advael

24 ms·

301.
by advael 2y ago
Aye, exactly that. Even as someone who loves to do a dumb research project, it's starting to irk me how much funding can apparently go into essentially studying the various detrimental effects of poverty in exactly the same ways and co
302.
by advael 2y ago
I know it's important to do science that comes to obvious conclusions, but sometimes the interiority-centric framework of psychology seems comically ill-fit for topics like this In most countries in the world, money is what allows you
303.
by advael 2y ago
I agree that this is a more likely path for the human economy to take, and one that would disproportionately benefit from people being able to operate independently, as if stuff like social companionship become the kinds of things humans va
304.
by advael 2y ago
If we purport that human labor has no economic value, people being useless in their idleness has no bearing on the future. Also, the COVID pandemic was not people having free time, it was people being ordered to stay at home, many people be
305.
by advael 2y ago
Money is an abstraction. If AI can't produce enough value to support humans, then clearly there's stuff humans value that AI can't do. If AI can produce enough value to obsolete human labor, then human labor is unnecessary an
306.
by advael 2y ago
So your position is that people who have free time mostly do awful things and your support for this position is like... a misquoted aphorism from the bible ("idle hands are the devil's workshop")? I don't find that parti
307.
by advael 2y ago
I think this line of thinking is what happens when economies are allowed to calcify by consolidation of power in the hands of too few. I think the degree to which current systems are actually meaningfully transformative is greatly overstate
308.
by advael 2y ago
Give an artist unlimited freedom and they will often produce drivel and sometimes produce masterpieces, even if with a few constraints they could have produced interesting work Give a corporation unlimited freedom and they will inevitably c
309.
by advael 2y ago
Yea, it's pretty silly that this is the case in our culture, and is a mark against using the paradigm of property rights to manage acknowledging the contributions of creatives
310.
by advael 2y ago
Yea, I am. I think minimizing the data that can legally be retained about people is the best policy both on principle and practicality here. Yes, there will always be black markets as long as there are incentives. But it's much harder
311.
by advael 2y ago
I think this is an argument against how taxes are organized, at least in the US Rather than add a bunch of subsidies in the form of tax breaks, the government could just spend money on programs that accomplish the aim they want. By making t
312.
by advael 2y ago
I don't think any such regulation can have teeth or actually protect anyone. The mechanism by which data is abused is a moving target that will shift with any regulation you throw at it. It will go to black markets, be reshaped through
313.
by advael 2y ago
Okay, so we ban selling data and then people who want it will buy or even fund breaches instead. Massive breaches will likely become more common, because that's how driving valuable stuff into a black market always works, and companies
314.
by advael 2y ago
I don't think it's possible to craft regulation such that companies collecting data for "internal use" can't abuse it. It's so easy to create plausibly deniable ways to move data around. In ML research we get a
315.
by advael 2y ago
Unfortunately we're in kind of the worst of all possible worlds here too. Not only do we want to "automate" these kinds of tests, but governments have bought into the "security through obscurity" arguments of tech g
316.
by advael 2y ago
They automatically occupy that position because in practice no user of a microsoft system can audit the entire "supply chain" of that system, unlike one built from open-source components. Any "control" someone has over &
317.
by advael 2y ago
Fair, but I think they at least attempt to signify pretty different things
318.
by advael 2y ago
Software engineering is really distinct from computer science. The practices that are prevalent in an industry differ from the algorithms discovered in academia (or in industry)
319.
by advael 2y ago
Right, I think that's not the only distinction here. Yes, Realpage pushes its customers to accept its recommendations. But by centralizing where this research is done, it doesn't have to do that to be engaging in anticompetitive b
320.
by advael 2y ago
If you read my comment at all, you'd notice it leads with drawing a distinction between your hypothetical scenario and the actual case at hand. If you read my comment carefully, you might also notice that I'm being extra charitabl
321.
by advael 2y ago
There's a huge difference between researching your competition and coordinating with them. In effect, Realpage is acting as a mechanism for landlords to coordinate prices collaboratively rather than competitively. It just hopes to get
322.
by advael 2y ago
The crux of why this is a bad analogy is that everyone talking about "automating" things with LLMs is misusing the word "automation". A machine can automate a repetitive manual task. A computer can automate the operation
323.
by advael 2y ago
The theory-practice gap is so wide as to make the theoretical maxima essentially fantasy with body cameras that are proprietary and owned and operated by the same police departments they are supposed to be an accountability mechanism for
324.
by advael 2y ago
In an environment where police officers are effectively immune from any consequences of any actions, which appears to be almost true - barring widespread media coverage and consistent pressure from essentially a majority of US adults for mu
325.
by advael 2y ago
The entire existence of a class of contraband that cops can claim to be searching for at any time is a massive loophole in the fourth amendment, and as such, the drug prohibition wave of the mid-20th century was instrumental in turning the
326.
by advael 2y ago
I dunno, I make a lot of effort to not hate people, especially people I don't even know However, I think right now a lot of society broadly is turning against people who market themselves as misunderstood contrarian geniuses, mostly be
327.
by advael 2y ago
Having a bit of a bad PR year? Come up with a New Kind Of Guy that you are and do some good old fashioned identity politics. Throw some archetypes at the wall and see what sticks. Make people think you're letting them in on some secret
328.
by advael 2y ago
Strongly agree, but the existence of platform-integrated DRM is a moral hazard that current incentives don't seem to have a mechanism for overcoming, and the only mechanisms that seem to work require open or at least regulated platform
329.
by advael 2y ago
Not surprisingly, most governments have little to no respect for individual freedom and autonomy. To my understanding, this is among the best reasons not to sign such treaties with said governments, as compromising on principles surroundin
330.
by advael 2y ago
We need to kill the phone duopoly A big part of it is restrictive and onerous standards on cellular firmware that act as a compliance moat for Apple and Google (and seem designed to enable surveillance more than anything), but if we fail to

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