discodonkey (u/discodonkey)

discodonkey commented on Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses craigmod.com/ridgeline/21... · Posted by u/speckx

discodonkey · 2 months ago

I don't understand how you can portray these small-business owners as some helpless lambs, powerless against tourists. I can think of many ways to stop tourists from patronising an establishment. But of course (that one cocktail bar owner notwithstanding), most businesses operate for profit, and lap that money up.

Really, it seems to me like this essay is more about turning up your nose that some people are not enjoying Japan the "right" way.

discodonkey commented on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70 telegraph.co.uk/world-new... · Posted by u/wslh

discodonkey · 3 months ago

This is perfectly reasonable.

People are living and staying healthy for longer than they used to, while the overall population is aging disproportionally due to low birth rates. If they hadn't raised the retirement age, they would have to raise taxes very significantly.

People should remember that retirement is about making sure the people who are too old to work can still live respectably. It's not an end-of-life vacation.

Of course, it's still going to be massively unpopular. But the alternative is fiscal armageddon.

discodonkey commented on AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer’s and identify a therapeutic candidate today.ucsd.edu/story/ai-h... · Posted by u/pedalpete

cdf · 4 months ago

I always believed that the AI/LLM/ML hysteria is misapplied to software engineering... it just happens to be a field adjacent to it, but not one that can very well apply it.

Medicine and Law, OTOH, suffers heavily from a fractal volume of data and a dearth of experts who can deal with the tedium of applying an expert eye to this much data. Imagine we start capturing ultrasound and chest xrays en masse, or giving legal advice for those who needs help. LLMs/ML are more likely to get this right, than writing computer code.

discodonkey · 4 months ago

When AI writes nonsensical code, it's a problem, but not a huge one. But when ChatGPT hallucinates while giving you legal/medical advice, there are tangible, severe consequences.

Unless there's going to be a huge reduction in hallucinations, I absolutely don't see LLMs replacing doctors or lawyers.

discodonkey commented on AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer’s and identify a therapeutic candidate today.ucsd.edu/story/ai-h... · Posted by u/pedalpete

avogt27 · 4 months ago

It's really a bummer to see this marketed as 'AI Discovers Something New'. The authors in the actual paper carried out an enormous amount of work, the vast majority of which is relatively standard biochemistry and cell biology - nothing to do with computational techniques. The AlphaFold3 analysis (the AI contribution) literally accounts for a few panels in a supplementary figure - it didn't even help guide their choice of small molecule inhibitors since those were already known. AlphaFold (among other related tools) is absolutely a game changer in structural biology and biophysics, but this is a pretty severe case of AI hype overshadowing the real value of the work.

discodonkey · 4 months ago

I think the authors of this article probably sought to highlight the fact that AI is now being used in medical research, rather than credit it with all the work (see "helps unravel" as opposed to "unravels").

discodonkey commented on My 16-month theanine self-experiment dynomight.net/theanine/... · Posted by u/dynm

defen · 6 months ago

The author directly quoted the European Food Safety Authority, who found the same thing he did. There's a rich history of self-experimentation in medicine and nutrition, I don't think you need to be so negative.

discodonkey · 6 months ago

My point was that no data gleaned from this experiment would've been meaningful, regardless of the result, because it was not conducted very rigourously.and on a sufficiently large scale.

discodonkey commented on My 16-month theanine self-experiment dynomight.net/theanine/... · Posted by u/dynm

discodonkey · 6 months ago

For a community that prides itself on critical thinking, I'm always surprised to see HN lap this sort of pseudoscientific witch-doctor stuff up.

This poorly-controlled, N=1 experiment tells you nothing, not even about the author.

There's absolutely no reason to consider these novice self-experiments when professional scientific experiments are available (unless you're hunting for a specific result).

discodonkey commented on Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working economist.com/leaders/202... · Posted by u/pseudolus

PaulRobinson · 6 months ago

Consider how big the difference is between each segment identified here. Realise that the upper income bracket itself could be broken down into three segments that would show an ever starker difference.

Unequal gains is the problem, and your intuition can help inform why: the 2023 dollar index used is based on what rate of inflation? CPI? RPI? Something else? Why is it that in 1970 a median income household could buy a home on a single income and raise a family (including sending kids to college), on a 2023-dollar income of $66k, but that's mostly not possible on $106k in actual 2023 for most households.

When you adjust for real buying power using a less favourable means of assessing inflation and taking into account housing costs more fully, I sense you'll find that the bottom two brackets are behind their 1970-adjusted counterparts, and the upper income bracket is significantly better off, especially if you then break that upper segment up a little into more categories.

And, without something happening to adjust this, the effect is going to just get worse and worse, and everyone knows it.

discodonkey · 6 months ago

It seems to be using the CPI. The basket of goods & services the CPI is referencing is determined by the extensive Consumer Expenditure Survey, and reflects to a fair degree the actual spending habits of Americans.

Obviously, if you give more weight to housing, you're going to get different results. But it would distort the actual change in expenditure.

discodonkey commented on Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working economist.com/leaders/202... · Posted by u/pseudolus

dleeftink · 6 months ago

Two things can be true at once; growing income per working hour has not resulted in less income inequality.[0]

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/inequality?tab=chart&Da...

discodonkey · 6 months ago

True. Income inequality increased.

The person I responded to suggested that only the rich saw income growth, and that they were achieving this by taking from the poor, which is wrong.

discodonkey commented on Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working economist.com/leaders/202... · Posted by u/pseudolus

andy_ppp · 6 months ago

People really should look at the work of Gary Stevenson here: https://youtu.be/TflnQb9E6lw

The truth is economic growth hasn’t been occurring in real terms for most people for a long time and the rich have been transferring money from the poor to themselves at a dramatic rate.

I’m starting to think the entire system is corrupt and we are headed for a destroyed Europe and a civil war in the US. Maybe I’m very pessimistic but this moment in history feels like the end of the American empire, what comes after this is extremely uncertain but people only seem to demand a fair piece of the wealth after a world war.

discodonkey · 6 months ago

>economic growth hasn’t been occurring in real terms for most people for a long time

This is just not true.

At least in the U.S., people of all income tiers have seen their incomes grow[0] while their working hours shrunk[1].

Inequality is a problem in itself, but equating unequal gains with "transferring money from the poor" seems like bad faith.

[0] - https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/th...

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...