techorange

This is sort of the inverse of the sunk cost fallacy. We are where we are, if we want to move back, it's not implicitly rational to move back solely for the opposite reason that we moved forward.

Moving back has additional costs, it doesn't simply undo the costs of moving forward.

Is there a strategy here, or is this all emotional. Or is the strategy like, we can reduce social security spending if more old people die of the flu?

This isn't entirely cynical, I do assume there are some pragmatists who might think this way.

What principle are you trying to uphold? Change is bad? I haven't actually seen you present a compelling principle.

Here's the thing that bothers me.

In opposition to this someone would likely say "You were ok when liberals were censoring everything, and now the shoe's on the other foot, go shove it"

But actually, someone deciding to make biased media doesn't bother me that much. I mean, it's not great, I would prefer X have non-partisan ownership, but it happens, and free societies have an exhaust valve, particularly America:

People are contrarian. The more you see conservatives try to control media in avoidable ways, the more people will fight that influence. In the wake of the election Meidas Touch, a liberal podcast just overtook Joe Rogan.

The thing that concerns me is this: I think some people in power know this. Well I think all people in power know this, and I think some people currently in power who are intent on doing something about it.

If you're going to convince me that you're "anti-woke" suggestions are better than the "woke" suggestions that got us here in the first place, do so in the traditional way. Make an argument for why moving back to master makes substantive improvements in my workflow as a developer and not because you find it aesthetically concerning. And why it is financially beneficial for the globe to spend the engineer-years it would take to make this change.

Also, I don't know that I'm convinced that 'master' in this scenario is more descriptive than 'main'.

Yeah, it's going to be an uphill battle convincing me to go through and talk to my co-workers to convince them this is something we should do, then change all of my branches back, against the defaults of most git providers. All for?

I guess I never read deeply on the subject, but Agentforce never felt all that grounded to me. It seemed like a tagline without a real underlying strategy. This I guess gets to Satya Nadella's recent observation that AI is "generating basically no value" but AI seems to still be globally in the like product/market fit stage, seemed odd to me to announce you were staking the entire company on an unproven AI bet.

Also one that's at a higher level of abstraction on a foundation that is fundamentally shaky.

This is a concerning level of politicization.

I have a theory that one of the things that drives misinformation/conspiracy theories is that the more passionate you are about being duped, the more vulnerable you are to misinformation.

Is this pro-musk? Since this is HN I try to approach situations with curiosity rather than judgement, because I do think the question about like who is the speech that comes from AI and how does our understanding of 'truth' fit into that is interesting, but if you're curious since you asked:

Fuck Musk, I think he is 100% directionally incorrect about where the world should go, and everything he's doing in our Government is completely toxic. That being said, I think he is also frighteningly effective and prefer to approach thought experiments about his role in the world from that lens. If you're going to try to defend yourself against someone, don't underestimate them.

I think part of the problem is that Republicans understand that message matters much more than substance much better than Democrats. This is why a former-reality TV star does so well as president. All I hear from a lot of the sort of old-school Democrat flag-bearers (Biden, Jeffries, etc) seems to be this consistent drum beat of, if only people knew what we were doing, they would support us.

I guess another question --

Maybe I don't understand how the DNC works, but who are these people specifically? I don't think Obama wants this. Neither Kamala nor Tim Walz ran on this. Mark Cuban doesn't, nor do I think any of the silicon valley Democrat Billionaires. Maybe Nancy Pelosi does? I don't really I guess know who the shadow super-progressive woke figures are, nor how to get rid of them.

Like it's weird that a lot of the public leadership seems to get it, but that there's this perception that the "DNC" or "Democrats" don't.

On the one hand, I don't disagree, and I certainly don't think the right strategy is for Pete Buttigieg to sit on his hands and not say anything.

But, Republicans are no better. Like outside of a few key celebrities (and even within those key celebrities) are a bunch of people who look even more out of touch than the average Democrat. Trump and Elon Musk are maybe two of the greatest salespeople the world has ever seen (and within that all the implications that implies) But like, arguably even Pete Buttigieg, probably the best communicator in the party right now can't come close to them. The point of which is to just assess benchmarks. What is the art of the possible? We should certainly expect more of the leaders of the party, and I think everyone suspects there are core problems at the top, but the rank and file will probably always be sort of a median level of successful. Though we could go like the Republicans and just do some ideological purges.

Are you trying to imply that some group of people you are skeptical of supported limitations on free speech with the defense that they’re a private company they can do what they want, and now a different company is doing the same thing and that was a foreseeable consequence?

By saying it was intentional are you applying some kind of insider knowledge? Seems like we should wait to judge until we have all of the facts.

