netcan

7 ms·

31.
by netcan 5mo ago
Great example. But... IDK if this (or other clearly advanced writing systems) demonstrate "refinement of millennia." I think we have a "history is accelerating" bias. Changes in the deep past happened slowly, and the pac
32.
by netcan 5mo ago
Assyriologist Irving Finkel believes Gobekli Tepeh is or is evidence of writing or proto-writing. That's 12,000 bp. There are ice age artefacts that may represent writing-like symbolism. The super-old artefacts themselves are only a hi
33.
by netcan 5mo ago
Living culture is a concept that I think is quite unintuitive to modern minds. Examples of it are all around us... but it's usually blatantly missing from our "big picture" thinking. For example. Take a modern country with
34.
by netcan 5mo ago
The music was new, black polished chrome And came over the summer like liquid night The DJ's took pills to stay awake and play for seven days There's something special to the loss of promise . That's the thing most often mou
35.
by netcan 5mo ago
Path dependencies between invention and utilization... are complicated and hard to fathom. Our mental models of developments like the industrial revolution, literacy, printing or suchlike tend to be a lot more straightforward than how thing
36.
by netcan 5mo ago
There is evidence for neanderthals making gum/glue from birch bark. It's useful for hating stone onto wood for tool making. I wonder if this bone grease was an edible product or something else. Oils have many uses.
37.
by netcan 5mo ago
Yeah... This thread and article have made me realize that a lot of different incentives exist to talk up the apocalypse. It even neutralizes the Eliezers and their apocalypse mongering.
38.
by netcan 5mo ago
I remember thinking Altman seemed to be over-reacting and fanning the flames about "Ai bias" circa gpt3. There was a when little panic about the fear of bigoted computers at that point. But... it got a lot of earned advertising an
39.
by netcan 5mo ago
> All tech business plans eventually lead to serving ads IDK if this is true. The boulevard of dreams is full of failed/misguided ad-based business plans. Contempt for the business model is sometimes the reason. An implicit assumpti
40.
by netcan 5mo ago
So the article isn't very good but the vibe coding debate is pretty interesting. This is how I'm thinking about it: in a scenario with increased opportunity and risk... You've gotta know where you stand. First question is
41.
by netcan 5mo ago
And here I thought I was being unique. I guess Socrates must be popular.
42.
by netcan 5mo ago
If token cost goes up, then the efficiency gains come from using fewer tokens... which is likely possible. The point is that efficiency comes after, not before.
43.
by netcan 5mo ago
A lot of paraimony between your statement and Socrates' comments on the transition to writing. Interestingly, he placed a lot of importance on memory... where you emphasize manipulation of concepts.
44.
by netcan 5mo ago
I wasn't even talking about drawbacks, though that applies too. I mean... you would be basically taking a complex thing, transforming and reconstructing it. What we want out of social media isn't a simple, legible function. The po
45.
by netcan 5mo ago
In a sense, everyone is a startup now... At least, every serious user of agents. So... if you spend $3m to replace a $1m team... you are betting on that $3m cost coming down. It's a proof of concept. The first step is to find out if ag
46.
by netcan 5mo ago
Useful comment. Thanks.
47.
by netcan 5mo ago
Myopic is inevitable, to some extent. It's very hard to project this stuff. Socrates wrote about what was being lost as philosophy was becoming written rather than oral...and he was right. We can't even understand what was lost.
48.
by netcan 5mo ago
I think it's an interesting idea to explore. But... It's the type of idea that is unpredictable as it comes into contact with reality. If it works, it probably works very differently from the initial idea of how it will work.
49.
by netcan 5mo ago
I didn't mean this as an absolute statement. Relatively, and in the short term.
50.
by netcan 5mo ago
Ok... but this just generalizes into the "known things" type. Whether the reason of strategic (like your example), internal politics, insufficient knowledge.... The point is that there is a local equilibrium, and most mature firms
51.
by netcan 5mo ago
>. In many domains, productivity is already sufficient. What’s being sold is workforce reduction. This is a blindspot to many. People working on entrepreneurial projects need to build a lot. They start with nothing. They need (for exampl
52.
by netcan 5mo ago
Yes.. I agree. .. and that entropy can be where all the ultimate value is. That said... considering the point at hand is the context, it's important to start with the diminishing marginal returns. To give a simple example... Google and
53.
by netcan 5mo ago
I don't agree with the "full cynicism" POV, but I do agree that TechnoChina's existence is a potential paradigm shifter. But generally speaking, AI is currently pretty competitive and robust. Straightforward business mod
54.
by netcan 5mo ago
The technical task is not the business task... unless the task really is a commodity. Coding facebook isn't rocket surgery either. Neither is Visa, Salesforce or many other tech-centric companies. Replicating their business model is. T
55.
by netcan 5mo ago
Ok... but extrapolating from this to "whole market" paradigms is speculative. The (imo) question isn't how you produce software, but what the value of this software is. Are you going to make make/better software such tha
56.
by netcan 5mo ago
True. Regardless, (a) it's ability/desire to make such investments is still driven by stock-driven optimism and (b) these transactions' "signal" can have a similar, warping effect. In this case the transaction creat
57.
by netcan 5mo ago
It's just hard to tell the difference between "real" demand and "circular." That's the concern. PG had an essay about this during the dotcom, when he worked at yahoo. Iirc...Yahoo's share price and other b
58.
by netcan 5mo ago
So yes, but that doesn't negate the circular investment aspect, for most intents and purposes. The risk is from this structure is mostly to do with how this affects market cap. Companies using the value of their shares to fund demand f
59.
by netcan 5mo ago
In human time scales, the species which thrive will tend to be the adaptive generalists. Evolution takes time.
60.
by netcan 6mo ago
The ads are effective, and the way they are effective is via targeting. From the customer perspective, it works. The main problem is price competition for access to audiences. That's why fb revenues are what they are. The ads work, lar

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