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JumpCrisscross

191,127 karma · joined May 31, 2011

Ski. Fly. Growth equity VC.
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JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> do wonder if you’d care about this conversation if you and your family were the ones being killed

No. At that point, whether it's a genocide or not is kind of irrelevant. They're being killed. War doesn't need extra bits attached to it to be horrible.

> would you turn to them and say “ackchyually

What is this.

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> the homes are booby trapped

Robots. These things can be cleared. Particularly if the population isn't there.

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> if less than a million people are killed it's not a genocide?

Nobody said that. OP asked why this is being debated. That's why. It's not clear what generally constitutes a genocide in a way that is separate from warfare in general. (Gaza and Ukraine are simpler, to me, because Russia and Israel explicitly message genocidal intent in a way New Delhi, Beijing and Washington do not.)

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> you should also ask why this is being debated so widely in the first place

Because there are lots of wars burning all over the planet. We tried to carve an exception into international law, after WWII, about it being permissible to intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign state if they're doing genocide. So this is a real debate that should be had. The problem is by practically every definition, there are at least a handful of active genocides happening in multiple theaters around the world.

The abhorrence of genocide is one that needs to be refreshed with action if we're to restore the norm that it's not okay. But to do that, you have to set the new threshold.

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> f you mean that all war is unjustified, consider stating that plainly

Most war is unjustified. Violent resistance is almost never unjustified if one lacks access to elections.

But violent resistance that targets civilians robs itself and its cause of justice until that rot is removed and regretted. It's not only morally wrong. It's strategically stupid. Terrorist tactics do not work–they radicalize the enemy and unfavorably polarize the alliance space.

Remember the videos Ukraine circulated of sharing tea with Russian POWs? Imagine if Hamas had only targeted military outposts and then shared images like that one from its bunkers under Gaza City?

A cause can be fundamentally justified but still piss away its advantages with poor strategy. At the end of the day, Hamas has acted in Iran's interests. Not the Palestinians'. (Same with Hezbollah. Same with the Houthis, though to a marginally lesser degree.)

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> It does not

In absolutely does [1].

> What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position

If Gaza is a genocide then Ukraine almost certainly is too. The same messaging about exterminating a culture that doesn't "actually" exist from senior leadership. The same attacks on children. The same destruction and systematic razing of civilian settlements.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ySLyCjNnrI

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> How does bulldozing a family home have any affect on a tunnel?

The tunnel entrances and exits are tremendously hard to find. Some of them were located in private residences.

But Israel has an oil & gas industry. They have equipment that can look underneath a quiet city. If tunnel elimination were truly the goal, temporarily displacing the population while clearing operations took place should have been sufficient. As it stands, simply bulldozing over the entrances probably doesn't actually destroy the tunnels. It just hides their entrances.

JumpCrisscross··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
> seems bonkers to me that we’re nitpicking what to call a given mass extermination of human lives

The OG genocides involved deaths in the millions [1]. That requires killing with industrial efficiency, something that made it categorically unique from the "wipe out the village" warfare that goes back to, probably, before civilisation. (Chimpanzees do it. To my knowledge, they're the only other species that annihilates versus merely fighting off enemies.)

At lower kill volumes, even in the tens and possibly even hundreds of thousands, the line between conventional warfare done conservatively, conventional warfare done brutally and a process that, if left unhindered, will reach a million-man death toll.

(Then you have the ambiguity, one which does not apply in Gaza, introduced by displacement also being included in genocide and it starts to intersect pretty much perfectly with war.)

If we want these words to keep having meaning, we have to nitpick around their use. Otherwise, overinclusivity will consume them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

JumpCrisscross··on Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs
> Such a business already exists - airlines

Also computers. DEC and IBM and Gateway and whatever didn't extract the economic benefits of digitization. Even Apple extracts a vanishing fraction of the economic benefits the iPhone has created.

JumpCrisscross··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
> not just the trade war

I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)

Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.

JumpCrisscross··on Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?
> Have you ever seen someone claiming ai labs should have no liability in the wild? I haven't

I'd describe David Sacks's position as, approximately, no limits on AI. At some hypothetical future state, sure, maybe, but right now, nothing. That's tantamount to consequence-free action.

JumpCrisscross··on Deutsche Bahn "joke" is no longer funny
> because the number of passengers and the number of trains is also so numerous!

I don't think the author's hypothesis, that complaints scale with utilisation, holds.

Germans travel fewer kilometers per year per capita by passenger rail than Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, France and Korea [1]. The two topping that list–Japan and Switzerland–also have exceptional systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

JumpCrisscross··on Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?
How do you think it's solved? The number of things that folks on both sides (and it really does seem to be a two-sided debate, at least in America) are "alarmed...is even up for debate" that are so obviously worthy of reasoned investigation and potentially experiments is annoying and seems to be calcifying onto ersatz partisan stances versus resolving anything usefully.
JumpCrisscross··on Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?
> the debate is going to come down to what is and isn't considered reckless

This is a more productive debate than pretending all AI is fundamentally reckless or should be exempt from all liability, which are the two actual poles of the current dialogue.

