TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
No bio...
User ID: 616
My father passed when I was eight, and my mom gave birth to me when she was 42. I sort of always felt like my parents were old.
Part of the reason I think we should encourage people to have kids young.
Trump apparently just put the DOGE team in charge of auditing defense, so I think your constant drumbeat of "nothing ever happens" may need to be updated just a bit here.
Now we’ll keep on trying cuz there’s science to do.
When I look up there it makes me glad I’m not you!
Maybe not this generation. But there are hordes of people begging for it on X, and if they can leverage it for more money and status I’d imagine it would catch on over time.
Neuralink has caused a bit of a storm on X, taking off after claiming that three humans have what they call "Telepathy":
Today, there are three people with Telepathy: Noland, Alex, and Brad.
All three individuals are unable to move their arms and legs—Noland and Alex due to spinal cord injury (SCI) and Brad due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They each volunteered to participate in Neuralink’s PRIME Study,* a clinical trial to demonstrate that the Link is safe and useful in the daily lives of people living with paralysis.
Combined, the PRIME Study participants have now had their Links implanted for over 670 days and used Telepathy for over 4,900 hours. These hours encompass use during scheduled research sessions with the Neuralink team and independent use for everyday activities. Independent use indicates how helpful the Link is for real-world applications and our progress towards our mission of restoring autonomy. Last month, participants used the Link independently for an average of 6.5 hours per day
Assuming this is all true and the kinks will be worked out relatively soon, this is... big news. Almost terrifyingly big news.
AI tends to suck in most of the oxygen around tech discourse, but I'd say, especially if LLMs continue to plateau, Neuralink could be as big or even bigger. Many AI maximalists argue, after all, that the only way humanity will be able to compete and keep up in a post-AGI world will be to join with machines and basically become cyborgs through technology like Neuralink.
Now I have to say, from a personal aesthetic and moral standpoint, I am close to revolted by this device. It's interesting and seems quite useful for paraplegics and the like, but the idea of a normal person "upgrading" their brain via this technology disturbs me greatly.
There are a number of major concerns I have, to summarize:
- The security/trust issue of allowing a company to have direct access to your brain
- Privacy issues with other people, hacking your Link and being able to see all of your thoughts, etc
- "Normal" people without Neuralinks being outcompeted by those willing to trade their humanity for technical competence
- LLMs and other AI systems being able to directly hijack human agents, and work through them
- Emotional and moral centers in the human brain being cut off and overridden completely by left-brained, "logical" thinking
Does this ring alarm bells for anyone else? I'd imagine @self_made_human and others on here are rubbing their hands together with glee, and I have to say I'd be similar a few years back. But at the moment I am, shall we say... concerned with these developments.
How do I get my Substack to take off? Asking for a friend.
I agree though, I think it makes perfect sense for someone to stop hanging on forums if their writing gets big. Trace did have ideological issues with this place though IIRC.
Sorry to hear it my man. I hope you know it was for the best, and that you are able to get over it with as little pain as possible.
I feel for you.
Kanye West pulled an insane stunt at the Grammys where he had his wife strip naked in front of where they take the pictures. Clearly a publicity stunt (since he wasn’t invited anyway), and he quickly got kicked out.
What’s shocking to me is how freely so many media outlets and people on social media are sharing it completely uncensored. For some reason X doesn’t seem to be marking it as pornography either. It’s quite disturbing to me how widely and casually it’s being shared. I’m not going to link because I don’t think it’s good to share this type of thing but I’m sure a quick search will find the video in question.
The worst part is that his wife looks clearly disturbed, sad, and afraid as he stands there looking around in a sort of combative way. It’s truly awful.
A lot of people on the right saw Kanye as a sort of martyr who stood up for his beliefs enough to get completely cancelled. Hopefully this stunt shows that he is not truly aligned with most conservative’s values, and is just a billionaire who loves attention. We’ll see how it goes.
