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> I don't think social mobility will be eliminated, I think the variance of individual mobility will just be radically increased.

Those round to the same number: 0.

> While that's technically a valid potential future, it's unrealistic just because society would tear itself apart long before it reached that limit state.

I don't think it's that unrealistic. The trick will be, not going too fast, managing a few separate transitions, and making sure capital maintains control of the institutions with the monopoly on the use of force. The masses don't tend to act to project their interests until it's too late.

> What are the barriers to a junior dev creating their own product?

Are you seriously asking that question? What are the barriers to a junior dev writing the Linux kernel from scratch by themselves? What are the barriers from climbing from the bottom to the top of a ladder where the rungs are 20 feet apart?

Sure, start at the top, then it's great. Very few start at the top.

> I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field.

> If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital.

And if you're a junior software engineer? Fuck you and be unemployed.*

Do you get it now?

* Until you can climb up the ladder where each rung is now 20 feet apart.

> Over time that will reduce to executives, "architects" of various sorts, social media entertainers and manual laborers/direct customer service.

And at the very end, it will reduce to capital only, with no need for labor at all. Most people will be unemployed, and whatever capital they've amassed is unlikely to be enough to sustain themselves and their families for the long term. They (you) will end up as little more as impotent ants to AI-fueled Elon Musks, neglected until the infestation needs to be cleared to make way for some project.

> What happens to social mobility in the post GPT world[?]

If the technology pans out the way the techno-enthusiasts hope it will, upward social mobility will be nearly eliminated... unless there's some kind of successful Luddite revolution against the technology and the people that own it. But that's not going to happen: there are all kinds of social pressure against revolution, as well as strict gun control in most places. Anyone who tries to resist their obsolescence will soon find themselves either ridiculed and condemned or in jail.

Of course, downward social mobility will accelerate, and be celebrated by idiot technologists who just want to build tech, and don't really care to think about the consequences of the technologies they build on real people.

> I also assume that preservation of books will be a priority for at least some people even in near-apocalyptic circumstances, and that material conditions would improve markedly after only a few years.

I agree, but "in in near-apocalyptic circumstances" they'll only preserve the stuff they value or find useful. I don't think redundant, low-print volume academic specialist works will fall into those categories. Unless there's enough surplus that the university continues to function as such, those books (along with dissertations, most academic papers and archives) will rot on the shelves.

In the aftermath of a full-on nuclear war, I'd expect the English-speaking word would experience huge, unrecoverable losses in areas beyond the undergrad level. Advanced work that's famous and highly-cited enough to be in a South American or African university probably would be an exception, though.

> And I think there's still a lot of disruptive, world-changing tech to be discovered before AGI is even a remote possibility. In reality this tech is probably going to be more like a superpowered exoskeleton for CEOs, politicians and the like to sway public discourse in their favor.

Our current powers-that-be are so manifestly unsuited to have the kind of power our idiot technologists are desperate to build for them that part of me wishes for a disaster so bad that it knocks technological society off its feet, to the point were no one can build new computers for at least a couple generations. Maybe hitting the reset switch will give the future a chance to make better decisions.

Looks the organization dissolved in 2009 and had its activities taken over by the USB Implementers Forum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Computer_Memory_Card_...

> What the administration is attempting to do is monopolize the framing of the issue as a legal one. Frame monopolization is inherently an authoritarian practice and unbecoming of a prestigious higher institution.

What do you mean? It's a law school, so it seems perfectly reasonable and not authoritarian that these issues should be framed by the organization's primary purpose.

And frankly the quoted statement less "frame monopolization" than a rejection of an even more stringent kind of authoritarian ideological "frame monopolization."

> Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them (or even hearing arguments about them), but however appealing that position might be in some other context, it is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school. Law students are entering a profession in which their job is to make arguments on behalf of clients whose very lives may depend on their professional skill.

