iroh2727

Some individuals, in some particular professions, may have this choice. But there are structural forces preventing this on a population level.

Most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck as is, and it's not that they're spending frivolously. Our standards of living are based on what's needed for subsistence, yes, but also cultural and historical. Based on how we grew up and how our parents grew up, and how culture (e.g. hollywood) tells us we should be living. So most people are trying to live according to established standards.

It's already much harder for the present generation to live at the standard of the previous generation or two (e.g. buying a home is less of a possibility). Choosing, then, according to our "freedom", 20% less pay would require also choosing poverty according to established standards of living (i.e. it would look like poverty).

The narrative of "the individual" is a nice narrative from the perspective of the elites of our society to distract from the fact that, as always, there is class conflict and systematic forces in place. Of course, don't get me wrong: it is nice that there is some legitimate freedom on an individual level in the US. But for one, that legitimacy is overblown via mass media marketing (e.g. of course Jeff Bezos is going to tell his rags-to-riches story for everyone to hear). And more importantly, there is also the question of the overall structural forces that establish the population level structure.

Amen. Yeah statistics never say much (they always say a lot less than basic common sense).

Interesting side note unrelated to the VR part: although I'm all for moderate recreational psychedelic use (or not moderate...you do you), it seems there's a weird rebranding of psychedelics being done by the pharmaceutical industry (who is now repackaging and selling psychedelics, e.g. esketamine).

I think what is happening is (1) they're looking for new growth opportunities, and (2) some drugs like SSRIs have a worse rap now, so pivoting to psychedelics gives this appearance, like "Look we are helping to liberate you. We're on your side. Free love and free drugs, man."

But viewing this in a more cynical way, we could perhaps see it as a way to keep making money while avoiding the fact that these drugs, like SSRIs, do not really treat mental illness (merely induce alternative states of mind that have different symptomology), and that the real causes of mental illness are usually more social/societal.

https://joannamoncrieff.com/2021/09/02/psychedelics-the-new-...

Although I generally agree here, I wouldn't say there's "no" social. Some platforms are more social than others, and it's interesting to compare them...

Like having an argument/discussion in comments (where you're not optimizing for likes) can be somewhat social. Or being a fan of some creator can be a legitimate form of (para)socialness (especially if you have some "real" friends who are also fans).

I think where it gets very, very unsocial is when platforms (1) overoptimize towards doomscrolling/engagement, (2) when they try to "capture" social elements through various feedback mechanisms (e.g. all these other reactions and actions that can be done besides simply commenting or liking), and (3) maybe when a platform is so big that people/organizations are encouraged to post there for some monetary or other value it may give them (rather than simply to engage/interact).

Although the root cause of things like hatespeech or misinformation is people rather than platforms, I'd say the root cause of unsocialness (or disconnection) is absolutely platforms (e.g. their algorithms, dark design patterns, monetary incentives, etc).

Oh man that sounds pretty bad... I feel you. Hmm I guess one way of looking at it is just in terms of power. Like your immediate boss has power over you and treats you like shit. So I wonder, is there any way to gain power elsewhere, like demonstrating value to higher ups or other people? Like if the concerns you raise are really hurting the bottom line, that really should get known or else it's an inefficient organizational system.

But yeah if there's no opportunities to increase your visibility or power, it's pretty hard to overcome a shitty manager... and especially if he doesn't value your work, why even bother doing good work?

Let’s not forget that “self-taught ai” is kind of a misnomer for multiple reasons. First of all, although it’s of the class of “self-supervised” models, it is still targeted by some person or organization for some purpose. Also, although it is called “ai” it is actually ml which means it uses some data (often user data). Even this label-less data is still data.

This misleading terminology can be used purposefully by corps (the major funders of ml research) to distract people from what they’re really up to. Not to say it’s not good research…just that’s it’s not necessarily used for the best of purposes.

https://nathanieltravis.com/2022/08/11/ai-safety-is-a-purpos...

Yes.

Though, given that you have nothing to lose, you could consider first kindly telling the bosses what is insufferable. Maybe that could help, idk?

Or I guess I'm curious too: what makes the immediate bosses insufferable?

Yeah at least several years ago I had an explanation for this (though I’m not sure if it still applies). Basically, I think one reason for this weird type of interview is that it was an indirect way to bias towards young hires.

Young people have that energy and naïveté to do a lot of the grunt work. And most work at any established company is kind’ve grunt work. Anyways, just a random theory but nowadays it may be backfiring.

