rebelos

Imagine watching the seeds of AI that will terraform society and rapidly displace human labor over the coming decades be planted, and then still splitting hairs over whether or not it'll achieve sentience.

Our world is changing before our very eyes while this guy is belaboring the technicalities. You could hardly ask for a keener display of the philosophical gulf between scientists and engineers.

Yup. I should have noted this in my comment. That is an excellent way to conceptualize it.

People and corporate entities do not truly own land. That is a convenient illusion and a rhetorical trick we endure for perhaps no other reason than the momentum of precedent.

People and corporate entities rent land from governments and we call the rental rate 'property tax'. Furthermore, eminent domain is in part meant to defend against adverse situations of the kind you're describing.

IP law is designed to prevent indefinite squatting.

> It certainly can be channeled into inefficient or unproductive economic activity (and often is), but the system ultimately keeps moving.

Yes it could but that still wouldn't have some sort of deleterious effect on the broader system.

Money is economic kinetic energy. Assets are economic potential energy. And, by and large, any institution attempting to store and grow wealth through asset allocation will need to conduct continuous exchange operations back and forth between economic kinetic energy and economic potential energy, which is another way to describe investing.

This is, of course, a useful activity because it facilitates the transmutation of human self interest into productivity and social value. And, to the extent that such a system gives rise to negative externalities, it is the job of government to correct for that.

It's not really a concern so long as they are engaged in nonzero economic activity, in which case no money is permanently trapped within the vehicle. Money flows continuously in an economy and is only at rest in certain places such as bank reserves, mattresses, etc. But there is a very low incentive for it to remain at rest because our monetary system is inflationary. It certainly can be channeled into inefficient or unproductive economic activity (and often is), but the system ultimately keeps moving.

To get more concrete, if you have a charitable trust of the kind described in this article, then it will pay out salaries to employees and purchase various kinds goods and services. The recipients of those money flows will in turn put that money to work for their own ends: supporting a family with food, shelter, etc, paying other employees further along the value chain, acquiring other goods and services, and so on.

If someone accumulates this much wealth, they are well within their right to put it to work however they please. And doing so does not induce some permanent dysfunction in the system. In this case, I would argue that what the Patagonia founder has done is immensely commendable.

Why wouldn’t it be both the (considerable) expansion in money supply and shortages? At a 30000 foot view, price level is determined by money supply divided across the finite set of goods and services.

> People will complain all day long about the total incompetence or even criminal nature of every human government in recorded history, but when it comes to the prospect of an entity with hypothetically superior intelligence taking over, they want to prevent it!

This reductive drivel at the very end of the post nullified any credibility the author may have had.

The core game code is remarkably compact. I'm not familiar with game development, but is this usually the case? Very impressive.

Carmack sounds like someone who lives his job, so I don't think age/life stage is a factor here.

Many people are unaware that there's usually an automatic anti-dilution clause in the event of a down round. These types of maneuvers are usually 'heads I win tails you lose' in favor of the investors.

Yes and by that point both Braintree and Square were in competition iirc. Probably others too.

It’s now a commodity business with a range of competitors. Do people at Stripe really become this bamboozled? You’re not changing the world anymore, you’re just making money. You’re mercenaries who've been fooled into believing you’re missionaries. The counter-factual of a Stripeless world in 2022 is the market share gets split across the other providers and the world keeps on trucking. Get over yourselves.

This is monumentally delusional. That $4.1T annual healthcare spend by the government? Communism!

Isn’t SSR only really relevant when you need to optimize for SEO (which only applies to a subset of apps)? Seems like it doesn’t confer any other significant benefit.

Sounds like you got very lucky. To clarify: the (reasonably well regarded) university I attended most certainly didn’t teach me how to learn properly. It taught me how to cram to answer a contrived set of questions and then promptly forget everything. I’ve learned more about how to learn from a few short books than I did across the sum total of my university education.

> An old man who is also a deputy dean and associate professor told us: "The university does not give you knowledge. It teaches you how to get knowledge on your own."

This is laughably untrue and, oddly enough, the part of this post that left me most bothered.

> to appease those with conservative views on construction

More like "enlightened views on wealth preservation." You can follow the incentives on this one. It's not that complicated.

I guess that's not always realistic? And, more importantly, I'm not sure I like the idea of taking a 'fear-based approach' to solving this ("if I lapse for even a week during a vacation, I'll never be able to get back on track"), even though I understand the logic. Somehow that strikes me as an uncomfortable way to live.

This strategy makes perfect sense, but how do you handle vacations?

Please have a seat and let me tell you a story about a little something called 'Kubernetes'.

You are certainly dealing with burnout. Most people going through it don't realize it, but the increased negativity is in fact a part of that package. The inability to concentrate and brain fog are the more obvious symptoms. Type 'burnout' into HN search and you'll turn up plenty of good advice on the subject. You're in good company (unfortunately).

Wow this is cool. How long did it take to build it?

Certainly the latter. I know of several examples of patent infringement problems ruining a company or product, so I believe there's enough evidence to at least treat it as a real concern.

Have you ever worked in data engineering? They're using these systems for event data, data generated through transformations (multiplicative effect on base size), data used for ML, etc.

A lot of those people in India and China commit suicide, have mental breakdowns, or end up living generally unsatisfying lives. Their system is entirely unenviable.

The first thing you need to do is accept that you can't have everything you're looking for and that you have to explicitly decide on the tradeoffs you're comfortable with. The best writing on this subject comes from Tim Urban, in this lengthy but worthwhile essay: https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html.

Thanks for the info! Definitely going to look more into this. Hopefully I can embark on something similar minus the noted downsides.

What was your level of practice before going into the retreat? Did you go in 'cold'? What would you recommend for people who are considering it?

I've got a news flash for you about the scientists that America is educating...