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Ilverin

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Progress isn't inevitable because the government can stop it sometimes. Nuclear power is regulated to be forty times safer than natural gas (the safest natural gas) (the factor of forty is ignoring the additional climate costs), and that's why we don't have abundant nuclear power.

There are plenty of good scientists and engineers who do psychedelics. If what you say were true, I think at least one of them would have figured out what the sense data is caused by in the environment and have set up a demo such that they can reliably react to a signal sent by a skeptical tester who turns the demo device's power switch off and on, in order to provide evidence to skeptics of their superior perception ability.

Openai employees had extreme leverage because they were (or at least appeared, by the number of signatures on the letter) united. They could just leave for another company (Microsoft or other) where they would not be at all controlled by AI safety people.

Openai investors had only the leverage of "we won't invest more and you're running an operating loss", they did not actually have a case in court. The investment contract they signed stated "view your investment as a donation" and "this investment confers no fiduciary duties from the board".

The board had the leverage of "you employees and investors value your stock holdings, and if the company fails, those stock holdings to to zero".

The resolution I think was (could be wrong) just to initially reduce the size of the board to three. So it isn't completely guaranteed which side won the battle for control: it's not impossible that the AI safety people might still control the board. Maybe one or both of the new board members is secretly convinced by the AI safety movement.

The battle for public opinion is a different battle, and it looks extremely likely that the AI safety people lost that battle. Maybe it was still worth it for them, if they did in fact win or at least stalemate the battle for control of openai.

The expansion of the universe is accelerating. At some point, the number of galaxies in the visible universe will stop growing and the light received from distant galaxies will grow more and more redshifted. However, it's possible that the redshifting will accelerate faster than our technological ability to detect more and more redshifted light.

A complication is that the employees who work in the nursing homes are likely to bring covid in if it is spreading in the community and the community is acting normally (eg parties are happening). Not to say that your plan wouldn't be overall better (I'm not sure), but just saying it would likely result in more death.

A)11.36 million acres refers to the land leased for either fuel or non-fuel minerals. So if you wanted to compare the size of the royalties to the annual fees for the land, you would need to figure out what percentage of the land was used for fuel versus non-fuel mining.

B) The $165 is per 20 acres, not per acre. "In FY 2022, the BLM collected a total of almost $94 million in fees associated with nearly 489,100 active mining claims on Federal lands"

A) at the time this was written, Scott lived in the Midwest B) Scott worked at a hospital at the time, which selects a bit against those who are creationists. In my opinion, probably 40% of the nurses in such a hospital would be creationist, but maybe Scott disagrees with me about that assessment C) in terms of socialization outside of work, Scott is not an extrovert, so I can imagine arbitrary levels of selection and that it is plausible he did have 0 creationist social acquaintances (maybe the quote is only even talking about his social acquaintances, not his work ones)

Altman doesn't have equity in OpenAI, so that's a bit of evidence that he believes ai could be valuable or important to him or humanity even without his gaining value in equity.

llm summary

The article tells the story of how two former spies and enemies, Frederick Russell Burnham and Fritz Duquesne, joined forces to promote the idea of importing hippos from Africa to Louisiana in 1910. Their plan was to solve the Meat Question, a crisis of meat supply and demand in America, and also to get rid of the invasive water hyacinths that were choking the rivers. They had the support of a Louisiana congressman, Robert Broussard, who introduced a bill to fund their project. The article explores the historical context, the personalities, and the motivations of the main characters, as well as the challenges and opposition they faced. It also examines the cultural and ecological implications of their proposal, which was ultimately rejected by Congress.

my question to llm: why did they want to kill each other?

answer: They wanted to kill each other because they were spies on opposite sides of the Second Boer War in South Africa. Burnham was an American who fought for the British Empire, while Duquesne was a Boer who fought for the independence of his people. They had several encounters and attempts to assassinate each other during the war, but none succeeded

The large banks are more heavily regulated. Trump raised the limit at which a bank is called large from 50bil to 250bil. The small banks value their freedom from regulation more than they would value full FDIC coverage. The fed would love to make that trade:more regulation of small banks in exchange for full FDIC coverage for small banks.

Canada is dominated by five enormous banks, they are closely regulated, and Canada has had a better experience than USA with both fewer bank failures and higher real interest rates paid to customers.

Stylized example of how the game works:

Bet on every number but 0 on a roulette wheel

Not 0: you and your investors make 3 billion this year

0: you and your investors lose your 20 billion you have invested, and the government bails out your depositors who kept 200 billion with you

This stylized bet is a good deal for the investors and management and bad for the government. Sometimes investors lose everything but it's still a very good bet in expectation. This stylized example is a case of "privatized gains, socialized losses".

Then the question is: was SVB reckless? They could have been less reckless by covering their interest rate exposure, but the fed has an equity to deposits ratio requirement, and getting any equity to invest requires a return. IMO they should have either diversified their business or stopped opening new accounts for tech companies because when depositors are uninsured and concentrated in the same industry, that is risky.

Well the bank can't get your future earnings or other assets if you default, but they can get the house. So if the house is worth zero dollars (never true) then you are 5 to 1 leveraged.

Even finance experts like Matt Levine use index funds. Unless you are mega rich and have connections, you almost certainly have no advantage against the many people who work 100 hours a week trying (and often failing) to beat the market.

You're right and my above comment is wrong, but I still think the downside risk is bigger than the upside risk. It's ETH with 100% leverage, except beyond the risk of collapse of ETH there is also the risk of the collapse of RAI. Either of those happening would result in severe losses.

Rai was initially released based on a value of 3.14 usd, it's down from that. Since usd has experienced inflation one would expect an unpegged stablecoin like rai to be worth more not less usd over time.

Vitalik's requirement for an automated stablecoin to only hold crypto assets is quite severe. If there's a general crypto downturn, people are going to want their money back, which turns into a bank run. It only takes a minority of holders to want their money back in order to create a bank run (and bank runs can start small and get larger because the debt/equity ratio goes down if you are already not at 100% of debt backed by equity and if you pay holders 100% value when they get out of the stablecoin). Basically the only reason to hold a stablecoin instead of the underlying assets is convenience, because if you own an automated stablecoin you don't own any upside but you do own downside risk (e.g. Terra)

Quote from Matt Levine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-09/we-mig...

Well, I just got through saying that there’s not really any reward for being pessimistic and right about valuation when you are pitching an IPO. Your optimistic competitors will get the mandate, and then spend some time walking the company back

...

On the other hand it is a repeat game and there are occasionally penalties for getting it wrong:

...

it will be rough for Morgan Stanley if winning the biggest IPO prize [Uber] of the unicorn era loses it the biggest IPO prize of all time [Saudi Aramco]

That is a good article for explaining why costs have gone up in most countries, like they have in France and Spain.

It's less good at explaining the vast outlier (larger outlier on cost than gdp) that is US construction costs.