Yeah this is definitely a problem, but I blame the companies. On the one hand, yes, for a long time there have been a lot of people that don't do much work. They should've been firing those people long ago, but they I guess were too scared/defensive. They felt it was better for business to just keep them.

But now there is a big uptick in employees not working much, and I think the cause is just that companies are so disconnected from people. For example, Sundar wants people to be more "customer-focused" but everywhere at Google, all anyone talks about is this metric and that metric. Customers are just treated as a number to be aggregated into a metric. They're really not talking about specific customer problems. And they're not empowering employees to have vision for how to solve specific customer problems overall imo.

Also, speaking of their own employees as people, they're similarly disconnected. They just treat employees as part of a metric too to a large extent. And what does that lead to? Employees that also care mostly about that metrics ($) and not building cool, assistive/helpful products.

I mean it all comes back to incentives of companies trying to grow their stock value. So it's really that and not out-of-touch CEOs. But although a recession is heartbreaking, we do need to regain some sense of reality imo. Perhaps return to technology that's actually trying to assist people or fix things in the world. One can hope.

[1] Social animals want to be social.

Yeah I shouldn't speak for everyone... but I think for one, having a sense of mission contributes to meaning. And for two, having a sense of tribe (e.g. deep collaborators, partners in crime, healthy rivals) contributes to meaning. Both of which are much easier to have in person.

There's another important aspect too which is this sense of lifelong friendship that you may be building. People you know in person, you may feel that they're a "real friend" that you can meet up with in person in the future as well, regardless of what happens with your job. That's important too. I mean a "real friend" you can call or zoom with and it's still good. But it's hard to build a "real friendship" starting from zoom, don't you think? Not impossible, but much harder/rarer (actually phone calls or writing emails is perhaps easier than zoom).

"Humans develop tools that assist in locomotion, such as domesticated horses and carriages and bicycles and cars—and then extend their awareness to those tools. The driver “becomes one” with the machine, as we say. In his 2020 book, Why We Drive, Crawford argues that a device becomes a prosthetic. The rider fuses with the horse. To move the tool is to move the self. Crawford argues that this cognitive enhancement is possible only when you can interpret the components of the tool you’re operating."

Very interesting theory: the importance of being able to interpret the components. Yeah I love stick shifts. Sometimes I regret getting it (because it's not a sports car or anything). But I think, for one, having something extra to with my body frees my mind to roam while I drive.

Yeah I think hybrid is kind of inefficient. Unless it's a significant portion in person, you lose most of the benefits of being in person (e.g. it needs to be highly connected for it to feel connected).

I guess the "efficiency" gains of remote (more focus time for individuals? less distractions?) are more continuous/less thresholded OTOH because they're more related to individuals than the collective.

But basically the top reason (if true) means you kind of need to be all in on the in-person or you're kind of all out efficiency-wise. Very small companies I guess can go either way and be OK (though, people need to be extra passionate about their project and coworkers to be motivated without that in-person connectedness).

Big companies I think just don't work at all in the remote world. Everyone loses meaning. No one wants to do those big audacious or really challenging/messy things with no meaning (I mean, people will still do a lot of small things to get their paycheck). This may sound bad but...I am absolutely not going to do a giant, messy, complex refactor for a bunch of zoom heads who I can only talk to through some awkward hand-raising-button-disconnected-digital-cubicle social dynamics.

It's just inhuman the world we were encouraged to be a part of. And we talk as if it's "normal"... Anyways, yeah efficiency! Yes, it's just inefficient for big companies. And eventually we'll realize this. I hope.

Yep. My analogy for this kind of effect is McDonald’s (and other fast or prepackaged food). Fast food never eclipsed good food because, well, it’s not that good. But it spreads. It’s just the result of unfettered capitalism (tech is no different in this regard to any other industry).

But it’s also a culture thing…like people trying to convince us that mediocre stuff is good or cool. I mean in this case it’s new because a machine is doing it, but what are OpenAI’s real economic motivations behind all their press releases I wonder…?

Haven't gotten past the first couple of chapters so I don't have strong opinions on whether the theory is "true" or not.

But one thing I don't see mentioned enough is that it's just a brilliant piece of literature. So poetic and clear at the same time. And just rich with interesting tidbits and philosophies... very refreshing.

It's not about Amazon's terrible actions fighting the union. It's about Amazon's exploitative labor practices, the day-to-day oppression that warehouse workers have to deal with.

