I think the problem is more about how do we get people in power that don't actually care about it.
You have to go through a lot of crap to get to a high leadership position and, in general, the only types of people that will think it's worth it are the ones who are attracted to the position because of the power benefits that it offers.
That problem doesn't really have a solution, though. Power inherently is a corrupting influence, and everyone is fallible. Focusing on building safeguards into how we choose whom to give power to, rather than limiting the exercise of power itself, will always produce dysfunctional systems.
People can be corruptable, fallible, greedy and unprepared to wield power over others - especially the people that seek out power.
The solution is to build better people from the ground up (culture and education) AND create institutional protections that function during both the absence and presence of substantial political power. I'd argue that, in the USA, we've done neither and appear surprised when it keeps turning out poorly for us.
> The solution is to build better people from the ground up (culture and education)
No, it's not. Trying to reform human nature through some sort of all-encompassing utopian project always and inevitably (a) fails miserably, and (b) itself becomes a vehicle for corrupt power-seekers to pursue their ulterior motives.
> create institutional protections that function during both the absence and presence of substantial political power
Institutional protections formulated correctly are constraints on the exercise of power itself: strict limits on the reach of political power; checks and balances among multiple parallel institutions; mechanisms of public accountability, incentive structures that align selfish motivations with public purposes, etc. This is exactly the sort of stuff I'm talking about.
> I'd argue that, in the USA, we've done neither and appear surprised when it keeps turning out poorly for us.
In the USA, we've wisely eschewed (a) and avoided the disastrous failure modalities that entails, and instead pursued (b) quite extensively, to the point that things have in fact turned out reasonably well for us, especially in comparison to other countries in the world that have attempted the inverse (i.e. centralizing power with insufficient constraints in the hands of the "right" people, who are always the wrong people).
The stated point is to prevent central banks from printing currency / inflation. The claim is that crypto today worth 1% of the world's BTC will be worth just under 1% of the world's BTC in 2300, at least barring e.g. progress in quantum cryptography, a sunspot taking out digital infrastructure, or similar.
That's probably socially harmful, but it is the claim.
Inflation is increasing prices, which has causes other than central banks putting more money into circulation. When Bitcoin’s value drops, prices in Bitcoin increase so it experiences inflation regularly.
Even when it doesn't exceed economic growth; the flip side of the coin is deflation.
Resources like gold, land, or bitcoin, if broadly used, is deflationary as the economy grows, even from simple issues like population growth. All else being equal, if I save $100 today, and the economy triples, it's worth $300, since I have the same piece of a bigger pie.
In my academic career, I had one instance of reviewers actually reading a paper. Otherwise -- accept or reject -- the comments made clear the paper had never been actually read.
Retractions are non-existent, even with clearly proven academic malpractice.
I am sorry for that. Fortunately, this does not resemble my experience (electrical engineering/digital signal processing).
Usually I got quite critical comments (positive and/or negative). Yes, sometimes a reviewer does not write even a single sentence before giving an average score to complete the review process. But this has not been the regular case.
And as a reviewer for a conference paper of 4 to 6 pages, I usually assigned 1 to 3 hours to read it (journal papers: 1 to 2 days) and to give comments.
Curiously, the one paper which was actually reviewed was in an IEEE journal and about filter design.
Most of the rest of my papers were in completely different disciplines.
It was an awesome paper -- in my mind, groundbreaking -- but I'm not convinced anyone beyond the reviewers ever read it. I see about a dozen citations which popped up years later, clicked through a few, and they were inane.
Problem is it was work in a very, very classical field, alongside Butterworth, Chebyshev, and similar, and while quite fundamental, and with many applications, there is no contemporary research there.
My most popular papers were mostly rather.... random.
Depends on journal. Predatory and low tier journals that's true for, but at higher tiers it is far less common. You still get the occasional lazy reviewer, but typically they wont be asked back if the editor isn't lazy as well. The system certainly has its flaws though.
Retractions do happen as well, especially if it's clearly proven malpractice. I've been behind 2 retractions so far, but it has never (in my experience) happened at the "contact corresponding author and seek clarification" stage of escalation. Typically it requires escalation to the journal itself.
There are nice houses in that price range around Otwock, Piaseczno, and similar.
1.5M-2M is sort of the price range for something big, nice, and not car-dependent right now. You can find things less nice below that.