> Safe-harbor best practices that cap liability are ripe for abuse

Safe harbors aren’t swimming pools. You can explicitly exempt certain categories of harm from damages. But if an OpenAI bot hacks Hugging Face and causes some chaos but no lasting damage, that strikes me as something a fixed cheque on a fixed scale addresses more effectively than years of litigation or an NTSB-style inquiry.

If, on the other hand, anyone is or could have been injured, no safe harbor. I think it’s important to delineate this, because in the public consciousness the Hugging Face hack is in the same risk bucket as Anthropic’s wet lab.

(I'm a huge fan of the NTSB model for AI. They don't write rules. They mercilessly investigate accidents with full subpoena and records-preservation powers. One of the reasons the debate is so confused is the fact pool we're relying on is highly filtered by industry.)

JumpCrisscross··on Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?
> If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault

Legally, this isn’t complete. If it was a genuine mistake and you weren’t reckless, there can be very limited liability.

The AI makers are rich. They can afford to pay. What they can’t afford is complicated adjudications of damages and fault. A system of safe-harbor best practices that cap liability at a penalizing amount that anyone on the other side would be happy with getting quickly and with minimal legal effort is a precedented path forward. Unfortunately, that involves invoking the “r” word.

JumpCrisscross··on MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta
> if you hear "they are foreign" you don't think its multiple people?

This is almost never ambiguous within context. I blame the outrage on illiteracy. If you don't read a lot, even a simple turn of phrase or grammatical ambiguity could be anxiety inducing.

JumpCrisscross··on Palantir founder purchases large swath of forest in Sweden
Alpine versus cross country.
JumpCrisscross··on Joseph Szabo’s pictures of American adolescents
> no country as much as America idolizes and worships its adolescents

Would it be accurate to say that the modern concept of adolescence is an American invention?

JumpCrisscross··on World Labs is Joining AMD
> Neoclouds want to do neolab things and now chipmakers want to do neolab things

We don't know what the right integrations are. Is it the chipmakers with the toolmakers? The front-end makers with the model designers? That's the current set-up. But there might be another industrial configuration that is superior.

AMD is still struggling to establish itself in AI. That makes it a worthy competitor. Its agglomeration of talent and resources is probably, knowing little else, good.

JumpCrisscross··on World Labs Is Joining AMD
> A name like Fei-Fei Li is probably worth a chunk of that

You're right. Her bio writes like an OP self-insert character's [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fei-Fei_Li

JumpCrisscross··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
Large-format bottles are criminally underappreciated this side of the Atlantic.
JumpCrisscross··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
:D

That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.

JumpCrisscross··on Pirating the Pirates
> even hardcore fans want nothing to do with

I think the main series has turned to trash, but isn’t it still commercially successful? I personally adored Andor, but even my parents couldn’t sit through the first couple episodes because they’re slow moving.

JumpCrisscross··on Every Household in This Rural Town Receives $10k If a Data Center Gets Built
> The “LVT-funded” in “LVT-funded UBI” above ain't there just for decoration

Sure. How many of these exist?

If some steps take something out of the realm of theory into practice, they aren't extra.

JumpCrisscross··on Musk, the Movie
I don't maintain a non-pseudonymous internet presence because I don't think I could be unconcerned about folks shitting on me online–I got upset when my cat ghosted me for an hour after I got back from a holiday a month ago.

It's a journey of maturation I haven't yet completed. I suspect neither has Musk (if he recognizes it as a shortcoming).

JumpCrisscross··on Every Household in This Rural Town Receives $10k If a Data Center Gets Built
> the version with fewer steps does indeed work quite well

Where? Because everything I can think of that comes close to a working UBI has a funding model behind it.

JumpCrisscross··on Every Household in This Rural Town Receives $10k If a Data Center Gets Built
> we're just doing LVT-funded UBI with extra steps

They're only extra if the version with fewer steps works. Communities that can host datacenters have leverage. People who want to build datacenters have capital.

JumpCrisscross··on Musk, the Movie
As someone who woke up early to see Starship today, I promise I would love to believe that he's actually playing a crazy person. I don't think we can reject the notion entirely. But there is zero evidence for it and a lot against. (He also doesn't need to be personally writing anything to constantly be on social media.)
JumpCrisscross··on As A.I. makes law firms more efficient, clients ask: 'Where's my discount?'
That law is essentially a diff. The USC (the actual statute) tends to be easier to read through.
JumpCrisscross··on Musk, the Movie
> Altman's upcoming midlife crises are more worrying

Altman has a life partner by his side. Musk does not. That really stabilizes a person. (Particularly, it seems, a man.)

If Altman pulls a Bezos and trades for a younger Oliver, yes, we should get worried. Given the low-key maturity with which they seem to pilot that relationship, I'm not.

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