. There are other (negatively correlated) proxies that can be conveniently disregarded by certain political persuasions:

* Debt - effectively going into debt is sacrificing future agency for the sake of the present. In the moment of obtaining a loan you will of course have more liquidity at your disposal but after that moment in time your freedoms are limited due to your debt obligations. It's more obscured with purely financial loans - the way it negatively impacts democracy is more obviously seen in quid pro quo arrangements.

* Welfare dependence - like any other dependency relying on welfare decreases an individual's agency. They cannot afford to live without the welfare apparatus they depend on for survival.

In a democratic system we want every voting individual to have as close to the average agency as possible so that there isn't a non-democratic force continually applied corrupting the democratic process. Conversely we know that human beings are strongly motivated by agency maximization which society also needs for progress - in other words, humans need opportunity. The job of a statesman should be to manage these competing priorities.

Why stop there? EVERYBODY deserves healthcare and education too!

I would say in a perfect world everyone should have all of these things.

The problem is that the marginal cost to giving each of these things to everyone increases to infinity as we approach 100% of a sufficiently large and diverse population. For example, creating a city water system should efficiently deliver clean water to a large proportion of an urban population. However, not everyone lives in an urban setting and delivering clean water to remote populations can get astronomically expensive.

As rational citizens we must acknowledge this unfortunate reality and figure out how to deal with it fairly and equitably. Profit seeking enterprise has been astoundingly effective at driving down these marginal costs for a whole host of goods for centuries. Many of these things you mention only exist because profit seekers developed and distributed them!