citadel_melon

There is a spectrum between an employer’s monopoly/oligopoly over labor that Marx’s narrative presupposes and a perfectly competitive labor market your narrative presupposes.

Reality varies between these two extremes in different labor markets. In some labor markets, the employer has so much leverage they’re essentially a local monopolist; in other markets, employees have enough leverage that the respective labor market is close to perfectly efficient.

Thusly, both yours and Marx’s narratives about the labor markets are typically wrong, but serve good extremes on a spectrum. These extremes help you calibrate the respective spectrum and as you turn the dial between the amount of power the employee vs employer has in a respective market, you can induce how well employees get treated.

Moreover, if there exists a mismatch between employee treatment and their respective leverage, there essentially exists an arbitrage opportunity to exploit. For example, in 2022 Musk (especially when he bought Twitter and laid of 80% of the workforce) and other tech oligarchs conjectured that tech workers were being overcompensated and that employers had enough leverage to start treating them worse. Largely this bet paid off whether or not it was justified during the time. On the other hand, RenTech saw that highly skilled people were being under compensated and was able to get top tier talent without having to compete with others firms that much since they were undervaluing this labor.

I think right now tech labor is being undervalued by the market and that there is an arbitrage opportunity to get highly skilled people since the cut-throat competition for these workers is much less than it was in 2021. That is my conjecture. Regardless if my conjecture is true, I hope I sufficiently illustrated why this spectrum mental model is more useful than presupposing a monopoly labor market or a perfectly efficient labor market: both of these are unlikely to be true and are just meant to be oversimplified mental models with strong assumptions that can be loosened later. From these strong assumptions, we can loosen them to build more robust mental models as I describe above.

I’ve started picking up a new language with the help of LLMs (not the only source, but it helps me make flashcards using Leipzig Glossings) and it’s helped me read through math textbooks on my free time much faster/more thoroughly (ambiguous concepts/proofs that used to require a TA or professor for help now I can sort through on my own without having to laboriously cross reference two other textbooks). I also created a prototype app that creates flashcards automatically for a distributed systems book I am currently working through, making concepts stick longer through active recall. I’ll also use LLMs to learn more about the tangental figures in the history books I am reading that I couldn’t have just learned from the book itself and would have been too much of a hassle to look online or in other books.

These are just a few examples of how I use LLMs to learn faster.

LLMs are a tool and I have seen massive gains from them personally

Manhattan is filled with consultant-brained professionals and trust fund babies: I’m not surprised the business selection pressure is thusly catering to the lowest common denominator.

Hopefully Flushing — NYC’s real Chinatown — is far enough away and has enough immigrant clustering to keep its charm.

Creatine has been tested over long time spans already so this comment is not applicable here.

The better rebuttal is that the paper didn’t follow RCT protocols.

"The best cure for high prices is high prices."

Chomsky's hierarchy makes sense as a theoretical basis. His theory is poor at describing how people actually learn languages and lazily conjectures preprogrammed language in the human brain to explain phenomena that other mechanisms could more plausibly explain.

However, showing that naive computer models can simulate language is a nice finding, as then, when the "more correct" theory comes along, we can show that the latter can simulate language just as well as Chomsky's theory, while also providing additional psychological explanatory power: implying the new theory is strictly better than the last. Chomsky's hierarchy thus provides a nice benchmark. This is how a lot of contemporary empirical research is done (especially today with neural networks and machine learning), and saying that these benchmarks or previous, imperfect research "is a lie" seems to misunderstand how research fields often develop. Moreover, the video's thesis ignores the value of explaining to students how a field has developed and grown, including by teaching previously imperfect/defunct ideas. Granted, maybe his professors at UPenn did not express clearly how the Chomsky hierarchy is imperfect/defunct, but then the solution is to just have them emphasize that more, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Thiel is using Bad Bunny’s definition of America

Thank you joe_mamba for your nuanced rebuttal to my pointing-out that your main tactical trick is contradictory when used evenhandedly.

“Pragmatists” (but really anti-pragmatist) like you always find creative ways to bring the blame back to government but then don’t take the next step of blaming the private interests that crafted those government policies.

Effectively, I could make a symmetrical argument and every time you blame the government, I can blame the private interests that primary influence government — especially since citizens united but even before then. Obviously this tactical trick you and other “pragmatists” rely on is therefore fallacious as it leads to a contradiction when you apply it evenhandedly.

I have respect for many libertarians but you are not one of them.

Property taxes already exist. There is no obvious reason why this particular property tax would be legally problematic.

