aylmao

Those who can afford it as easily as you say are the kind that will go to private schools in a heartbeat

Those who are struggling to afford it are the ones who will appreciate the help

Have you considered that perhaps you have causality mixed up here? Perhaps it's not that only the wealthier ~39% of people want to go to college, but rather that the bottom 61% don't want that economic burden.

> They had governments borrowing to fund their citizens' consumption.

The problem here being that it was money spent that was never earned back, and money that eventually had to be paid back, right?

This can also happen with private capital. 2008 was a bust caused by private banks, for example. AI hasn't proven to be profitable yet [1], and I'm not sure it'll makes a difference, for the success of projects like this, wether the money is coming from government or not.

In fact, if the 2008 bank bail-out, auto industry bail-out, the Silicon Valley bank prop-up, and other such actions by the US government are considered [2], if this turns out to be a bubble it will be taxpayers who end up fronting the bill.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ai-generative-business-mone...

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen...

Worth pointing out; the Turing test is pretty much just a thought experiment. Turing never considered it a test of "intelligence", or any other human quality. Many people have criticized its use as a measure of such.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#Weaknesses

> free college is just a giveaway to the wealthier third of our society and irresponsible with our current fiscal situation.

How is free college a giveaway to the wealthier third of society? For starters, I can assure you the wealthy care a lot about the name of the institution issuing the diploma, and they can afford it. They'll happily front extra cash so their kids can network with people of similar economic status.

With half a trillion dollars you can also open a lot of universities. Increased supply would lower prices for everyone. One could even open public universities and offer education at very reduced or no tuition.

> if what you care about is having your money well spend and getting to Mars as cheaply as possible, he's exactly who you're looking for.

I do find impressive that SpaceX engineers figured out reusable rockets and now we can send things more cheaply out to orbit. But in all seriousness, should we care about getting to Mars cheaply? Or do people care because Musk came along to convince them (and the US government) to invest in this venture of his?

Interestingly perhaps, as a foreigner (not from the USA or China) I can tell you not everyone around the world shares this perspective. There's people who trust China's single-party system over the USA's oligarchy.

AI very much has to do with the state. It's an arms race between China and the USA, per many [4]. And China doesn't seem to be behind any longer [1].

It's not only Trump. Before leaving Biden already ordered the DoE and the DoD to lease sites for data centers and energy generation. The only reason we don't see a "Department of AI" or a "National AI Agency" is due to how the military industrial complex works, and a lot of lobbying I'm sure.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3295662/beijing-mee...

[2] https://www.insideglobaltech.com/2025/01/20/biden-administra...

[3] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/biden-doe-dod-lease-sites-a...

[4] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/21/1110269/there-ca...

How so? Does this capital being private ensure "this time will be different"?

I like the simplicity of yours!

Some very impressive ones to look at here:

- Colombia is about as tall as the USA's West Coast.

- Brazil is comparable to Canada.

- Indonesia is wider than Europe.

Now that you mention it, I weirdly never struggled with this. I wonder if it's because I first started using the terminal on macOS, which I think by default starts prompts with % instead of $ or >.

Trying to consciously think about the gut-feeling that makes me remember this, all I can come up with is that $ feels "heavier" than ^, which just leads it to naturally feel like the end of a line. Perhaps its verticalness makes it feel like the vertical blinking cursor, and that's what this gut-feeling is really about? I'm not sure, the mind is a mystery sometimes haha.

Very much this.

Some of the most memorable moments I had in my learning were when I "reinvented" something. In high-school, our math teacher had us reinvent the derivative rules, and later had us derive Euler's identity through Taylor Series. They were big eureka moments. Going through all the work someone else did hundreds of years ago is very inspiring, and IMO gets you in the right mindset for discovery. I can't imagine where the joy of learning comes for someone who sees learning as a test —a question, an answer, nothing in between.

In uni we built a CPU from scratch over the course of a few weeks. First building an small ALU, widening its bus, adding memory operations, etc. Beyond learning how things work, it makes you wonder how inventing this without a teacher to guide you must've been, and gives you an appreciation for it. It also makes you extrapolate and think about the things that haven't been invented or discovered yet.

In theory LLMs could serve as a teacher guiding you as you reinvent things. In practice, people just get the answer and move on. A person with experience teaching, who sees how you're walking the path and compares it to how they walked theirs, will know when to give you an answer and when to have you find it yourself.

One doesn't learn how to do lab-work in the library.

> "Dependence on [_____] assistance" is the point of all technology.

I will note two things though.