I’d be more on with this if I trusted someone to take a wide view on these issues, as it stands I’ve observed that personal liberty is heavily biased by some towards personal liberty for the upper classes; but I hope to be wrong.

It doesn’t seem like we’ve established ethical norms for AI yet, but like what’s the difference between:

Google removing a search result that says Sundar Pichai spreads misinformation

Twitter removing a tweet saying Elon Musk spreads disinformation

OpenAI tuning ChatGPT to not say that Sam Altman spreads disinformation.

Wikipedia changing an article that says that Jimmy Wales spreads disinformation.

Seems like there are lots of potential, I don’t know if you want to call them free speech issues, but maybe that’s the question, is there any way to assess if you’re censoring AI vs tuning it towards truth? Obviously easier with more objective than subjective topics.

PR disaster seems a bit much. I’m trying to think what I would do if something similar happened to Biden or Kamala and I can’t imagine being moved? I would think the right, being more pro freedom of speech, and pro-comedy would let it go. It’s kind of funny really.

He talked about using Ketamine. Openly.

This just inspired my curiosity, How well normalized is IQ, is it persistent over time, or does the curve meander.

99 times out of 100 I would say boycotts don’t matter that much, certainly not to 45% of sales.

An interesting counter to that though is that Elon Musk’s whole marketing strategy has been to be the lead marketer and do no advertising (until recently)

One thing that's interesting about the attention economy is -- I feel like Musk's biggest risk is someone taking the attention away from him. It puts in context some of the crazy attention grabbing things celebrities like Ye have done, and Musk's purchase of Twitter. If another Entrepreneur captures the imagination of investors, that would probably be the end of Musk, he's probably literally dependent on the investor attention he gets that inflate the companies value, and now he has some influence on the chance another Entrepeneur goes viral.

Kurt Vonnegut has this story about a conversation between him and his wife, where he relates:

"Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is - we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore."

The thought leadership in this area is strange. On the one hand, I think there's this implication in the UBI and end of scarcity talk that implies that AI will free us up to like have fun be with family and build relationships.

At the same time, we're talking about AI essentially ending all relationships. Part of the value in a therapist is that they're not perfect, emulating some of the relationships you have in real life. If AI ends up being the perfect therapist, then it's not preparing you for real life, it's sort of preparing you for narcissism.

I feel both like this touches on something important about the human condition, while simultaneously feeling like the old "Back in my day, we talked to people and not robots"

Right, can't imagine these are regretted attrition (for the administration)

fivethirtyeight published a similar article a long time ago, saying that maybe counter-intuitively people turn against their party when their party takes action.

I feel like the big government programs, medicare, medicaid and social security are facing an inevitable fall. There's just not enough unity for people to think that the government should be spending that much money for the public good. And it's odd, maybe because my life is and has always gone fairly well(this is certainly not a consistent yardstick so shrug) but I've never had reason to have animosity towards government. I do understand the cases presented by lots of entrepreneurs as to why they're antagonistic, but everything else.

But really hard to imagine things will get better without these programs.

There is a line between DE&I making feel comfortable and like enabling people to talk about gangbang’s at work.

Christopher Rufo is doing everything he can to blur the difference, but like everyone should be able to talk about their family outing at the water cooler at work, no matter who that family is, and in reverse, no one should be able to talk about their sexual escapades at work, regardless if it’s a gangbang or very traditional missionary sex with the intention of having a child.

Can someone explain to me why Trump is cozying up to big tech all of a sudden? Has he gave a reason? Republicans have spent the past like 10 years demonizing big tech, and isn't thinking big tech is too powerful bipartisan?

I read there's sort of this paradox about dismantling government that people talk about where sure you run on dismantling government, but then, when you get in power, you realize that it's much easier to affect change if you have resources to do so.

I imagine some of the folks being put in charge of agencies are going to want to leverage power.

I often wonder, like was this top down, or was this bottom up? When you have Twitter and everyone gets to make their own opinions, like how do you "control the movement". I think there was some sort of organic sense that progressives were looking for ways to support a community.

That all being said, I sort of didn't like the coerced pronoun thing from the opposite side. I do sometimes empathize with the fact that are things you do for political reasons (normalize pronouns) that aren't perfect interpersonally, but like as someone is sort of gender-agnostic.

I don't want to talk about my pronouns because I feel like it forces me to reckon with a thing I don't want to reckon with. Gender has always been a sensitive topic for me, so it feels strange to sort of open a conversation in front of my colleagues with something that feels very vulnerable. And then to sort of be chastised for not being a good ally because you don't want to announce your pronouns. I have to imagine there are other trans and non-binary people who are not out who feel similarly awkward.