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I’m taking some time away from Comma

geohot.github.io

431–437 of 437 posts

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#431

George references relistening to his Lex Fridman interview...the most recent Fridman interview is with Andrej Karpathy, head of AI at Tesla up until a couple months ago. I know that in Andrej's interview he talks about how he felt the Tesla team had become autonomous and didn't rely on him anymore, maybe George resonated with that.

I got that Andrej's point was that he didn't really enjoy Management and was much more interested in building things directly.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#432
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading when he brought the Bible into things. I have no time to waste on that sort of thing.

You have no time to waste on western civilization's foundational text? edit: to the people who want to argue this: show me a body of work which has been more influential on western society. What people seem to identify as 'western' values are largely just judeo christian values. The influence of the bible is so ingrained into our society that you will live out the values within it even if you don't realize it. And th…

Not for current day issues no I don't. I've certainly read parts of it and have watched numerous documentaries, museums, etc on it. From a historical point of view it's of course valuable. But it's not valuable to me for current day issues any more than flat earth theories are or outdated science textbooks.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>paid employment situation Just don't get yourself in such a situation and you'll do fine :)

Yeah, sure. It's super easy to avoid gainful employment. Based on this comment I can already tell you're a genius.

If you ignore corporate and social propaganda it tones the difficulty down a bit by having the right mindset.

I've only been an employee at the start of my adult life for 3 years at a small software outsourcing agency. Been gaining a steady 20x the median salary for my city for the past 12 years since I've abandoned "employment". Can't say I'm particulary smart. I'm closer to Dumb and Dumber than Rainman. I just ignore opinions of other people or entities and go my own way.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#434
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s only one outcome for hedonists. Wireheading. I suspect many people will go this way, I won’t.

Most people cannot ever get to that, hence the whole "enjoy the journey not the destination". When I read your post the main takeaway I got is you made too much money. Tell me if you started from scratch right now you'd be worrying about this 2deep4u shenanigans instead of doing cool shit again? By the way, I really respect your work and think you've done great things and enjoy reading your rambles a lot.

[deleted]

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Believing in democracy" means believing that granting real power to all adult citizens through voting and other forms of feedback is a better form of government than those governmental forms that only grant power to a few. Say, to the members of the central committee of the Communist Party, as in China. Or to a tiny group of oligarchs, apparatchiks and propagandists, as in Russia. Or to a royal family and its courti…

> "Believing in democracy" means believing that granting real power to all adult citizens through voting and other forms of feedback is a better form of government than those governmental forms that only grant power to a few. That's a false dichotomy. In a western democracy, do you vote for the things you believe in, or do you vote for one of the few representatives that pretends to approximate your beliefs closely?…

> That's a false dichotomy. In a western democracy, do you vote for the things you believe in, or do you vote for one of the few representatives that pretends to approximate your beliefs closely?

No it's not, actually. Democracy devolves power to individual citizens in ways that allow them to impact decisions about collective action. In western democracies, citizens have many ways of impacting collective action, which include speaking out and rallying others to their cause. It is common in places like Russia and China for citizens to be jailed or killed for speaking out about government policy. Therefore, those countries are undemocratic not just in how they approach voting, but about the civil rights they recognize and protect ... or trample.

> Is that true? What if the people likes authoritarians? What if it doesn't care about scandals? What if it democratically decides it doesn't want "free and fair elections" anymore? If the majority wants "the wrong things", the outcome will be poor. Democracy is not the distinguishing factor, it's not inherently good or bad, functional or dysfunctional.

Given that authoritarian figures control the media, information and feedback loops that are available to citizens in their countries, how would you even know what "the people" like? You can't know; you can only speculate. Authoritarian states systematically falsify voting results and other expressions of popular will. They obliterate the feedback loops because they are afraid of what people would say. That's one crucial property of an authoritarian state. To put it bluntly, you have no idea of knowing what people want under authoritarianism, and that should trouble you.

> The proceedings may be illegitimate, but there's no doubt in my mind that the Russians would have elected Putin over Navalny again. Of course there is an opposition in Russia, but it's not a majority and in any event Navalny isn't all that popular.

You have no way of testing this hypothesis. It's an opinion without evidence or the possibility of evidence, and I will treat it as such.

You should ask yourself why Putin is so afraid of running that experiment himself.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#437
post #27

It strikes me as surprising that George Hotz is religious. Very few people I’ve met with similar personalities are.

I've seen this change dramatically in the last few years. The people I knew 10 years ago who were the sortof frighteningly brilliant hackers have almost all become religious (mostly traditional Catholics). I'm not saying this is an objective truth, just that this has been my experience.

I’ve noticed that almost universally, a smart person embracing religion when they’re an adult, choose a religion which their family followed when they were a child. Also only if religion was a big part of their family’s identity.
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