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Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#211

Post by MarkusQ »

AngryData wrote: post #178
MarkusQ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support. https://thetechleaders.com/was-elon-musk-born-rich-exploring...

Compared the the majority of the population in the US, and like 95% of the population in South Africa, he seemed to grow up pretty damn wealthy. Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash. No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did, but part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them. If…

> Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash.

Do you have a credible source for this? At best I'm seeing EDS conspiracy nuts (and Erol, though he seems to be all over the place).

> No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did

I think there's a little more to it than that.

> Part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them.

He didn't hold on to them long, at most a year or so after he left (the sale to eBay was 2002).

And why would his family be supporting him when he was already a millionaire and had paid off his 100K+ student loans?

Again, do you have any credible sources for any of this?

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#213

Post by jjmarr »

mncharity wrote: post #205
AngryData wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true for multiple topics too, like economics. It is almost worse off for people to take these 100 level classes without then taking 200 and 300 level continuations. They think they have extra knowledge in the subject because of the classes but it was really just a primer later to tell them why all that stuff sounds good at first but is completely wrong and useless.

A kindergarten science education person suggested their kids have a human right to understand their world then , rather than a lifetime (for them) later. So atoms, etc. I think that far far harder than they thought - "adapt later material for a younger audience" vs "wield lots and lots of research community domain expertise to craft largely novel content". But I've found it an interesting probe question: How would yo…

> No learning linear systems without learning how to do linear approximation of systems in a mostly non-linear world.

That's why Common Core trains kids on estimation from Grade 2. Instead of adding 12 + 23 = 35, you add 10 + 20 = 30 to get a number close to the right answer.

This plants the idea "I can simplified numbers to get the answer if I don't need the last digit, which lets me solve problems faster". Which gets generalized as "I can use the simplified Ideal Gas Law to model a complex system if I don't own a supercomputer".

Even in university I had this: my physics course heavily emphasized properties of linear systems to demonstrate why I'd want to use one and we ran linear regressions in other courses if we didn't "know" the true equations.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#214

Post by crote »

petermcneeley wrote: post #115
steveBK123 wrote: post #3

I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. They just got uberrich and now worry more about the concerns of the uberrich than the concerns they had when they were normies. Rule of law, functioning government providing services, functioning public commons, free press, freedom of speech for all, any social safety net, etc don’t matter when they are so far removed from the public they can just go buy yourself…

Clarification. None of the silicon valley elite were ever "normies". I would guess most of them come from the top > %1 of society. This is just a rival elite not a non-elite.

They started with nothing, in a garage! An unused three-car garage next to their parents' mansion. While living at home, without having to pay for basic things like food. And with a $100k loan from the other guy's parents. And with daddy's business contacts being the first customers, and being the angel investors. Absolutely nothing, all their own hard work!

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#215

Post by x-complexity »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #186
ETH_start wrote: post #114

The government has expanded by any objective measure: From 20% of GDP to 40% of GDP today From a 34 regulatory agencies/offices to 77 today. From 5 percent of occupations needing a license in 1950 to 23 percent today From zero federal environmental review in 1950 to 26 months today for major projects. From almost zero collective bargaining agreements in the public sector in 1950 to approximately 36 percent of public…

> From 20% of GDP to 40% of GDP today Yeah, let's cut where all that spending went- medicaid, medicare, social security, and welfare...oh How do you cut any of these without everyone losing their minds?

> How do you cut any of these without everyone losing their minds?

> medicaid, medicare

You can't. You're dealing with the inevitably increasing costs of human labor as it becomes more valued over time.

To decrease the costs without devaluing human labor inherently requires the use of labor-magnification tools to perform cost amortization, or use machines to move the performance of labor up by one layer of abstraction (directly performing the work -> maintaining the machines that perform the work) and amortize the costs that way.

> social security, and welfare

Both schemes require a sufficiently large working population that is multiple times larger than the recipient population to remain sustainable & relatively painless (Ratio of > 3).

In scenarios where the aforementioned ratio is lowered, whether incrementally or suddenly, the total supply from the working population decreases whilst total demand remains the same. As told in conventional economics, this results in an increase in prices as the same amount of resources chases a decreasing amount of labor.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#216

Post by crote »

Recurecur wrote: post #171
dinfinity wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen a lot of bloat, corruption, & massive inefficiency [in government]. To what extent is this due to the public nature of the organisations and to what extent is it just the size of them? Are private organisations of similar sizes free from such bloat, corruption and inefficiency? I feel like people often give "businesses" a pass on this. Government projects that are over budget, especially IT-related ones a…

One issue with private, for-profit organizations is their major focus is “creating shareholder value”, which is apparently the modern way of saying “making money”. That, along with competition (if applicable, see below), drives them towards minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, and innovating. Government has the major focus of taking money, and largely spending it arbitrarily. It’s inarguable that the US Federal G…

Stop voting for politicians who keep starting pointless unwinnable wars and you can cut the military budget in half. Boom, 10% of the expenses gone, and $500B less of a budget deficit. Tax some billionaires and it'll be net-positive in no time.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#217

Post by bawolff »

MarkusQ wrote: post #153
bawolff wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities other than musk, were the tech bros rich? most seem to have grown up middle class. that said, the fact they are still rich suggests that they do know how to analyze risk. You do…

Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support. https://thetechleaders.com/was-elon-musk-born-rich-exploring...

> Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support.

that is an entirely separate question from if he grew up wealthy.

to be fair, i dont actually know how wealthy he grew up, i was relying on the general internet view that he did, but i haven't actually looked into it, so maybe that is wrong.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#218

Post by crote »

mancerayder wrote: post #194
wdr1 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. I don't know that I've been brainwashed, but living most of my life in Chicago & Los Angeles, I've seen a lot of bloat, corruption, & massive inefficiency. Many of friends lost their homes in the Palisades & Altadena fires. If it weren't tragic, it would be laughable the challenges they've f…

I really like this comment. Yes, it's the worst of both worlds: the right says that government is inefficient, I told you so; the left says it's the only solution to solve many social issues. Unfortunately they're both right and wrong. I'm very familiar with New York politics, and I watch in slow motion while enormous amounts of money disappear into government salaries and pensions, programs that go nowhere, and corr…

> building subway/metro infrastructure costs 3-4 times in New York what it costs in Tokyo, London or Paris. Why is that

The NYC subway is one of the few (the only one?) to run 24/7, and it is one of the largest in the world. Construction is expensive because the operators choose to make it expensive. Digging giant new tunnels under existing skyscrapers also isn't exactly easy.

Yeah there's corruption and waste, but not to the order-of-magnitude level.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#219

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jjmarr wrote: post #213
mncharity wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kindergarten science education person suggested their kids have a human right to understand their world then , rather than a lifetime (for them) later. So atoms, etc. I think that far far harder than they thought - "adapt later material for a younger audience" vs "wield lots and lots of research community domain expertise to craft largely novel content". But I've found it an interesting probe question: How would yo…

> No learning linear systems without learning how to do linear approximation of systems in a mostly non-linear world. That's why Common Core trains kids on estimation from Grade 2. Instead of adding 12 + 23 = 35, you add 10 + 20 = 30 to get a number close to the right answer. This plants the idea "I can simplified numbers to get the answer if I don't need the last digit, which lets me solve problems faster". Which ge…

It annoys me, though, that there's a prescribed method of estimation, which is hard to remember. I always used to get the "wrong" answer because I picked easier-to-add approximations, even though my estimates were generally both faster and closer. (To use your example, I'd have estimated 35 or 36: the sum of two small numbers, like 2 and 3, is normally about 5; and this sum is a little bit less than (1 + 2)×12 = 3×12.)

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#220

Post by mncharity »

jjmarr wrote: post #213
mncharity wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kindergarten science education person suggested their kids have a human right to understand their world then , rather than a lifetime (for them) later. So atoms, etc. I think that far far harder than they thought - "adapt later material for a younger audience" vs "wield lots and lots of research community domain expertise to craft largely novel content". But I've found it an interesting probe question: How would yo…

> No learning linear systems without learning how to do linear approximation of systems in a mostly non-linear world. That's why Common Core trains kids on estimation from Grade 2. Instead of adding 12 + 23 = 35, you add 10 + 20 = 30 to get a number close to the right answer. This plants the idea "I can simplified numbers to get the answer if I don't need the last digit, which lets me solve problems faster". Which ge…

Nod. A random TIL from Friday, courtesy to qwen.ai: In contrast to USA educational estimation, which emphasizes point estimates, China reportedly emphasizes directional estimation to establish an envelope, upper and lower (strict) bounds - Da Gu and Xiao Gu.

I've long though we'd be better off doing incremental bounding, hard and soft, in part because the group discourse dynamics are so much better. "Ok, who can suggest another bound, upper or lower, hard or soft?" vs "Your step 2 is too big. Well, your step 4 is too small!".

Which raises a question - might this diversity be leveraged? Science education content improvement is often bottlenecked on regional conditions. As when a high-stakes exam doesn't cover topic X, so there's regionally less interest/opportunity to explore better teaching of X, or using X to better teach other things. This especially bites when you wish to explore mashups, X+Y+Z with each taught well, but they're every one both in poor shape and bottlenecked.

Both countries largely fail to create a physical intuition, a feel for reasonable values - in the US because it's a secondary priority, and in China reportedly because estimation has become nationally high stakes, so memorization gets emphasized over feel.

Can we leverage that regional difference? For a strawman, might one develop content with improved bounding facilitating a rough quantitative feel for reasonable values, in China where it's sort of aligned with the flow, even if off to the side, rather than in the US, where the aligned energy is much less. And then, having developed that content in China, bring it back to the US, where again off to the side, there's perhaps the flexibility and inquiry perspective for the material to appeal in its developed form? And WeChat Groups seem potentially a way to get heterogenous ad hoc communities around content development, for which I don't know a US equivalent.

For analogy, I'm told the US advanced placement exam for French, is both hard, and narrowly focused on a style of conversational French. So people teach to the test, and all else that is "French", is deemphasized. But let's say you have a VR app which develops both that conversational, but also cultural and business and travel. You might develop it the US, leveraging the conversational incentive. And release elsewhere, where there's interest and room for the other bits, even if there wasn't sufficient incentive elsewhere to build the app in the first place. Maybe?

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