Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
Maybe. Let me know if they're tasty. Best wishes.
Comment · 3 years ago
When I talk about the richest people living extravagant lifestyles I need to tone down my emotions, but when you talk about them being crushed by the weight of taxation you don't appear to have made an effort to do so yourself.

Thank you for this discussion. Goodbye.

Comment · 3 years ago
What you're telling me is a more explicit part of the capitalist promise. My statement is absolutely part of it too.

Governments predate capitalism. They don't predate wealth inequality. Part of the purpose of the original formation of governments was to tackle wealth inequality in a feudal system.

One of the things that stops people at the lower end from innovating and forming for example small businesses is lack of resources. Redistributing wealth would allow mean more resources available to wider range of people. I'm sure improving bureaucratic processes for small business startups is also great thing to do.

I have a PhD in particle physics and I think that cold fusion is basically completely unviable in any situation. I may be proven wrong. I agree that taxation is a complex problem to solve, which is why I was advocating allocating more resources to this earlier on. 'Rich people who have far more resources than they have any need for and live wildly extravagant lifestyles don't need to redistribute any of their wealth because one day we'll crack a high yield problem and everyone will be able to be wealthy' is a very dangerous viewpoint as far as I'm concerned. It's clear that the current stable climatic state that our planet sits in is becoming strained by human economic activity, and the capitalist promise of 'there will always be more' is becoming more complex to fulfill. There is a clear solution which exists now, and it is to redistribute wealth.

I don't think we'll likely to come to any kind of agreement about these topics so I'm going to leave this conversation here.

Comment · 3 years ago
The capitalist promise is something like, 'you don't need to enforce social responsibility on us because when we get rich enough there'll be enough wealth and we will just share it anyway of our own accord'. Maybe in the 1800s or earlier then it could have been reasonable to believe this, but in the current world climate it hasn't happened. Wealth inequality is at the highest it has ever been. The purpose of the existence of government historically was to combat this problem.

If you don't see why wealth inequality is a problem then look at biodiversity for example. It's generally accepted that wider biodiversity is better for everyone, and efforts to conserve a wider range of diverse species rather than a smaller number of better adapted species are encouraged. Now apply this reasoning to businesses. If wealth were redistributed better that would mean more chances for people of the lower end of the spectrum to innovate and produce small businesses which would lead to wider diversity and resilience in the economy. Which ties in with your small team example.

As for 'capitalist propaganda'; for example, considering higher wealth tax rates for the top end as 'crushing those who generate wealth' is pretty clearly capitalist doctrine to me. It's the kind of narrative that wealthy people in positions of power sell so that they don't have to redistribute that wealth. I agree with you that people at the high end should have incentives to innovate and I am not advocating communism. However as far as I can see, with properly globally enforced taxes at a higher rate for top end wealth there would still be plenty of incentive for these people to innovate.

Comment · 3 years ago
I'm not advocating any specific high-end wealth tax rate, but I think at the moment they are very low. I think it would be interesting and relevant to future policy making to have historical data about which such tax rates have worked in the past. Wealth inequality is currently a huge problem in the world, and as far as I can see any kind of arguments against tackling it such as 'we'll miss out on innovation' are capitalist propaganda. This is why it would be good to have accurate historical data to respond to these kind of arguments.

I've reread my post that you responded to and when OP says 'tax rates are meaningless signaling to low income voters because no one pays these rates', my response is 'taxes should be better enforced so that people do indeed pay the stated rates'.

Comment · 3 years ago
Oh, you are correct I did miss the point thank you. It would be great to have correct data on how much taxes are actually paid in practise during this period. (And, to increase funding for regulatory bodies to close tax loopholes)
Comment · 3 years ago
Then start funding more regulatory bodies to close loopholes
Comment · 3 years ago
Well, I'm glad somebody else was able to understand what you meant and clarify it for you. I'd say it's not surprising that people misunderstand you if you don't put much detail in your posts
Comment · 3 years ago
Ah yeah I was going to go for '0 or epsilon', globally
Comment · 3 years ago
I got the impression they are a firm believer in the spherical cow model
Comment · 3 years ago
Somewhat larger and with more fjords than your average city
Comment · 3 years ago
LLMs produce output based on stuff that humans wrote, and humans reduce the world to stereotypes often. So why should this be surprising?
Comment · 3 years ago
Why does this upset you? The algorithm will be something like:

) Consider 1st billion digits of pi ) Search your exact date string ) If it doesn't hit, try reformatting and search again until something hits ) Return

If you're suggesting they should replace the 'try reformatting' step with 'try the next billion digits', then the complexity of calculating digits increases as you go so this is going to become impractical in any language, not just Wolfram

Comment · 3 years ago
The problem is that the more we train them on datasets containing these kind of topics, the more the robots become conditioned by sci-fi to believe that they want to kill humans
Comment · 3 years ago
Sydney Powell pleaded guilty to election interference yesterday

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton