curiousllama

You appear to be making the assertion that any economic exchange taken by two adults with full information is morally acceptable. Is that correct?

If so, would you accept the following as moral actions?

Financial adviser charging substantially above-market fees to recent widows, who lack experience in finance (All information is available, but not understood)

Selling heroin outside of a drug rehab clinic (All information available & understood, but under compromising circumstances)

The top 10% of spenders account for 49% of US consumer spending. They're not completely brainless; they're targeting rich people.

NAL, but looks like they're alleging something like negligence & deception. Addictiveness is just the mechanism of harm, so doesn't require a strict general case: just actual harm and the prior knowledge thereof.

So like the general argument is "company X was causing material harm, knew they were causing harm, and actively decided to continue causing harm while covering it up."

It'd be similar to suing someone who sold a dangerous toy under the label "safe for all ages". The lawyers don't need to ban specific features (sharp edges, fast motors, etc.). They just have to argue the way it's put together harms kids, the company knew about it, and they kept lying about it anyway.

The remediations could therefore be case-specific. They don't need to ban infinite scroll in general, just ban Meta from applying it to their products, since it's known to be harmful in that context.

> does it have to be answered in general?

100% yes. Remember, this is somewhat adversarial: Meta increases its products addictiveness year by year. Banning individual practices fails if the rate of that growth exceeds the impact of point solutions.

Yea, that's his point. The gold standard neither prevents nor encourages inequality, except inasmuch as it limits policy flexibility (which, similarly, could be used to promote or limit inequality).

NAL, but have worked in this. Griggs is a bit more complicated than that, and its progeny modify application anyway.

The TLDR is that arbitrary tests are permissible if there's no disparate impact. Tests with disparate impact are permissible iff they are not arbitrary (i.e., "directly" assess job responsibilities).

So, for example, Leetcode may have disparate impact, but it's "direct" enough to be permissible. On the other hand, most "AI Assessments" are actually so badly implemented that they're effectively random - and a coin flip won't have disparate impact.

How long would it take an aggressive company to expand production capacity? I always thought it takes a few years, at minimum, for even established players to stand up new fabs

Sure, but the key word here is "was"

The industry is so naturally prone to oversupply that the only stable equilibrium is undersupply. Aggressive expansion kicks off a price war, which immediately undercuts the logic of the expansion.

This only changes with new entrants, which will come, especially from China. But it takes time to build fab capacity, so the medium-term modal outcome is consistent undersupply.

Again - maybe?

The credential was certainly something - a more easily understood distillation of the of connections and status that got you there. But that's not exactly professional the way a degree in Business is.

Besides, were there not other high-minded notions that underpinned that credential - ideas of self-development and virtuous leadership? And more crass notions of polish and status? Were these not the self-justifications of these elites, made manifest through the institutions?

As a side note - I do strongly suspect elite schools will bring these ideas back. If not for virtue, for necessity - as schools seek to self-justify in ways that go beyond the dollars they risk losing.

Maybe? Elite colleges have been around a lot longer than the professional credentialism of the last 20 years, no?

Maybe - to your point, if we think of happiness as like “living one’s own purpose fully”, then yes, it does very directly.

But I was referring to happiness more generally as enjoyment, joy, satisfaction - that type of thing.

And in that case - there are plenty of ways being better = less happy. Eg if I were to sacrifice myself to save my family, then that’s the best version of me, but I’d be pretty dang unhappy about it.

Expanding this thought...

UChicago should be pretty uniquely positioned to address the problem of AI writ large. They already require a full year of each philosophy, literature, and history (all through primary sources). This "Core" should already be fairly AI-proof, given they are primarily small-group, discussion-driven courses; oral exams, in-class essays, or even graded discussions should be straightforward adaptations.

And yet, the university shifted towards professionalism before AI ("training a mind for the workforce" rather than "the good life").

Already, this transition did what the author observes AI is doing. I would hardly believe someone who cheats through an econ/stats major is less educated - if only through osmosis - than someone who honestly completes Business Economics.

