the bitter lesson is to _let_ data and compute do the majority of the work, it's not to remove humans completely, but wherever possible
Readit Newstherobot24 commented on “The Bitter Lesson” is wrong. Well sort of assaf-pinhasi.medium.com/... · Posted by u/GavCo
therobot24 commented on Ask HN: What useful AI tools do you use every day? · Posted by u/rajkumarsekar
Perplexity - for search (Google replacement), summarization and rewriting, basic research and making presentations (using Perplexity apps)
Granola - transcription and meeting notes, searching across notes, recalling action items
I've played around extensively with ChatGPT, but Perplexity now covers my use cases. I'm looking to test Claude, primarily because Perplexity does not currently support MCP servers, and I need an assistant who can answer questions across all my work files (Google Drives, Calendar, Slack messages, GitHub, etc.).
Have you tried google deep research? i'm curious how well perplexity compares to it.
I've been using Gemini Deep Research to replace my Google search since it does a web search and provides links you can check yourself to any citation that the resulting report uses.
until there's actual enforcement, there isn't the incentive to tell the truth...
It really is sad how much data has been captured and monetized of the average person. It seems like we're only continuing to turn up the heat as we continue to 'boil the frog'.
therobot24 commented on We are no longer a serious country paulkrugman.substack.com/... · Posted by u/rbanffy
The divergence between interest rates and the dollar is historic and bodes ill for investors and company builders who historically have been able to rely on the relative stability of the US.
As a reminder, the Mary Meeker slides on AI reported that the US share of top companies in the public equity market went from ~50% in 1995 to ~85% recently.
Still, the signal from US debt might reflect only changes in a few dominant players (and we famously have adversaries investing in US debt -- Middle East, China, Russia). Also the big beautiful bill shows even Republicans want to spend now and pay later, so this might be unwinding the false expectation of austerity during the Republican trifecta. Both are transitory and neither really goes to seriousness.
The real question is whether we've lost seriousness by continuously moving upstream, into financial and information services and technologies. Our willingness to sell IP/infrastructure now rather than protect and control (milk) it over time reflects a generational lack of diligence. (Sorry - not trying to diminish exit strategies for interim investment tiers.)
republicans wanna spend the way 'they want to' and cut every way the democrats want to spend, and just the opposite is true too (austerity only really matters when it's the other party with the control of the budget)
pair this with each district, state, and constitute company/nonprofit/whatever looking for a piece of the pie creates an utter mess of non-stop spending
therobot24 commented on We are no longer a serious country paulkrugman.substack.com/... · Posted by u/rbanffy
Agreed that policy changes whipsaw markets and that causes disinterest in the dollar, and agreed that could be real bad (TM) for America.
The rest of this essay just reads like griping and cherry picking though. Complaining about the name of the bill "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is just dumb. Senators and Reps name bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy or what have you, it's part of our process.
And, it seems much more likely that whipsawing serves the purpose of someone than that people in the whitehouse are "unserious". I'd rather see Mr. Krugman's estimable mind devoted to figuring out who is benefiting, how long they will benefit, and what that will do to others than to read him complaining about the name of a bill.
I think you're focusing too much on the analogies he used instead of the thesis -- everything is aligning to a leader who isn't respected outside of the USA, much like kim jong un. That if saber rattling is the future of the US, then divestment will only increase and won't easily return. And further, the benefactors of this transformation is whoever doesn't have to adhere to our saber rattling which will be as many other countries as possible.
therobot24 commented on Tesla shows no sign of improvement in May sales data arstechnica.com/cars/2025... · Posted by u/doener
It’s really sad that people are giving up high quality reasonably priced electric vehicles over politics. I’ve driven a Prius for years, because it’s obviously to me that sending money to shady petro states all over the world is just a bad idea and the volatility of oil prices isn’t worth it and the overall maintenance and reliability of my hybrid vehicle is incredible.
I probably will replace it with a Tesla, but I’m hoping they release a 3 row with a reasonable 3rd row seat that would be great for my family and there’s no rush because I don’t really drive too much.
That being said, I think Tesla’s are obviously incredible engineering feats that everyone should want. Politics aside.
would rarely put "high quality" and "tesla" next to each other
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-init...
therobot24 commented on From Steam to Silicon: Patterns of Technological Revolutions ianreppel.org/from-steam-... · Posted by u/hbartab
I think the writer should have also taken a moment to reflect on the underlying _need_ that led to these revolutions. Each need is implicit to what's discussed in the table, but would be useful to help frame the discussion of the underlying questions that are discussed. For instance, going from IR3 -> IR4 created a _need_ of information management, where Google was the first major player in providing search as that means, now agents are taking the role of search & retrieval as a single action.
therobot24 commented on The Era of the Business Idiot wheresyoured.at/the-era-o... · Posted by u/dvt
Yeah, Friedman would clearly agree that you can't have perfect knowledge but he argues that bad business decisions are punished with losses and firms' owners will fire bad managers or they'll lose their investments.
