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Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

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Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#41

Post by logicchains »

thiagoharry wrote: post #28
xvilka wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? If these sectors offered competitive salaries - sure, talent would flock to them. As a former chemist, I struggled to find a job that didn't pay scraps, no matter the industry - from big pharma to advanced materials. Eventually, I just gave up and went into the IT, which is 3x-10x better paid (at the very le…

We let the market dictate how society's resources are allocated. And we see, as a result, how the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

>the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

The biochem industry is extremely bad at creating things that increase the satisfaction and well-being of society; the vast majority of products are failures with few users. The reason tech companies make money is because they make things people actually want to use.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#42

Post by cheonn638 »

throwaw12 wrote: post #20
JasonADrury wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High frequency quants almost certainly don't directly provide a massive social good, but they're one of the many facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do. But FWIW, the comment I was replying didn't seem to be specifically critical of high frequency quants. Dismissing the entire field as something that doesn't contribute to society is beyond absurd.

> facilitators enabling the smooth functioning of markets that do Do you think without HFT markets stop functioning properly? What if they are one of the contributors of highly inflated valuations?

[dead]

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#43

Post by logicchains »

dgacmu wrote: post #37
0x3f wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have any reliable and scalable way of doing this allocation, though, so it's a bit like saying that all the resources are wasted being locked up in asteroids.

We do have a lot of policy levers that are tilted in favor of making money in finance, though, and we could change those levers. - The carried interest loophole - We could add small transaction taxes - We could raise capital gains taxes - We could be a little more focused on enforcing antitrust - We could raise higher end marginal tax rates to reduce the relative attractiveness of off-scale payrate jobs - We could pr…

>long-term societal importance without bringing in any form of centralized resource allocation.

The onus is on the biomedicine industry to demonstrate it's capable of producing anything of societal importance because so far it's largely failed to deliver. There's nothing noble or scientific about throwing good money after bad into an industry that's continuously failed to deliver.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#44

Post by vlovich123 »

paulluuk wrote: post #9
wittyusername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

Don't we already harvest more food than humans could ever eat, and have a huge pharmaceutical industry? I get what you're saying but these two examples seem counterproductive imho. Which begs the question: what would actually be a good field to apply human potential towards? I agree that finance, sales and ads are very low on that list.

I think energy is actually the most underserved sector, with maybe high tech manufacturing as a hidden second.

Just look at what happened when AI took off in the US and our ongoing struggle to get global warming under control - only China is taking a serious stab at this which is why they’re absorbing AI more effectively than we are.

Also semiconductor manufacturing has clearly gotten way too concentrated and there’s not enough experimentation with new designs (eg throwing more at existing DRAM designs instead of building new designs like in-RAM compute to shift the power and performance by an order of magnitude or 2 thereby easing the pressure of how much is built).

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#45

Post by logicchains »

ViscountPenguin wrote: post #16
paulluuk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we already harvest more food than humans could ever eat, and have a huge pharmaceutical industry? I get what you're saying but these two examples seem counterproductive imho. Which begs the question: what would actually be a good field to apply human potential towards? I agree that finance, sales and ads are very low on that list.

I would imagine that increasing crop yields would do social good primarily via decreasing the amount of cultivated farm land, especially since we're well past Jevons paradox territory with calorie intake I imagine. While the pharmaceutical industry is large, the marginal researcher does still seem to have a pretty positive impact from an outside view. The most positive use of human time probably looks something like…

>While the pharmaceutical industry is large, the marginal researcher does still seem to have a pretty positive impact from an outside view.

From this outsider's point of view it's failed to have a positive impact; people nowadays are far less healthy and happy than they were half a century ago when the pharmaceutical industry barely existed.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#46

Post by SiempreViernes »

logicchains wrote: post #41
thiagoharry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let the market dictate how society's resources are allocated. And we see, as a result, how the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

>the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society. The biochem industry is extremely bad at creating things that increase the satisfaction and well-being of society; the vast majority of products are failures with few users. The reason tech companies make money is because they make things people actually want to use.

Most ad-blockers are non-profits, how does that fit in your picture?

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#47

Post by logicchains »

bluerooibos wrote: post #31
zeroCalories wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not wasted. Society can pay for the talent it wants, and they don't want to pay for this. Instead this talent helps to grow the overall wealth on in the world, letting us pay for the stuff we want.

I'm sure people (society) wants cheap food, free universal healthcare, free public transport, so why don't we have these things? Under capitalism each of these individual systems needs to turn a profit to be deemed worthwhile instead of treating the system as a whole and taking into account the economic externalities and benefits to the entire system.

>free universal healthcare, free public transport

There's no such thing as free things, there's just some people paying for other people's things, and surprise surprise some people don't want to use their hard earned money to pay for other people's transport and healthcare.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#48

Post by logicchains »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #46
logicchains wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society. The biochem industry is extremely bad at creating things that increase the satisfaction and well-being of society; the vast majority of products are failures with few users. The reason tech companies make money is because they make things people actually want to use.

Most ad-blockers are non-profits, how does that fit in your picture?

Sorry, what have ad-blockers got to do with biotech?

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#49

Post by idiotsecant »

logicchains wrote: post #41
thiagoharry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let the market dictate how society's resources are allocated. And we see, as a result, how the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

>the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society. The biochem industry is extremely bad at creating things that increase the satisfaction and well-being of society; the vast majority of products are failures with few users. The reason tech companies make money is because they make things people actually want to use.

At least you're honest enough to admit ignorant tech bro status out loud.

Re: Can you reverse engineer our neural network?

#50

Post by webdevver »

wittyusername wrote: post #5
dang wrote: post #175

[stub for offtopicness]

All I think when I see this is "this intelligence wasted on finance and ads." Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc? Not everything has to be perfectly efficient but it just saddens me to see all these great minds doing what, adversarially harvesting margin from the works of others?

but doesn't the empirical evidence reject this premise?

if the greatest minds of earth, in their wisdom, have all collectively concluded that the smartest thing for them to do is make as much money as humanly possible, then evidently the greatest calling for mankind is... to be wealthy!

and the older i get the harder it becomes to argue with such a perspective... hmm... maybe i am getting closer to wisdom? haha!

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