xpe

72 ms·

871.
by xpe 2y ago
Titanium frames have a devoted fan base. Personally, I tried to notice the difference back when I did road racing but didn't. Maybe I didn't want to: Ti ain't cheap.
872.
by xpe 2y ago
> Use larger diameter tubular components - Strength goes up as the cube of the diameter so unless there are geometric constraints, use larger diameter tubes with thinner walls to get a lighter structure with increased strength and stiffn
873.
by xpe 2y ago
> Weight has no impact on sustained speed. On a nice track, assuming a perfectly smooth surface and zero elevation change, I'm willing to accept the effect may not matter enough to care. But introduce even just a little bumpiness or
874.
by xpe 2y ago
Two key points, which we probably agree on: (A) There are various flavors of social contracts. (B) Acceptance of any one social contract is a statistical thing, not a binary thing. The most basic idea of a social contract is the legitimacy
875.
by xpe 2y ago
Individuals who voted for Trump don’t necessarily want to throw away a social contract. Many of them do support societal norms, albeit different ones. And some don’t even think in these terms; they are more motivated by other factors. Along
876.
by xpe 2y ago
We need to define conflict of interest. Question: is an investor who gives money to one organization, but is not involved in the decision-making, conflicted if they give money to another organization? Are they self-conflicted (undermining t
877.
by xpe 2y ago
Yes, political corruption is a drag/loss on everyone except the corrupt ones. Worse, it can shift a system out of its viable operating zone. Corrupt individuals in a market can destroy the market. But what is the connection to the pare
878.
by xpe 2y ago
Yes, this can happen. How often and under what conditions I’m not sure. I’ll give some other lenses: 1. From the point of view of an individual person, growth in the overall market is often an advantage. If one company doesn’t survive, ther
879.
by xpe 2y ago
From the "Bonus: reputation" section: > As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when there's incontrovertible evidence that it's untr
880.
by xpe 2y ago
>> "Simply do the research and publish the results" > And then you don't get any grants anymore. This is exaggerated to make a point, which I interpret as: savvy researchers are mindful of how to conduct their work a
881.
by xpe 2y ago
Yes, neutrality is an important principle: we want a study to proceed without outside influence. Yet, there is an additional point worth mentioning: to the extent public money is allocated to e.g. study beetles, it is downstream of a politi
882.
by xpe 2y ago
Here, I'm thinking out loud. Are "Everything is political" and "There are no apolitical institutions" are functionally the same thing? When I read "everything is political", I interpret that as meaning &qu
883.
by xpe 2y ago
I read tpm's core points as (1) all institutions are downstream of politics (meaning government, whatever its form) and (2) Therefore, don't take institutions for granted; they rely on compatible upstream governance. I think tpm m
884.
by xpe 2y ago
Can you point to some more detail on this?
885.
by xpe 2y ago
> "Everything is political" is such a boring tautology. 1. The comment above didn’t say “Everything is political”. 2. "Everything is political" isn’t true. One might say that many things are influenced by politics; th
886.
by xpe 2y ago
The word “political” is rife with confusion. Careful discussion requires slowing down long enough to make sure different people are talking about the same thing. One of my favorite definitions of politics is the set of non-violent ways of r
887.
by xpe 2y ago
There are also expectations about maintenance and some notion of a “standard” environment. For example, unmaintained firearms work less well (or fail) when exposed to humid conditions. See also: https://www.nps.gov/subjects&
888.
by xpe 2y ago
I would expect a mindful trade-off against total system mass and cost.
889.
by xpe 2y ago
> Well, there have been no significant improvements to the GPT architecture over the past few years. A lot hangs on what you mean by "significant". Can you define what you mean? And/or give an example of an improvement tha
890.
by xpe 2y ago
> They've simply run out of data Why do you think "they" have run out of data? First, to be clear, who do you mean by "they"? The world is filled with information sources (data aggregators for example), each avai
891.
by xpe 2y ago
> They can't create anything that doesn't already exist. I probably disagree, but I don't want to criticize my interpretation of this sentence. Can you make your claim more precise? Here are some possible claims and refuta
892.
by xpe 2y ago
> LLMs do search and copy/paste with idiom translation and some transliteration. In general, this is not a good description about what is happening inside an LLM. There is extensive literature on interpretability. It is complicated
893.
by xpe 2y ago
Or just use it in Australia. Or Antarctica. Etc.
894.
by xpe 2y ago
Do these three points fairly characterize Marcus? Have I left out other key claims he makes? 1. AI is overvalued; 2. {Many/most/all} AI companies have AI products that don't do what they claim;* 3. AI as a technology is runni
895.
by xpe 2y ago
> He spends 95% of his energy trying to take down the merits of NN-based approaches. The 95% figure comes from where? (I don't think the commenter above has a basis for it.) How often does Marcus-the-writer take aim at NN-based appr
896.
by xpe 2y ago
I find Marcus tiresome for many reasons. I look for writing with testable claims and good argumentation. He comes across as evangelical. Am I missing something? Sure, there is considerable hype around generative AI. There are plenty of flim
897.
by xpe 2y ago
Many of these are points I would agree with, except: > [comparisons to] commenters in this submission I wouldn’t make claims as to the level of accomplishment here, not least of which because I’m not willing to pick any one definition of
898.
by xpe 2y ago
Ah, well, isn’t a “to do” item, so no anxiety needed. I’ve collected quotes for years: pretty fun to review from time to time.
899.
by xpe 2y ago
I'm storing this quote into my second brain right now. I'm heisenseriousjoking. Filing something away makes forgetting very cool indeed; I know I can look it up later.
900.
by xpe 2y ago
So. Many. Tradeoffs. :)

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