SamPatt

In a sense I agree, since GDP is a bit of a silly metric.

But it's a decent enough proxy for the parts of human progress that I think are meaningful that it illustrates the point well.

That website is an excellent resource and you can find other more compelling charts there.

There was no default "state", at least by the time you're talking about humans, we probably already learned from each other by observation. Sure, politics and wars and religion and feudal dynasties and whatever make bumps in the line, but generally it goes up.

No, that's not the shape of the line. You can view it here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-ca...

The hockey stick upturn in recent centuries needs explanation.

I'm pushing back so hard on this comparative definition of wealth (which I notice is the secondary definition you found behind large possessions) because I think it's silly to do that when we have an unbelievably dramatic increase in wealth in recent centuries which needs understanding first.

Hand-waving away human progress and forcing zero sum definitions of wealth feels unserious. You have terms for things like inequality, why not use those instead of distorting what wealth means?

A wealthy person is not someone with a lot of things.

No one made that claim.

By nearly any sane metric the world is wealthier. You can verify this on sites like Our World in Data.

We are healthier, have more leisure time, are less likely to die in natural disasters, etc.

It's willful ignorance to define wealth in a way that wouldn't show humanity as having gotten more wealthy. You're doing harm by overlooking massive gains we've made and understanding why we made them and instead redefining the common sense understanding of basic terms.

You are talking about access to resources and technologies, which is basically constantly rising, we couldn't stop that if we wanted to

We could very obviously stop our progress in resources and technology. It has happened throughout history many times and we see plenty of modern examples.

You seem to be treating the accumulated products of civilization as though they are geological facts rather than fragile outputs of maintained institutions.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you believe that 1) access to resources and technology are "basically constantly rising" and 2) why the relative difference in wealth today is more important than the (magical?) existence of a system were everyone has continually gotten more access to resources and technology.

No. The world has absolutely gotten wealthier over the last few centuries.

Wealth is obviously not zero sum. Humanity is far wealthier today than before the industrial revolution, and the trend is still towards increasing wealth.

Yes but what would they learn from their mistake?

"I should run my purchase decisions past an AI in the future."

The entire point is to stop it from needing to be a cause in the first place.

Trying to establish the right to run models locally while we still can makes more sense than waiting to see if they do try, then organizing too late.

As the earth has warmed over the last century, has food production increased or decreased?

If production increased (dramatically) while temperatures increased in the past, could this trend continue?

Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century.

I won't bother sharing the source because you'll find some reason to dismiss it I'm sure.

It's interesting you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source and yet have nothing to say about the parent comment which claims we no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change. Which of those comments seems more propagandistic?

the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

Nearly 10x more people die from the cold than from the heat.

"...9.43% of global deaths were attributable to non-optimal temperatures, with 8.52% from cold and 0.91% from heat."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

LLMs don't think for you. Just like any other text you read, you can accept or reject it.

Discernment still exists.

I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying.

Who is focused on destroying the world?

I don't think hardly any super villains exist. People might have a different assessment of what destroying the world means than you do.

Emotions do seem to act as signaling, but is that the same as an attempt at manipulation for the benefit of the individual?

It seems conceivable in social groups that having an honest accounting of how people are feeling (via emotions) available to the group might benefit the group in achieving their goals while not always benefiting the individual.

Many comments are mocking the "Non-technical teams are now shipping production code" line as an obvious disaster waiting to happen.

I think this will be commonplace in the not too distant future.

Some disasters will happen, just like they did before AI. Skeptics will gleefully point out these failures while more and more non-technical teams ship code.

I can second the sentiment, I have had kdenlive crash on me several times without saving.

I still use it because it's great for quick and simple things, and I save frequently, but it is extremely frustrating when it happens.

Yes. This is why copy-trading often fails.

You can see when they buy or sell a position. It's on the blockchain so it's all public. And yes, copying positions is called copy-trading and it's extremely popular.

Orders aren't public though. Only the actual trades. This is important because by the time the trade is known by others very often the edge is gone. Especially if you have other people watching the same trader and they all try to copy the trade at the same time.

Ah I understand you now. Yes I could have had a service do the digitizing then only done delivery myself. And given the time investment that probably would have been more sound. I don't think I'd do it all myself if I did it again.

I didn't know Gemini models were that capable. I admit I'm still skeptical about this approach though - even if it were capable of accurately labeling people and locations across decades, there's no way it could know when a scene is of personal interest. I kept a running log for each sibling as I was manually doing the labeling, knowing what they'd want to see, which presumably is only possible for me and my siblings to do with any accuracy.

If AI could ever do that then we've definitely hit ASI!

I'll have to try that next time

Yup, you nailed it. This was my exact concern.

It wasn't about having the videos held hostage, but about the ease of accessing and viewing them. I didn't want to do DVDs at all - frankly, that's just a bad experience to go through 200+ hours of unlabeled video.

Hi gwern!

My siblings are very much not developers. That's a lot of data for them to download, store, and figure out a way to view.

I was worried they'd just see a list of filenames and not put in the effort. By creating a streaming experience, I thought they'd actually watch them.

You might be correct that Gemini could have helped, I didn't test it, but much of the knowledge of who was in a scene, where it was, and why it would matter is inside my head. I doubt any model could effectively label locations and people over 20 years of video.

As to the opportunity cost - I'm currently looking for work, so mine is undoubtedly lower than yours!

I'm sorry to hear that. I agree. I'm fortunate. I hope that you can enjoy the memories as best you can.

Bro, you're paranoid. I'm the author. Look at my blog. I write my stories myself. I wrote a geoguessr article last year that hit the top of HN.

Yes, I've used VLC. But I'm using a fairly new machine and hadn't installed it yet.

Why does it strain credulity to make this myself? I explain it step by step. I enjoy using AI to build stuff myself.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I posted this 5 days ago, and it didn't seem like anyone saw it then, so I'm happy folks are enjoying it now.

I would absolutely try that first.

It's the Big Video8 cartel astroturfing.

Really? I'm the author and I can't conceive of any way this could be considered marketing. It's a personal project, I'm selling nothing.

But I am looking for work, so hey, if anyone is hiring and they enjoyed the post, then email me.

It's a joke; my grandma worked as a switchboard operator in the 1940s for two weeks. As she says, she "disconnected half of Washington DC."

We often refer to government agents as "feds." I wasn't considering an international audience with my title, apologies!

Glad you enjoyed it. Definitely get some good videos.