Compound interest can be demotivating. Oh if I'd started investing 10 years ago I'd be rich, I'll never get as much out of it if I start now, so I might as well just not do it.
Comparing the future value not against present inaction, but against earlier action start.
Our servers run Ubuntu. In practice it doesn't make that much of a difference I assume, but why diverge at all if I don't have to. I have separate laptops for work and personal anyway.
There's no moat to AI models so it doesn't really matter who develops it first. If AGI happens none of it matters since it won't be controlled anyway. If there's an exponential wall then everyone will be at it within 12 months of the first person hitting it and then it's better not to have spent the cash pioneering the path.
The long-term idea that the we have to compete claim is based on is like AGI and it's gonna really care what Elon tells it to do. This is a dumb idea regardless of how it fails.
AI models are seeming the ultimate in fungible commodities at this point, why spend on R&D?
If you don't have the capability to train these models, then there's almost no chance of you having enough GPU power to run inference at a large scale on these models (assuming the weights for such a model are ever released or leaked in the future). And that's ignoring the fact that you won't have cultivated a sector that can continue to learn about and improve on said models.
Yes, election coverage and endorsements and politically biased media did not exist before Citizens United. None of the dozens of democracies with political spending limits have political news coverage.
Hinduism is hardly non-proselytising. After all there's not a lot of Buddhists left in India. The Brahmin caste pretty intentionally and comprehensively reacted to and pushed out Buddhist practices once they became threatened by them.
I was thinking along parallel lines. If you have fuck-you money then sure: you just leave when asked to do something imoral. But if you are materially dependent on the job then you have battling imperatives that will stress you.
The first thought that popped into my head here was, "well I have no kids, so yeah if forced to choose between job and morality I'd just bounce and figure it out later". But if I DID have dependents it's harder.
I will say if the choice is between being imoral and _personally_ poor ... I'd like to think I'd rather just be poor.
edit. Then again this is also on us as people to anticipate and prepare for these dilemmas and not let ourselves be trapped in toxic situations. I suck at this and don't do any real forward planning like having a lot of savings or having a backup plan to getting out of a bad job. But that's on me.
> But if you are materially dependent on the job then you have battling imperatives that will stress you
I would like to offer a different perspective for you.
I’ve never been shouted at in my work life. And I also know a few people who complain about being shouted at, at all places of work they’ve had — and it’s difficult for me to empathize with them.
At some point I understood that I never allowed my coworkers or managers to shout at me, and in the rare occasions when their voice was raised, I had made myself very clear, and I quit on the spot had the situation ever happened again. As a result, I’ve always had very pleasant and respectful working conditions, with self-respecting people who I know will quit if abused, so I treat them with respect as well.
On the other hand, people who endure humiliation by imagining contrived moral dilemmas about why it’s good and right for them to continue suffering — suffer for decades wherever they are employed, as they seem to filter out and stick to workplaces where this is acceptable.
Are there really no jobs for your talent where you can be moral, or you’re prepared to endure immorality (and to be faithful employee to such businesses) until you’re old and frail?
It's not really random. Disease development in the Old World was a combo of long term urbanisation and animal husbandry. Urbanisation in the New World existed but wasn't as old and obviously there was way less animal husbandry. Also assuming the Bering straight crossing hypothesis humans probably left almost every freaking old world parasite and disease behind by the time they got into the americas. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of eveolution of diseases that evolved in Africa/Eurasia pretty much gets purged during that migration.
Sure, "random" isn't the right term for what I mean.
There were reasons, but neither side understood them!
From their perspective, it just so happened that 80-90% of the population on one side died within weeks of contact. Often the disease travelled faster than the invaders, so as the went inland they found mostly empty settlements they could just take over.
It's easy to see how both sides could think that the god(s), in their inscrutable ways, had decided to give the land to the Europeans.
This also played out in the opposite direction in Africa. There the Europeans just couldn't survive for long until Malaria treatments became available in the mid 1800s, and so Africa was colonized last. Since Africa is where humanity originated, it has the most diseases and parasites that specialize in feeding on us.
Many of the diseases that afflicted the old world may have evolved after humans crossed into North America, so there was never any resistance in the New World.
They were charging up hill in the mud. Noone really died from arrows, except maybe some of the horses. But a lot of their horses fell and then the knights ran back through their own infantry, though apparently that wasn't that big a deal in the battle.
The battlefield killing was done by light infantry wading in with daggers and hatchets apparently during a foot slog up the muddy hill which left the french heavy infantry exhausted. Another wave of killing afaik was when the captured prisoners were all executed since the english position seemed like it might be overrun by some follow up fighting.
(keep in mind the battle took hours and there was a lot more going on then just heavy horse riding up against arrows once or twice)
This is absurdly wrong. Most immigrants are poor people entering their new societies at the very bottom, not hipster digital nomads. Sometimes they are lower middle class in their own societies, but often they are pretty much at the bottom at home as well.
For whatever reason the west fails to successfully socialize an unacceptably large portion of the native born population.
A train engineer with decades of experience moved to the US when the war in Ukraine started. The job she could get here was as a nanny, watching children in her extended community, and even that was half a favor.
> For whatever reason the west fails to successfully socialize an unacceptably large portion of the native born population.
Part of the reason for that is protection and promotion of freedoms of individuals, which means that we expect the society to stay away from our lives, because we did try various forms of state and church hierarchies running our lives and we did not like it. If you come to the West or are born here learn what it is about and decide how you want to live your life. The same people complaining about the society not caring for all are those who wanted the society to leave them alone.
You need to consider the distinction between legal and illegal immigration for starters. Most legal immigrants are reasonably well off in their society of origin - enough so to afford the legal process (which is not cheap).
And yes, immigrants generally tend to end up lower on the social hierarchy in their new society as compared to the old one, but how is that relevant to what I wrote?
Comparing the future value not against present inaction, but against earlier action start.