domain:slatestarcodex.com
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
I mean the even bigger issue with raising taxes on 'the rich' is there just aren't enough of them.
campfireSmoresEaten
16hr ago
There is a common human thing where someone gets into a hole and takes a huge risk in hopes of getting out of that hole, which makes the problem much much worse.
If politicians embrace AI for this reason and then superintelligence kills everyone, I would describe this as that
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
I hate to break this too you, but Democrats-as-they-actually-exist are pretty NIMBY.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
16hr ago
Do you really not think people would flock to competent governance like corporations once did to Delaware?
Any other answer is acceptable, I was genuinely asking. It just seems mysterious to be allergic to the concept of scientism in a world where this building exists.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
16hr ago
Why don't you just send your confession directly to the feds instead of their best friends and save a judge some time?
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
America is long past the point at which most countries would have seen fiscal collapse, default, or otherwise serious consequences from the debt.
It's not unreasonable to note that at the moment, America(and Japan, apparently) Is Different.
Yeah but you always run the risk of being captured anyway. See what happened to El Chapo. There are no safe countries from the reach of the US anymore except perhaps North Korea.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
17hr ago
I saw that. It's amazing how much MTG cards have appreciated over the past 25 years that the market can absorb such a large transaction. It's like an asset class in and of itself. someone should make a MTG card ETF or an ETF of MTG and Pokémon.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
17hr ago
MMT is propably not a popular position here. Your comment mostly assumes its true, and your very long quote is entirely about why the reactionaries wont see the light. The justification is essentially this:
To be economically literate, one would have to know that saying the government deficit should be cut is identical to saying the non-government surplus should be cut.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Government deficit & debt are good things, and the only problem is along the lines of 'too much of a good thing' (inflation, which is the self-correction mechanism)
Why is inflation correcting it? We have over the last few years heard from many left-leaning economists that inflation is actually fine, the lower classes are just irrationally afraid of it, go right ahead Mr Biden. In a mostly cashless economy like the US, even the logistical problems of hyperinflation can be handled pretty well.
dr_analog
razorboy
17hr ago
Unclear. Employers in the US vary on how comprehensive a health plan they will buy for their employees. Additionally, some households will have one spouse enroll in their employer's family plan while the other opts out entirely (and maybe even gets a monetary rebate for declining it).
Another complication is even with 65%+ total employee cost going to taxes, professionals in France opt for additional supplemental insurance so they don't have to share services with the poors.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
17hr ago
Cherry studio is great for this thanks to the knowledge base and regular expression features. With the knowledge base you can grab a bunch of books you like and add them to it and the ai will adopt the style and theme of the books. Add a bunch of Sanderson books and you'll get a different style than if you added a bunch of Salvatore books for example. Or you could add a bunch of Tom Clancy books and watch it spend paragraphs describing guns.
If you want Lovecraftian horror though, don't do Lovecraft - it's just not fleshed out enough in the works themselves. The best I've found so far is a mix of Thomas Ligotti and Brian Lumley - Lumley's Titus Crow books are kinda dumb, but meticulous in their coverage of everything in the mythos, so pairing him with Ligotti gets you cool shit like taking all your missions from brains in jars and the hounds of tindalos coming for anyone who uses time manipulation, plus the occasionally beautiful turn of phrase.
And then there's the new regular expression feature, which is regex, so you can very easily set up a basic randomised combat system with it. It won't be particularly intricate, but it will give you random attacks that whittle away your hp, you can add status effects like sleep (character can't act) and paralysis (roll 1d5 to see if the character acts) and critical hits. The only caveat is that you have to keep track of your hp and mention it frequently, or set your prompt up to always mention party hp and status. Or better yet both, otherwise the assistant will forget.
nopie
17hr ago
I am sorry, I had seen this usage in some writings and thought that it is a standard English. But I am not a native speaker and make a ton of mistakes in every sentence.
Wealth and income have nothing to do with each other in Sweden. You become wealthy by either starting wealthy, starting a company, or in extremely rare cases invest your way there (or win the literal lottery). Capital gains are practically not taxed in Sweden so being wealthy here is great! Having a high income what's taxed and that doesn't lead to wealth.
zoink
17hr ago
Seems like it works OK for organized crime based out of countries antagonistic to the West.
campfireSmoresEaten
17hr ago
I am fine with returning art, but I would object to returning Gibraltar or the Falklands. They seem very different to me.
striker
17hr ago
This is helpful, sounds like a great process. Daily word count targets are essential - getting it down, can all be edited later. Will consider this. You can’t beat a good spreadsheet.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
17hr ago
How much of a window do these LLMs have? Presumably, as a completely new user, I wouldn’t get much out of this prompt.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
17hr ago
Practice.