If you're willing to go as far out as Nieporęt or Grodzisk Mazowiecki, there's a ton of things below that. It's certainly not car-dependent; lots of stores nearby, but it is a decently long train ride if you want to come into Warsaw more frequently, at least if you mind working on a train.
If you don't mind car-dependent, it's a lot cheaper than that. Places outside of Otwock, near Park Kampinoski, and similar can be had for a song.
Most crimes require intent. Some do not, but without intent, still tend to be lesser crimes. For example, killing someone through negligence (the zip tie example) is still a crime, but manslaughter, and not murder.
Digital trespass, intent is generally required, but the definition of "intent" varies by circuit in rather interesting ways. I don't think OpenAI could be prosecuted criminally under current US laws due to those wrinkles (which is a problem with current US laws).
Oddly enough, there are plenty of European countries with lower taxes holistically, higher entitlements, and lower debt / deficit levels.
As far as I can tell, the solution isn't nearly that hamfisted. It requires:
- Reinstituting rule-of-law (not just Trump; the whole system)
- Instituting basic proper management of funds
In Europe, I can walk into a government agency and be done in 15 minutes, with a smile from the administrator, for what would take months of fighting in the US. If a part of the government is breaking a rule, I can point them to it, and they'll follow it. Courts are slow, but follow clear laws; I don't see black robe syndrome. And police follow and enforce laws.
US used to be closer to that too; it actually led the world in good governance for much of history.
That's hard work of diving in and cleaning up every piece of the administration. There's no stomach for that. Until there is, the deficit will keep going up.
> Reinstituting rule-of-law (not just Trump; the whole system)
It's probably more correct to just say instituting. While Trump has certainly turned the rule of law on its head, it's a not-so-secret secret that the law has never really applied to the rich and powerful. If we're already going to be making fixes, we should make a real effort to honor the rule of law.
That would necessarily include things like reforming bail and fines so they scale properly with ability to pay, especially in the case of corporate fines.
Trump is a symptom of a trend which has been going for about 40 years, and accelerated in the past 20 years.
It's system-wide.
It's not that rule-of-law was ever perfect in the US, but it was ahead of the world, and ahead of where it is today. Probably, it peaked a little bit after cases like Brown v. Board through around 1990.
From 1800-1900, there were more serious issues than today, obviously, but the baseline of comparison globally were largely dictators, kings, warlords, ..., as well as fledgling systems like the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution.
1900-1960, the baseline was 2nd and 3rd world.
Today, the US is no longer in the lead, and to the contrary, towards the tail end of democratic developed countries. That's also a bigger club than in 1950.
<-- This is the problem, but it falls well short of singularity.
If ML + robots can be produced for fewer resources than it takes to feed and house a human, then no reasonable amount of human labour will be sufficient to pay for robots+compute.
We may have a bust, with broad overcapacity and cheap, distributed ML compute. We may have the paperclip problem, where datacenters and fabs are taking over all reasonable resources and humans squeezed out. We may have everything in between.
My AI is regularly solving master's thesis level, and sometimes Ph.D thesis level problems for the purpose of, e.g. routine tasks like filling out random paperwork.
It's been very odd.
I'd only assume Nadella has access to more advanced models than I do, just as much as I have more advanced models than my relatives.
I feel like I'm missing some context. A lot of context.
Whose loyalty test? How?
I mostly heard "super intelligence" a long, long time ago in the context of work on AI / philosophy / futurism which, honestly, sounded pretty detached until the current deep learning sprint, and now sounds pretty prophetic.
Right, and humiliation rituals are not just about the authoritarian's ego, they do damage that the authoritarian exploits.
People who comply scar their reputation and trustworthiness, so that it's harder for them to build any alliance against the authoritarian in the future, ex: "We all know Bob lied to keep his job... But if they threaten his job again, doesn't that mean he might lie to us too?"
Right. It’s absolutely crucial to understand what is going on here.
He has a litany of weaknesses, failings and shortcomings, but he is an international expert at humiliating, suborning and breaking people. His mendacity is very nearly unparalleled.
> “The bill would hold any officer, manager, partner, beneficial owner, or member of a shell company personally liable for any unpaid taxes, and any interest and penalties on those taxes, the nonpayment of which may constitute a crime, due on the purchase of a vehicle, vessel, or aircraft.”
Is dumb.
