notShabu

every domain of expertise has two "elo" systems, the niche one and the broader one.

e.g. you can learn basic juggling in 30 minutes that you are top 10% of your friends/colleagues etc...

however within the juggling community itself this is known as the "3 ball cascade" a really simple trick relative to the ones that requires years to master. an outsider may not be able to tell the difference between the 1 year expert and the 10 year master.

a lot dunning-kruger can be explained by people in one or the other not understanding the other system

One of the "benefits" of traditional society is that there's a stronger gravitational pull towards the orthodox.

e.g. dealing with the majority case deals with 80% of all cases. VS in a more diverse group, the biggest pie slice might only be 20%

The system has a much higher burden of complexity to deal with edge cases.

An argument can be made that Dunbar's number sets a cap on the complexity a system can deal with. External scaffolding like a legal system increases system capacity which then reduces how necessary the orthodox gravity is.

sometimes it's not even clearly good or bad. E.g. "sensitivity" as a trait can be useful in nurturing environments to develop it into talent, but also a way-in for trauma that would have otherwise bounced off of someone with less sensitivity.

You're projecting a bit I think... the comment is making a case for the dehumanizing aspect of AI when it blurs the line between calculation and creativity

"better calculators will destroy humanity" seems like a ridiculous statement

but that's what new AI tools that can create good art/music/writing does. They boil down and automate the middle process of calculation.

what was previously "creative" is revealed as calculation from the God/Universe pov and as the range of calculable things grows, the island of im-a-real-human-bc-creativity gets smaller and smaller

defined this way... creativity ends up including some interesting domains like capital allocation and hedge fund management.

these allow for "expressions of freedom" unconstrained by calculation

For some reason it reminds me of Dune's sandworm and how you needed to "Walk without rhythm"

Being able to generate randomness is something only nature can do so by mimicking it you blend in with it.

A important aspect that I think is overlooked is that democratized access to exponential growth (like an index fund or buying a house) mathematically creates a growing wealth gap.

E.g. if 2 people equally start with $100 and grow their money at 7% per year, the difference in wealth is:

100 * 1.07 ^ 10 - 100 * 1.07 ^ 5

This function is still an exponential function.

So even though the second person is always 5 years behind in wealth, the absolute wealth gap will grow exponentially and cut the latter off from being able to compete on anything that they both want access to within the same timeframe. E

So... what I've learned from anime and video games is that main-characters basically fall into two buckets

"Light" characters are those that do no go gently into that good night. They are often passionate and naive.

"Dark" characters are those who understand the inevitability of entropy and also how it is a necessary power in the world (as it creates the arrow of time and thus all Stories)

Dark characters want to reduce the pain in the world by euthanizing it in some way, bringing about the inevitable instead of the vain struggle.

Light characters "win" by converting everyone they see into an ally and friend from going down the dark path by showing that the struggle itself is meaningful. This is the "anime friends unite and defeat God" trope.

Light: Naruto, Goku, Luffy, etc... Dark: Madara, Amelie (Death Stranding),etc.. Light struggling w Dark: Aang (last airbender) Dark struggling to be light: Kratos

Techno-optimists are a sort of interesting hybrid. They are often intellectually sophisticated enough to understand and bias towards a dark character but also occupy positions in society where you are obligated to be a light character that supports society.

This can feel cloying and fake and self duplicitous or it can feel manipulative and sociopathic. "Accelerate the production of entropy, for we will find a way to reverse it!"

So they are a dark character struggling to be light but not willing to give up the god-powers that come from tapping into the dark dimension.

So... basically the Ancient One from the marvel movies...

This explains the popularity of tech-spirituality. Because pure rationalism inevitably leads to the entropy-worship so there needs to be something more woo to counteract that inevitable conclusion.

All societies worship life differently, all death cults are alike.

Seeking absolute consistency logically leads to worshipping Shar

I've thought about this for quite a bit and here is my relatively legible explanation of what the 'Dao' and synonymous concepts in other religions/cultures is

The "Path" is the arc from a state of anti-entropy(negentropy) to entropy. Negentropy is synonymous with "God" or goodness while entropy is the "Devil" or badness.

A life that is in "flow" is one that is on the path moving away from God's light while bravely facing death with eyes forward.

Courage is the first of all virtues b/c when facing forward, you are more thankful for each and every fleeting moment.

"False idols" are like perpetual motion machines, they seem like sources of negentropy and can reverse the arrow of time like a fountain of youth.

etc...

This post made me think of human hierarchies. Line level ICs are cheap because they are specialized and fine tuned. Leet code is a way to roughly measure degree of fine-tuning even though it doesn't accurately measure how well the fine tuning is for the job.

As you go up the hierarchy what you want is higher quality answers to more and more abstract and general questions.