Also, isn't it also an area where professional and ethical obligations require you to be able to make the strongest possible arguments that you're capable of on behalf of your client... even if you personally find your client to be extremely distasteful. Lawyers literally need to be able to play devil's advocate, so I think it would be perfectly reasonable to not only require lawyers-in-training to be exposed to ideas opposing things they feel "should not be up for argument," but even argue against those things themselves as an exercise.

> They apologised after getting criticized¹, but as Mike notes, someone consciously put that text there. Was that some experiment by their publisher? To get young adult readers to get used to such silly stipulations in order to turn it into law later? If I was one of the authors I would be pissed at the publisher² for slipping that in and damaging their reputation.

My bet it was put there by the author (who blames their "formatter"), because wording and sentiment are amateurish. I'm also getting strong vibes that that book is self-published. For one, it's a looks like it's a trashy romance novel, and I understand self-publishing is pretty common for those, and the apology Facebook doesn't mention a publisher and makes it sounds like the authors are running the show.

In any case, the inclusion of that example give me a poor opinion of this article. The author isn't above digging up stupid stuff done by some random ignorant boob to fuel the outrage machine.

> After the nukes fly, who knows... maybe those physical books will be the only copies which survive a temporary global disruption of digital technology and industry.

The problem with that idea is that there would be very few copies, concentrated in the urban areas that are likely to get nuked. A book like one of those is also likely to be extremely specialized, so it would be unlikely to be used if that specialty ceases to be of practical values for a generation or more. Even physical books need care to be preserved for long periods, and wouldn't survive in an abandoned library with a leaky roof and flooded basement.

I agree, but my old high school library apparently has a copy available (according to their online catalog). I'd bet it's rarely been checked out, and never actually read (beyond a couple of pages).

They also have the The Communist Manifesto, which seems more like the kind of thing a precocious or edgy teen might actually read (at least in the pre-smartphone era).

> If every college/university and big city library needs to own a copy so that their members can get access to it, that's not such a big problem, you can still sell maybe 1,000 copies. But if everyone can share a single copy, that is a big problem.

And if they can do that, it probably means that copy will never be written, or priced at $20,000 or something.

> I hope that all school libraries have copies of Rudin, Marx and Kripke too—and that’s it.

Honestly, I kind of doubt that would ever happen. Marx's most famous books might be kept only because of their extreme fame, but you'll rarely if ever see mathematicians or analytic philosophers like you listed. They'll rarely if ever be checked out, and will be weeded. A school library isn't an university library.

> Does anyone know why the big companies didn't scale back their TVC (Temporary, Vendor or Contractor) usage before laying off full-time staff that take an order of magnitude more resources to hire and fire?

> I was under the impression that flexibility was one of the big reasons for TVC use, much easier to scale up or down, akin to cloud computing resources.

I think many companies use them for flexibility, but my impression is that social media companies (of which Google is one) have other reasons, such as protecting their FTEs from the soul-killing aspects of content moderation.

> That would probably be the safest place to work, can't fire anyone with the risk of bad PR.

Why? Just as long as they don't fire someone on the spot, live on social media, I'm sure their PR team can handle it. E.g. make a statement "Joe Schmoe had persistent performance issues and was fired a month after the CEO visit, there's no connection to the CEO."

> If this was not a PR move, but a desire to get a sense for work conditions, real problems, etc, it would not be publicized.

And it wouldn't work. I don't think a lot of people would be comfortable sharing real complaints with the CEO who parachuted in for a single shift. It will probably end up being a bit of a Potemkin village situation. The shift will probably be filled up with the highest-motivated, most ass-kissing employees, whose focus will be keeping the CEO comfortable.

The high volume of waste might actually be a plus here, since it would more likely to be practical and economical to develop a custom recycling/disposal process for them. Also, since solar panels are so large, sorting shouldn't be too big of a challenge.

> I’ve come to associate it with an attempt to will the Fed into doing what they want.

