rebelos

I'm not sure I follow. Sentience is inherently goal-oriented. The goal of a human is to propagate genetic information. AGI will invariably have to be supplied with a goal by us or else there is literally no impetus to act.

> Once you educate yourself more you can make more sophisticated investments.

There are countless well-capitalized and mostly underperforming hedge funds that were built on this premise.

I've always assumed that the trouble will begin when we have a model for 'true' AGI and discover that the constraint "do not harm any human" renders it functionally inert.

This is the best answer here. All memories decay unless you practice recall in the appropriate manner. And I agree with the theory that practicing recall is likely to improve your brain's overall capacity for recollection. That would resemble what we see in other aspects of brain function.

Von Neumann had a memory that was considered exceptional even amongst those of the various geniuses of his time. He's one of very few humans regarded as having had close to a photographic memory.

This suggests a good answer for why he’s so sensitive to shadowy conspiracies and bad faith actors (re: the mob rant): he was indulging in some of it himself. Not that we should assume this absolves Stripe. There seems to be some circumstantial evidence for their ruthless behavior beyond what Breslow has offered.

> eating a high fiber diet like most humans did for most of evolutionary time

Can supplementation be an effective substitute for fiber derived from real foods? If so, are there any particular kinds of supplements you'd recommend?

Some of this is unforgivable, but reflecting on it I also realized that software engineering at quant firms has an almost impossible mandate. You want something akin to the extreme rigor of mission critical software (airplanes, cars, NASA, etc), while also remaining nimble enough to modify strategies as market conditions rapidly evolve.

A simple answer to your conundrum could be how he manages his cadence and deals with pressure. Programming isn't especially difficult in my opinion. In many cases, sheer throughput seems to have a lot more to do with success than raw talent. Someone who was previously a chef might have a huge advantage in this regard, since working in a kitchen is a really demanding occupation. He probably has excellent training in dealing with pressure and time constraints. Perhaps being a programmer is even a relief compared to being a chef!

> The key difference is that central bankers were in a very different state of mind in 2008. MMT realy imposed itself post 2008.

> So while it's relevant to brace for a small crash due to interest rates adjustments if inflation continues, I wouldn't bet on a full scale snowballing cash grab, that killed relatively healthy institutions like in 2008.

This is a dangerous view because you're assuming the Fed won't be backed into a corner like Volcker. They may end up having to choose between the markets and the integrity of the dollar. When entertaining the counterfactual, it seems in hindsight like Volcker made the right call (and many economists endorse that notion), even though it manifested considerable short term pain.

You seem to be implying that an increase in money supply has to be the only catalyst for outsized annual S&P returns, and I'm not following that logic.

This is only a problem if you receive a windfall. Otherwise you should simply be continuously investing some portion of your income at all times.

And that's very relevant when you're talking about FIRE. You shouldn't have to liquidate any substantial part of your portfolio at one time. Once you're no longer on your own income, you should plan ahead with a 1-2 year runway (deciding the exact amount is an optimization problem that can be run against historical data) to hedge against having to sell off too much at a loss during a downturn.

This shouldn't be a problem if you're invested. There's a reason the S&P went up almost 30% this year - a lot of it was an adjustment for the boost in money supply.

You can't predict how things will evolve in 50 years but, as you have suggested, there are various (often simple) ideas and concepts that are timelessly useful. So develop a personal system for storing knowledge, keep adding to it, and use it to review continuously.

Here's a counterintuitive idea you won't hear often: reading on its own is futile. You'll eventually forget almost all of what you read or even learn if it's not reinforced. In fact, knowledge that isn't being actively recalled or applied can decay shockingly quickly.

The only way to combat this is to have a system. A simple and fairly informal system might be Post-Its and notes in a book that you review sporadically, whenever you happen to remember to do it. A more sophisticated system might leverage spaced repetition, practice problems, and tools like e.g. Anki and Obsidian/Roam Research.

As an example, let's say you didn't want to forget how to differentiate (most) functions. This might sound ridiculous from where you are now, but keep in mind this is about thinking longer term. So how would you achieve this? Well you might have some flash cards with concepts and some graphics and then some more with practice problems. How many problems would you need to do a year to recall differentiation properly? Maybe 50? Add flash cards.

Now differentiation is a poor example insofar as you might never find practical utility for it across the entirety of a software engineering career and you don't necessarily even need to remember how to do it manually (e.g. just use Wolfram Alpha). It can suffice to spend 5-10 minutes a year making sure you recall the most critical ideas.

