Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
What is the appeal of sushi? Specifically the raw fish. I decided to try a big bowl of raw fish at my local sushi bar, and like, it was fine. I ate it, but all I could think about was how much better it would be thrown on the grill with some MSG.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Goddamn, they really mailed fake elector certificates to the Vice President.
Googling this right now. They all have the same format. This is obviously a coordinated conspiracy.
Trump is toast. He should be on his knees begging DeSantis for a pardon in exchange for his endorsement right now. He will be in jail on election day.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Senator Josh Hawley:
Huh? For reference, section 230 is here. In short, section 230 says that companies aren't liable for information posted on their websites by third parties. This means that Google can't be sued for showing ISIS.com on your search results, because ISIS is a third party, and ISIS.com is their content, not Google's. Section 230 doesn't apply to generative AI because generative AI isn't a third party. If Google Gemini replies to your prompt with, "Thank you for joining ISIS. Recommended pipebomb targets in your area are X, Y, and Z," Google can't use section 230 as a defense if Y sues them for being bombed, because Google generated the information.
If I were to steelman Hawley's point, I guess it would be that Google as a company benefits from section 230, and so repealing it would punish them for creating "woke" AI and cut off a source of funds for AI development, but I don't think Hawley's use of the phrase "these AI companies" is easily read as referring to only "AI companies which are bankrolled by social media products."
If you are familiar with simulacrum levels, you may have had a bit of difficulty grokking level 4. I think an intuitive definition of level 4 is, "politician speak that doesn't fit into levels 1, 2, or 3". Which level is the tweet by Hawley on? It's not 1, because it isn't true. It's not really 2, because it's not trying to convince you of a proposition. It's not 3, replace "conservatives" with "liberals" and "Google Gemini" with "𝕏", and it could be from AOC. That leaves 4. It's just word associations. Woke AI is bad. Tech companies make woke AI. Section 230 something something big tech censorship. Put it in a box, shake it up, let the manatees do their thing, post whatever comes out to Twitter.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Situations like the state of Texas trying to expand I-35 through downtown Austin that the city generally opposes.
Mind-boggling. It’s as if they want Austin to suck as much as possible. Like the suck is part of the charm.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI
Is this even legal? AFAICT there’s no abstract ownership of concepts or ideas that copyright holders can claim, only claims against produced works. So a copyright holder can sue someone who uses AI to generate similar content to what is copyrighted, but not for using a work as training data per se. Sounds like the writers should be picketing Congress too.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Is the whole point of Effective Altruism to be a place for nerds to meet women? I’ll be honest, I never really “got” EA, but once I applied the “rationalist nerd dating scene” lens, everything suddenly made sense. No one actually cares about the mental wellbeing of shrimp. It’s just an excuse to show girls how nice and empathetic and smart and well-connected you are. The tone of this comments section is very much, “you’ll have to pry the polyamory from my cold dead hands.” Empirically, I see lots and lots of married couples and casual sex, but very little global improvement. By their fruits you shall know them etc.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Furthermore; there is little need for cars in a place like Oxford.
THEN WHY ARE THERE CARS EVERYWHERE?
This is the most Orwellian piece of journalism I’ve read in months. No understanding whatsoever of economics. Traffic isn’t bad because traffic is bad. Traffic is bad because it makes it take longer to get where you want to go. Banning cars to reduce traffic doesn’t solve the problem, it makes the problem worse because now it takes longer to get somewhere than it did when you were stuck in traffic.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
I notice I am confused. There is a 10-15% chance that the Supreme Court rules Trump ineligible for the presidency. There is an additional 10-15% chance that Trump is literally in jail by the time the convention rolls around. Just because DeSantis can't beat Trump in a primary doesn't mean he has no chance. Even if he doesn't have the money for an active campaign, endorsing Trump kills his momentum for a "told you so" convention chaos campaign.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
I thought the NPR label was a bit tenuous (assuming the 10% government funding stat I’ve seen is accurate), but the BBC is absolutely state-run media.
The whole “editorial independence” thing is a joke. Here’s a test: could the BBC run a piece calling the Queen a cunt without government consequences? If they couldn’t, then they aren’t editorially independent.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
If the United States invaded Canada out of the blue one day what would happen? Would they even shoot back? If Canada invoked Article V would the UK or France threaten nuclear war?
I don’t really have a model for this, and yet it could easily happen.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Breakdancing (or "breaking" as they call it) is new to the Olympics this year. The Australian contestant is Rachell Gunn, AKA Raygun, a communications professor who specializes in "the cultural politics of breaking". Lets see how she does.
How the hell did this happen?
Let he who has never anonymously posted edgelord comments on the internet cast the first stone. I honestly can't imagine how dull and intellectually lazy one would have to be to never once let a single cancellation-worthy thought enter their mind. In the early 2010s there was even less of a barrier between thinking something and posting it anonymously on the internet. Not everyone was reading Moldbug back then. You didn't expect the thought police to be around every corner.
The idea of rationalism being an "off-ramp from extremism" has been around for some time. This article is not strong Bayesian evidence of anything, even assuming that it's true (It probably is. Hanania would have denied it immediately if it was false, and he's been radio silent on Twitter since the article dropped). Conservation of expected evidence; you should have assumed that anyone who says the things that Hanania says publicly under his real name also has stronger beliefs that he doesn't say. The quoted material sounds like exactly what you would get if you prompted a non-RLHFed LLM with the phrase "Richard Hanania under fire after the following controversial statements resurfaced:".
Ignoring it is the best option here. Anyone with a brain knew that there was a high probability that he believes (or believed) things like this. What the article does is make these things salient and give activists a pretext to attack Hanania and his associates. If he ignores it completely he can maintain plausible deniability.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Why do girls like Titanic so much?
