wskinner

8 ms·

31.
by wskinner 3y ago
I don't know where you live, but my anecdata from being homeschooled starting ~20 years ago in the Bay Area contradicts this. I was part of a group of more than 50 homeschooled children of various ages. Our parents all had their own re
32.
by wskinner 3y ago
In a city like San Francisco, building self-driving cars is easier than building "safer, more pedestrian friendly infrastructure". Those changes would take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars, and will not address the fun
33.
by wskinner 3y ago
It’s not at all clear to me that a hypothetical scenario where the driver moved the car after running over the person would have a better outcome than waiting for first responders to jack up the car (see e.g. https://news.ycombin
34.
by wskinner 3y ago
The framing for these reports is always the same: the journalist refers to other recent incidents involving autonomous vehicles, ignoring the very high base rate of incidents not involving autonomous cars. Accidents that don’t involve auton
35.
by wskinner 3y ago
The purpose of these laws is exactly to change people’s behavior through incentives. So if the incentives produced by the law resulted in behaviors with negative social outcomes, that really is the fault of the people who came up with the l
36.
by wskinner 3y ago
Yes. If you know nothing about investing, the best thing you can do is read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". It's quick and easy and explains why beating the market by picking stocks is not a great way to invest.
37.
by wskinner 3y ago
Rent control works for some people (e.g. those already living in rent controlled apartments). It also tends to suppress long term supply and improvement of existing supply, and that hurts other people in less visible ways (e.g. people who w
38.
by wskinner 3y ago
1. Make friends with people at work 2. Eventually, some of those people will get new jobs, and they can refer you to their new employer (and vice versa). 3. Repeat for a few cycles and you have a network full of potential job opportunities
39.
by wskinner 3y ago
Uber was a good investment for all of their private investors until SoftBank. For many of those investors, it was the best investment they ever made (see Benchmark, for example). For very late stage private investors who entered when the co
40.
by wskinner 3y ago
If your standard for “safe enough” is that no one will directly die or be injured, ever, then the only feasible solution is no electricity at all.
41.
by wskinner 3y ago
In America, there is broad implicit approval for the idea that the tax code should be used to encourage (discourage) desirable (undesirable) behavior. We may quibble about the definition of desirability, but most Americans do seem to suppor
42.
by wskinner 3y ago
The original thread from Matei Zaharia (Stanford prof who contributed to the paper) is a bit better: https://twitter.com/matei_zaharia/status/1681467961905926144
43.
by wskinner 3y ago
Almost 43,000 people died in car accidents in the USA in 2022. Many people hope autonomous cars can reduce that number. The goal is not a 100% human-like driver. It is a driver that is better than humans.
44.
by wskinner 3y ago
I find directly looking at the CPI rather than the trailing growth rate to be more informative. Since March 2020, the CPI is up 17%. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
45.
by wskinner 3y ago
Are you confusing dang with Sam Altman?
46.
AI Safety and the Age of Dislightenment(fast.ai)
124 points by wskinner 3y ago|214 comments
47.
by wskinner 3y ago
Has anyone made an attempt at accounting for all the harms and benefits of PFAS? Something I feel is often missed in reporting about similar issues is that the products in question have tremendous benefits. Yes, they have caused significant
48.
by wskinner 3y ago
He follows ~21,700 accounts. Do you think he shares or endorses the opinions of all those accounts?
49.
You Don’t Need Our Education – We Must Have Cohort Control(fashionalexpectations.substack.com)
1 points by wskinner 3y ago|0 comments
50.
by wskinner 3y ago
> The western world desperately needs a way to do resource allocation that is parallel to and augments financial markets. Something like a government that taxes the people and spends the tax revenue on stuff? In the USA, government spend
51.
by wskinner 3y ago
What happens to the typical person’s healthcare costs when some people who consume extremely expensive treatments” just don’t pay”? What is the equilibrium here?
52.
by wskinner 3y ago
I'm not sure where you're getting the $20,000/year healthcare spending number, but that looks like it is too high by an order of magnitude. See e.g. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-bri
53.
by wskinner 3y ago
The top marginal rate of 45% in the UK starts at £125,140. Compare that to the US, where the top marginal rate of 37% starts at $578,125. - Edited to correct incorrect US top rate.
54.
by wskinner 3y ago
And what about the case of Lightning and USB-C? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35853766
55.
by wskinner 3y ago
Many responses to my comment made the same argument, so I’ll just reply here. What do you see as the main safety differences between Lightning and USB-C? As both systems have been in use at scale for some time now, this should be easy enoug
56.
by wskinner 3y ago
If the standards are so good, they shouldn’t need to force companies to use them.
57.
by wskinner 3y ago
The article didn't link to the paper (or if it did, I wasn't able to find it). If you're basing this claim on the original paper, can you share a link?
58.
by wskinner 3y ago
Compared to what? Eating a pint?
59.
by wskinner 4y ago
Are vehicles that use electric batteries instead of gasoline entirely pollution-free? Every such change is about shifting from one form of pollution to another. If your standard is zero pollution of any kind, the only solution is eliminatio
60.
by wskinner 4y ago
OpenAI's status page ( https://status.openai.com/ ) claims their API is up (except for text-curie-001) as of 2:04PM PT. However, I have been getting HTTP 429 (too many requests) from the chat completions API ( https:&#x2

More ›