1. Not all technology creates "dependence". Google Maps removes the need of carrying bulky maps, or buy new ones to stay updated, but someone who knows how to read Google Maps will know how to read a normal map, even if they're not as quick at it.

2. The best technology isn't defined by the "dependence" it creates, or even the level of "assistance" it provides, but for what it enables. Fire enabled us to cook. Metalworking enabled us to create a wealth of items, tools and structures that wouldn't exist if we only had wood and stone. Concrete enabled us to build taller and safer. Etc.

It's still unclear what AI chatbots are enabling. Are LLM's big claim to fame allowing people to answer problem sets and emails with minimal effort? What does this unlock? There's a lot of talk about allowing better data analysis, saving time, and vague claims of an ai revolution, but until we see X, Y and Z, and can confidently say "yeah, X, Y and Z are great for mankind, and they couldn't have happened without chatbots", it's fair for people to keep complaining about the change and downsides AI chatbots are bringing about.

I remember when I was younger, learning about economic models, including free market liberalism. I thought surely human desire left to their own devices can't possibly lead to meaningful progress. It can lead to movement alright, and new technology, but I had my doubts it could lead to meaningful progress.

The longer I see things play out, especially in neoliberal economies, the further I seem to confirm this. Devoid of policy with ideals and intention, fully liberalized markets seem to just lead to whatever produces the most dopamine for humans.

> In the deep past, they maintained an oral tradition, and scholars were expected to memorize everything. They saw writing/reading as a crutch that was ruining the youth's memory.

Could you share a source for this? The research paper I found has a different hypothesis; it links the slow transition to writing to trust, not an "old-school's attitude towards writing". Specifically the idea that the institutional trust relationships one formed with students, for example, would ensure the integrity of one's work. It then concludes that "the final transition to written communications was completed only after the creation of institutional forms of ensuring trust in written communications, in the form of archives and libraries".

So essentially, anyone could write something and call it Plato's work. Or take a written copy of Plato's work and claim they wrote it. Oral tradition ensured only your students knew your work; and you trusted them to not misattribute it. Once libraries and archives came to exist though, they could act as a trustworthy source of truth where one could confirm wether some work was actually Plato or not, and so scholars got more comfortable writing.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331255474_The_Attit...

Some people don’t focus primarily on the money. When that’s the case, many things (love, pride, comfort, dreams, fears, etc) might keep someone from moving.

It did affect housing. I remember the great deals one could find when remote work was in full swing, and all that was said about vacant office, or smaller cities growing at the expense of bigger ones.

It was only two years though. An industry can hold off and fight back in that time.

Also worth noting, and the article briefly alludes to this; college costs are higher, the difference between jobs that pay well and those that don't is wider, and everyone is very aware of all this. My guess is young people today are possibly less laissez-faire than in the past. People are worrying about their future earlier.

It was evident that Mark Zuckerberg / Meta would have to once again "adapt" to another Trump presidency, but this is much more explicit than I expected, wow.

> if you live in a large city and are willing or need to go out of your in-group, the diversity is much larger.

There's a double crux here; Firstly, why would you? By sheer numbers I'm sure there's more school teachers, insurance salespeople and tattoo artists in NY than where I currently live. But while in NYC, why would I have gone out of my way to meet people with these professions specifically when there was plenty of people demanding my time in my circles already? Where I currently live, I just meet them at the gym.

Secondly, this applies to the other side too. While in SF I once people went to a party with a group of people that was very into photography. I never saw them again. Thinking about their perspective, why would they have hung out with me again? We lived far from each other (Oakland vs SF), they had own clique, and I'm not really into photography. The pull was weak both ways. I don't share much with the insurance salesperson I met at the gym, but it's the daily routine that's led to a meeting point, without any side having to "try", chatting, etc.

NYC has diversity by the numbers, but if you talk about an individual's perspective, there's very strong clustering leading to local homogeneity. SF isn't that big, so I'm not even sure if it has more diversity by the numbers compared to where I now live. But the filters leading someone to move to SF are strong, as is thus the pull to cluster with people that are very similar to you based on where you live, shop, workout, etc.

> it's a skill issue, sorry to say.

That's the point, isn't it? You need to try, and have both the determination and "skill", to find variety when the environment gives you homogeneity.

I'm sure I could find an elementary school teacher, or an insurance salesperson to chit-chat with in SF or NY. I never tried, cause why would I? These aren't Pokemon to collect. It just so happens that my gym in the middle of Manhattan filters quite strongly for a certain income level, and thus age, but also profession, etc. In my current gym we all just go to the same class together.

