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danny_codes

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We won't know how close we are to takeoff until takeoff. My main critique of AI is that takeoff is dangerous, and we're basically running towards the cliff as fast as we can. Will you grow wings before you fall to your death? That's basically the bet we're making, if you believe in takeoff.

Silver lining is that if it goes bad we probably won't live long (as a species) to say "I told you so"

The excess money goes into assets that people need to survive/thrive. In SF/Bay Area a lot of it goes into land appreciation (housing prices). The end effect is rampant homelessness (did you know a full 1% of SF is homeless), delayed family formation, and an ever-growing state bill to subsidize landowners.

Excess isn't a problem, it's the distribution of the excess. Right now (in America) pretty much all of it goes to the top couple percent. The bottom ~40% of Americans have, by all practical measures, experienced a reduction in standard of living compared to 1980. Like, yes, they can afford more trivialities. TVs are cheap, particle-board furniture is cheap, and so on. But the actually important things like healthcare, education, and housing have moved further out of reach.

So yes, it's nice that my Anthropic friends can retire to work on, in one case, their fantasy novels. I'm very happy they can focus on something they love (and I look forward to reading their books). However, that much capital concentration leads to a hefty chunk of our (really rather rich) country struggling to service basic needs (like having a roof).

Sure, but 98% of what you buy is is either in the set of SKUs near you or substitutable for them. Near you only applies if you live among actual density of course.

Sounds like you want to have unequal representation. Or rather, you want to keep your privilege by preventing other people from gaining equal footing. You are right that this is a pretty central element of American society. However, I think we're at our best when we concede that this sort of thinking is counter-productive in the end. Cooperation is really the core mechanism for societal growth, so any efforts to prevent cooperation (in this case, by creating a subclass) is eventually self-defeating

The problem I have with the immigration of today is that the levels of cultural distance are much, much higher than Ellis island.

Sounds like a good thing to me. More diversity means we can incorporate the best ideas from everyone, instead of a select few. But I suppose not everyone likes to try new things

Birthright citizenship is one of the best things we have going for us. I see no reason why we should treat people differently depending on whether or not they have an imaginary stamp labeling them as special (IE, as citizens). Birthright citizenship ensures the problem of unequal representation is fixed over time. A self-fixing function, if you will.

Long-term downsides tend not to show up in studies for many years. For example, these drugs might increase cancer rates, but we wouldn't know for a few decades.

I imagine though that on-balance they'll be net positive because being overweight is just so bad for you.

and thus far everyone has accepted it

For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.

Good luck finding anyone in SF who wants to replace open space with more density. SF is amazingly lucky that it has so much green space and it's a big reason the city is so desirable. Increasing sprawl into our open spaces seems like a really bad idea to me (and I assume most people who live in SF). You could argue we should replace golfing with other green-space uses, and I'm sure you'd find takers, but for more sprawl? I doubt it.

Also I never understood this obsession with "heritage". Why not promote the next generation of SF architecture instead? Modernize the victorian into increased density, create something new and creative. Over time blend the new-ness with the old. This ideology of stasis seems at-odds with SF's image as an innovation hub, both technologically and culturally. Why should our architecture be stagnant when our ethos is to constantly push forward?

This is one of the big loses we've had to NIMBYism / prop 13 / regressive zoning. We could have such cool, interesting architectural advances, but ironically our perverse urban development incentive structure discourages those kinds of innovations.

So they reduce their prices 50x and their revenue drops to $1B a year? And they're supposed to be worth $1T each? If there is an open model offering at the cost of inference + whatever margin you need to stay alive, then as inference falls Anthropic/OpenAI revenue also falls.

What's the end-game? It sounds like in this business, if you are right, your revenues drop every year.

SOTA models can be run by anybody with compute capacity. You can pay for GLM 5.2 inference right now via Fireworks AI and presumably several dozen other providers. So if you don't want vendor lock-in and rug-pulling (Anthropic has churned on their subscription model like 4-5 times in the past month) you can just pay an inference provider and have far more control over your environment.