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Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

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Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#231
post #217
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a generically cynical statement that you don't seem to have any specific basis for. In such cases, for HN purposes you should practice the Principle of Charity and err on the side of giving others the benefit of the doubt. It won't affect Zuckerberg much, but it will make this community better.

You'll find instead that it will turn any community into an echo chamber. This sort of tone policing accomplishes nothing but belittling differing viewpoints and alienating users who may (publically or privately) disagree with charitable interpretations. When the dust clears, you'll have a harmonious web forum -- in which no information is exchanged.

> You'll find instead that it will turn any community into an echo chamber.

What's the probability they don't know this?

They're corralling the sheeple:

Get typing your sanitised comments. Engagement up.

Weasel Words are kind words.

Correct isn't politically correct.

Motives are always good. There're no bad people in utopia.

There is no marketing. Interviews aren't marketing. HN isn't marketing.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#232
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're joking, but in case it isn't obvious - Mythical man month doesn't apply outside dev. Sales/marketing people can actually deliver a baby in 4 weeks.

:) right so every public company can just double sales/marketing spending and it would double their revenue :)?

There will always be diminishing returns ... But lets say you are spending money on Pay Per Click Advertising ...

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#233
post #95

Seeing how he behaved while getting to his success i don't think he should be idealized. I would rather listen to what Elon Musk has to say about future than Mark Zuckerberg.

Elon is coming up in the series. Hopefully up in a few weeks.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I find that the major objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn't do just information theory. Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of cryptography. H…

There was a lot of luck in Facebook, even if Zuck is a particularly talented individual. Also - if Harvard is a great school - how the F does someone find time to do the work and make a product at the same time? When I did Engineering, I didn't have time to take a shower.

Some people are just much better organized. I studied physics at a pretty good school. A lot of my classmates were very smart and hard workings. We spend easily 8 hours a day doing problem sets. Then we had an exchange student who cam from France (from the Prepas system) and he was just so much more organized with his work. He would sit down and very carefully read the chapter, make sure he understood everything. Then work through each problem carefully and then spend the rest of the day relaxing. Till he was done he wouldn't get distracted, check his phone, shoot the shit classmates. Just a very focused mind.

Looking back at college it was easily 80% worrying about doing work and 20% actually doing it. With something like programming, knowing how to use a debugger, profiler and an IDE give you a huge leg up. Easily 95% of CS students never take the time to learn the tools b/c you have to do it on your own time - but you have other homework to stress out about.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#235
post #57
post #35

> I heard this story recently that at this conference where > someone has built a machine learning application where you > can take a picture of a lesion on someone's skin, and it can > detect instantly whether it's skin cancer with the accuracy > of the best dermatologists and doctors in the world. So who > doesn't want that, right? I wonder what that app is? Is it SkinVision[1] or IBM's proprietary medical techonol…

> So who doesn't want that, right? What about privacy? Doctors in my country (France) are legally obliged to respect the privacy of their patients and the confidentiality of medical data. A third-party cloud service, not so much. Edit: To be more precise, I'm not saying that medical apps can't be done right. I'm just disagreeing with the implication that an efficient medical app is automatically a good thing.

I'm sure the same privacy conditions exist here in Australia too. However, when getting my skin checked, I asked the doctor about what she was looking for, out of curiosity. To explain, she pulled up vision of a problematic mole on someone else's file, and their name/details were visible.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you think about Oculus is irrelevant. FB has the money to see it through, along with dozens of other similar projects. Feel free to explain the other models.

State sponsored fundamental research for one. Pretty much all of the actual computing innovation was a direct result of fundamental research that was sponsored by the state either directly or indirectly. Heck, modern compilers have a direct line back to Grace Hopper working at the naval research lab. Commercializing stuff is great and all but there is no point in pretending it is the same or equal to the kind of inno…

I guess you don't understand the value behind the trillions of dollars of R&D spent over the past 50 years by tech companies like Xerox, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Google, etc

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State sponsored fundamental research for one. Pretty much all of the actual computing innovation was a direct result of fundamental research that was sponsored by the state either directly or indirectly. Heck, modern compilers have a direct line back to Grace Hopper working at the naval research lab. Commercializing stuff is great and all but there is no point in pretending it is the same or equal to the kind of inno…

I guess you don't understand the value behind the trillions of dollars of R&D spent over the past 50 years by tech companies like Xerox, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Google, etc

Not really. I do see a staggering amount of waste though. Duplicated effort across the board, re-invention of the same basic building blocks re-packaged and re-branded, billions spent on patent suits, billions spent on lobbying, etc. Competition in basic innovation does not make sense. In fact I'm not even sure how much of those "trillions" contributed to actual innovation. I suspect a proper analysis would reveal an extremely poor efficiency ratio and only a few keystones that could trace their history directly back to a university research projects and other state sponsored projects.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Think if Friendster & Myspace were on top of things, they would have bested Facebook. What made them suscpetible for disruption?

Friendster was a clumsy product. MySpace was limited in features, and a fugly interface. Neither had talented people. Zuck started at Harvard. That was his core user base. The Ivy League. Basically marquis 'customers' in social. Think of how massively that affected recruiting and attention? The network effect of Ivy League x 1000. It would have been trivial for him to get investment. But in the end - forget culture -…

MySpace had a record label - "Myspace Records". Founded in 2006, ended somewhere around 2012.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#239
post #27

The TL;DR of how Zuck wants to build FB's future w/his quotes: 1) "Connectivity, so getting everyone in the world on the Internet." 2) "The next one is AI. I think that that's just going to unlock so much potential in so many different domains." 3) "[The next computing platform] - I think that's going to be virtual reality and augmented reality." For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread he lays out a pre…

For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread It's pretty safe to ignore most of the flack in this thread. Most people vote with their feet (or wallets, or eyeballs, or attention), and they've voted that they love Facebook, regardless of what a minority of people in this thread say or upvote. Nerds have a cantankerous side and are as prone to virtue signalling as any other group. Those of us who read Slashdot…

What you're saying is all true, esp. virtue signalling. But, one can admire Zuck as an individual (Harvard educated, code wizard, able to learn Chinese and become almost fluent at it while running Facebook, etc.) and still think Facebook changed the world for the worst.

Google and Microsoft gave us tools that enabled us to work faster and do things we couldn't do before (esp. Google); Facebook is just addictive but doesn't enable anything.

I would rather "the future" didn't include more of Facebook.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#240
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People overestimate the positive impact of technology. Of course in Silicon Valley you're considered crazy if you don't believe technology solves everything. But it's not as simple as that. My grandparents for example, had no internet, no Facebook, no iPhones. They're doing great and have led very fulfilling lives. Most of the positivity in their lives came from their relationship with each other and their kids. Of c…

It comes down to definitions. What is "positive impact" to you? To me, it means "increasing the total amount of human understanding", not "making everybod happy and Amish". Edit: By the way, this is the essential difference between Bentham's and Mill's versions of utilitarian philosophy, if you'd like to research further. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Utilitarianis...

human knowledge != human understanding.

You can read about humans, to understand humans you have to form relationships with them and experience them yourself. An analogy would be reading K&R compared to bashing against GCC.

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