You all realize that when AI takes everyone's jobs the only way people will survive is by pledging allegiance to AI companies so they feed and house them right? Its not going to lead to some utopia where people are free to paint and write novels all day. People will basically become slaves to these companies.
I would think twice about pushing for driverless cars and replacing people with agentic workflows.
Divorce is extremely cheap if you both agree on everything. Its literally one of the options on the divorce filing. You just pay the court fees. The problem is both parties rarely agree on everything and that's when it gets expensive.
Stock analysts have a success rate of 47% or lower for directional predictions. That's worse than a coin flip. All AI has to do is product fair 50/50 results and it can beat analysts. But you can do it too for the price of a quarter.
lol this is a great quote, it's like a couplet from a standup set. It's humorous, unexpected, on closer reading it's possibly true, and then you see the source and immediately realize it must be correct.
Any article you'd recommend about Renaissance? I've always been curious but not curious enough to read "just anything"
> Magerman told me, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.” … Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.”
I finally got to reading this! Honestly so far it's more about politics than I wanted and less about Renaissance, but it's certainly well-written. I particularly like this line, lol:
> Mercer has asserted repeatedly that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights movement. (Few scholars agree.)
People are scared of inhuman AIs taking over but maybe they should be more scared of the inhuman humans who've already done so. How many of the world's billionaires are emotionally stunted misanthropes like this? What do we do when we find ourselves in a system where someone with no emotional intelligence, empathy, or interpersonal skills can make themselves a gigantic pile of cash by pushing buttons on a screen without ever having to interact with another human, and then decides to find a sense of purpose by hurling their wealth around according to some seriously misguided views? It seems obvious to me that a core component of the problem is the fungibility of money, which over time absorbs all other figures of merit and rolls them into one, called "power", which subverts any system designed to contain it.
I don't think analyzing just the directional correctness is enough. Magnitudes shouldn't just be ignored. A trader can still make money even if more than half of their trades were wrong directionally, and can still lose money (or even go bankrupt) even if more than half of their trades were correct directionally.
Actually we don't know the speed of light in one direction[0]. So we could actually be seeing things as they are in this moment or at any other moment in time for all we know.
Based on the downvotes my comment is getting it seems there's a lot of scientifically illiterate people on this site. So, I'll expand on what I said.
We cannot directly measure the one-way speed of light because doing so requires synchronizing two distant clocks without already knowing how fast light travels.
When scientists state that light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, they are referring to the two-way speed of light (a round trip from a source to a mirror and back).
To find the speed in one direction, you need a clock at the start and a clock at the finish line. To sync those two clocks, you must send a signal between them but, any signal you use to sync the clocks travels at the speed of light, which creates a circular problem.
Heavy regulations are the reason why we have the John Deere semi monopoly. The regulatory entry cost is in the millions for any new player to enter the market so no one wants to compete and provide better service.
Every regulation looks good or at least defensible in abstract, especially when some peddler is trying to sell it and the consequences aren't obvious yet.
This is just not true - their machines are purposely opaque and loaded with DRM. Regulation in this area could potentially make the entire system more efficient and cheaper for everyone at the cost of JD's predatory practices. In addition to owners there are lots of independents who could work on JD equipment, but they are all literally locked out.
It depends on who writes the regulations. Today money writes the regs and people pay the price. Take money out of politics. But all three branches are captured. Anything that resembles returning power to the people is derided as socialism. So the result is power over the people.
Given how each tractor manufacturer is essentially associated with its own specific country, I'd say this industry is a great example of how mature industries tend to consolidate into monopolies while getting propped up by regulatory capture greased by concerns over natural security. So while the regulatory costs you cite may indeed be onerous, simplistic calls merely for "less regulation" don't bear out.
the cost of starting a company that makes a line of tractors combines and sprayers is probably second only to an aircraft manufacturer in difficulty and complexity
I think China has this all sorted, we should just have a free market without tarrifs. Let the market provide us the best, un-enshittified products we can find. I am old enough to remember when that was a conservative position.
The conservative position is always whatever benefits conservatives at this moment. Back when they supported a free market, a freer market benefitted them. When market regulations benefitted them, they supported a more regulated market.
I call bullshit until you cite evidence. Farm equipment doesn't even need to comply with road vehicle requirements. What special regulations does a farm equipment manufacturer need to comply with that don't apply to any other industrial manufacturer?
Then, Chase knows you've verified your ID somewhere, the relay knows that some Chase user verified themselves at Pornhub, and Pornhub knows that the user is over 18, without knowing their identity or what bank they're using.
You could also do this with ZKPs and device integrity protection. The latter is more secure but more complex, the former is much simpler and openness friendly.
> You could also do this with ZKPs and device integrity protection.
How has the anti-competitive lock-in scam of "device integrity protection" entered the discussion? Using ZK proofs without it has exactly the same effect.
There are far too many attestation-passing insecure devices to expect attestation to have any security value against attackers who can choose any of those devices on purpose.
No. The simple relay thing only works if you can trust that they aren't comparing notes. But if I could trust them not to do so, I would already trust them when they say that they do not log your identity.
ZKPs allow you to be the relay between Chase and Pornhub, and you know exactly which data is shared between the two. Chase would obviously have no idea whether you used the certificate for Pornhub or anything else; and Pornhub will know that their request was validated by _a_ trusted ID provider, but not necessarily which particular one out of a group (issuer-hidden ZKPs).
Or we could use multiple relays so nobody knows both the bank and the purpose, or even who would know the other piece of data... and now thats just Tor but for identity verification. Might be a good idea actually, except the whole point is Anthropic wants to know who you are.
I think the key here is “a trusted third party” more than “bank”.
Also, I’d rather a company know “he has an account at Bank of America” than “His full government name is Bit Masher and his driving license number is 9”
Well, they already know your credit card issuer, it's not that wild. Really Visa/MasterCard should offer age verification on their network... They have all the necessary components.
I would think twice about pushing for driverless cars and replacing people with agentic workflows.
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