Ah, ChatGPT’s hidden INTP mode. We’ll finally get the right theory for ASI, but it will provide no clues on how to actually implement it in a timely manner.
Readit Newsthrowaway713 commented on Sprinkling self-doubt on ChatGPT justin.searls.co/posts/sp... · Posted by u/ingve
I saw that Reddit post a while back. It’s interesting, but I wonder how much it really applies to all of the super wealthy. There are certainly billionaires and centimillionaires who reject that lifestyle out of hand (I know I certainly would). The average person doesn’t know their name and they prefer it that way. Even the local billionaire near where I lived for a while was pretty modest, all considered (his kids not so much). I was surprised to see him and his family sit down next to mine at a restaurant one day. Could overhear him talking about the local farmers market and commenting about the tomatoes of the season haha
throwaway713 commented on Something is wrong on the Internet lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/... · Posted by u/toss1
I mean, my simple theory is people buy everything cheap because most people are broke. Small businesses die because as much as people want to support them, they can't spend more. They can only afford to buy goods from businesses that take advantage of economies of scale, and small businesses by definition are usually locked out of that.
That's a fair point actually, and perhaps we are only seeing these problems increase recently because "locally optimal" capitalism had historically sort of prevented the global algorithmic optimizations we're seeing now across industries. E.g., rental price fixing via algorithms.
throwaway713 commented on Something is wrong on the Internet lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/... · Posted by u/toss1
> I'm certainly not saying "blame the consumer", but if people really don't like ads so much (to the extent that they stop clicking on them), really disliked streaming so much (to the extent that they unsubscribe) — then why haven't they?
In my observation/bubble, people actually do:
- I rarely click on ads (though I admit the reason is typically much more mundane: nearly all ad networks don't really "get" my interests. When they (rarely) actually do, the common situation is that I recently bought such a product, and thus clearly don't need another one when the advertising networks realize my interest and show me ads).
- Many people install ad blockers.
- Many people that I am aware of who are annoyed of streaming either did cancel some subscription(s) or never got one.
> In my observation/bubble, people already do
Well I thought so too. I match those behaviors, and I don't even watch television. But then I worked at a tech company where I could see the actual data on consumer preferences and behaviors, and it's fairly undeniable: most people aren't like you, me, or the average commenter on Hacker News.
throwaway713 commented on Something is wrong on the Internet lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/... · Posted by u/toss1
Do most people really want an internet without ads, flights with large seats and plenty of space, high-quality local food — or do most people just say they want that? Because when push comes to shove and these options temporarily become available for some reason (e.g., a new farmers market, a premium streaming plan that removes ads, etc.), most people don't spring for the higher quality option. The cheapest option still seems to consistently win out overall.
I'm certainly not saying "blame the consumer", but if people really don't like ads so much (to the extent that they stop clicking on them), really dislike the subpar streaming services so much (to the extent that they unsubscribe) — then why haven't they abandoned these products?
There are other countries where valuing quality seems to be more deeply embedded in the culture, and most people in these countries will reject subpar offerings altogether. I think the U.S. has had a uniquely precipitous fall in this regard — the average person just doesn't seem to care that much. Why this is the case, I'm not sure, but it's not surprising that since Silicon Valley is located in the U.S., the region simply optimizes on whatever (revealed) consumer preferences return the most. Tech companies are certainly not unique in this regard.
throwaway713 commented on AlphaProof's Greatest Hits rishimehta.xyz/2024/11/17... · Posted by u/rishicomplex
Anyone else feel like mathematics is sort of the endgame? I.e., once ML can do it better than humans, that’s basically it?
throwaway713 commented on Why you've never been in a plane crash asteriskmag.com/issues/05... · Posted by u/throwup238
This concept of a blameless culture reminds me of one time when I was talking to a SWE at Facebook around 2010. I don’t know whether the story is actually true or just folklore, but apparently someone brought down the whole site on accident once, and it was pretty obvious who did it.
Zuckerberg was in the office and walked up to the guy and said something along the lines of “Just so you are aware, it would probably take a lifetime or more to recoup the revenue lost during that outage. But we don’t assign blame during these sorts of events, so let’s just consider it an expensive learning opportunity to redesign the system so it can’t happen again.”
Related to this problem is the interesting tradeoff between fairness and harm minimization. The idea of fairness is that no individual should have a higher probability of a guilty verdict or punishment than any other individual due to factors that are outside of their control. But there is an inherent conflict between fairness and our ability to reduce harm that results from crime.
For example, consider two hypothetical but identical individuals: one born into a low-income neighborhood and one born into a high-income neighborhood. If you develop a model to predict what we currently categorize as "crime" (the definition of which is its own separate issue), you will find that the income of a neighborhood is inversely correlated with the density of crime. If this is the only factor in your predictive model, then you will more effectively reduce crime by directing attention toward the low-income neighborhood. But now there is an inherent unfairness, because the additional scrutiny toward the low-income neighborhood means that individual 1 is more likely to be caught for a crime than individual 2, despite both individuals having an equal likelihood of committing a crime. This also creates a self-reinforcing situation where having more statistics on the low-income subset of the population now allows you to improve your predictive model even further by using additional variables that are only relevant to that subset of the population, meanwhile neglecting other variables that would be relevant to predicting crime in high-income neighborhoods. Repeat this process a few times and soon you have a massive amount of unfairness in society.
It's probably impossible to eliminate all unfairness while still maintaining any sort of ability to control crime, but what is the appropriate threshold for this tradeoff?
throwaway713 commented on The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell (2010) thetech.com/2010/04/09/du... · Posted by u/praptak
I work at one of the well-known tech companies. We have recently gone on a consultant hiring spree after previously having avoided external contractors for years.
With a team of five consultants and their manager, months of useless hour long meetings to answer simple questions that can be looked up in the documentation, and plenty of slideshows and design docs that are mostly filled with fluff, they’ve produced... a dashboard that I could have put together in about 30 minutes.
Whatever social purpose this contract fulfills is a total mystery to me, but all I can think of is what a waste of human time this is.
throwaway713 commented on Every engineer should do a stint in consulting cloudirregular.substack.c... · Posted by u/forrestbrazeal
I largely agree with you, except that I think the most valuable experience gained is that of exposure to information a typical software engineer is not privy to. I think this is often overlooked and is what doing a short stint in consulting should be about. Getting the opportunity to understand the inner workings of an organization at, often, a senior management level, was one of the most lucrative lessons of my professional life and is a selling point that I use when interviewing candidates because it’s generally true if they conduct themselves intelligently. Also, to reiterate your point, consulting can be incredibly lucrative if you price yourself at market value — most freelancers and consultants I’ve met are too afraid or nervous or get caught up in imposter syndrome, etc. to charge their true value. $300k/yr (in the US) is near trivial to make annually as a consultant, $400k/yr is where most capable software engineers should be, and yet few get there for reasons I attribute to lack of self confidence — a shame really.
> understand the inner workings of an organization at, often, a senior management level, was one of the most lucrative lessons of my professional life
What is an example of something you learned about senior management?