The film made almost two billion dollars when it was released in 1997, making it the highest grossing movie in history at the time (the previous record was Jurassic Park at only $900 million).
Why? What made it special? It’s a perfectly fine movie I guess. The effects were well-done and innovative. But otherwise it seems like a pretty generic disaster/romance film. There’s an old /tv/ meme about “movies women will never understand”. Presumably there are also “movies men will never understand”. I know many women consider Titanic their favorite film of all time, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man say that.
Take a second to think about it. This is actually quite surprising. Big machines, transportation technology, humanity fighting nature, honor, these are all male-oriented interests. I find that these themes make the film tolerable to watch, but why would adding them to a romance make the film so popular amongst women?
What am I missing here?
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
How does the FairTax proposal work?
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
How Rationalist (community) Are You survey. Kind of curious how y'all rank. Its an Aella survey of course.
I got
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
No wait, that's a Key and Peele sketch. Here's the real song that's making headlines:
Jason Aldean - Try That In A Small Town (Official Music Video)
The song is about shooting rioters. One can argue about to what extent shooting rioters is actually a good thing, one can argue about to what extent said rioters are "racialized" as African American, but the song is transparently about shooting rioters. Just what exactly is, "Around here, we take care of our own. You cross that line, it won't take long," supposed to mean? Surely it's a metaphor, not a literal line (like say, some train tracks) right?
Needless to say, the video has been pulled from Country Music Television (whatever that means). Seems more like fake backlash than real resistance to me, but I don't know much about country music. Are these guys a big deal?
Also, my God country music is terrible. It's better than rap, but rap hardly counts as music. I'm glad Red America finally has the balls to stick up for itself, but this is not exactly art that's going to mog the cathedral.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
It is a very important job. Somebody has to tell doctors and patients no. That said, I sure wouldn’t want to do it.
I think it is hypothetically possible for a health insurance CEO to be so cartoonishly evil that murdering him on the street becomes ethically justified. I haven’t seen the evidence yet. I assume if it existed it would be plastered all over the internet.
If this hadn't happened, would FEMA have an extra $300 million to use on other things, or would they simply be appropriated $300 million less?
Same question for the illegal migrants program that everyone on Twitter seems to be talking about.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Wait, no. That’s the opposite of the point I was making. I-35 through downtown Austin is 3 lanes each direction. It’s awful. That’s the same width as I-35 through rural areas between San Antonio and Waco.
You seem to have fallen for the “induced demand” meme. No, the demand is already there. People want to live in the suburbs and work downtown. If throughput were increased, more people would be able to do that. The welfare of the area would be increased. People wouldn’t have to pay massive rent for shitty apartments near their work. Not to mention the fact that I-35 is, you know, an Interstate. People hate driving through Austin. Other Texas cities with functional freeway systems are objectively easier to get around.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
You literally can't get much stricter than Chicago in restricting firearms
Thought experiment: Set aside the 2nd and 4th amendments for a second. Suppose the United Stated banned civilian firearms, all of them. No manufacture, no sales, no ownership. All citizens must surrender their guns to the authorities. Anyone who has ever posted a gun on social media gets their house searched for contraband. Children are taught in school about the importance of turning in their parents if there are guns in the home. What does the murder rate look like in Chicago a year later? How about 10 years later? Surely you concede that there would be less mass shootings in the USA, how would random 20-year-olds be getting access to weapons after a generation of total control?
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
A New York grand jury indicted Donald Trump in connection with a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Is that what this is about? I thought they at least had tax fraud receipts. What the fuck?
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Is there a wage gap in fraud?
New court documents have revealed how much money each FTX executive received.
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Sam Bankman Fried: $2.2 billion
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Nishad Singh: $587 million
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Gary Wang: $246 million
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Caroline Ellison (guess):
$6(six) million
I honestly feel bad for her. Forget jail time, that’s barely worth the disgrace brought to her family (who are well-regarded academics). Ryan Salame, who wasn’t even in on the fraud got more than that. The only explanation I can think of is that she was a true believer in the effective altruism thing. If everyone is earning to give, it doesn’t matter how the loot gets split up right? Except everyone else was buying yachts.
Idk, maybe this is just what happens when you never ask for a raise.
Quantumfreakonomics
2yr ago
Imagine being Glenn Ellison. You’re a highly respected academic at the top of your field, Department head of economics at MIT. One day you wake up and see your daughters face all over the internet. Half the world is calling her ugly, stupid, and evil. At the office, your colleagues are too polite to mention it, but you can see the disgust on their faces. What are you gonna do, blame it on the Harry Potter fan fiction? How does the daughter of the chief MIT economist not understand margin requirements or decreasing marginal utility? Everyone knows you failed as a father, and you just have to sit there and take it.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Let’s say you’re walking down the street and a black guy steals your phone. Later that day, this same black guy is minding his own business when he is attacked, arrested, and beaten within an inch of his life by an unabashedly racist police officer who is an open member of the KKK. The police officer notices the cell phone, which he finds out later was reported missing by you, and returns it to you. Further investigation reveals that the police officer had no probable cause, and simply assaulted the man because he was black. Do you have to give him your cell phone back?
The answer is obviously no, right? Just because the black man has a clearly justified claim against the government, doesn’t mean that we have to recommit all of the crimes that the unlawful state action righted. Compensation should be made in a different way.
The companies that make those drugs have policies against selling the drugs for use in executions. The perfect execution method exists, but "medical" """""ethics""""" "committees" prevent it from being actualized.
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