The tax is also likely politically difficult to counter. Consider how limited in scope these taxes are, how the tax revenue benefits residents who live in NYC through providing more revenue for services without taxing residents at all, and how the only constituent the taxes negatively affects are non-residents (aka it’s non-trivial to argue that these people should even be considered constituents) who benefit from the services the city offers through stable apartment prices that nicely store their wealth yet provide little value in return.

The only rebuttal one could conceive is the value these high-net-worth individuals altruistically provide the city through developing office space and giving jobs to the city is not worth risking, but that is like saying the tail wags the dog. The reason these CEOs go to NYC is because that is where the talent and economic clustering is: if these high-net-worth individuals could get the talent they need to run their firms in Miami and Austin, they would have done so already. They have tried and they have failed up until this point.

Regardless, a claim into the future in such a complex system such as the markets and the judicial system (especially a common law system) always relies on induction which is never going to be deterministic. However, this tax is just another property tax meaning it likely will stand in court. Additionally, given that the opposition has very weak rebuttals against a well-versed counterparty implies the legislature or other political machinery won’t have a strong enough incentive to fight this tax.

Part of the problem is that there are fake “pragmatists” who claim that nothing ever comes from greed or market consolidation, making laymen who can’t mechanistically and empirically think through the markets skeptical of all “pragmatist” claims.

For example, you are right about rent freezes and protection of non-infant industry; however, there were studies showing that ~40% of inflation at the end of Biden’s term was due to “greedflation.” This should not be surprising to anyone who understands that massive consolidation in industry leads to less price competition. Moreover, there were CEOs on shareholder calls bragging how they could get away with price gouging, using inflation as an excuse to justify an order of magnitude more price hikes than inflation justified. We do not need to take their word though, as if inflation was the only cause of inflation, then firm profits should have stayed around the same book ratios, but during the time I discussed firm profits ratios increased dramatically.

So let me make a symmetry argument: why are you so angry at ignorant individuals who throw the baby out with the bath water and dismiss your valid “pragmatist” takes, when you yourself are ignorantly throwing the baby out with the bath water dismissing many valid “greed and consolidation” takes?

You can succeed at that level while staying a moral person, but it’s a much tighter rope to walk. The ones wise enough to be able to walk such a tight line are also wise enough to recognize that the reward for all the effort is sour grapes.

Fallacious appeal to the efficient market hypothesis

Will this project eventually be able to completely replace MechE software students need to use for classes or what is the intentions about your software’s scope

One could imagine a different legal standards for recreational, research, and commercial uses.

I’m glad people will have to evaluate the substance of the deck rather than using a cheap heuristic like how visually appealing the presentation is.

I understand there tends to be a correlation between visual appeal and effort, and correlation between effort and merit, but correlation is notoriously flawed. Flawed models can be useful, but only if one qualifies their use sufficiently. I don’t think most people who used are using the aesthetics heuristic you mention to gauge merit are using it rigorously to sharpen their thinking, they’re using it as a shortcut to prevent themselves from needing to think.

An equally plausible scenario to that of which you mention is that technical people can make presentations that are similarly visually appealing as the non-technical people, and that their opinions will be valued more than before. Maybe this will happen, maybe this won’t happen, but I am certain that we do not know yet.

The executive also can’t declare war, yet we are in Iran. Executive orders have stood in for legislation; even though it shouldn’t.

What is considered lawful is up to the whims of the pentagon and the other two branches have shown little interest in providing sufficient checks and balances. Maybe 5 years after the pentagon makes an illegitimate legal justification will a judge strike it down: that is if we are lucky.

Let’s steel-man the parent comment. Obviously “just following orders” is not generally a morally sufficient argument even if you end up not facing repercussions for your actions.

By what measure are Iranians more educated than US citizens?

Are you also claiming infrastructure in Iran/Iraq/Saudi Arabia is better than the US, or just Saudi Arabia?

But does it control for family/relative income? One could be poor but could travel and maintain a safety net from their family.

Too many variables to control for imo to abductively say the sun helped. Once you start controlling for enough variables to start teasing out causation, degrees of freedom and the power of the tests become precarious.

Not to mention issues with data dragging/p-hacking: we don’t know if they just tested a bunch of random things and are only reporting the interesting finding.

