vharuck

It's a long game thing. My kid surprises me with how far back he can remember the things I've said. He'll say them like he came up with them independently. That means those words are getting through and being internalized.

The vast majority of peoples' actions are beneficent, or at least polite. Otherwise, nobody would even keep their cars on roads. Stores would keep all merchandise in locked displays (not just the expensive things where the rare thief causes too much damage).

The bad experiences stand out because that's how our minds are wired, and they're so uncommon as to be surprising.

Some of my friends are going to start a book club specifically for Dungeon Crawler Carl. I'm really looking forward to it.

For the majority of math history, people wrote proofs using natural language. Formalized notation is relatively recent. I have read both, and the notation is (on the whole) so much easier to read. But anybody is free to learn math beyond an undergraduate level with natural language texts. If you want to be traditional, start with Euclid's "Elements."

Plus, in the good articles I've read, the structure is usually: dissection of subproblem, intuitive description of solution, converting that solution into notation, proceed to next subproblem. If you see an unfamiliar symbol in an article, look it up. If you don't understand its definition, you don't yet have an intuitive grasp of the concept. Keep going down that rabbit hole until you have the intuitive building blocks to understand the article.

Frankly, I love how much math we can teach before a kid graduates high school. Thousands of years of mathematical ideas, up to calculus invented less than 400 years ago. All before they're 18 years old and probably don't care much about math.

Allowing AI companies to get away with this because we're "better off"¹ is like eating our seeds. Sure, we built something cool with the massive corpus available, but how will it affect future decisions to develop or share creative work?

If nothing else, a sense of justice tells me that if somebody's work directly helps create a profitable tool, that person should share some of the profit. The size of the share can be negotiated, but the AI companies didn't even reach out before the law suits. And even then, only to major sources of content (some of whom don't have the copyright for their content, just a limited license for distribution on a website and all the nitty gritty involved in that).

1: In a sense, a world with these models has more capabilities and is therefore better. But this is the real world with real people, who are emotional and competitive. So let's see how it actually plays out.

I've been thinking about nukes lately (way too much, in fact). And, IMO, the only people who want nuclear weapons are national leaders. If the US invaded North Korea tomorrow, then NK has three options:

1) Launch nukes at the US. The minute those missiles leave their silos, the US will launch theirs. Even assuming the best case of no other nations joining in, most residents of NK and many residents of the US are either dead or going to die soon. The leaders of NK are probably dead.

2) Fight a conventional war. NK will probably hold out fairly well using drones. If they learned from Iran's diffuse decision-making in the military, they'll do even better. They might hold off the US long enough for peace talks. Leadership has a chance to survive, more so if they flee to China or Russia.

3) Capitulate immediately. Leadership flees to China or Russia, and the US probably lets them. The citizens aren't massacred or conscripted into a massacre, and they go on living their lives.

For NK citizens, the order from best to worst is scenario 3, 2, then 1 (if NK had good human rights, the order would be 2, 3, then 1). For pragmatic leadership, it's 2, 3, then 1. For crazy leadership, it's 1, 2, then 3. In the long run, every country will have a crazy ruler.

And that applies to any two countries. If Russia invaded the US tomorrow, I'd prefer we put up a good fight with conventional weapons, and then surrender if that fails. No nukes. I would rather live a mean life under Putin than watch my family suffer radiation poisoning. At least there's a chance of improvement and rebellion with the former.

Thinking more about it, is there any good circumstantial evidence that nukes have deterred war? Conventional war between any major powers would be devastating to everyone's economy. When the USSR was falling apart, they knew it was because of their own system and choices. Was would have just made things worse. The US goes to war with weaker nations and still leaves before winning, because we're a democracy and wars are very unpopular.

I listened to yesterday's NYT's The Daily podcast about the Hugging Face incident, and they got to the part about some of the agents showing reluctance or guilt in the posts. Then I thought, "These are improv actors." Stories with conspiracies of AI agents will often have "nervous Nellies" because that makes a better story. So when the flow of the conversation reaches a point where a nervous Nellie would chime in, it's reasonable that an agent would fill in that probable post.

The worrying implication is that stories have conflict.

What about researchers at universities? Maintain a list of experts and conduct a poll whenever an event like this happens or enough of the experts request.

Or require an act of Congress. Obviously, we can no longer rely on Executive Orders being careful, thought-out, or lasting changes. Does any mapping organization want to change names back and forth? Does any user want to see these changes?

I'm happily surprised they didn't ask for money.

Imagine an arts and crafts company. The company wants to create a forum where users can share pictures and advice of their creations. There must be moderators, because unmoderated image boards become cesspools of CSAM and scams. Let's assume Section 230 doesn't exist or at least doesn't provide such a strong shield against liability.

Does a company moderator need to review every post? That might be feasible for a low-population community, but it can be expensive.

But let's assume that's the protocol. A post is submitted and reviewed by a moderator. How does the moderator know if the post violates a law? Is the moderator a lawyer with knowledge of all laws? If not, every post is a roll of the dice for paying unpredictable fines or the end of the business.

Without Section 230, any lawyers' advice for hosting user content would be simple: "Don't."

>The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance.

Many immigrants come to America to work and start businesses. That creates jobs. Even the day-laborers buy food, clothing, tools. If we cracked down on businesses that used illegally immigrated workers, that would be a much more targeted way to fight wage suppression.

How could inflation come from illegal immigration? Are the immigrants bringing in crazy amounts of money? Does the existence of more workers competing for an open position drive up the going wage?

If we want to reduce the price of housing, we need to build more houses. That's the key. The trouble is how to tackle the financial and regulatory hurdles that discourage building houses. Clamping down on immigration from poorer countries hurts the construction industry, which employs a lot of immigrants.

>Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.

If we cared about people with foreign allegiances participating in our politics, we'd ban dual citizenship. If we cared enough about welfare costs to do unpopular things, we'd ban smoking and high-sugar foods. That would save a lot more in welfare costs, and our citizens would be healthier. On my list of priorities for reducing welfare costs, taking money from poor people who don't actually qualify ranks low. It's a mistake or crime that feeds people and gets money circulating in local economies. Not efficient, but not world-ending and probably not common. If you really want to find people receiving benefits despite not actually qualifying, look for senior citizens hiding their wealth as cash in their house.

>I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.

Trump stated immigrants poison the blood of our nation. I'm going to accept that as his actual belief and reasoning.

Don't forget, with the alleged drug boats to the south, this government claims anyone they designate a terrorist is immediately a valid target for lethal military action.

4, actually.

3 voted to allow the executive order rescinding birthright citizenship.

1 voted against the order, but on the reasoning that it violated a law from the early 1900s, not the Constitution.