Next time I'm in SF or NY I guess I can invest the time and effort to join a facebook group to meet school teachers, if that's what we mean by skill here.

> Every culture on earth sees a draw from the small towns and villages to the city.

What you're describing is true, but also different from what the original comment is talking about. There is a global trend to urbanization, yes. The original comment isn't talking about moving from rural to urban; what they say applies to moving from one city to another.

Moreover, at an individual scale, moving for better opportunities doesn't mean one has to leave family and friends. For example, my grandma: she was very poor, and moved a few times different cities looking for a better life. This meant moving with her whole family, and/or moving where other family was. After she married my grandpa, he got job opportunities in both Guadalajara and Mexico City. I'm sure they could've done better in Mexico City, since it's the capital, but they chose Guadalajara due to proximity to family. Her mom eventually moved to Guadalajara too.

Another, more recent example from my family: my uncle. He had the opportunity to move for a very good job, but didn't take it since it was far from family. My brother moved cities for college, but specifically to one where he would be close to family.

One thing is moving wherever it takes for the sake of going to a specific school, working at a specific job, living in a specific dream home or dream city. That is very American. Another one is still looking for opportunities, but framing everything in terms of your family and friends; ie, what's the best job, school, home I can find close to my family? That's much more Latin American and much less common, in my experience, in the USA.

> Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisely because you meet people who are different from you, who have different ideas. Sometime even it could be obnoxious people. I think obnoxious people — I mean, what I consider obnoxious — are necessary in order to stimulate.”

I've experienced the opposite too, having lived in both NYC and San Francisco: urban homogeneity, and even monocultures.

Yes, San Francisco is very diverse in the origin of its people, but the people who move there tend to fit certain molds, regardless of their cultural background. New York might attract more varied "types", but the act of moving to NYC still tends to select for a certain socio-economic level, a willingness to make certain sacrifices, people with certain life-goals and expectations, etc.

I surprisingly have found more diverse personalities and ideas in smaller places that are less selective (in price, profession, ideology, etc) to move to or to live in. Places where a software engineer might frequent the same gym as an insurance salesperson, an elementary-school teacher and a tattoo artist, even if (and perhaps because) they're all from there and didn't move in for a job.

> rural living gives you less choice in company increases the degree to which you invest in the relationships that happen to be around

I lived in New York at some point, and experienced the opposite of this first hand. In my experience, in NYC, it's easy to end with a lot of acquaintances but few real close friends.

At least in the social circles I moved around, everyone was always looking for "the next thing". There was an intense sense of impermanence. The next apartment, because the current one isn't great. The next job, because one can always do better. The next friend, because there's always more people to meet.

Especially in a city as romanticised as NYC, where a lot of people arrive with the expectation to live their best lives, make it big, and/or meet the most interesting people, I think people get used to the idea that something better is always around the corner.

> Housing costs triple over night for the win? We'll all be homeless but those of us in construction will get a boost (or decreased competition from low cost imported labor).

Your discourse is sensationalist and unnecessarily agitated. Paying workers a fair wage wouldn't triple housing costs, that figure is completely made up.

> We'll all be homeless

It also wouldn't lead to complete homelessness.

A lot of things "flood the job market". In 2021, >104k degrees CIS degrees were awarded by US colleges [1]. There's a flood of young people entering the market every year, and they're willing to work for >30% less than experienced engineers because it's their first proper job.

IMO as with all things money, it's all about negotiation. Of course a lot of negotiating power simply has to do with the market supply/demand, but a whole lot has to do with policy and rules. Giving more negotiating power to H1Bs would definitely put upwards pressure on salaries.

Re: construction workers. Same problem, worker's rights. A lot of construction workers are undocumented: an estimated 20 percent [2][3]. Undocumented immigrants have virtually no negotiating power. Allowing this solid 1/5th of the workforce to confront their employer without fear of deportation would go a long way increasing compensation for the industry as a whole.

[1]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_322.10.a...

[3]: https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumen...

I mean, I can think of a lot of things businesses could greatly benefit and grow from, but would have to do without if it came with $200,000/yr price tag.

IMO this is not about wether a business can do without X. Most businesses can do without a lot of things, just more poorly. IMO this is about finding the right balance between the benefits and drawbacks of hiring foreign specialized workers.

Is this bad due to the hypothetical loss of diversity? ie, it'd be better if there were a mix of Indian, Chinese, Brazilian, Mexican, etc immigrants, vs only immigrants from a single state in India?