BurningFrog

Also note that we're 8 billion people living on a much higher average material living standard than when we were 2 billion 100 years ago.

By what measure does it work for the French?

They have 8% unemployment, 30% less GDP per capita than the US, and many other problems.

Government by caving in to riots is not in general being responsive to the needs of the people.

This is why I spent most of my career in startups. I did work at big companies twice for a few years, and it strongly reinforced that decision.

Startup life has it's own problems. Primarily that the company may cease to exist at any time. it's not for everyone, but I adapted after my first big layoff.

Great sounding quotes of unclear origin are usually attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, or a few others.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Misquotations

You get to vote for one of ~5 alternatives every 4 years. This then propagates to hundreds of decisions in a way that dilutes your influence to practically nothing.

Cells are small compared to humans because we're made up by around 3×10¹³ cells.

This makes sense, but a logical next step is to have one AI write code, and then have another AI, instead of humans, verify it.

Or are current AIs too similar for that to be fruitful?

Here is a piece of history trivia. Not trying to have an argument.

> they wanted to bypass what they considered "trading bottleneck" created by Ottoman

The Ottomans didn't exactly close the Silk Road, but they made it harder and more expensive to use it.

But the major reason for the maritime routes taking over the cargo traffic was that it's much more efficient to sail to Asia with your cargo than to walk it on camels.

So when the Portugese found the way around Africa and landed in Calcutta on May 20 1498, the trade patterns changed forever.

I'm thinking of custom built Teacher AIs, trained in how to teach different kinds of students, and with well defined curriculums.

Even if they're not better than the best human teachers, I think being able to "personally" interact with each student 24/7 will be a huge improvement.

There are some early products around:

- https://www.khanmigo.ai/

- https://squirrelai.com/

With AIs as most staff, this should be very reachable.

The Robespierre regime chopped off ~40,000 heads during the 10 months "Reign of Terror" 1793-1794.

The French Revolution was an orgy in mass murder that led to the slaughter of millions in the Napoleon wars.

It really need to be romantizied much less!

You can move your 401k money between several funds at any time.

This is a bit like the critique of physics that they ignore friction.

It turns out that for many purposes friction and externalities are small enough that they can be ignored for most purposes.

Physicists and Economists are very aware of the tradeoffs.

Just like dividends.

Companies buy back shares as a different way than dividends to enrich their shareholders.

Also, if your billion dollar rocket can be destroyed by a $2 bullet, maybe you need to look at hardening your design.

> First, the rich have unimaginably more power in changing people's minds

If that was true everyone would love billionaires. I'm fascinated by the cluelessness of this assertion!

The actual research on campaign finance says that once you've managed to inform the voters about what you stand for and who you are, further spending does very little.

> simply being a contest of who can buy enough ad space to brainwash people to vote against their interests

This is the most anti democratic statement I've seen in a while!

If you think voters are such easily brainwashed fools, you can hardly be pro democracy!

This is just a disagreement with the principle of free speech.

If you're only for free speech as long as it doesn't change people's minds, we have very different perspectives.

So why were loitering laws introduced? I doubt it was purely a sadistic effort to ruin the lives of kids.

My guess is that combatting gang crime was a major reason.

I don't have a good intuitive feel for that.

At 25km altitude, with 1% of normal atmosphere, maybe you're close enough to vacuum that it can get really quiet?

I used to have a more naive libertarian view, but after the last decade, observing both my countries (US and Sweden), I agree that you need to keep the immigration at a level where they have to adapt to your existing culture, not the opposite.

That said, importing smart engineers and entrepreneurs from the world is so absurdly beneficial for the US that... I can't find words right now.

> Do people migrate to "contribute their skills" to a foreign country, or to improve their lives?

People come to improve their lives.

Their employers hire them to improve their lives.

Both end up better off!

This argument proves too much. That some technical progress arrives slower than predicted does not mean no progress ever occurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_too_much

My Tesla is quite reliable when self driving!

I think Google can handle paying for any number of $250k cars to get a good share of the future of transportation.

I expect that in 10-20 years, all cars will be self driving.

The targeted ads in Google Search were hugely helpful, at least in the beginning.

Suddenly, you could search for something obscure and get ads about that exact topic. This enabled a huge number of small niche businesses to exist and prosper.

We now live in the world Google Ads created, and we take for granted the there will be someone selling Bulgarian accordion cleaning kits out there that I can easily find. But targeted ads made this world possible!

You're describing the concept of insurance.

This is tough for the manufacturer, but great for the consumer.

I think it's a good tradeoff.

Playing music at 1x should be a pretty simple feature to add to those apps.

Ideally it should be done while encoding.