AGI, God, CEOs, and figures like Paul Graham, Elon Musk etc.. all answer to various degrees the ultimate abstract question of "What is the meaning of gestures wildly at everything"

Cost efficiency and commoditization basically increases "how" capacity at the cost of "why" capacity

as a counterpoint, this is sorta similar to how Apple creates products:

there's quote about magic:

> Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect. - Teller

The 3x code is all the magical "stuff" and that goes on in the background to create the illusion of something magical just working as well as non-essential "flourishes" like animation of different font support

However the key difference is that one magical feature is worth more than 1.5x a list of features to sell to various customers who only care about a different subset of those features.

In both cases though, it's understood that there is an additional burden of complexity and upkeep in order to achieve an end goal. Every line of code adds additional entropy to the system until it caps out based on whatever rate of entropy expulsion the culture can maintain.

The diminishing return on additional lines of code may be an unavoidable part of large systems. So it always feels like returning to the "Beginning" via a new project or new startup increase agency and leverage. Which is then perceived by marketing/sales/etc... as a constant refusal to move into the "future" b/c of "bad code danger".

therapists IMO is a paid "listening as a service". but many therapists won't have the necessary life similarity overlap to truly listen.

this is esp true for individuals who end up needing therapy b/c they think in ways that are not aligned with society.

so most therapists teach coping mechanisms to fit in more w/ society so that it becomes a source of support vs judgement. it's a nice and controlled "lobotomy" of the parts that "should" be excised.

vs the "integrate the shadow/subconscious" stance which believes that these parts cannot truly be excised and instead are suppressed instead of integrated.

No state can manage identities without the consent of the individual because individuals have to actively protect and manage their identities and not sell them.

E.g. we protect our social security numbers against identity theft because the economic benefits of having one outweigh selling it. But when there isn't a benefit, then the identity can just be sold.

Solving the identity problem and solving the "good governance" problem are likely the same problem.

Here are the best arguments for why TA works IMO:

- The patterns are real in that they can be used to roughly identify groups of buyers and sellers who have price floors and ceilings. E.g. it's a way of gauging the momentum of a trend. However the signal:noise ratio is very high especially when traders try to act on these patterns so that their activity drowns out the original signal

- The patterns then become a schelling point and those who can read the patterns faster can front-run those who read it more slowly. The patterns themselves become reality rather than just a representation of reality.

The value is most likely fully drained from it in that there is no longer any alpha but remains sorta-kinda truish occasionally like "if they don't look you in the eyes it means they're lying" or "changing the lighting improves productivity"

I heard this theory once that one of the biggest jumps in cellular complexity was when cells started to use mitochondria for energy production. This created so much abundance that organisms could afford to diversify into all kinds of shapes and sizes and ways of life.

Software similarly isn't like farming where the margins are so thin that processes become homogenized. Software companies traditionally have had so much "fat" that the structures built around this cashflow are arbitrary.

Some build temples and monasteries, some create a monarchies or dictatorship, some are anarchist libertarian experiments, etc...

What is common among them though is that the hierarchy revolves around culture rather than pure meritocratic ability.

E.g. if a foreigner goes to work in Japan, he/she might think that it's all fake work meant to keep fax machine companies alive but it's not "fake" when viewed from the perspective of keeping a culture alive. In any institution, there will always be founders and traditionalists who need the culture to stay alive to support their position. This "support" exists in the form of followers which make up the bulk of the org body.

Engineering is an outlier because it's more mercenary, the skills are transferable so there isn't a need to compound loyalty and connections at one single place.

That is... traditional companies are like a national army. Even in times of peace it is held together by nationalism or peacekeeping. Tech companies are like mercenary armies, they are only held together when there is Something to Do.

High rates are currently maintained via the reverse repo facility which allows you to park your money at the Fed with high interest.

Usually only bank and other primary dealers can have an account at the Fed but the reverse repo facility allows money markets (and thus anyone) to basically passthrough to the Fed.

Given the high interest yield offered and the fact that the Fed by definition cannot go bust, there is no reason to put your money at a small bank due to the risk and low reward.

Algorithms wove our pseudo-realities into super plazas of connectedness and mimetic conflict,

AI however can create raw strands of pseudo-reality, a previously human-specific ability.

The arms race shifts from "i'm more human than you!" to "i'm human, really!"

IMO most of what is "connectedness" or "anti-loneliness" is an illusion. Like those movie scenes where two actors mirror each other's movements to create the illusion of a mirror.

That is, connectedness requires an external structure to synchronize everyone's rhythm. This can be a sports team, a religion, a shared love the same anime or breed of dog, etc...

