VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
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User ID: 411
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
11mo ago
the proposed solution (expropriating PRC influence) doesn't imply the implied result (better Social Media quality)
The point isn't to make the media high-quality, the point is to make it not be controlled by our geopolitical opponent. And the latter is 100% achievable.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
11mo ago
The point is that an unpopular Republican who barely squeaks through in a blood-red state is not an obvious choice to win over the more liberal neighboring state, even though they are neighbors.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
11mo ago
OK, I disagree, but regardless, that doesn't explain why it's an advantage.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
11mo ago
It’s less of a moat in many cases than people think; the experience of euro budget airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet shows that consumers are happy to go to airports 100 miles out of town for fares 1/4 of the legacy airlines. Startup costs are extremely low with the leasing business the way it is. I’m skeptical that looser competition laws would dramatically worsen the situation for consumers.
Then why did USAir/AA raise fares?
I take your point on Euro airlines, but suspect that the Euro airport/airline system is different in some fundamental way.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
11mo ago
I think you're right, but I'm very curious as to what theory they would use to overturn it if they couldn't grasp at some idiosyncratic procedural glitch to spare themselves from having to confront the core question.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Because the stakes are much higher
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Here are two polling aggregators. None of the polls they register have extended beyond 5/31. In another two weeks, we will probably get an initial read. If they don't show a bump toward Biden of 1-2 points, I think that will be meaningful preliminary evidence that this hasn't hurt Trump. If they do show that bump, it doesn't necessarily say much about whether the Biden bump will last. For that, we'll probably need another two months or whatever.
Anyway, that's what evidence will look like. Anecdotes about forum posters and real life acquaintances and conversations aren't meaningful data points.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
It may not work. But I bet Israel could offer a lot in exchange, especially to a country that doesn't have much to begin with. There were reports that Netanyahu was negotiating with Congo, for example.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Yeah. They can also try to negotiate with a third country for their expulsion.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Also, #3, Israel no longer appears willing to let the current situation fester for another generation.
How can we be certain that Russell's Teapot doesn't exist?
I guess my objection is that this whole dispute feels like it's in bad faith. A lot of people just hate OpenAI for various reasons (predominantly ideological safetyism and rank envy at how much they've succeeded), are channeling that regrettable ennui into becoming sudden converts to the vital public interest of protecting an obscure IP right in "likeness" on behalf of Hollywood celebrities, and are making whatever assumptions about the facts they need to make to paint OpenAI generally and Sam Altman specifically as a villain on that dubious stage. I just don't buy the notion that the vitality of your objection is genuinely rooted at this object level. It just looks like you're trying to throw stones, and you think that celebrity IP likeness rights are a good stone. But both your motivation to throw stones (rather than make the argument that is at the genuine root of your distaste for OpenAI) and your apparent willingness to pick up a turd and call it a stone are just... unbecoming, I guess.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
They hired some other female voice actor. They did not instruct her to imitate Scarlett Johansson and they did not mention the movie Her to her. I suppose you would have a point if you could find some internal documents that said something like "we've done auditions with 100 female voice actors and we suggest proceeding with Candidate #73 because she sounds the closest to Scarlett Johansson's voice," but absent that, there's no case. There's just a rush to judgment and condemnation from various nobodies on the internet who have axes to grind with OpenAI for various stupid reasons -- or who are technology "journalists" farming engagement from aforementioned nobodies.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
And some (like me) think that the King has poor taste, admitting mediocrities genuinely unsuited to the responsibilities of nobility who will therefore bend their mediocre talents toward scapegoating society for their mediocrity and attempting to undermine and erode it out of spite.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
Right, if that's the idea, the proponent should do the budget math to figure out what it would cost to raise the entire rest of the world up to first-world standards, because it's obviously a fantasy even if you assume that wealth can be delivered via wire transfer irrespective of the human capital in the recipient country.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
I'm no expert either, but isn't Crimea pretty easily embargoed? IIRC, Ukraine recaptured Kharkiv by threatening Russia's supply lines, and I don't know why they couldn't do the same to Crimea.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do.
Life is generally better for the head of state and leading members of government when the government is popular than when it isn't, and good stewardship of national resources and policy is generally an effective path to popularity.
It does not explain the value of assigning such entities sovereignty over such areas in the first place.
Maybe it would be helpful (both here and generally in your commentary) if you made more of an effort to state your thesis directly instead of only implying it by criticizing other comments for what you view as the negative space of your unstated thesis.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
I guess it can! Maybe it finally has enough training to overcome whatever impediment hobbled previous incarnations' attempts.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
But we have domesticated dogs to our requirements.