She’s from the U.S. it’s different. Culturally and ethnically.
How does this help lower and middle? Everyone I’ve read says the opposite
What do you think of the tariffs? Just kinda curious to get people’s general vibes.
I’m more excited than anything to see what happens as a U.S. citizen. I am not like in a super precarious place financially but I’d imagine it is scary for those who are.
I think the general harm is more of a human capital / social capital / cultural capital issue overall.
Mass immigration risks eroding the culture and trust that built so much wealth and dominated the world. That’s a bad thing if it does happen. It’s not guaranteed, but mass immigration of low skill and low IQ people is one way to get there.
Boss materials. For endgame bosses you have to farm items to summon them
Typically people group up because you know if we both have mats and we alternate summoning the boss, we get 2x the loot.
Would love to have you join! It’s a great game imo. I’d be happy to help you get your bearings.
Are you saying that the economists who advised politicians to implement NAFTA and USMCA are frauds, and in reality there are no economic benefits to free trade?
I think the steelman is that it hurts domestic production, which hurts a lot of the labor market in countries who are losing local jobs.
Anybody play Diablo 4? I have a bunch of boss mats on this season and would be happy to run ppl through.
Hmmm given how intertwined the cartels and the government are, what if Trump is trying to put economic pressure on the cartels themselves?
What if he is serious about Canada joining the United States, and he wants to use tariffs to force them to either ruin their economy or join the Union?
What would be a few demands you think Trump should ask for from Canada and Mexico, respectively?
I think for Mexico the obvious answer is to stop the cartel from smuggling drugs over the border. Not as sure on what Trump would want from Canada, besides possibly a regime change to a more conservative government.
Has there ever been a time in history when a superpower as economically huge as the U.S. implemented major tariffs?
Personally my take is that while economists are very intelligent and have put a lot of thought into these things, there really just isn't any way to know exactly what will happen. Tariffs could lead to:
- economies getting destroyed overnight
- a renaissance of modern industrial capacity in the U.S. & Canda
- no noticeable effect on anything as large industries get exemptions carved out
- closer relations b/w Canada & the U.S. as well as Europe and the U.S., as they are forced to negotiate
- more distant relations, vice versa above
- literal war with China
- trade war with China
- Greenland and Canada joining the United States to avoid tariffs
- etc etc
There are just so many possibilities, and even with all the statistics and math in the world I genuinely don't think any economist has a great idea how things will shake out. The global market is one of the most complex systems in existance.
Either way, it's a high variance move and as others have said, it allows Trump a TON of leverage when negotiating with our allies. Personally I'm very curious to see what comes of all this.
Israel was just founded in a bad place. Its destruction is not inevitable, especially because AGI/ASI will upend global politics in such dramatic ways that we can’t really predict anything more than 20 years away. But the most viable location for it was probably in some of the depopulated formerly German parts of Eastern Europe, now no longer claimed by Germany since reunification and never really substantially Polish (pre-1945) either.
Uhh... I think this cold argument completely ignores the religious aspect of where Israel was chosen to be? No, random parts of Germany would not be the "most viable," they literally wouldn't even matter. Jewish people wanted a state in the Holy Land, it's unthinkable that the project could've worked to gather so may Jews into a nation again anywhere else imo.
More on topic, this will on net make Trump less popular. Like I said, federal money is sacred to a great share of the American workforce, and messing with it is considered way outside the scope of party platforms. They depend on it, so it must be necessary.
This is one of the biggest problems with the modern government, IMO. It effectively takes a huge share of people out of participation in the market, leading to horrible incentives.
All of the above? I think A is probably the easiest to do and I would prefer that yeah.
Just a comment, I like these posts but I would read them more if they were far more concise.
Fascinating! This may be where the name came from
That’s dope though an even deeper cut
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Fascinating! And deeply creepy. If old internet posts can and will be replaced by LLMs.... oof I don't even want to think what might happen to the information landscape.
Any more blog posts or writings on this?
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