But regardless, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt regarding p-hacking, this paper has not reached a sufficient level of abduction to convince me of anything. Even if there is a correlation between sunlight and health, this correlation doesn’t deduce the mechanism, meaning I can’t prescribe myself any solution. Is it because going outside and enjoying yourself causes less stress? Then video games would be just as good. Maybe it’s the vitamin D? I could then just supplement. Maybe people who go out more are more connected to family? I could spend time with them inside. One could argue the mechanism is not important, but that ignores that sun damage dramatically increases skin aging and skin cancer risk, and also ignores that I could expose myself to the sun and unintentionally avoid the real mechanism behind the desired effect.

Teasing out causation with empiricism is near impossible without eventually needing to rely on occum's razor to some extent or another.

Reliance on occum’s razor would probably be less needed if this was a random control trial, but still the study would be correlative with alternative explanations still plausible.

Regarding health, focus on calorie control and getting enough fats/carbs/protein. Eat whole foods that are high enough on the satiety index because they make calorie maintenance more intuitive so you don’t have to count calories if you don’t want to. Those (and maybe a few other tips) are the only things that have a large enough effect for one to determine with almost (only almost, because everything empirical is a confidence interval/correlation) certainty that they’re effective.

Any study saying that blueberries are “superfoods” or any other hyper-specific food recommendation, I immediately don’t trust it. There just isn’t any organization that would fund a RTC of such a niche finding, especially considering you would need to pay and surveil thousands of people over the course of their whole life to change their diet and stick to it. I don’t think even the NIH is giving out millions of dollars to a research team to find out if blueberries are superfoods.

Is there a way you can make custom time-intervals? One month seems too short for one of my friends, but 3 months is too long.

The article states that AI is partly to blame. How could one state this claim is not sufficiently qualified?

Efficiency does not necessarily mean lower costs. More efficient workers could mean more valuable workers, and thus something employers are willing to pay more for in a competitive labor market.

Bell Labs was at its peak from 1960s-1970s. Since the 80s, corporate governance has completely changed due to Jack Welch’s short-term shareholder maximization ideology taking over the corporate world.

I don’t think there are current private organizations doing research similar to what Bell Labs did as the current corporate-governance systems wouldn’t allow for it.

Currently, industry research is more for profit-maximization at the expense of greater human prosperity/economic growth: such as you mention Monsanto making patented seeds, increasing profits by disallowing farmers to regrow crops more cheaply which otherwise could’ve been passed onto consumers/wider society.

It’s silly. MLB players are unionized and they make more money than tech workers. The reason why management don’t need a union is because they have much more say in determining their own wages.

If you live in SF, you can get a cheap degree from a California community college. It will be 10-50 dollars per semester. You can even transfer the last year of the degree to a UC if you care for a name-brand school, but I don’t think that would be necessary with work experience.

The FDA was founded in 1906. They are the reason we don’t have formaldehyde in our meat nor chalk in our milk. Read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to understand why people defend the FDA.

I agree with this point to some extent, but insurance before protections for preexisting conditions used acne as a reason to reject cancer treatment claims: obviously fraudulent behavior. If insurance is deregulated and any regulations aren’t going to be enforced regardless — a path we are going down — insurance firms will weasel out of claims with or without this genomic data

I am not as worried if this data gets out or not.

I think there are negative externalities if the data is sold to insurance firms — who can use the genomic information in litigation and policy rejections — or if the data is sold to some sort of powerful, pro-eugenics political organization. The insurance externalities likely can be mitigated with minimal legislation (protecting consumers in a similar manner to how we protect those with pre-existing conditions) and it is reasonable to assume pro-eugenics political groups wouldn’t be any less dangerous without this genomic data available.

Thus, I struggle to see how this data changing hands would be especially detrimental to society. One could contend a moral dilemma will arise from future developments in cloning, but would it? We already have clones in the form of identical twins, and their existence does not seem to create many, if any, especially problematic moral dilemmas. Maybe people are worried that society will start cloning celebrities and famous intellectuals instead of having babies more naturally — creating a world of designer babies where the diversity of thought and talent shrinks in a “tragedy of the commons”-esque dilemma — but I don’t think this is people’s issue because most people frame their qualms as more of a personal privacy issue. Moreover, designer babies issue I describe would likely become an issue with or without cloning.

There are issues that come to mind regarding genomics in commerce — such as the ethics and market incentives of patenting certain genomic patterns — but again I don’t see how this 23andMe data changing hands make this issue any more pressing than before.

On the other hand, my instinct (which I have learned to never blindly trust) is that making the data more widely available may make it cheaper and easier for researchers to make impactful discoveries. Therefore, my biggest worry with the change of ownership is that the new owners may keep the data behind a bigger wall.