Radiation hormesis is one of those junk science topics that persists in the literature despite many thorough efforts to debunk it.
Could you support that with references?
Isn't the null hypothesis sufficient?
Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
111–120 of 312 posts
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#112Thinking democracy's success is tied to economic growth is a pretty dim worldview. I hope he's wrong about that.
"Economic growth" can exist on a computer screen completely decoupled from the "real world" and independent of a strong middle class. IMHO An economically strong middle class is needed to maintain social order. This mitigates the public from hunting and and killing the rich and keeps the public from displacing their social frustrations on to each other and creating riots. Generally its a better existence for everyone…
Incidentally, a strong middle class also keeps the rich from killing the public.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#113The most, we are here to understand where to put our technological hands in order to succeed, this because SV (and Y Combinator as one of its coveted stars) still has the gist, the money and the ability to deliver. If we in Western Europe could have something similar in Berlin or Amsterdam, now that London is going, I would be even happier.
YC alumni are in all those cities and YC only requires relocation for the 3 months of the program. So YC is already global.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#114It's all about real AI today (not based on words and rules - lookup CTM - the real bots have this and its based on vector space). Get the companies and groups that are making very small breakthroughs in this area. The days of regurgitated cut-n-pasted text entry boxes and js (geocities, friendster, myspace, facebook) are over. Time for the new Googles of the world that will solve things bigger than SpaceX like extend…
+1 on the CTM stuff. I recommend Jeff Hawkin's book "On Intelligence" if you're looking for a quick read.
Hawkins' memory-prediction concept is quite more specific than general CTM, and not borne out by evidence.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#115I love Sam and just wish they would have used a different metaphor than "Manifest Destiny". Isn't manifest destiny what led to the genocide of native american populations?
Don't Sam and other YC folks thinks that technological innovation will put most people out of a job, necessitating a "basic income" which makes them permanent government dependents?
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#116I love Sam and just wish they would have used a different metaphor than "Manifest Destiny". Isn't manifest destiny what led to the genocide of native american populations?
I think it's definitely intentional. This profile isn't meant to be purely congratulatory--the undercurrent that some of this is creepy and undeserved that other commentors have picked up on is deliberate.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#117The brilliance of YCombinator, IMO, is HackerNews. It's turned YC into a self-perpetuating machine by getting smart people to congregate and talk about news YC itself partially generates. I heard about YC, PG, and sama all through this outlet.
I agree. HN and pg's old essays were a gem in the times were little other startup resources were out there.
Even today when startup resources abound, Sam's Startup Playbook [0] and the course How to Start a Startup [1] are in another league, particularly with their directness and clarity.
Edit: Getting downvoted, but these resources are really great, so I'm not sure what's going on. I just added links in case people are unfamiliar.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of them is obviously Musk. I could guess on the other, but it would only be based on the "wildness" of the other billionaire's imagination.
Musk strikes me as an imaginative but a very rational person who deeply thinks about stuff, so this is confusing to me. His argument that our world is most likely a simulation does seem logical given our current knowledge. However, breaking out of the simulation is completely another matter, more in line with Hollywood thinking than with anything that scientists can be engaged to do, at least currently.
Nick Bostrom's argument.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a fellow European, I disagree that we have built in common features - unless you think "European" means your country and its closest relatives. If we all had the same culture, the EU wouldn't probably be in its slow bureaucratic slump. On topic, don't underestimate the power of faith. Humans are not rational beings by default, so powerful narratives about the hot shots of SV really do have an effect in inspiring t…
But wouldn't you agree that we share at least a general attitude that tends toward a (most of the time) healthy skepticism?
I'm originally from the UK, but feel that 'healthy skepticism' there can all too often be the label that people give "why bother, it'll probably fail anyway". The boundless optimism of the US may be more beneficial in the long run.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#120I've been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Sam Altman ever since he was named President of YC in 2014. Now I know. It's less to do with him; more to do with this narrative of Sam Altman as some visionary, world-saving, future-builder. The story just doesn't fit the character. There's no comparison between him and true visionaries like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. Unlike Sam, these guys can…
I find it odd that you'd criticize Sam Altman in this way then go on to call Steve Jobs a "true visionary". I see Jobs as being more a managerial type that managed to get a few things very right. He wasn't able to dive deep into technical things and grok them as you said. I have read comments on hacker news from people that worked directly under him, talking about how he forbid using object orientation in programming…
> I have read comments on hacker news from people that worked directly under him, talking about how he forbid using object orientation in programming.
Steve Jobs talked incessantly about object-oriented programming after he left Apple, and built an entire company (NeXT) and operating system (NeXTStep) using a new object-oriented programming language (Objective-C). He didn't write the code himself but he funded and led these efforts.