freeopinion

Aren't datacenters being targeted with missiles in this conflict? A single incident for a single Starlink datacenter might not have been the result of a missile, but it seems that full-on missile and drone attacks are now a very real part of the threat profile for datacenters.

As resentment towards datacenters grows in the US you might even see increasingly creative acts of vandalism and other attacks in places that are not considered war zones. A pipe bomb tossed it the vents of AC units ups the game of "basic physical security". And you don't have to get that crazy. A $100 drone can drop a bag of BBs.

Basic physical security is already way above basic at ordinary datacenters in seemingly safe locations.

> the US is clearly turning hostile to Ukraine

I think more precise language is important here. It is my perception that a small faction that currently controls the federal US government is hostile to Ukraine. A large majority of the general population of the US seems to support Ukraine.

You might argue that this distinction doesn't change the reality for Ukraine's prospects, but I disagree. The small anti-Ukraine faction in the US is becoming increasingly unpopular within the US. It is doubtful its dominance of the US executive branch will survive the next general election in two years. Its total control of the US government may not survive another month.

The willpower of Ukraine has been underestimated throughout this conflict. It seems a cinch it will hold strong for three more weeks. Then the US campaign for President begins in earnest and it would not be surprising for many US politicians to press against the anti-Ukraine faction in a bid for control of the US Presidency. The US Congress may try to remove itself from under the thumb of the current president and you might see sweeping changes in as little as three months. Or you might not.

Take courage. I think Ukraine's resolution to survive will outlast the influence of Putin fans who happen to have an outsized influence in US politics at the moment.

I think it is very difficult to discern innate ability because it can be so easily masked by effort. Lack of effort registers as lack of ability. Sometimes it's hard to keep making an effort when you lack ability. So are you slacking because you are lazy, or are you slacking because it's exhausting?

Sometimes you can help somebody find their smart by sparking their interest. Their smart was there all along. They just needed the right motivation to find it. They can learn all sorts of smart things as long as you relate it to kites, or Napolean, or horses, or whatever they find interesting.

Was Google's main product search in 2016? That doesn't ring true. Google's main product today is not search. Neither is it AI. So I guess 50% is a fair characterization. But that was the floor for that prediction in 2016. So... meh.

I'm not going to read the actual article, but I expect it isn't anything like your example.

It would be spectacular if you predicted the next 10 NBA champions with 50% accuracy. It would be much less impressive to predict the next 10 NBA champions will be from the Eastern Conference with 50% accuracy.

This is not a new discussion, of course, but has been examined many times over. Individual people make decisions that no rational individual would make. People also make mistakes. Sometimes people get it wrong. Sometimes group dynamics make it more challenging to get it right. But that's a bit like arguing, "It's not my fault I ran that person over. I was drunk at the time."

Should "The Ox-bow Incident" be required reading in high school?

Is it just me, or didn't we just see a single company cause a bit of a dustup when they refused to provide certain services to a military that wanted to bomb another country?

If it doesn't sound like something in the control of a single individual company, perhaps you have something distorting your hearing.

Didn't the danger of the founder getting bored always exist? With or without Anthropic?

Companies don't think. Companies don't make decisions.

I appreciate the analysis and following a string of thought. But sometimes you eliminate so much reality to follow a thought that the string becomes kinda pointless.

Amodei is worth several $billion, right? He could simply walk away today. There is no Nash equilibrium for him. Nor for his replacement, nor their replacement. And it is not illegal for people to collude in quitting their jobs.

There are two obvious arguments for not quitting. 1. If the well-intentioned person quits they will be replaced by a non-well-intentioned person. 2. There is no real belief in a hazard and you would be giving up unbounded income for no reason.

If the actions and behaviors of a supposedly well-intentioned person who is afraid of a hypothetical non-well-intentioned person are indistinguishable from those of a supposedly non-well-intentioned person... don't we really just end up with a really long sentence with a lot of gibberish + the outcome of having a non-well-intentioned person in power?

It's an interesting aspect of human nature to maintain contradictions in the same brain. Latter-day Saints are taught to value moral agency very highly. But humans in general tend to try to enforce their own practices on others (see Daniel and the Lions Den, also Prohibition).

There will always be those who try to leverage people's human frailties into political advantage. Sometimes it's a real challenge to live a principled life. Indeed, it seems rare to meet people who hold to principles even when the principle appears to work against their own self interest in the moment.

Obviously, moral agency in the extreme can lead to anarchy. Libertarians must always thread the line of figuring out the minimum amount of regulation that protects society just enough without infringing on the individual too much. If you want a libertarian to vote for your law, you have to convince them that it prevents a serious threat to enough important individuals to matter. You have to tip the scale on the contradiction in their brain.

I don't think it is widely known how much casino gaming machines are allowed to control outcome. Indeed, in some cases they are required by law to control outcome.

About half of the states in the USA require the ACT or SAT for high school graduation.

Alabama is one state that requires the ACT. The mean score in Alabama is below 18/36. Wisconsin is another. Its students score on average about 1 point higher than the national average of 19.4/36.

If you prefer states that require the SAT, the mean SAT score of students from Delaware is less than 980/1600, about 50 points below the national average.

I'll leave it to others to argue about whether these exams are rigorous.

Do you have the stomach to walk into a high school in the USA these days? Teachers use AI to generate assignments. Students feed the assignments to AI and submit the responses. Teachers feed the student submissions to an AI for grading.

Good luck with that. You will have to pry the water from the AI datacenters.

This does not imply that the organization is not paying for content writers or proof readers. It does suggest that they are not getting the value of paying for content writers or proof readers.