bumby

23 ms·

421.
by bumby 2y ago
> The taxpayers were never at risk I’d implore you to research more about how the CCP is administered. There are payments before any astronaut gets a ride. Meaning if the company goes out of business beforehand, the taxpayers lost that
422.
by bumby 2y ago
NCEES has brought back the controls systems professional engineering licensure. This is the same license that civil engineers use to stamp designs for example. Of course, the license doesn’t mean anything if everyone falls under an industri
423.
by bumby 2y ago
You may want to familiarize yourself with counter examples from Musk biographers, like Seth Abramson. Musk said himself SpaceX would’ve gone bankrupt without NASA contracts. He needed those contracts because Spacex was too high of a risk at
424.
by bumby 2y ago
I’d argue he offsets his risks (but not profits) to the taxpayer. His high-risk bets have largely been buoyed by government contracts, subsidies, and borderline crony-capitalism. In many respects, that’s not always bad for the taxpayer when
425.
by bumby 2y ago
I agree it’s fair, but I don’t think it’s “open-source”. Open source means “free”; requiring me to give you something in return is transactional.
426.
by bumby 2y ago
> SpaceX launches NASA astronauts which means that they also need to comply to the same standards Sorry, this is false. When NASA engineers have raised the question of non-adherence to NASA standards by CCP contractors, they were told i
427.
by bumby 2y ago
NASA/DoD did lay some of the groundwork. DC-X was a vertical landing rocket meant for reuse nearly 35 years ago. Granted SpaceX has done amazing things that are more difficult (DC-X was suborbital), but I tend to think if NASA continue
428.
by bumby 2y ago
> "a factory used to". That's questionable 1) The past gives context and so we shouldn't dismiss it. In this case, it provides insight into why the current tax structure is the way it is. If the underlying premise ch
429.
by bumby 2y ago
Much more succinct description than mine :-)
430.
by bumby 2y ago
Primitive in what sense? Lacking nuance, or not reflective of modern society? I do think that the success category is easily mapped to money, which may be why it’s a primary heuristic for measuring success in a modern western society.
431.
by bumby 2y ago
William Storr has written about this and gives three different styles of social “currency”: dominance, virtue, and success. Capitalism favors success and dominance over virtue, but some social subsets (eg clergy) get status through virtue.
432.
by bumby 2y ago
It’s been talked about for years, but my lay understanding is that tax is levied on automation that displaces human production. This circumvents the issue where we have a system based on income tax, but a lower ratio of income to production
433.
by bumby 2y ago
I like that ideal, but it only comes about in abundance. Unfortunately, I think humans are programmed to rarely feel a sense of abundance because we innately desire social status. Social status is a relative metric, meaning it only exists i
434.
by bumby 2y ago
I think you’re casting too narrow of a net here. Other options include an automation tax, UBI etc. (unless you consider those a subset of your items above)
435.
by bumby 2y ago
I don’t think that fully encapsulates the issue. I can recognize some other being has subjective experience irrespective of any predator/prey relationship.
436.
by bumby 2y ago
Because we generally acknowledge a need to discriminate how we relate and interact with others. I treat a child differently than an adult, a dog differently than a human, and a plant differently from an animal. Humans as classification mach
437.
by bumby 2y ago
Where do you draw the line? Do you think dung beetles have emotions? Not being snarky, I just think it’s a difficult idea to pin down.
438.
by bumby 2y ago
I think it’s latent status signaling. Humans are hierarchical primates and we search for status in our social groups. To that end, it’s not much different than other social creatures that seek social status in their tribe/pride/pa
439.
by bumby 2y ago
I believe, at its best, it’s an incomplete model (which may be enough for most people). But it leaves out important aspects like magnetic field work and probably a host of aspects from quantum theory. https://www.slideshare.net&#
440.
by bumby 2y ago
Is this because we're misapplying the analogy to ML? I.e., in an effort to communicate and understand ANNs, we "pretend" it's like a brain. Just like before, we used "file retrieval systems" to understand the b
441.
by bumby 2y ago
Care to elaborate? I think the more salient issue is the contracting process, not any particular company.
442.
by bumby 2y ago
That point assumes technology is evenly distributed. I think it’s clear it is not.
443.
by bumby 2y ago
Not the OP, but my best guess is it’s an alignment problem, just like gun killing what the owner is not intending to. So the power of AI to make decisions that are out of alignment with society’s needs are the “something, something’s.” As i
444.
by bumby 2y ago
You make an interesting point about embedded specifications. But doesn’t that assume two things: 1) the specs are clear and complete, 2) we’re ok trusting AI to develop safety critical software in those subsets of embedded applications?
445.
by bumby 2y ago
Why the artificial constraint of assuming technology is constant? In not necessarily one to hope that tech will automatically bail us out, of the growth in the previous decades has been from tech innovations like automation.
446.
by bumby 2y ago
There is an often unaddressed risk in robotics because there is a lack of theory-of-mind. We’ve evolved to intuit what others humans are thinking (based on words, body language and other context) which helps us predict behavior and mitigate
447.
by bumby 2y ago
Psychologically, “better” is not referenced to the objective things they have, but the relative things they have. So humans drawn to status-driven wealth will always want more relative wealth.
448.
by bumby 2y ago
Michael Lewis paints a different picture in his book “The Fifth Risk” where govt infrastructure is leveraged for private profits. Ex: AccuWeather uses NOAA data to make their products while lobbying to make the same NOAA data inaccessible t
449.
by bumby 2y ago
If true, there’s some irony in how much of the actions are centrally planned rather than pushed down to lower level leaders closer to the problems.
450.
by bumby 2y ago
It’s a 15 year contract awarded in 2023 so it may be too early to tell. The strongest public claims that Verizon isn’t capable comes from their competitor so those claims should probably be taken with a boulder of salt until more informati

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