Live data from Hacker News

We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

calpaterson.com

311–320 of 427 posts

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People thought of this issue since 1870 and the solution they came up with is simply non-transferable rationing devices. In traditional Marxist terms this was labour vouchers but nowadays there are much better solutions. Marx himself wrote about this, in terms of primitive accumulation in socialism. For sure there are a lot of issues, but this isn't one of them. You could in theory have bribery in material terms, but…

I don't really get it. How does this prevent people from holding onto foreign currency or gold?

Who is going to sell you forex or gold for non-transferable tokens?

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would imply there isn't an equilibrium.

And in this case, the equilibrium is some amount of AI-bait fluff. There's a limit, beyond which continuing to add more fluff does not produce higher results.

It's a dynamic equilibrium. The constant is bullshit, but the means of delivery vary.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#313
post #279
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it’s repackaging a point Smith made 194 years earlier.

I think Friedman's ideas are substantially different. The quote from Smith is discussing tradesmen running a business in their own self interest. In some ways, Friedman's point is the opposite. That the laborers perform in the self interest of the owner. I don't know the full context of the Smith quote. I did a bit of digging for Smith's views on publicly traded companies, and came across this quote[0]: >The director…

Surely that’s exactly the same thing Friedmam was saying. According to Friedman managers spending company money on social causes are spending other people’s money, the same phrase Smith used, when they had no business doing so. In saying that the firms responsibility is to its owners, Friedman was addressing precisely the concern that Smith was worried about.

Of course in Smith’s time joint stock companies were a relative novelty. We have a lot more experience of them now and have developed standards, checks and balances to try to maintain discipline in managers in the intervening centuries. Friedman was simply attempting to bolster that effort, but Smith was writing about exactly the same concern.

As it happens while I’m a big fan of both men, on this issue I think Friedman is too much of a purist. Some social spending can just be good business. It promotes the brand, buys political friends and can even reap commercial benefits down the line. Donating or subsidising computers in schools for a company like Apple for example.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#314
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it’s repackaging a point Smith made 194 years earlier.

A shareholder is more like the butcher or baker's brother than the butcher or baker. The incentives are different.

How so?

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the ideal business model from users' perspective could be pay-as-you-go, where you pay for each individual you want to send message to (e.g. $1.99).

There are a lot of dating sites at least in Scandinavia/central europe, where men pay per message (or usually buy message packs, it ends up being around 1€ a message IIRC). The (mostly) men answering these messages, pretending to be women, get paid around 0.15€ per reply. And obviously writing messages where they try to prolong the conversation and turn down real life meetings or changing to other (free) messaging sy…

Why does the system charge men and pay women to message, instead of just charging everyone to message?

I would have thought that of all places Scandinavia would not price-discriminate users based on their gender ...

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big difference.

Tell that to the people who were enslaved and to the people who starved to death.

Slavery is not a function of capitalism, though. Capitalism is being able to 1) firstly, own yourself and your body 2) thus sell your labour however you wish. It's the alternatives economic systems that prevent you from being free.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the people who were enslaved and to the people who starved to death.

Slavery is not a function of capitalism, though. Capitalism is being able to 1) firstly, own yourself and your body 2) thus sell your labour however you wish. It's the alternatives economic systems that prevent you from being free.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument was with the idea that money will be gone as a rationing device. You can come up with alternatives but it’s the human nature that is the problem not the technology we use to ration resources. Let me know when this bug is fixed.

Well, that's not the problem we were talking about, is it? We were talking about the issue of bribery, which is made possible by the fungible nature of money.

Yes it is, namely this is the GP

> Money is the one unpatchable zero-day for every platform and service on earth.

To which the response was that Karl Marx had submitted a fix

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that this criticism is offered in good faith, and that you're in need of good, solid Wiki articles about the tens of millions of victims of Communist regimes--well, I'm happy to get you started! Here's an article about the Soviet terror-famine (known as the Holodomor) which killed 4 million Ukranians. No worrisome notifications on this article, so I assume it meets your rigorous standards: https://en.wikiped…

I'm not denying or excusing that historical atrocities occurred under socialist governments , but for perspective one should also look at the myriad atrocities that were and continue to be committed under capitalist governments. That doesn't excuse such actions, but neither side is innocent. I suggest reading The Wretched of the Earth* Chapter 1, "On Violence". Here are a few examples off the top of my head: https://…

The issue is that these atrocities were committed more specifically as a result of communism, whereas other attrocities are less closely attributable to capitalism since it has been the majority default throughout history.

EDIT:. I'm not saying what's normal is ok, I'm saying what's common is more likely to falsely correlate with anything. Whereas as the common factor for communism across the board has been a high statistical propensity for mass murder and genocide. This includes the nazi regime I might add (look it up)

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get it. How does this prevent people from holding onto foreign currency or gold?

Who is going to sell you forex or gold for non-transferable tokens?

Non-transferable tokens aren’t going to be a successful replacement for money
Post reply on HN