Loneliness feels more pronounced when in the presence of these illusions. It's not easily solved because from the pov of the lonely person, he/she is asked to believe the equivalent of "2+2=5" in exchange for that kind of connection. It feels like an ask to self-lobotomize. (even if from the pov of say a therapist, the client is actually just in a different kind of illusion)

* "illusion" can have negative valence so an alternative here is "story" or "pillar of meaning"

This is like the mirror opposite of how VCs burn money to create new behaviors. Eventually the protest (wasteful burning) creates new behaviors that shape the world into one's desired image.

My one philosophical takeaway from GTD is the idea of offloading the record keeping and logistics of tasks to some slower external system.

This allows the "RAM" or faster context of your thinking to be focused entirely on what you're doing.

Every system built on top of this (including GTD itself) is just an interpretation of this core idea that GTD points to that have unique selling points.

For example, ticketing systems inspired by toyota-scrum-agile externalize work in a way so that you can debug bottlenecks. GTD itself focuses on capture and filtering. Newer "second brain" stuff focuses on the knowledge management itself.

These external systems tend to grow until they require a dedicated cabal of priests to manage them. Since these systems measures all "progress", individuals then become incentivized to align with the priests (or become one).

Eventually the finger that points to the moon becomes the moon itself. The system was intended to allow you to focus on The Important Thing but instead becomes The Important Thing itself.

I think each generation tries to be more "real" than the previous generation.

At first social media allowed us to express "who we really are" by providing us tools to present "who we think we are". This was more "real" in contrast to the suit & tie professional persona many were shoehorned into. (Which was more "real" in contrast to traditional work-husband/housewife roles, since it was theoretically gender-blind)

Now social media personas feel too "fake". Being physically fit in the real world is one of the only hard-to-fake ways to stand out as "special" now.

I noticed this as well, either the new liability training has nerfed the model or they're marketing GPT-3.5++ as GPT-4 due to cost or service uptime concerns.

I think one part of this is that it's easier to hike prices when there's a narrative of inflation because it gets lost in the noise. In quieter times, standing out with price increases drives customers to the competition.

Has there been any research in the possibility that much of what we say/speak (including this convo) is actually just stochastic parroting?

e.g. instead of the stochastic parrots mimicking intelligence maybe intelligence doesn't exist, it's just stochastic parrots of various levels of sophistications organized into a hierarchy. "Intelligence" is necessarily socially defined with the more complex parrots being unpredictable and "intelligent" from the POV of lower parrots. Vicer versa, looking down, the lower parrots seem to act like "NPCs"

Using "Add to Home Screen" for the chat.openai.com URL actually is better for now IMO.

It has more features like selecting GPT-4 sub-models with browsing, plugins, etc...

Kudos to the responsive CSS

I don't think it's fair to be dismissive of AI fears by equating it with fear of future because what matters isn't change but the RATE of change

The rate of change is the difference between slowing for a red light and crashing into a brick wall. In both cases there is a force acting on the front of your skull but only in the latter is it accelerated into the back of your skull.

To feel like a main character you have to feel "observed" by a reader.

This becomes interpersonal conflict when attention is zero-sum. When all employees depend on the corporation-as-observer the team dynamic can become toxic

However most people have other "observers" like parents, friends, twitter-community, God, etc...

Though they can generate feelings of love, acceptance, fame, oneness, etc... it is fairly difficult to transmute this effort into money to make a living so these stories are subservient to the money-attached one.

Newer generations don't have decentralized observers. Everyone is online so social just converges into performing for the "algorithm". Religion and other traditions feel out-of-touch with where the world is headed. etc...

Work ends up becoming the sole pillar that is supposed to hold up all these requirements. Partners & colleagues are expected to be Virtuous by serving the one true lord of light

Managers have to act as priests...

This is actually a pretty accurate though exaggerated version of what happens in my mind.

The blind man variation is a lot "harder" in that I can feel my mind reaching for scrap paper and intermediate steps.

The first one is simple enough that I can start an "improv" and start speaking without fully parsing and initiating a world state.

I think the GPT models all do something similar. Without prompts to get it to think step by step it just wings it like a public speaker under pressure.

The human mind is likely a bullshit parrot as well. Those who are at the cutting edge of ideas can claim a bit of non-parrot-ness for a while but most of the time it's just parroting within a curated "elite" subgroup.

What makes a "human" different could be that we live in the physical world with environmental and social consistency. Each time we sleep the mind "dies" and is "reborn", like GPT-4 starting a new conversation with new context.

The physical environment and social interactions (and cues from long term and short term memory) make up the preamble for the day.

If the environment and interactions fall into easily compressible patterns, it can feel like the movie Groundhog Day, a constant loop. However changing relationships (breakup, dating) or changing environment (traveling, moving) changes the preamble where "I" feel like someone different. A harder reset vs the soft reset of sleep.