Viewing profile — zemvpferreira

I echo that sentiment but oppose the positive adjectives tied to his motivation. Rather I believe can be at our best when motivated by our dark emotions towards positive actions: G…

We have more energy hitting the planet every second as radiation than we can possibly use. This is a non-issue for any civilised society switching to solar.

Because I’ve often been with professors in math, literature, arts who pride themselves on a certain intellectual purity that makes them a cut above, while living on wages paid by t…

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their co…

Personally I have noticed a lot less cognitive impairment after a poor night’s sleep since starting on 10g per day. It seems to make a noticeable difference in my ability to reason…

You might not want it for yourself but many people, especially health professionals in my experience, will take a smaller but less painful lifespan over a chance to live longer thr…

The father of a good friend passed away recently from a brain cancer. He was a doctor, but atypically accepted every treatment available. His last 3 years were spent in surgery or …

I don't want or need war, but I won't deny to having felt tribal impulses before. I won't deny culture and groups are different from individuals. Idealism is fine until it starts i…

Where there are simians, there is war. The more primitive the society, the bloodier and more total the war is. I wish our problem were psychopaths in power, but the truth is we are…

I don't mean to belittle the American war machine but as someone involved in overseas manufacturing for a while, I just don't see how it's possible to source 90% of items now made …

No, culture and the means of production went global. Bespoke only makes sense when you can’t get an acceptable good at a decent price. That goes for food, building materials and ph…

Interesting that you would use as an example two people who ingeniously built complex systems, through lots of hard and clever work, to turn the odds in their favour.

Given that the lottery has a typical expected value of -$1.00 per ticket you really should revise your opinion of how lucky/smart these people who repeatedly make tens of billions …

I didn't claim there's a simple solution, rather that the simplified system of publish-or-perish doesn't work. Personally I believe you can't replace a management layer that's alig…

As a former scientist it's embarrassing how easily the dismal state of science today could have been predicted decades before by applying Goodhart's Law, or any simple train of tho…

Simple is definitely the wrong term. Chess's simplicity is where its inherent difficulty comes from. It's paradoxically much more difficult to optimize than more complex games like…

From what I can tell the average school at best can aspire to teach kids how to work and how to socialize. That's it. I'd personally be very happy with computers mostly going away …

If all you need are labourers to prop up the economy there are billions of people willing to work on temporary visas.

In the end we have to face that systems have failed to replace competent managers. If there isn't a chain of accountability starting at the top that can manage people without exten…

I don’t think we should miss the forest for the trees. If you incentivize people to publish as much as possible, and institutions to apply as little oversight as possible, and peer…

Couldn't agree more. Jobs' advice to say no to a hundred things sounds easy in a vacuum, but to actually go against the powerful people around you and gatekeep the quality and esse…

Not a fan of Altman but the devil you know is a powerful argument. If you believe a CEO/Founder to be a grifter-position at its core (fake it till you make it etc etc), retaining t…

What he actually wanted was a straw-man to burn. Glad it's out in the open now.

Yep, the Time Machine minus the fear, the cannibalism, the suffering, the apathy, the reduced capacity for engagement etc are essentially the best-case scenario, which takes us out…

I don't think you need to worry yourself so much on my account friend. You asked, I told. Let's keep it at that. Also feel free to keep the name-calling to yourself.