Broaden out and think about what could be useful for you. Mental models, data structures/algorithms, systems design, etc. Consider what would be needed to retain that knowledge and then extend your system to make it happen. Focus on ideas that are disproportionately useful (or could be) but that you encounter infrequently (so e.g. perhaps you might include 'distributed systems consensus' and not 'git fundamentals'). For most concepts it suffices to have a good high level understanding and assume that you can deep dive and relearn the rest, should the need arise.

You'll be amazed at the surface area you can cover spending even 5 hours a week doing this. It's one of the easiest ways to remain an effective and flexible thinker.

> When they make tests optional they can admit more Black students without having to report their test scores.

I want to make explicit that what you're describing here is racism, because I think many people have kind of lost sight of this lately.

You're saying that nothing other than the immutable biological character of one person (Black) versus another (Asian) should form the basis of preferential treatment. I find this abhorrent and wholly incompatible with the notion of a civilized, modern society.

Discrimination in favor of Blacks is racism. Period. What the author was attempting to point out (that you ignored) is that very often the Blacks being admitted are the privileged ones anyway, while highly underprivileged yet talented Asians are completely screwed over.

But no one cares, because the whole thing is a farce. It just needs to look good enough to appease the various despotic progressive forces dedicated to re-institutionalizing racism. This kind of system will never work. It is morally bankrupt in the extreme and it makes me sick just reflecting on it.

Very surprised I didn't see this mentioned already: make sure you don't have any kind of sleep problem.

If you wake up feeling unrested, look tired, struggle with energy or sleepiness during the day, or otherwise feel like something might be 'off', then it might be worth exploring whether or not you have a sleep disorder.

That could take the form of insomnia, OSA, or even something more subtle like UARS.

Not many sleep labs are good at evaluating patients, so I would recommend going to the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center if you want proper diagnostics.

What's especially stupid about this is that almost nobody knows that we have a quite workable backup plan (solar geoengineering). It's not ideal but at some point it will have to be deployed. It'll be relatively cost effective and can be 'tuned' quite easily.

If you think there's no level of piracy as a fraction of total consumption that would destroy the economics of content production, then I'm afraid you're too unreasonable a person for me to engage with successfully.

This is certainly possible. Watch all of your content in theaters with all copies of the content as heavily secured as possible (physically and digitally)

Please feel free to read the next sentence.

> My recall 20 years later is excellent, so this is not cramming.

Then one of the following is true: you have an exceptional memory, have been reviewing the content since then, or are dramatically overestimating your recall. It has little to do with your technique.

It's not hard to see how piracy threatens the entire business model. You can have rampant piracy or you can have financially sustainable content production. You cannot have both.

There is some critical mass of piracy that would in fact destroy the economics of the content production model. The industry has to work to deter that by periodically making examples of people.

The timing is likely not coincidental either. Expect to see more of this as content once again fragments across providers, reanimating the traditional package TV structure in fresh form.

If you're looking to work with someone on this, reach out here: revoh98186 at kibwot.com (temporary email). I'm a fullstack dev with an interest in finance/trading and scouting for a side project.

No, you don't understand. A combination of normal housing price inflation and lower mortgage rates can easily explain that result.

> Although Google leaves open the technical possibility for Android consumers to acquire some apps without using the Play Store, this can only be accomplished through a competing app store installed on the device (either through preloading by an OEM or through the user sideloading the store), or through sideloading of individual apps. Google takes various steps to discourage OEMs from directly competing or sponsoring any app store competition. Google makes the sideloading process unnecessarily cumbersome and impractical by adding superfluous, misleading, and discouraging security warnings and by deterring users by requiring them to grant permission multiple times for a single app installation (discussed in more detail in Sections I.C. and I.D. below). The effect of Google’s conduct is to practically eliminate competition in Android app distribution.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210707/17411147129/googl...

> Dubbed the Open App Markets Act, it would let you install apps from places other than Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store, which both come pre-installed on iPhones and Androids, respectively.

> The industry calls that sideloading, and if it's allowed, would mark a turning point in the companies' iron grip on how people access apps and use their phones.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-app-store-downl...

> "frontload a big hedonistic experience before you start working/living as an adult"

Absolutely shameful straw man.

It's a real shame that spending your youth fixated on money and a nebulous future retirement doesn't have a price tag attached to it.

You can calculate the opportunity cost of a dollar spent vs a dollar invested, but you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered.

Balance.

A lot of people have a weird emotional fixation with "owning" a home when it really shouldn't matter at all.

You're in finance, so you should understand opportunity cost and you should very easily be able to model out the full financial burden and projected ROI of home ownership. Once you get honest about the work, hidden costs, loss of flexibility, and opportunity cost involved in being a homeowner, it'll start to seem like a not great and potentially even stupid idea, particularly in this environment with rapidly inflating housing prices.