You want comprehensive enforcement with reasonable penalities.
I don't think it will hold up in federal courts. This seems to apply to cars that the company officer who lives and drives in Montana as well. If this only applies to cars used more than 50% in CA is would hold up. Of course truck drivers who mostly don't drive in CA but that is home may find an out with that plan.
The core of the law, ie who is expected to register their car in CA and what state sales taxes need to be paid has already been in place for years and likely already challenged. This is just a modifier to address a particular loophole.
As long as nothing about this crosses state lines (ie they’re not trying to regulate out of state businesses or property) there’s not a lot to go on. Several states have taken similar steps to close this loophole. Famously the YouTuber whistlindiesel got arrested in Tennessee for this and the case is still pending
Details matter and the article may have them wrong, but my reading is this accidentally covers out of state cars as well. I'm not going to look up the law to see who is right though.
The cars are registered in MT but they’re under CA jurisdiction if they are primarily driven here. That’s the literal loophole. CA is not trying to force people to pay CA registration and sales tax on cars kept and used primarily out of state.
That is the intent of course. However it is really easy to write a law that missing important details and so despite the intent cover all cars regardless of where they are used.
> If anyone running the business is a California resident (by the updated definition outlined above), then the whole business is a California resident, and any assets (including Lamborghinis and Bugattis) held in the state are subject to California taxation.
I'm relying on the paraphrasing in article rather than the text of the law itself, but this says that it only applies to assets held in the state.
Paying tax on a vehicle driven in a state is not unreasonable. And holding the executives of a shell/numbered/privately-held/tax-dodging organization liable for taxes owed is not draconian.
Gas leaf blowers are a menace to society that should not be allowed in any urban or suburban area. (If you want to use one on your farm or whatever, go for it.)
The ban is useless because the only way to enforce it is to catch it in the act (in my town). Basically impossible. So it is a ban that could be enforced (other ways) but instead is just a suggestion - and not one that most people follow because there are almost no repercussions.
There are some unavoidable sources of noise, so I'm not sure a blanket noise restriction is going to work. If someone is doing home renovation and the contractor needs to run a saw for a while, it's just going to be loud. Sometimes someone needs to jackhammer up a slab of concrete, or chip up tree pruning debris. Etc.
But gas leaf blowers are easily replaced by a much less neighbor-hostile alternative.
A month ago, I heard a lot of very loud jackhammer noises at 2AM. I got up and went out to investigate. A crew was jackhammering up the street. The foreman saw me and came by to apologize. The water main had broken and water was flooding the street. If they let it wait until morning, a lot of erosion damage would have been.
I told him I appreciate the crew coming out and fixing it right away.
If it is a blanket leaf blower ban, that is indeed asinine. However, I will gladly support a ban on two stroke engines for leaf blowers the same way I support requiring drivers to wear seatbelts.
> If it is a blanket leaf blower ban, that is indeed asinine.
Uh … okay, it isn't immediately obvious to me why that would be. My landlords insist on (literally) weekly leaf blowing, regardless of season, and so every Thursday the air outside the apartment is quite literally unbreathable, as it is slaked with dust and exhaust, and literally unbreathable inside if I were to open a window (i.e., living here, I have to remember to always close the windows prior to Thursday). Not to mention the sound.
Banning the gas ones fixes a portion of the problem, I suppose.
I don't think I'd care as much if the cadence was something reasonable, like monthly. One bad apple spoils the bunch.
There is no such thing as “random” enforcement. Laws built this way end up getting abused against minorities (racial/ethnic or political), the poor, or personal and political enemies.
> Altman is busy saying there needs to be regulation, but in terms of what OpenAI does, he can control that already.
No. He can't. Literally.
In a competitive ecosystem, one needs to play to maximize profit sufficiently optimally to remain in business. Otherwise, the business dies, and another one succeeds.
His hands are tied.
If I am in a business making toxic food, and the whole industry is plagued by scandal, as much as:
- I might not want to make toxic food
- The whole industry might benefit from less scandal
- The world as a whole might be a better place
The invisible hand of the free market might force me to keep doing so. Otherwise, I go in the red, and go out-of-business. And if I go out-of-business, someone similar but even less ethical will take my place.
That's why business leaders often do horrific things, while calling for regulation to stop them.
Free markets optimize. Regulations set the constraints of that optimization.
reply