They kind of got what they wanted. IIRC, before SVB collapsed, it was widely believed the Fed was planning to hike rates by far more than they just did (IIRC, 0.75%).

> I find it interesting that an asset with such a "bad" reputation in the media is attracting investors during these unstable times.

Are people actually rationally using Bitcoin as a safe-haven, or are the Bitcoin maximalists irrationally fantasizing that this time they'll get some crisis that will fulfill their wildest dreams, so are piling more money into it?

> Thank you congress for passing the IRA, which did nothing but further increase inflation.

And now many states are planning to "fight inflation" by literally sending people "inflation relief checks." :/

> Frankly Mozilla already lost that and people demanding Mozilla stay firefox focused are telling the company to death spiral.

Firefox is literally the only thing Mozilla has that's worth a damn. A Mozilla that doesn't focus on Firefox is already dead.

> Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant marketing share.

They have a path, and it's "called not focusing on aping Chrome and mindlessly cutting features 'because telemetry.'"

> I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it afloat.

I don't care about Mozilla-the-organization, I care about Firefox. It does no one any good if they burn up all their resources aimlessly chasing trends as an also-ran.

> Avicenna apparently had a very strict schedule of putting down the quill and enjoying the company of his women. So now, the fact of his genius notwithstanding, what does that do with the dopamine and distraction theorem given this man was unbelievably productive in his life?

Probably not much. I forget the exact term, but when people refer to "dopamine" in the contact of distraction, they're not really talking about dopamine in general, but rather things like slot-machine-like random enforcement engagement mechanisms (which can be explicitly designed, like in social media apps, or accidentally "fall out" of new tech-enabled activities).

I think you're being a bit misleading. It's not some issue related to government bonds specifically, it's about long-term bonds generally. IIRC, SVB went under because it took up a large position in long term mortgage-backed securities not treasuries. If it had instead invested in short-term treasuries, it would have been fine.

Government debt is the safest, and if you buy any other kind of debt, you'll want to be paid a premium for the extra risk you're taking. If interest rates are going up, you don't want all your money in long-term bonds.

> Among the resources that have been plundered by modern technology, the ruins of our attention have commanded a lot of attention. We can’t focus anymore. Getting any “deep work” done requires formidable willpower or a broken modem. Reading has degenerated into skimming and scrolling. The only real way out is to adopt a meditation practice and cultivate a monkish existence.

> But in actual historical fact, a life of prayer and seclusion has never meant a life without distraction.

I don't think anyone serious claims "distraction" is a new phenomena that didn't exist before "screens." The actual claim is more like the magnitude of distraction is higher now.

To give a slightly different example: complaining that your memory is poor because you can only memorize 100 poems is very different than complaining your memory is poor because you can't memorize 10 lines, even though they're both "complaints about memory." Unfortunately, a lot of people engage with these comparisons without looking at the actual details and differences, so they say useless things (often with the effect of denying a problem).

> Bottled water in glass bottles is a luxury good for yuppies in America. Store-brand seltzer water bottled in plastic is about $1 per liter.

I think in some countries, water in glass bottles not a yuppie luxury product because they actually reuse (not recycle) the bottles. Sort of like what they used to do with milk in the US.

> How about, just don't be a piece of shit in general? The whole do onto others etc... Or just mind your own business, shit doesn't involve you.

When are you going to start following your own advice?

> I think you are too much focused on global agricultural productivity, which will not be a life-or-death problem for anyone with access to the global market

That one thing I was focused on, but there were others that a are other that appear to be missed, for instance take your...

> farmers in some communities such as central Africa, rural Asia, indigenous populations, who don't import their food from around the world

What will be their actual experience? The estimates seem to assume they'll just keep doing the exact same thing they are now, but that's easy to model but unrealistic. It's extremely likely they'll change their crops or techniques to improve yields in the new environment, and I think results derived from model that doesn't account for that are not useful to a layman.