takinola

I can imagine a painter two hundred years ago saying the same thing about photographs. How can you feel attachment to a picture when you did not make each brush stroke?

My guess is the art form will evolve. When YouTube started, some people thought it would not be able to compete with heavily produced video content. Instead, YouTube spawned a different type of "movie". It was short-form, filmed on phone cameras, lightly scripted, etc. The medium changed the content. I suspect we will see new genres of video content show up once this tech is widely available.

> I find the US to be highly authoritarian, full of easy examples double-thought and duck speak.

I’m curious to know where else you have lived (I assume you live in the US). As someone that has lived under an authoritarian regime, I find this statement really hard to agree with. The US is far from perfect but it is far from authoritarian in my opinion.

If we were to find DNA based life on Europa, would there be a way to tell if it came from Earth, seeded Earth or both came from an external source?

Imagine the amount of energy required to create a jet that large! The scales are so big, it makes me wonder if there isn’t an upper limit to energy density. How much energy can be in one spot before you inadvertently create a Big Bang?

They would need to have a self-sufficient base otherwise a good old-fashioned blockage would be very effective.

> They believe that they alone are capable of safely engaging with the world of ideas to determine what is true, and thus feel strongly that information and speech ought to be censored to prevent the rabble from engaging in wrongthink.

This is a particularly ungenerous take. The AI companies don't have to believe that they (or even a small segment of society) alone can be trusted before it makes sense to censor knowledge. These companies build products that serve billions of people. Once you operate at that level of scale, you will reach all segments of society, including the geniuses, idiots, well-meaning and malevolents. The question is how do you responsibly deploy something that can be used for harm by (the small number of) terrible people.

I am curious to know if there is precedent for goods losing their veblen status.

> I refuse to believe that he's reclusing in some island in NZ and even if he is I'm pretty sure he isn't just watching from the sidelines.

You don't know anything about him other than some videos and public appearances. He could be doing a myriad of things, including watching from the sidelines. I bring this up not to bash you but to point out a common misconception that we all fall into at times. We don't really know public figures and so a lot of our opinions about them are just projections of our own desires and biases. People you only see in public can be very different (in character or motivation) than you think.

Your examples make my point. Some bad things happened but not on a catastrophic level that warranted the level of investment that was put into Y2K projects.

> "Remember Y2K? Nothing happened!" is a super toxic lesson to take away from a rare success where people came together and fixed something instead of firefighting disasters.

My cynicism about Y2K comes from the fact that there were a lot of snarky articles written about how certain countries or companies were not Y2K ready but nothing bad seemed to happen to those countries either. It seems like a natural experiment was conducted and the results indicate there was no correlation between good outcomes and the work done to be Y2K ready.

I have no doubt that the armies of consultants did fix real issues but anyone working in software knows there is a never ending set of things to fix. The real issue is whether that work was necessary for the ongoing functioning of business or society.

If you would like to learn more about the Punic Wars, Oversimplified has a very, very good (and humorous) explainer video

https://youtu.be/yRmOWcWdQAo?si=6FNtH2zqJ9XAMh3g

> I also remember around 1975 getting all excited about solar and getting told that costs were dropping so fast that in five years solar would be cheaper than power produced from coal or natural gas

My understanding is commercial solar (as opposed to household solar) is cheaper than natural gas so that prediction is at least partly true

> The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family.

Why is it illegal to purchase healthcare privately? When I lived in the UK, I skipped the NHS and used my private insurance all the time to avoid all the issues you listed. Why not make it available to those that can afford the option?

Context matters. When I walk into a high-end store and see a shirt on sale for $X, I assume that I need to pay $X to get the shirt. If I see a shirt at a flea-market priced at $Y, I assume I can get the shirt for some percentage off by just bargaining. The sellers are also aware of this context and, presumably, set their prices accordingly. The same thing regularly happens in business. For most services, people understand that pricing is not fixed and act accordingly. They are not (necessarily) jerks, they are just reacting to the context they are operating in.

Many? Most?

I suspect your view of women's preferences is jaundiced. Most men earn average or below average incomes (by definition) but I don't see any data to suggest that there is a significant number of those men are unable to find women. That suggests to me that this idea of women only dating 6-foot tall men with 6-figure incomes is a myth.

Other than cynicism, what is the basis for this argument? The economic and social interests of the pharmaceutical companies are to find a cure. If a company came up with a single dose pill that cures colon cancer, they could charge up to the cost of a full course of chemo for that pill and insurance companies would line up to cover it. Go see what has happened with Hep-C and DAAs.

Also, the industry and brand cred that would accrue from being the company that cured cancer would be immense. Think about what that would do for recruiting, influence and access. Ask yourself if Novo-Nordisk is in a worse position today for pretty much curing obesity.

I think the secret was being acquired by Google. Without the deep financial pockets and strategic patience of Google, I doubt they would have been able to become what they are today.

I guess if you only do one testicle, you may get half off.

Goodwill only comes into play in the context of an acquisition. Unless they are being bought, the decrease in market cap is just that. It doesn't come out of anything in particular, accounting-wise.

I think the issue was closer to one where the interviewer (all but) hires the "non-diverse" candidate and then as an afterthought interviews the "diverse" candidate. This clearly defeats the spirit of the plan.

As for your specific hypothetical, it still seems to be contrary to the stated goals. My guess is you'd want to cast your net wide to get a cross-section of qualified candidates and maybe not just hire from the same sources that produce homogenous candidates

Markets are not about morality. They are designed to allocate resources optimally. If you want moral outcomes, you would need to inject incentives that make those outcomes optimal for the market participants

Goodwill has a very specific definition that has nothing to do with your behavior. It is simply the difference between the price an acquirer pays for something and the book value of that thing

I guess anything is possible but this seems unlikely. The type of questions (and followups) you would ask in a job interview are quite different than for an inquiry. Also, there are more straightforward ways of getting this information so why take a more convoluted and less efficient path.

Imagine a patch of ice on a busy sidewalk. You can put up a sign that says "be careful, icy path" but lots of people are still going to slip and fall. The advice (ie the sign) can only do so much as long as the hazard exists. The challenge here is the hazards are your mental models so they are a lot harder to clear than an icy patch.

The incentives for the police don't encourage this outcome. Imagine if something does happen and there is a report in the local newspaper that the neighbors had reported to the police multiple times but they did nothing. Better to CYA and give the parents a talking to and be seen to have done something than to do nothing at all. Situations like this is what should give you pause before reaching for your pitchforks next time you hear of someone screwing up royally.

Two things I do to help me ship. I write down the list of features required to complete the project and then ruthlessly pare it down to the absolute minimum. Nothing gets on that list unless it is absolutely required. For example, if I were shipping a car, I would not consider doors to be required.

The second thing I do is to bribe myself. I promise myself a treat but only on the condition that the project is complete. It is usually something small but I hold myself to not getting it unless the project is shipped.

Those usually help me get over the finish line.

Dumb question: What is inflammation? I know what it sounds like but I realize I am not quite sure what it is.

There's an old episode of RadioLab or This American Life (I can't remember which) that explores this very topic. If memory serves, there was a woman who lost her mum at an early age but her mum recorded videos to be shared with her at certain points in her life (birthdays, graduations, etc). I recall her mentioning she came to dread those events knowing she would have to relive losing her mum by watching the video. I can't recall if she felt it was a net positive or not.

Not really. Innocent people need defense attorneys as well.