Also, let's not forget that Amazon has unlimited funds to cover up and distract from their misdoings while the Teamsters do not.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/27/amaz-a27.html

Yeah I'm definitely not an expert here, just raising the question. I guess compared to pharmaceuticals which are something we'd take only as a last resort/backup plan, is there extra danger in modifying the most basic of our food sources? Any unintended side effects that could happen or limitations to our tests?

(I'm definitely am in favor of regulation to prevent overprocessing of food too. So no double standard from my end there.)

“Generally considered” may not be good enough given that that general considerment is corporately influenced (in terms of research funding, media, narratives inside the industry, etc.).

I mean, I’m not an expert, but altering the expression of genes already present could be hugely dangerous in theory. These expressions are based on extremely precise feedback loops and interrelationships.

I guess we could use a coding analogy: if you’re using a statically compiled language and you make a code change that compiles and makes the unit tests you have in place pass, it probably works. But it might not… and in this case, what are the risks of the “might not,” especially when we’re layering these modifications on top of each other? And do we need to take such risks?

Well, I don’t think this article did a good job of representing Adler’s real views. I’ve read a little bit of his work and he’s definitely a reasonable person who would agree that your trauma is real.

I think his perspective/emphasis just differs a bit from Freud for example. Like rather than saying this event caused my current state of mind (which is of course true from one perspective), he’d focus on the perspective that my mind reacted in this way for a particular purpose (e.g. to protect itself so that I can keep surviving/functioning in the future, even if it comes at a severe cost). That perspective is also true, just different.

I guess it’s important to have both—-empathy for your experience and the real trauma it caused (so that you still feel connected and supported by people) but also reflecting on what may be the purpose of some behaviors/mentalities that came out of the trauma, so that at least in the longer term they can be improved or substituted (e.g. if something exists for a purpose, we can’t just remove it because it’s “not normal”; we need to understand the root of it). All to keep moving forward to your best self. I mean, there’s no magic pill for trauma so every therapeutic approach is going to have limitations but it’s good to seek useful, self-empowering approaches which I think is what Adler was going for.

Just my interpretation. I’m not an Adler expert but I do like his work (as well as Freud’s).

Oh god. I'm afraid to say this sounds kind of...hopeless. I don't think it's a lack of management ability on your end. It's that it sounds like they don't even have good intentions. If they had good intentions, you could at least work with them to improve their skills. But if they don't or have some ego issues, what can you do? That's not really in your power to fix.

Can you find new team members? And in the meantime, perhaps do more coding yourself?

Well, I guess they won the challenge at least...

In all seriousness though, screw TikTok. Kids should not be using (un)social media til like age 16 at least. I always wonder how the future will view the creators of these (un)social media apps. Brilliant innovators? Capitalists that turned a blind eye? Soulless murderers?

Mmm I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I definitely believe in giving users the ability to customize and control the software they use. But on the other hand, I feel like a search engine, in order to be good, should be opinionated about what constitutes "quality" and what's useful to people. These goggles can kind of be a way for Brave to say "the blood isn't on my hands".

Also, seeing the initial examples from their beta (e.g. boost tech content or boost left-wing news sources) makes me a bit weary about its usefulness (if most people, rather than creating their own goggles end up using some prepackaged ones).

Anything that's not connected to the internet.

Why is the box black? Because it’s more of a tangled mess. Many classical methods are absolutely appreciably less tangled.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the fact that a method is classical makes it by default untangled or a good approach. I mean random forests consisting of big tree are really not that interpretable for example. And ML in general is not always the best tool for solving a problem. Gotta use our judgment factoring in the time dimension of software/product development.

Also, I think it’s a question largely of how deep learning is used. If it’s used in a very compartmentalized way, either at the product level or the code logic level, where you don’t need to be able to disentangle the component (and it’s giving huge wins over alternative methods), it can (can!) be a good choice.

And if by AI we mean deep learning, it’s very entangled and non-modular code. In other words, what would be considered unmaintainable or unscalable code according to the basic principles of software engineering. Not to mention that it is often a huge distraction for many of your top programmers away from focusing on the actual product you’re building.

(Not to say that deep learning can’t be useful of course. But people should know it comes with huge costs. And given that the performance of relatively simple or interpretable methods is often comparable in practice and much, much more practical when taking into account the time dimension of software engineering and product development, it’s definitely overused at the moment.)

Just curious, what concretely is “the way AI can potentially bring benefits to humanity”?

This is a lot of speculation on what exactly Putin's calculations were. Of course war is bad for Russia in the short-term but given NATO encroachment, you can't just let yourself be slowly encroached on forever.

