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The whole thing was a scam

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The whole thing was a scam

#281

Post by contrast »

apparent wrote: post #214
kelnos wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have laws like that, but apparently our supreme court believes that bribing politicians is political speech, and curtailing that speech is unconstitutional, so... It's so broken.

Are you aware that the Citizens United case was actually about a movie? It wasn't about handing someone a stack of cash. When I see perspectives like yours, I wonder what you would say is the right way to handle the question of whether someone can make a movie that portrays a candidate in a positive or negative light. It seems to be pretty clearly a matter of free speech (first amendment), so unless there's some othe…

That’s a profoundly incorrect misunderstanding of the Citizens United decision, which was to remove restrictions on political spending by corporations.

In other words, by your distinction, the decision was about stacks of cash, not movies.

A case regarding a movie was indeed brought to the court. The court decided to make a far more expansive decision. The movie became a footnote, and has effectively no meaningful relationship to the court’s final decision or its impact.

As for getting lost in a discussion about the difference between an ad and a movie, that’s really going down a rabbit hole of deliberately missing the point completely. Some word play is just too divorced from reality to engage with. There are many very short movies, and any rational person would be able to distinguish them from ads to a high degree of accuracy.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#282

Post by wartywhoa23 »

tombert wrote: post #95
juleiie wrote: post #75

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know…

I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it. There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret. We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hidin…

Jones in a shill, plain and simple. A puppet of said and unsaid billi/trillionaires.

Discredit By Association is written all over his yelling face.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#283

Post by JohnCClarke »

juleiie wrote: post #75

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know…

Well, the wives.

But women are generally ignored in our society.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#284

Post by bloomingeek »

coliveira wrote: post #184
bloomingeek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, that's why we have to vote maga out and start over. We can't get lost in what we think will happen, we have to vote and then pay closer attention. We have to vote in people to congress who know exactly what the people demand.

You can vote in whoever you want, they'll take billionaire money the same way. The problem is not voting, it's the system.

No doubt the system is broken. But like all systems, you get what you put into it. Something is always better then nothing, effort is always worthwhile, even if the results turn sideways. Why? Because guilt sucks.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#285

Post by mold_aid »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #31
MadxX79 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.

It’s a comment about who Gary Marcus is presenting himself as My intention is for other people to think what I believe which is Gary Marcus is a hack and has no business being listened to with respect to technical evaluation of AI because he’s not technically competent enough to do. The existence of his polemics waste everybody’s time and generally waste resources like we’re wasting right now. His entire schtick has…

What "technical competence" do you need to provide a technical evaluation, o person who is posting a comment to the "here's how I vibe-coded a fantasy football analytics service" forum? You think everyone here has a technically deep background?

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#286

Post by eszed »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #111
knollimar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance. An amount you can comfortably retire on is way different than $5. We love to pretend humans have unflinching morals but they don't

> I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance There are people that wouldn't do it no matter the amount. Not for billions. Not for a trillion. And that's why no matter how rich the other party, there are people to whom they simply aren't rich enough. "No" is the most powerful word in the dictionary. And when some people say no, they really m…

> most filthy, corrupt, bribed politicians and corrupt public servants... feel filthy and miserable.

Citation most definitely needed.

I agree with your ultimate point that some people can't be bought, and I aspire to be one of them - though I don't think anyone actually knows until they face a temptation with a life-changing upside - but spare me the "evil-doers are always punished, even if it's in ways we cannot see" rhetoric. Sociopaths, at least, are just fine (in fact show happier than the average person on standard "life satisfaction" metrics), and I'll put it to you that there are a lot of ways that both you and I don't perfectly live up to our highest ideals (do you own anything that's plausibly been manufactured by slave labor? Have you bothered to check? Or, if not that one, have you sold everything you own and given it to the poor?) and we both feel pretty good about ourselves, am I right?

I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to come at you that hard, but I'm going to leave it stand - it's not truly personal - because I think moral fables (ie, "do the right thing and you'll be happy") aren't true, and thus are counter-productive. Acting morally is hard, and often (usually?) comes at a personal cost. It's more honest to tell people that.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#287

Post by [deleted] »

Gud wrote: post #235
knollimar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance. An amount you can comfortably retire on is way different than $5. We love to pretend humans have unflinching morals but they don't

I believe the problem is making sex about morality.

[deleted]

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#288

Post by graemep »

tombert wrote: post #95
juleiie wrote: post #75

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know…

I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it. There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret. We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hidin…

I have long thought that the greatest harm conspiracy theories do is to distract attention from actual problems, and to discredit attempts to draw attention to them by labelling them all as conspiracy theories.

Other things are used too. A lot of the attention given to culture wars issues distracts attention from other issues. Its not just the right either. It allows people to pose as left wing while actually not being left wing on economic and business issues which are the traditional definition (the labour party in the UK - to be fair the left within it does seem to the reviving now).

With the Epstein affair, the shock people feel about sex crimes is being used focus just on those to avoid investigating the corruption in the US and other countries . The UK's two high profile arrests, of former Prince Andrew, and the far more important Peter Mandelson (former cabinet minister, for EU Commissioner, very close to multiple Prime Ministers) have been for passing on sensitive information but this is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what was going on.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#289

Post by graemep »

ben_w wrote: post #24
CamperBob2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent To where?

Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.

I am not convinced. Lots of people in Europe were connected to Epstein's network and engaged in corrupt practices - it is allegations of these that lead to the two high profile arrests in the UK. Norway has just charged a former Prime Minster (also a former Secretary General of the Council of Europe) with corruption.

The US is probably more corrupt that the most developed European countries, but they have also been becoming more corrupt.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#290

Post by graemep »

jakeydus wrote: post #27
ben_w wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.

If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family. Immigration is hard.

The UK has two schemes for skilled worker visas. It depends on the exact occupation and salary offered so you need to get a job.
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