lucidbee

I have realized when browsing some twitter culture war exchanges that people almost never respond to the opposing party's arguments. They imagine a set of arguments that uses some of the same words and then argue with that. This type of exchange never results in agreement -- or even the exchange of information! It's unhinged from any communicative act. It's merely inflammatory.

I do think this is extremely problematic in the long run.

I have to admit I occasionally have crackpot physics ideas floating around in my head and I actually have seen that Dr Hossenfelder has this service and thought of contacting her. But my tech job took too much time to even clarify my thoughts. (I had probably 5 undergrad physics/astronomy courses.) How many of us have these thoughts I wonder? It's a fun way to pass the time. Recently I thought that rather than thinking of these ideas as physics I should look at them as science fiction and write an amusing story.

I worked as a principal engineer in an AI company until a year ago and I was impressed at how hard it is to get models robustly trained. They are fragile in real world contexts (in the field) and training is full of pitfalls. I have heard so much marketing enthusiasm but the real world situation is different. Some fundamental advances are not even in sight yet. We don't know what we are missing. My view is we don't know yet whether the singularity is possible and have no idea when it could arrive.

If I were you I wouldn't apply right away to a 4 year college. Do community college in your chosen field and then transfer.

In California if can do 2 years in a community college you are guaranteed a spot in a school in the UC system. Not UC Berkeley, but still some place great. I think to qualify for this transfer you need to have a 'C' or 'B' average.

If you stay on the pity pot you won't get anywhere. Also, in California, community college is very cheap.

I was a crappy student in HS and the only good thing about me was my SAT scores. They got me into a good school. I ended up as a highly ranked engineer at Microsoft. My heart sank when people started not using the SAT. I hope this becomes a trend.

I have also read that it is really really hard to show that tutoring pays off for the SAT. I think the SAT is the fairest part of the admissions package.

I looked at the "mildly pornographic app" you wrote and my reaction was, I would not choose to hire you. Basically I don't want to be exposed to people's sexual fantasies as a part of my job. It's obnoxious and way, way into the territory of TMI. Do what you like and keep it private. The fact you thought it was appropriate to share this with a potential employer reviewing your resume is a red flag. Your sense of what is appropriate to share in the workplace is clearly off.

This is quite different than merely listing an employer such as pornhub on your resume.

Awesome tip. Thank you.

This is one of my absolute favorite podcasts. If you listen to the first you will want to listen to all. Great production values, fascinating stories.

I think there is a structural problem here that we are avoiding. The reason some higher ups don't see the merit of particular individual developers is that their pay does not reflect their contribution. Pay is the simple metric that should reflect worth, but we don't use 10x or 100x pay scales. We are failing to pay stars and superstars in accordance with the value they contribute to company. profits.

The timing of this is so rich in irony I can't help but wonder if there is an element of internal sabotage. How many FB employees hate FB right now? The latest expose of FB is both effective and truly awful. I can't imagine feeling good about a FB job. And it's gotten worse! Now they look like they can't even keep their websites up.

This seemed like a blurb for start ups rather than an analysis. One thing that is missing is a quantitative analysis in the factors underlying inequality, and whether / how they relate to startups at all. Also missing is an analysis of the role of rent seeking in increasing inequality. Basically there is a fundamental division in factors of inequality: which are related to the self serving manipulations of the political and economic system by rich people to sustain their position and which are related to innovation by the best entrepreneurs? Then we must also analyze which of these factors are dominant in our environment. He avoids these essential questions so this essay is just opinion. There are some aspects of our situation that make it seem rent seeking is dominant: low productivity growth, stock buy back games by companies rather than investment, a slowing down of new business formation (which can be caused by monopolies). I am sometimes critical of economics as a discipline because there is no scientific method but he could use some immersion in economic data, studies, and theory, to force him to come up with a useful analysis.