Someone wrote a good post about it a couple months back, but I couldn’t find it. It basically said you could train the skill efficiently by drawing real objects every day. Sufficient experience lets you move from drawing what you see to drawing what you saw, once, in a different pose and setting.
it_is_so_weird_to_be
17hr ago
True. In the years since I’ve discovered that when online dating, I get posted on private Facebook groups for women. My ex then shows up to talk mad shit including completely fabricating scenarios that didn’t happen. Social ostracization in action.
campfireSmoresEaten
17hr ago
There was that guy who bought a bunch of boxes of magic cards using bitcoin gained from some sort of criminal activity. The guy selling the magic cards was not a crypto-savvy guy. (And then the criminal sold the magic cards.)
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
Per WP, the federal debt amounts to some seven years of federal revenue. This is clearly not great, but it is also not obvious that this will cause a spiraling hyperinflation.
One early warning sign for being over-debt is that lenders are no longer willing to lend to you with low interests. The US still has a rating of AA+ with most agencies, and from my reading of Bloomberg, treasury bonds yield about 5% per year.
Also, the US is similar to Bolivia in that both have debts denominated in US$, but unlike Bolivia the US has the option to debase that currency.
Realistically, I think that the worst outcome for the US would be a bit tamer than the Greek debt crisis. Surely painful and something best avoided, but also not something which will end democracy and give rise to the next Hitler.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
18hr ago
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, in my view, Defense spending should absolutely be as touchable as entitlement spending, maybe even more so.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that, even though it would be to my personal detriment. But on the one hand, you are talking about things we could do to improve the economy and the country. On the other hand, you argue that we should not bother to do that because you don't want the other party to have a stronger economy to work with when they come into power. So I am a little confused what you actually want if it's not "Assume everyone is in defect mode and loot what we can."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
18hr ago
Because lots of government debt is bad, so less debt is good... Yes but the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that government should never do anything, lest it gets undone in a few years. That sounds like a fucking awful society.
The part you are failing to engage with is that "fiscal responsibility" is electorally unpopular, while "fiscal irresponsibility" is electorally popular. Implementing "fiscal responsibility" will obviously cost one political power, while implementing "fiscal responsibility" will obviously gain one political power. So long as this is the case, actual fiscal responsibility is not a possible outcome in any but the shortest of terms.
To the extent that this is fucking awful, I direct you to the litany of Tarsky.
This is true but again if this stance was held at all levels of power you're basically just advocating for anarchy?
No. I am positing that political power is a scarce resource, and it should be used where it plausibly might deliver positive results. "Fiscal Responsibility" fails that test. If you don't like that fact, well, legibly admitting that it is a fact might just be the first step to changing it.
Western nations have gotten pretty cooked, but seriously man you should consider therapy or something because your outlook is profoundly nihilistic, pessimistic, and defeatist.
Aiming to secure what value might be gained under the conditions that observably exist is not nihilism, pessimism or defeatism, but rather realism and applied rationality.
Because perpetual defecits that exceed GDP growth eventually lead to massive inflation, economic collapse, or both? This is bad.
Does the Democratic party agree? What's their plan for solving this problem? Is that plan realistic?
Kind of? You're incredibly negative and myopic though, which is a lens you are viewing reality through.
Perhaps. Can you lay out an equally-realistic assessment that's less myopic and more positive?
It's not, but I think the deficits feel worse coming from them, hence the focus. They did love going absolutely ape shit over any/all democrat spending during the 2000s/2010s, so it feels hypocritical.
Yes, and we also spearheaded the GWOT, which added trillions to the debt. But notably, we have since exiled the faction that spearheaded the GWOT, and are trying to an isolationism that is the best possible path to reduced defense spending.
Unfortunately not really, I'm honestly kind of worried about our societies inability to deal with anything, but if we give up then we go from "maybe fucked" to "definitely fucked" and I don't see that as an improvement.
Alternatively, maybe making it clear that the Republican Party does not consider the debt to be a problem we're in charge of fixing will make it clear that someone else has to step up. Or else, we all accept that there is no fixing it, and at least we have the maximum warning possible that disaster is not, in fact, going to be avoided.
Unfortunately not really
Then your plan is that Republicans should sacrifice their scarce political power for nothing, correct? Why would you expect Republicans to do that willingly?
You have many harsh words for my perspective, and many admonitions for why I ought to think differently, but no actual corrections about what is, no more credible account of the realities actually facing us. It appears to me that you are objecting to me pointing out obvious facts about how things actually are, and would prefer that I argue based on fantasy. I decline to do so.
It's only different because it has the most powerful army in the world. Well that and dwindling traditions of people using the dollar to price things that come from it.
The day that people stop fearing the US is the day that it collapses. And those soldiers, like the praetorian guards of old, need to see real value to remain loyal, not mere debt.
America's doomed like all empires are doomed, the only way out is growth. Ironically the MAGA people refusing to look at the number are the saner party here. There is no government cut that could ever pay this off without completely destroying the US and the world.
Musk is smart, but you can't outsmart that abyss.
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