Viewing profile — el_jay

To save other readers a web search: in a *Keynesian beauty contest, you pick the winners based on who you think others will find most beautiful.

> These are all fine questions, and they don't become any easier to answer if you replace "computers" with "brains" and "bits" with "neurons". What is even being argued here - neur…

Let’s say I stand up and step away from my PC, which miraculously runs a local Opus 4.8. Once I’m away from the PC, for an arbitrary time, nothing and no one calls or otherwise act…

Who really cares about the lives of lim n —> 4k wagies? There is an opportunity to maximise shareowner returns here - failing to seize it would be little more than economic treason…

On top of all the extremely valid points about the ad-driven cognitive friction inherent to modern device usage: print books can’t get yoinked off my shelf because a rich person wi…

This article and discussion appear to have been manually delisted from the News rankings. Evidently, even HN could only keep up the pretense that tech development is amoral and apo…

“Never”? Not once in the Story of Us has any dispute between large groups of humans been resolved by anything other than a superior application of brute force? Strong claim, but I’…

Indeed, why bother having states of law at all? Jungle law works well enough in reality.

My understanding is that deep-sea nodules produce oxygen by a process similar to electrolysis, where they generate currents that split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. The propor…

ML and physics share a belief in the power of their universal abstractions - all is dynamics in spaces at scales, all is models and data. The belief is justified because the abstra…

Suggest tagline: “Eminent thought leader of world’s best-funded protoindustry hails great leap back to the design stage.”

Expectations do not spring sui generis into hearts and minds. I don’t know about you, but AFAICT approximately sane and rational folks (ha! Ha!) at least try to derive their expect…

While there is certainly an argument to be made that many contemporary “Western” Pseudo-Christian Superempire nations face a crisis of short-termism, there are also ancient bits of…

As overt corporatism goes, you can do a lot worse than simultaneously embed tech execs in the military command chain, and military commanders in the tech industry.

A health insurance CEO was shot dead in the streets. It’s only one pitchfork but it’s still a pitchfork.

And only weeks before a US election.

Why no mention of a simple wealth tax? The Swiss take 1% of each citizens’ wealth, including unrealised gains on capital market holdings, every year. Paired with a policy of zero c…

Am I to understand that it’s legal and okay for LLM providers to profit massively from training commercial models on copyrighted works, without the rights holders’ permission - but…

Have spent too little time with Haskell, and am fairly indifferent to pure maths beyond forcible conversion to applied maths against pure mathematicians’ will - but I have an endur…

………………………………………………………………………………… Location: Bali Indonesia currently; footprints in VIC & QLD Australia, Switzerland, U.K., Italy Remote: preferred; hybrid okay Willing to relocate: …

“Plutonium:” was added soon after my original comment :P

Fair warning to any folks who went in expecting a read about dimethylmercury: the article is about plutonium.

Two kinds of debate: one where the expected outcome is a refinement of ideas, another where the expected outcome is an agreement on future behaviours (“alignment”). If you approach…

Simple example: Alice: “I need you to do X.” Bob: “OK, I’ll do X.” Not much negotiating, but Bob has aligned to Alice’s request. More subtle: Carla: “Do you think we should do X or…