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Careless People

pluralistic.net

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Re: Careless People

#171

Post by jfengel »

Jensson wrote: post #160
immibis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is incompatible with free markets. Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions.

> Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets? The freer the market the more capital accumulates. In a freer market that today you would have to pay a massive toll every time you went to the grocery store, because the road owner has monopol…

When all of the capital ends up in a small number of hands, the market ceases.

Each capitalist tries to corner the market, but if they succeed, the resulting monopoly isn't a free market. In theory a competitor arises, but it takes only an instant to shut it down and restore the monopoly.

Re: Careless People

#172

Post by krapp »

Jensson wrote: post #160
immibis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is incompatible with free markets. Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions.

> Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets? The freer the market the more capital accumulates. In a freer market that today you would have to pay a massive toll every time you went to the grocery store, because the road owner has monopol…

>I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets?

It would, which is why businesses support deregulation - not because they believe in vigorous competition for the sake of consumers, but because they want as little friction and consequence standing between themselves and oligarchy as possible.

A market in which the wealth "flows freely in all directions" is socialist, not capitalist. "Fair" markets are regulated, and by definition not free.

Re: Careless People

#173

Post by immibis »

jfengel wrote: post #163
piva00 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no departure from market fundamentalism, the belief in shareholder value being supreme is still very much the current Zeitgeist. As much as the USA's administration is jerking around with trade, the fundamental principle of what governs any corporation is still market fundamentalism: returning value to shareholders, nothing else.

Shareholders are pretty grumpy right now. They've lost a ton of money. I'm sure that some economist will asset that this will produce more shareholder value in the long run. But the stock market suggests that shareholders do not currently believe that.

We might have just exited from the era where shareholders mattered.

Re: Careless People

#174

Post by sanderjd »

drdrek wrote: post #83

This is exactly the type of people the cultural purge in big tech came to flush out. Trying to change a multi billion dollar company from the inside is delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective. Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of 100,000+ employees companies, of billions invested in them. The change is going to be political, regulatory. These companies always can't change until reg…

I don't understand your "delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective" / "egotistical" point. All of this would apply to people trying to change things from the outside too.

Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of hundreds of millions of US citizens, or billions of people globally, to think you can effect political and regulatory change?

And yet, this is how things change, by people working to change them, from either the inside or the outside. Maybe your point is right that anyone trying to be a change agent is self serving and egotistical. But don't fool yourself that there is some big difference here between internal and external activists.

Re: Careless People

#175

Post by cafard »

cess11 wrote: post #93
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

At the Versailles court of the Louies there were constant parties and games, gambling and otherwise. It wasn't to bond or for fun, it was to keep the aristocracy too busy to threaten the dictatorship, as well as letting the king exert an immediate influence over them through a borderline insanity. Infamously the first or second Versailles Louis, I forgot which, got very aggressive around the topic of toilet excretion…

Louis XIV had a notably insecure childhood, with portions of the nobility were in open rebellion. When he came of age, he set about to make damn sure that they were under his thumb.

But the parallel seems lacking to me: Musk and Zuckerman can't jail recalcitrant managers.

Re: Careless People

#176

Post by diggan »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #138
diggan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've kind of answered a different question. Yes, more LLM models could be created. But specifically Llama? Since it's an open source model, the assumption is that we could (given access to the same compute of course) train one from scratch ourselves, just like we can build our own binaries of open source software. But this obviously isn't true for Llama, hence the uncertainty if Llama even is open source in…

I think the fact that all (good) LLM datasets are full with licensed/pirated material means we'll never really see a decent open source model under the strict definition. Open weight + open source code is really the best we're going to get, so I'm fine with it coopting the term open source even if it doesn't fully apply.

> we'll never really see a decent open source model under the strict definition

But there are already a bunch of models like that, were everything (architecture, training data, training scripts, etc) is open, public and transparent. Since you weren't aware those existed since before, but you now know that, are you willing to change your perspective on it?

> so I'm fine with it coopting the term open source even if it doesn't fully apply

It really sucks that the community seems OK with this. I probably wouldn't have been a developer without FOSS, and I don't understand how it can seem OK to rob other people of this opportunity to learn from FOSS projects.

Re: Careless People

#177

Post by sanderjd »

concordDance wrote: post #86

Disgruntled ex-employee disparaging their old colleagues and bosses is extremely common, I don't get why this is getting so many upvotes...

Because it's an interesting and positive review of a popular book about the industry covered by this forum. It would be really weird if an article like this didn't get upvoted here...

Re: Careless People

#178

Post by keerthiko »

technothrasher wrote: post #98
rottc0dd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1]. Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math. (Re…

Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.

in my experience, people who grow up as the biggest fish in a small pond (whether concerning just fields they care about, or in general) are always 99% of the time, one of these two when they end up a middling fish in the big pond: like you, happy to find peers and inspiring exemplars to collaborate with and learn from, or those who hate that they are not the best anymore.

the former group probably leads the healthiest & happiest life fulfillment while pursuing their interests — i'm heavily biased though because i too fall into this category and am proud of this trait.

the latter group consists of people who either spin their wheels real hard and more often than not burn out in their pursuit of being the best, or pivot hard into something else they think they can be the best at (often repeatedly every time they encounter stronger competition) like gates & co, or in rare cases succeed in being the best even in the more competitive environment.

this last .001% are probably people whose egos get so boosted from the positive reinforcement that they become "overcompetitive" and domineering like zuck or elon, and let their egos control their power and resources to suppress competition rather than compete "fairly" ever again.

i think there's a subset of people from both main groups that may move from one into the other based on life experiences, luck, influence of people close to them, maturity, therapy, or simply wanting something different from life after a certain point. i don't have a good model for whether this is most people, or a tiny percentage.

Re: Careless People

#179

Post by OtherShrezzing »

eru wrote: post #142
Jevon23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually understand the distinction between “just a game” and “actual serious time”, they don’t “feel” that distinction in their bones. They have no off switch.

> In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.

>Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.

Apply the phrase to the staff member he lost to, and the situation makes sense. The staff member wants to win the real game (of remaining a high-salary Facebook employee), and will throw an otherwise inconsequential game of Catan to maintain that position's security.

Re: Careless People

#180

Post by OtherShrezzing »

Jevon23 wrote: post #28
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually understand the distinction between “just a game” and “actual serious time”, they don’t “feel” that distinction in their bones. They have no off switch.

Reminds me of this post[0] from a few weeks ago:

>A couple years back, I got a job offer from an investment bank to help them win zero sum games against people who didn't necessarily deserve to lose. I had tried very hard to get that offer

https://www.hgreer.com/PlayingInTheCreek/

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