> can't you just let people enjoy things?

Dumping slop into the public commons deserves criticism.

Apple care about their users like a farmer cares about a herd of dairy cows.

Whereas Microsoft and Google care about their users like a farmer cares about a herd of pigs.

I can tell you don't actually know what goes on on a dairy farm.

If you charitable (like you should be), then a reasonable assumption is that they probably know what happens on a dairy farm, and that's actually their point.

Ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed.

> We fit continuous theories to discrete measurements--and the good ones fit really well!--but until we can measure it how can we actually know?

Well, physicists came up with quantum mechanics because they found a way to distinguish a genuinely discrete phenomenon.

Understanding the physical universe overlaps with a subset of math. It shouldn't constrain the abstract tools which may or may not one day be useful for that understanding.

I agree that continuity (and therefore infinity) are really useful tools. But it may also be useful to develop mathematical formalism that hews more closely to that which we can actually observe. Or not! But if nobody investigates we'll never know.

> An instance of a number that has a special meaning.

Not really. There are infinitely many infinities. Infinite numbers are not particularly more special than real numbers, complex numbers, matrices, functions/operators, etc.

Infinite numbers break the abstraction of numbers in important ways.

Complex numbers do too (e.g. there is no ordering). But at least that doesn't cause as much confusion as some of the problems with infinite numbers.

> It's deeply distressing to watch people fall into AI psychosis.

It's unclear what you're saying here... Yes, AI-induced psychosis is a real problem and the frontier labs' mitigations are ineffective, to put it mildly. But using AI as a coding tool doesn't have anything to do with psychosis.

> I suppose they'd be comparably successful.

Yes, so, not particularly.

> That's super interesting, isn't Deepseek in China banned from using Anthropic models? Yet here they're comparing it in terms of internal employee testing.

I don't see why Deepseek would care to respect Anthropic's ToS, even if just to pretend. It's not like Anthropic could file and win a lawsuit in China, nor would the US likely ban Deepseek. And even if the US gov would've considered it, Anthropic is on their shitlist.

> It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly.

SWEs (and most any role for that matter) definitely can be minted in ways besides graduating with a relevant major. On top of that there's also H1Bs and contractors. Plus "overhiring" doesn't necessarily just mean absolute headcount, it could be compensation, scope, middle managers, etc. The definition of "qualified" is also malleable depending on the incentives.

> So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered.

Beyond the previous points, this also assumes the supply of labor is independent of the demand, and it's clearly not. As the demand increases, so does compensation, outreach, advertising/propaganda, etc. Everybody can overhire simultaneously as a result of pushing for growth of the supply of labor.

We can both "yeah, but" this to death. You make some valid points but I think my observation generally holds. The supply of workers is not so elastic, at least if you have real standards for the workers such as college degrees and so on.

> Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me.

Considering that this is nowadays a substantially less common background, and probably trending that direction indefinitely, this reads more as you being desensitized. It's not like vegans are unaware that people could have a background like yours.

> But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators

Morals and religion aren't about what's natural, they're about what humans desire. Illness, violence, and deception are all perfectly "natural."

First off, I believe veganism is, probably, morally correct.

However, I lead a morally imperfect lifestyle. I get around by driving or being driven in a car, even when it would only be moderately less convenient to walk or bike or take transit. A few dollars could feed children in poverty for weeks, and I spend on lot more than "a few" dollars on luxuries like travel. By my measure, knowingly choosing not to prevent human suffering on such a scale is massively worse than eating meat, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself or others in my position to be monsters.

> The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal.

While I believe non-human animals generally have greater moral value than a single meal - the most widely consumed animals are clearly capable of suffering and IMO intelligent enough for most to instinctively empathize with - I don't think it's particularly strange for humans to view humans as sacred.

Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.

Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.

I didn't say it any of it was unusual. Your observation that humans place themselves at the center of the moral universe and have the agency to enforce it is in line with my thoughts.

> Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.

Ironically making us the only animals capable of moral evil.

> Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.

Is this due to a internally consistent moral value system apart from a view of humans as sacred? If on the other side of the trolley were some of a race of aliens, smarter, better, faster, younger, and more emblematic of the human ideals by way of virtue than the humans on the other side, would you save the aliens? Probably not. Your preference to preserve other people is very natural and probably hard-wired into your brain. That doesn't mean it isn't human chauvinism.