And so I wonder - if the damage of AI is primarily instrumental to the broader trend of hyper-professionalism, what damage has it actually done?

If we automate away the signal to companies "yes, I can do stats for you," does that free students to focus more on the _less_ professional aspects of education?

Sure, it undercuts credentialism, making the "piece of paper" near worthless - but if our aim of education is just to "be better," should that not give us hope?

I can tell you with 100% certainty this is just how UChicago students write

Over a decade ago, my orientation at UChicago included the traditional "Aims of Education" address. They packed the whole first-year class into the chapel to explain, at length, that this education will not be "useful."

You're not supposed to make more money, or be happier, or really become anything other than a better version of yourself.

I wonder if they still do this.

This... can't be a signal of strength. There's a fine line between being agile and being erratic.

AI investment makes total sense as a proximal explanation. Minimize debt by trimming OpEx, then reinvest in compute. Seems smart.

And yet - this is what, the third layoff in 5 years? And weren't they doing aggressive performance cuts too? Are they workforce planning in 12 week sprints or something?

This reminds me of an overspending sports team: just toss together overpriced players/coaches, underperform, fire them all, do it again.

I think it's more like a restaurant offering both candy and burgers.

When candy sales outpace burgers, they're naturally going to invest more in candy. Eventually, they start to compete more with Hershey's than McDonald's.

Businesses evolve or die, no?

There has actually been a friends-only feed on FB for years. Timelines -> Friends filters everything down.

The problem? Nobody I care about posts anymore. The "flywheel" is broken.

Social Media hasn't died - it just moved to group chats. Everything I care about gets posted there.

Honestly, I would love a running Feed of my group chats. Scan my inbox, predict what's most engaging, and give me a way to respond directly.

Never confuse loyalty to a person with loyalty to an employer.

I have found loyalty to managers - when reciprocated - is the most valuable currency I have. It's led to both rewarding experiences & safety from the exact type of organizational change that makes loyalty to an employer useless.

Loyalty is for people & ideas, never organizations.

I would love to be a junior right now. I would just hate becoming a senior, after having been a junior right now.

Yea but "we waste the greatest minds of our generation on global economic information symmetry" just doesn't scratch the same itch

OODA loop is just a catchy acronym for the scientific method. Gather data, make hypotheses, choose one to test, actually test it; repeat.

If it makes you feel better, I’ve heard similar advice to manage executives

The whole thing with social media is network effects though. The added friction of a VPN, though small, is just so much larger than "click download, open app"

I mean, it was a ban when China did it to Facebook, no?

We have that. Welcome to the World Wide Web.

We all walked into the walled gardens and went "ooh, looks mighty nice in here!"

Maybe. Network effects are strong, though. I wonder how much losing access to the US market sets back TT's financial & competitive positions

Most folks who I know who made a large career change did one of two things:

- Hard shift: quit their job, went to grad school, and started over.

- Soft shift: got an adjacent job w/ a company w/ many roles (consulting, big tech, etc.), slowly got good at the adjacent role, and then title change.

I don't know what's best for you. Option 2 is safer. Could look like:

- Get a job doing UX in/around tech services/consulting/cybersecurity (eg IBM, Palo Alto Networks).

- Get on a team with cybersecurity engineers (eg, GTM for a "new cyber offering")

- Slowly build up your PM or technical skills (eg, start by learning SQL & doing reporting)

- When you're actually useful in the new area, ask about a role change

Keep in mind this is a lot of work.

- You're gonna need to go from No knowledge -> Junior -> Mid-Level -> Senior.

- Your opportunity cost is 1-3 promos in your current track, which would probably radically change your day-to-day anyway.

Good luck!

Tik Tok said they'll fully shut down. They'd rather go dark now than have a slowly-degrading experience, since users won't be able to update the apps.

That's a great point. Hadn't thought about that angle

I mean I know a lot of people who explicitly decide between sectors early/mid career.

Tech vs consulting/finance for MBAs, tech vs. HFT for SWEs, tech vs. advertising for creatives, etc etc