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FWIW, today is Meta’s earnings report
That’s exactly why he published this. To justify his insane investment spend. I am not sure if investors will continue to give him a blank check. He’s not spending his money. He’s spending shareholder money to pursue personal projects and endeavors.
It also makes you wonder what they do with all of that information. But surely this is altruism.
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I know your comparison to PowerPoint was probably not meant to be taken literally, but I'll just add that a good presentation takes just as much time, skill and effort as any creative endeavour (including programming).
I’d love to see a PowerPoint presentation that has a million man-hours of work in it. Oh, never mind, I probably have. But seriously, this comment can easily be true, and if it is , then it is an excellent example of a human endeavour that we invented to improve efficiency but has become a bottomless sink of talent, effort, and cost directed away from generating any value whatsoever. I have never seen a presentation…
https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd...
Communication is communication, be it by PowerPoint or semaphore, and it takes talent to do it right.
> I have never seen a presentation that couldn’t have been done just as well without the use of a computer., except to demonstrate things that are computer related.
Re-reading that, I wonder what would've happened if the Boeing wonks in that meeting had just not brought a presentation. Maybe you're right.
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I’d love to see a PowerPoint presentation that has a million man-hours of work in it. Oh, never mind, I probably have. But seriously, this comment can easily be true, and if it is , then it is an excellent example of a human endeavour that we invented to improve efficiency but has become a bottomless sink of talent, effort, and cost directed away from generating any value whatsoever. I have never seen a presentation…
I don't know if I can point you to a PowerPoint presentation that did have a million man-hours of work on it, but here's a story about one that certainly didn't: https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd... Communication is communication, be it by PowerPoint or semaphore, and it takes talent to do it right. > I have never seen a presentation that couldn’t have been done just as well without the use…
I was a contractor for the military for a few years a while back… the military runs on power point.
I’ve seen weeks poured into a power point presentation whose only point was that regular physical conditioning was beneficial to physical fitness. In the medical equipment maintenance shop.
I attended at least 100 meetings during that 8 years, and there wasn’t a single presentation that couldn’t have been replaced with a sheet or two of paper and a short lecture/discussion. Instead we got 1/2 hour marvels of editing and animation, often replete with music and video, and I’ll admit some of it was really a work of art.
But none of that contributed to the salient points. If anything, a good presentation was a distraction, leading to a ten minute discussion about the technique and tools used to make the presentation lol. There was also an underground market of enlisted presentation gurus that would make presentations in exchange for favors or even for pay, because impressive PowerPoint presentations were considered critical to career advancement for officers.
I often wondered what would have happened if IMD deleted PowerPoint off of all of the machines on the domain lol. Collapse? 10x productivity? Tires burning in the streets? Only one way to know for sure!
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I define it as smarter than humans. The same way a dog will never understand L'Hôpital's rule, there are probably things that human beings will never understand but future AIs will. I'd call those AIs superintelligent .
It is worth emphasizing that dogs wouldn't understand formal calculus even if they were smarter than humans! They are not physiologically capable of doing formal mathematics: - their eyesight is too poor to read - their paws are not designed for fine manipulations so they cannot write or type - their throats and mouths are not nearly as nimble as ours, so they cannot vocally communicate detailed information Even if t…
> The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight. Oh, is it now? So you know for a fact that intelligence comes from token prediction, do you, Mark? Look, multi-bit screwdrivers have been improving steadily as well. I've got one that stores all it's bits in the handle, and one with over three dozen bits in a handy carrying case! But they're never going to suddenly, magic…
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All of these is true for Stephen Hawking. Of course one can argue that he couldn't have done it if not for other humans making technology for him.
The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve. That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to…
“As recently as 200 years ago, 90% of people were farmers growing food to survive. Advances in technology have steadily freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits we choose” More people today are dying from starvation than people existed on earth 200 years ago. Celebrating our achievements in making shareholders rich is one thing, but to take credit for freeing the people. Yikes. Mar…
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All of these is true for Stephen Hawking. Of course one can argue that he couldn't have done it if not for other humans making technology for him.
The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve. That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to…