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Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

newyorker.com

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Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#301

Post by sebastos »

internaut wrote: post #221
sebastos wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide any links / reading related to some "other systems in G-space"? Sounds interesting.

Sure. For clarification: by G-space I meant 'how to govern well' or 'how to solve problems about, with, or in governance'. This is obviously an enormous topic area. It is also a dangerous and highly contentious subject matter filled with many taboos, due to its nature and importance. That said political scholars, like economists, have come to many consensus realizations. This is kind of amazing since Hillary Clinton…

Thanks for the detailed reply! Looks like a great list of refreshingly unusual thinking, and I love the Lovecraft suggestion!

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#302

Post by stale2002 »

sudoscript wrote: post #284
stale2002 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume a non omnipotent being, with non-infinite resources is creating a universe simulation. What decisions would we expect a person like this to make, when designing this simulation? Since they do not have infinite resources, they would likely take shortcuts, and make compromises and tradeoff when designing the simulation For example, if light did not have a speed limit, and interacted with the entire universe inst…

How do you know your own thought processes aren't a part of the simulation? Logic is a great tool to analyze the simulation unless it's been baked on purpose by our overlords. On a different note, does simulation hypothesis strike anyone else as the idea God just explained in pseudo scientific/computing terms?

The difference is that God is an unfalsifiable claim.

The simulation argument is one that can be supported or argued against using evidence.

For example, if scientists find some new nature process that would be very difficult to simulate, (infinite speed of light is one such example) then that is strong evidence that we aren't in a simultion.

Of course, even if we keep observing things about the universe that would make it easier to simulate, that doesn't mean we actually are. It could just all be a coincidence. Or maybe it doesn't make any sense for a universe to be difficult to simulate.

The basic idea is to ask the question "Assume someone lives in a simulation. What would that person be likely/unlikely to observe?". and "Assume someone does NOT live in a simulation. What would they be likely/unlikely to observe?" And see how much this stuff matches up with reality.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#303

Post by succstressful »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #136

> Only twenty per cent of the Inc. 500, the five hundred fastest-growing private companies, raised outside funding. I thought this was an interesting statistic. "80% of the fastest growing private companies did not need to raise capital to become one of the fastest growing companies."

The quoted statement misses a huge caveat: the Inc 500 are the fastest-growing private companies that submitted applications to be included in the Inc 500.

The application for the Inc 500 requires revenue disclosure. There are plenty of companies that decline to submit applications for the Inc 500, for reasons ranging from a hesitation to disclose revenue to a media company, to a hesitation to spend resources on PR that could be better spent on growth.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#304

Post by Ericson2314 »

burkaman wrote: post #123
Ericson2314 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. Everything powerful that startups "try to disrupt" (GM, government, Wall Street, etc) now has their own incubators. Only to one's immediate family might the work-life balance and low chance of success raise eybrows.

Yeah, that's what "gone conformist" means.

Oh! I'm very glad I read that incorrectly.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#305

Post by hmsln »

sanj wrote: post #171

Has anyone identified the Rickover quote that is alluded to at the end of the article? "At the end of his life, when he may have been somewhat senile, he did also say that it should all be sunk to the bottom of the ocean."

> I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Willingness_...

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#306

Post by __derek__ »

vonnik wrote: post #243

There are great insights in this piece into how Sam thinks about AI and the future of YC. But getting profiled in The New Yorker bears a risk, and the risk is that other media organizations try to tell the "down" story, because the down story is the only new thing to say after a subject is painted with such grandiose brush strokes. Example: Marc Andreessen gets profiled in The New Yorker and a year later the WSJ publ…

On (1), I think you're misreading. The "college and grad-school dropouts" are new people who could become "Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page and Sergey Brin." As that era has not yet produced a Facebook or Google, their names are useful stand-ins. The sentence hinges on that "could."

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#307

Post by codyb »

veddox wrote: post #299
codyb wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it as happening in a sort of Moore's law sense. Double what you can do today in 18 months, then do that 5-7 times in the next decade, and the results should be pretty staggering. What's even neater about AI is that the requirements to get involved are much lower than that of hardware and much easier to propagate. Combine that with the inherent power of machines teaching themselves and networking with each…

> What's even neater about AI is that the requirements to get involved are much lower than that of hardware and much easier to propagate. That's thinking very much from a CS point of view. Sure, if we're only talking about software you're quite right. But I would strongly argue that if we want to build an artificial intelligence, we first need to know what a "natural" intelligence looks like - and that includes a lot…

I'm not sure why A.I. would need to be based on human intelligence. At the end of the day the black box of the process doesn't matter if the results are sound, and we already frequently don't understand how our current A.I. works (which features the system is picking up on, etc). I'd expect that trend to continue.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#308

Post by lev_yashin »

Denzel wrote: post #58

I'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…

You nailed it. I'm surprised you didn't get downvoted to the gazoo. You absolutely were able to express the way I feel.

I don't consider myself a troll, nor do I hate Sam Altman. My goal is not to come here and slander. But I agree with you. Sam's accomplishments and track record have been very much exagerated. And he has played a roll in that exageration.

For me Sam's biggest qualities are: 1) being able to navigate sillicon valley skillfully 2) having a fantastic network 3) Portraying a self image that is super founder friendly (which he actually probably his, for at least the companies that are doing well).

That said he is not: 1) A successful founder. 2) A serial entrepreneur 3) A tech genius 4) A visionary

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#309

Post by tim333 »

moron4hire wrote: post #162

Altman worked so incessantly that summer that he got scurvy. You have got to be kidding. So much food has enough vitamin C in it to avoid scurvy that you have to be eating pretty much nothing but ramen noodles to get it. I don't need to be rich that badly.

Seemed to have happened. I guess diet's not something you think about when otherwise distracted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314804

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#310

Post by tim333 »

n72 wrote: post #147
snowmaker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, YC has expanded radically under the 2 years Sam has been running it, and all the expansion is purely Sam's doing. If you read the article, it discusses all this in detail.

I did read the article. I'm sure Sam has done good things. I still don't see anything which warrants a piece in the New Yorker.

It's more the ambition than the prior stuff:

>“unlike Google, we grow faster as we get bigger. We could catch them in ten years.”

trying to be the biggest tech group in the world can be interesting even if he fails.

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