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Careless People

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Re: Careless People

#111

Post by rottc0dd »

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.

Excuse me for generalizing the point. That's not fair to do just based on these anecdotes. But, I can also understand their perspective.

Paul continued to be a guitar player all his life and hosted jamming sessions in his home. I started with piano very late in my life and not very regular, but I am just happy to join the fun party.

Re: Careless People

#112

Post by [deleted] »

marcianx wrote: post #106
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…

A less unflattering interpretation might be that once they saw the level of skill required to contribute to a field, they switched to a field that they could more meaningfully contribute to.

[deleted]

Re: Careless People

#113

Post by diggan »

caseyy wrote: post #71
diggan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say Meta goes under tomorrow (won't happen, but bear with me) and stops making new Llama releases. Would the community be able to take over the project and train new models, assuming they have access to the same hardware? Obviously, the community doesn't have access to similar hardware, but even if it did, would the community be able to continue releasing Llama models? And if the answer to that is no, why is tha…

There are many things to be said about open-source projects and, more broadly, the capabilities of the open-source community. The most capable parts are for-profit organizations that release open-source software for their business imperative, public benefit companies that write open-source software for ideological reasons but still operate as businesses, and a tiny number of public benefit organizations with unstable…

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 the first place. If we cannot create something ourselves (again, given access to compute), how could it possibly be considered open source by anyone?

Re: Careless People

#114

Post by varelse »

vintermann wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably have been told their whole lives that they are so smart, clever, and special, that they will (and rightly should) always win. So any loss immediately looks to them like foul play by their opponent(s). Even if it's just a casual game. Anyone telling them otherwise doesn't last long in their orbit. As they gain power, they naturally grow a bubble of sycophants who reinforce their "I always win" beliefs.

There's also no shortage of people willing to tell Zuck and Musk (from a relatively safe distance, like in public here at HN) that they're insecure manbabies born into wealth who don't deserve a fraction of the power they've managed to claw themselves. I suspect that we, and the desire to show us wrong (or at the least spite us) are also part of the equation for why the current crop of billionaires are as they are. N…

[dead]

Re: Careless People

#115

Post by maxehmookau »

diggan wrote: post #57
teekert wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? I had a sort of respect for the Zuck, same partner for a long time, seems nice to his children, does charity… And then he gets one of those mega yachts and he can’t stand loosing at board games. So disappointing.

Surprise surprise, probably the image you had of Zuckerberg was not an intimate look into his personal life but instead a carefully crafted image created by an professional agency whose life and blood is creating neat images of famous people. Somehow, actual real life details are starting to come out (he does seem more "daring" as of late, might be why), destroying the picture painted by the professionals for all thi…

There is definitely a point where we need to stop assuming that people who are good at building tech companies are, by default, good at _anything_ else.

They might be, sure. But we shouldn't assume it.

Re: Careless People

#116

Post by mariusor »

brickfaced wrote: post #11
mariusor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comparison is not meant to be between degrees of horribleness between the two events, but between degrees of complicity and denial on the part of Facebook management.

Complicity in what, exactly? Democracy? Personally I'm less concerned about Facebook staying neutral in 2016 and more concerned about their election sabotage in 2020: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3616579-zuckerberg-tel... Of course in the end things turned out for the best, but that's almost certainly not what Sheryl wanted, so I guess it's on theme for the book.

> Complicity in what

The massacres in Myanmar and in the propagation of misinformation relating to the elections in the US in 2020, and probably 2024[1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46590890

Re: Careless People

#117

Post by hermitcrab »

grafmax wrote: post #58
K0nserv wrote: post #14

The book is a good read and she also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee[0], repeating many of the claims from the book under oath. One of the striking things is that it's clear that Mark and several others from Facebook perjured themselves in prior hearings. I expect there will be no consequence for this. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8

As long as we have this concentration of wealth in this country we are going to have this selective enforcement of laws based on class lines.

"The big thieves hang the little ones." Czech Proverb

Re: Careless People

#118

Post by rottc0dd »

marcianx wrote: post #106
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…

A less unflattering interpretation might be that once they saw the level of skill required to contribute to a field, they switched to a field that they could more meaningfully contribute to.

Yeah, but these are also about people who are not even starting off at a field. These are teenagers. It really stood out that they can think where they can make most impact in the world at such an young age.

Re: Careless People

#119

Post by hermitcrab »

piva00 wrote: post #69
grafmax wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we have this concentration of wealth in this country we are going to have this selective enforcement of laws based on class lines.

I believe it will take at least a couple of generations after a new political ideology is cemented in the USA to change anything. Market fundamentalism has been the game since the 80s with Reagan, it was building up to it but Reagan was the watershed moment when it really gripped. You see it everywhere now, here on HN especially, any deviation from the dogma of market fundamentalism is met with the usual retort about…

You might find this recent talk on neo-liberalism, by journalist and activist George Monbiot, interesting:

https://shows.acast.com/rhlstp/episodes/rhlstp-book-club-134...

Re: Careless People

#120

Post by bsenftner »

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…

I know these types of people, a lot of them, but I am not one of them. I was a student at Harvard, I've dated the daughter of a film studio owner, the daughter of the then-owner of Gucci, I've worked at an Academy Award winning VFX studio, I know celebrities and CEOs, and I married an Academy Award winner. I know these people.

There is a mechanism in high wealth investment circles that seeks very ambitious and simultaneously low self knowledge individuals to invest heavily. They tend to be driven and charismatic in that drive, while being very ignorant of their negative impact on others. Many high net worth individuals see themselves in such youth, and invest in them, their ideas and their drive. They create psychopaths, and celebrate their mistakes as fuel for control of them later. This mechanism I am describing is very powerful, dominating.

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