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The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

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Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#41

Post by nothrabannosir »

sien wrote: post #21
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #2

Lots of bold assertions without evidence. Author claims Google's high salaries killed entrepreneurship. Is there any data to back this claim? Or the idea that democracy can't adapt to social media discourse; not everyone is chronically online. Politicians still respond to public sentiment to similar degree as they always have. Then there's this: > AI systems aren't just tools—they're deployed faster than we can devel…

The number of unicorns was 39 when the term was coined in 2013. Then there was 119 by 2018 and then there were 1284 unicorns by May 2024. From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)#History So not only is there no data to back up the authors claim but it is wrong and could be checked by looking at wikipedia. You don't have to be right, you can make claims, but when you make grand claims you should at least…

Your broader point may stand but that’s not a counter argument if you give the original claim the benefit of the doubt: it can reasonably be interpreted as referencing lifestyle oriented businesses, niche b2b companies, anything small growth with a low ceiling.

Counting unicorns only serves to bolster that point : those are large VC fueled ships which operate on a completely different level. Because it is clear at founding time which type of company they are , it’s reasonable to include that as a qualifier.

Now if the data showed more small-growth companies were started , that’d be a stronger counter argument.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#42

Post by icehawk »

ehnto wrote: post #8
bjornsing wrote: post #3

Or maybe it just feels that way because the world is being fixed at unprecedented rates? For example I had the misfortune to needing help from the mental health community a decade ago. I sometimes think about how much easier that part of my life would have been if TikTok and Claude had existed back then. It’s easy to forget, but many of the institutions we’ve built over centuries are deeply dysfunctional and very muc…

I don't think you should be getting mental health advice from LLMs, it has been shown that their sycophantic nature reinforces your own diagnoses not that of a professionals. Using an LLM in a field you're knowledgeable in would make you think twice about their accuracy in fields you are unable to know the correctness of personally. It will all sound very convincing, but may be a fundamentally flawed diagnoses. Anoth…

I am really beginning to think that the Gell-Mann amnesia effect has a shining example in LLM usage.

Its obvious there's no intelligence behind it when you make it try to do something with data that gets parsed by a computer.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#43

Post by cluckindan »

sien wrote: post #21
nosefurhairdo wrote: post #2

Lots of bold assertions without evidence. Author claims Google's high salaries killed entrepreneurship. Is there any data to back this claim? Or the idea that democracy can't adapt to social media discourse; not everyone is chronically online. Politicians still respond to public sentiment to similar degree as they always have. Then there's this: > AI systems aren't just tools—they're deployed faster than we can devel…

The number of unicorns was 39 when the term was coined in 2013. Then there was 119 by 2018 and then there were 1284 unicorns by May 2024. From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)#History So not only is there no data to back up the authors claim but it is wrong and could be checked by looking at wikipedia. You don't have to be right, you can make claims, but when you make grand claims you should at least…

Not sure about that.

https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/google-stanford-and-the...

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#44

Post by bjornsing »

atoav wrote: post #10
bjornsing wrote: post #3

Or maybe it just feels that way because the world is being fixed at unprecedented rates? For example I had the misfortune to needing help from the mental health community a decade ago. I sometimes think about how much easier that part of my life would have been if TikTok and Claude had existed back then. It’s easy to forget, but many of the institutions we’ve built over centuries are deeply dysfunctional and very muc…

If there is one horror I have it is one of the really mentally unwell people I knew when growing up pairing up with an LLM that feeds into everything they say. LLMs are great for truth seekers, who know how to deal with the yes-sayer-mentality of the chatbot. If there is one type of person I am 100% sure cannot deal with that it would be mental health patients. That doesn't mean I don't think LLMs couldn't be used fo…

I fully agree that the night seems dark. But having recovered from a state that many institutionalized professionals deemed hopeless I have a different perspective.

Have you seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? I think it serves as a good model to explain why we can both be right. You’re looking at the average effect of the institution across every minor character that appears in frame and deem it positive, and it was. I’m looking at what happened to Jack Nicholson and see the institution as deeply dysfunctional. If you think about it I think you’ll agree that I’m not wrong about that.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#45

Post by raincole »

xxs wrote: post #34
raincole wrote: post #27

The articles on this blog before 2025 never contained em-dashes. Not even a single one. And the articles from 2025 onward all use em-dashes. Curious, huh? > Each operates at a different mathematical order: linear, exponential, and systematic respectively. This was where I stop reading. "Systematic" mathematical order. Sure.

It has all the classics

I know I shouldn't care at all. However I can't help but feel a little bit sad knowing that a (I suppose) once genuine blogger simply gave up and decided to delegate his thinking process to a token machine.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#46

Post by kubb »

pyrale wrote: post #36
halayli wrote: post #19

When you read the title, "Why everything feels broken and what can we do", it is obvious op turned a me problem into an us problem. It's a common pitfall to take yourself out of the equation when you are about to make assertions without evidence to back them up. The title could have been written as: "Why do I feel everything is broken, and what can I do about it". you will end up writing a completely different post a…

> The title could have been written as: "Why do I feel everything is broken, and what can I do about it". Sometimes collective action is required to fix an issue. Restricting people to individual action is depriving them of their freedom of association, a core enabler of democracy.

It’s an old strategy that tries to take agency from people by splitting them up.

If you convince many powerless people to work alone, they aren’t gonna be a threat.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#48

Post by exmadscientist »

What a strange article. It feels like one of those cases where the author gathers so many of the pieces, then, just... fails to solve the puzzle. Or get anywhere close.

I agree that everything feels broken. I'd like to do something about it. Let me deploy my leverage to work on that. Here's my "labor leverage", right here, this comment. Check. Leverage strength... not much. Let's bring my "capital leverage" to bear... okay, done, my 401(k) is invested in my favorite companies. Did you notice? No? Okay, leverage strength... let's go with epsilon^2. And my "code leverage"... uh... I don't think I have any.

So, wait, I, personally, don't have any third-order leverage at all? How am I supposed to go up against trillion-dollar, billion-node networks, with my epsilon^3 "leverage"?

That's the real problem: I don't actually have any meaningful leverage. I'm not in the game.

Is that actually true? Doesn't matter: I believe it to be true. Sure looks like everything is broken to me.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#49

Post by dxdm »

bjornsing wrote: post #30
ehnto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you should be getting mental health advice from LLMs, it has been shown that their sycophantic nature reinforces your own diagnoses not that of a professionals. Using an LLM in a field you're knowledgeable in would make you think twice about their accuracy in fields you are unable to know the correctness of personally. It will all sound very convincing, but may be a fundamentally flawed diagnoses. Anoth…

I’m well aware of the risks. But I think you have an unrealistically rosy picture of professionals’ diagnoses.

Replacing expert opinion with engagement-baiting content from feed machines and hallucinating matrices seems to me is a part of the problem, and not the solution.

Especially using TikTok to try and improve mental health issues seems a bit like trying to fight fire with a (edit: spelling) hose of jet fuel.

Re: The leverage arbitrage: Why everything feels broken

#50

Post by ball_of_lint »

> helping people recognize the type of power they're actually wielding and use it more consciously

lol, lmao even. I don't even think this would work if there wasn't capitalism in play.

> Most importantly, we need to redesign how we measure success and allocate resources.

Oh, they Are suggesting we dismantle capitalism.

Even if we were to dismantle capitalism in America, TikTok is a Chinese business/product. So this has to be a global solution. While we're wielding our lever that can move the globe let's fix global warming, war, hunger, etc while we're at it. No point in half measures.

Does feel good to read though, nice and fluffy.

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