I think your point about countries that were typically neutral becoming not neutral is an incredibly important data point here. Though I read it in a different way. Specifically, the fact that Switzerland became partisan (Switzerland!) seems to really support what Mearsheimer was saying (i.e. support for Ukraine by the west is much more about financial incentives than standing up for human rights). I mean, did Switzerland, who was neutral even in WWII suddenly gain a conscience now? (Though I guess another way to read it is just that Switzerland feels very safe at this moment to be partisan, or that power dynamics have shifted significantly in Europe in recent times.)

But anyways, let's just take a step back for a second... it's clear that the US empire is much more powerful than Russia at this point. Of course if the US decides to back Ukraine with a lot of resources and support, it's going to be a struggle for Russia. The fact that it's a struggle does not seem to say much.

Definitely agree with the summary of your views. I think your point on the motivation of eugenics coming from the desire to build a welfare state is very interesting. (I need to think more about the motivation for people that want to build a more AI-driven society or who fear AI technology in today's day and age).

Though, on a separate note, I would question your view of Putin as suddenly "losing touch with reality". Is it not possible that it's just a strategic response to NATO encroachment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

I wholeheartedly agree that there are times that call for defending your in-group against an out-group. It could be fighting for scarce resources or when your lives are on the line. But do you also agree that there are times where it is out of place? The unabomber perhaps? I mean he was a bit of a one-off (a group by himself). But what about the early eugenicists, for example, was it called for or out of place?

Ok point taken. But above you were mentioning examples of genocide…. I guess we could decompose something like racism (which I guess extends to other ways of categorizing in-group vs out-group) as (1) natural tendencies to group and make judgments based on groups, which as you mentioned certainly exist, (2) media/culture that shapes us on top of our natural tendencies, and (3) the desire to harm/fight/destroy other groups (which is probably a spectrum of intensity).

I guess that (3) is the part that I was saying is often unnatural. (And (2) also of course. I mean it’s clear how Hollywood is a racist propaganda machine for example…) But I guess with genocidal maniacs (or people trying to institute mass control or automation away from human agency) that’s really a question of (3). And of course, there are I’m sure events in those maniacs lives that led them to their views. But certainly they’re not seeing the whole picture, certainly they’re acting out of fear, or to maintain a sense of self-worth or as some other kind of coping mechanism.

Yeah I agree that no one acts in a knowingly malicious way. But considering for example racists or eugenicists, it's important to note that no one is born a racist or eugenicist. Those mentalities are always either (1) something other people convince them is the right mentality or (2) a kind of coping mechanism, a way to maintain our belief that we are good or we are competent in the face of some negative signals that may say otherwise.

Thus, given the fact that people do change (otherwise they wouldn't have changed to such an unnatural state to begin with), we should rely on the agency of people calling other people out and people being able to increase their self-awareness and learn from their mistakes. I mean, if you disagree with someone, you don't have to convince them, you just have to convince others to join your side. People with different beliefs standing up for them is what creates balance in the world.

Of your above examples, I also agree with your point about it always being some group vs the 'others'. But again, none of those people were born with those desires to harm others. It was something developed and something unnatural, likely the response to some negative events. But I don't think we shouldn't distrust human agency altogether just because some people use theirs to cause harm. And we don't have to calculate precisely the total benefit or harm of our future actions in order to have permission to express our agency. I guess it's really about reaching a state of self-awareness to identify if we're acting in an authentic way.

Coming back to technology, I'd say with people that want to automate away or control people, they should reflect on why they've come to distrust other people in general. I mean they certainly trust themselves to try to automate away or control other people. Why not trust others similarly? What events or people in their life led them to that mindset?

I agree with your point about scientific breakthroughs coming via pure curiosity. I’m just saying that we can’t forget the human agency at play here. We didn’t have to build the atom bomb, and it wasn’t exactly simple to turn insights from physics into the atom bomb (it took a team of the best scientists and technologists many years). Also, we can influence the direction of how technology is used. Even setting up the atom bomb to be used involves a ton of decisions and implementation that can be questioned and molded by individual people.

Essentially I believe that fear of powerful technology comes from an irrational distrust in people as incompetent or malicious. Same with desire for powerful technology to control or replace people (e.g. algocracy). It seems to reflect a lot of the rhetoric and motivations of the eugenics movement. But the problem is, it can perhaps be a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are capable of being incredibly competent if encouraged to do so. So I think we should go in that direction, of empowerment and freedom rather than control or replacement. And if our governing structures or institutions or culture are making it difficult to go in that direction, we should fight those.