You're actually touching on why he argues against efforts to regulate negative harms, because the government has an imperfect ability to predict the outcomes and there isn't a great feedback mechanism.
ok i think i'm starting to get it a bit, the double edged sword is essentially the reason for focusing on emergent results which (i'm guessing in Friedman's mind) have more options for mechanisms for good results than a constrained market might.
therobot24 commented on The Era of the Business Idiot wheresyoured.at/the-era-o... · Posted by u/dvt
> every business should optimize as much as utterly possible even if this results in exploitation, because the market will accept exploitation until it can't and correct.
I don't thing that's a correct assessment. He talks a lot about the need to follow laws an cultural norms and the importance of society setting normative guardrails for behavior. Moreover he point our I believe correctly that a lot of the worst behavior of businesses stem from monopoly power.
> In my view, the scenario and reasoning by Friedman in how he applies market forces applying to business decisions is a view where you have an assumption of 'knowing the result'
I think it only appears that way if you take small quotations like this out of context.
>> In my view, the scenario and reasoning by Friedman in how he applies market forces applying to business decisions is a view where you have an assumption of 'knowing the result'
> I think it only appears that way if you take small quotations like this out of context.
Can you help me understand this. Like the purpose of using logic to deduce decision making is because there's a fundamental structure in assuring the result from those deductions is accurate (or enough to continue manipulation of the problem data). When you try to predict market reaction to a decision and ascribe harm or success based on the decision you're creating causation out of correlation, often incorrectly. Again, not an expert in economics, but when i view theories of free market forces and how they're part of the logic of business decisions i can't help but think the people using this information are assuming their knowledge and logic aren't fundamentally flawed and as a result are essentially just guessing without thinking they are.
therobot24 commented on The Era of the Business Idiot wheresyoured.at/the-era-o... · Posted by u/dvt
On the contrary. Friedman argued that if as an executive you try to steer a business towards your particular personal aims that you are presuming to know more than you do about what is best for your shareholders who actually own the company. He is arguing that political whim is not a way to allocate the scarce resources of a company/society.
In particular the article linked in this blog post is Friedman arguing against Nixon's price controls and Nixon's insistence that it was "socially responsible" to not raise prices as you own costs went up. Stripping the article of this consequence is either dishonest, or stupid.
So my interpretation of how Friedman drew his theories of market (and granted I'm no expert, just a layman reading things online) are about every business should optimize as much as utterly possible even if this results in exploitation, because the market will accept exploitation until it can't and correct. I think you and i are aligned in this belief. Where i think we're separated, likely cause i just didn't explain it very well, was that to me, this means you as a CEO are accepting exploitation under the guise that you have the ability to react to the market forces to correct for it. That you 'know the market' and can adapt as needed. Such as described in the Friedman quote within the article which expresses an extremely libertarian view of how companies should be able to hire and fire workers:
> “...consider a situation in which there are grocery stores serving a neighborhood inhabited by people who have a strong aversion to being waited on by Negro clerks. Suppose one of the grocery stores has a vacancy for a clerk and the first applicant qualified in other respects happens to be a Negro. Let us suppose that as a result of the law the store is required to hire him. The effect of this action will be to reduce the business done by this store and to impose losses on the owner. If the preference of the community is strong enough, it may even cause the store to close. When the owner of the store hires white clerks in preference to Negroes in the absence of the law, he may not be expressing any preference or prejudice, or taste of his own. He may simply be transmitting the tastes of the community. He is, as it were, producing the services for the consumers that the consumers are willing to pay for. Nonetheless, he is harmed, and indeed may be the only one harmed appreciably, by a law which prohibits him from engaging in this activity, that is, prohibits him from pandering to the tastes of the community for having a white rather than a Negro clerk. The consumers, whose preferences the law is intended to curb, will be affected substantially only to the extent that the number of stores is limited and hence they must pay higher prices because one store has gone out of business.”
In my view, the scenario and reasoning by Friedman in how he applies market forces applying to business decisions is a view where you have an assumption of 'knowing the result' of any decision and using that 'knowledge' as justification for reasoning. When in reality, you don't know the result, you can estimate, but that's about it. So when an exec is applying Friedman principles they're trying to 'know the market' and that's a fundamental error in my mind due to the chaos of the world how it can manifest across all avenues of life.