That's entirely my point. We don't keep wild dogs as pets, so there are no dogs that would be wild but for our domestication. Daydreaming that the fat beagle lounging in the apartment all day has been deprived his romp in the Hundred Acre Woods is folly, because that option was never in the cards for that beagle. At best, he never would have existed in the first place.
If they're being kept like this? Better off never to have existed.
Fair position, albeit one I don't agree with. But they still haven't been "deprived of their own independent lives."
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
The college student? To be honest I don't remember much about her.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
You don't go to a movie like Glass Onion for compelling characters.
I did, because Knives Out delivered on that score. Blanc, Thrombey, Jamie Lee Curtis's character, and the lifestyle business lady were all endlessly entertaining. Even the cops were done really well, funny and possessed of interesting personalities despite their bit player roles. Marta was kind of an "empty angel," so pure of soul and good of spirit that there wasn't any room for personality, but everyone else made up for it, and even her role was played with charisma, to her actress's credit.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
In any event, to continue on to my point, if you used to have the right to use the highway without paying the search price, and now they impose a search price on use of the highway, I think one is perfectly entitled to claim that they have 'lost' a right, and that this loss has come without any compensation. In fact, imposing the search/congestion price is a loss for the people who choose to pay the price, too! The difference is that they valued the use more than the price.
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of this search price hypothetical, because it serves no purpose to search people before they use the highway, whereas it averts a genuine tragedy of the commons to tax people for using the highway while it is congested.
Discussions of "rights" is complicated by the overlapping and charged definitions people have for the word. It can be used in a positivist negative sense (the actual freedom from government interference in doing something -- I have the right to speak my mind on the street corner), in a positivist positive sense (the actual ability to invoke the power of the government to overpower private parties who try to stop you from doing something or who refuse to facilitate it -- I have a right to see what data Google has collected about me), or in a morally-charged economic entitlement sense (the normative claim to third party or public resources to procure a good or service for yourself -- I have a right to food/shelter/medical care). There are other variations too. I think your argument is technically the positivist negative sense, but feels like it is reaching, subtly, to insinuate the economic entitlement sense too, which (if I'm right) I think would be begging the question.
In the realm of positivist negative rights, I certainly don't agree in general that people deserve compensation whenever they lose a right. Such a rule would lock our country into a state of sclerosis; every change in policy reshuffles all kinds of positivist rights, and requiring huge financial outlays to change the rules in any realm of society would mean the rules could never change and we'd quickly devolve. Your defense against public policy that is unfavorable to you is to participate in the political process, or in the extreme to exit the jurisdiction -- not to sue for compensation. Eminent domain does not generalize; it is a specific doctrine about taking land. It does not even apply when the government imposes easements on your land.
I also disagree that there's any kind of "efficient markets hypothesis" about when roads get built. That stuff is intensely political, riven by special interests, collective action problems, grift and idiosyncrasy. We are nowhere close. There's no plausible mechanism by which it would be.
Finally, the whole topic requires recognition that overcongested highways are a tragedy of the commons, in which aggregate value is destroyed by allowing overcongestion. That's the primary basis on which I support it. That's the source of scarcity of highway space. And in any place where there is scarcity, we apportion it by price or we suffer deadweight loss.
If you don't like the distributional consequences of apportioning scarce resources by price, address the consequences with general social safety nets. Make sure that anyone can afford to drive somewhere efficiently when they really need to, at least occasionally. That's better than the overcongested alternative can offer. But it doesn't require remitting congestion pricing revenue directly to non-drivers. It just requires remitting it to the fisc, as with any other government revenue, and writing checks from the government to poor people.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
Probably the same place as my right to fly on a commercial airplane without paying the search price, unfortunately.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
Roads are not entirely funded by congestion taxes placed on road users, even in this scenario. You can't avoid paying for the road.
So? Eminent domain and government funding is used to construct shipping ports. That doesn't mean you get to dock your motorboat in it.
Can commuter trains not collect fares? Their tracks were laid with taxpayer funds on land taken by eminent domain.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2yr ago
whence my right to eat the apple in the first place?
Whence your right to use a congestion-priced highway without paying the congestion price?
How much should society be willing to pay for that preference? I don't think your opinion is able to graduate from irritable mental gesture to serious policy preference unless you have some inkling of the relative costs involved.
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