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What happened to nerds?

mrmarket.lol

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Re: What happened to nerds?

#531

Post by oliculipolicula »

plaidthunder wrote: post #530
oliculipolicula wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey it's the one that Turchin managed to have not named... psychohistory. Fair enough, that's not absolutely about a one-way life-cycle ( From not overly much to sometimes less than zero , or its counterpart There and back again ). For VC, go back to the Medicis? Obsession with Roman over Athenian (ie, not even Macedonian or ahem Florentinian, whom, as you know, were blessed-- by themselves-- with nonTrumpian^W (-"an…

Sure, but Turchin's overproduction of elites doesn't suggest a birth and death cycle right? It's a system that gets out of balance and needs to adjust over time. He calls the process that moves the system out of whack the "wealth pump". I don't think tech oligarchs are responsible for the wealth pump, they just benefit from it. Whatever causes organizational structures to decay seems like something more general than…

https://youtu.be/B5cMfyFqKmM?t=25m37s

You can play with his model

To your other points, I need to clear cache for them overnight, not now.. maybe I can have a response tomorrow

I haven't played with the model myself, it's possible that there's energy getting pumped into the model (unlikely to be the same thing as the wealth pump--- that seems to be internal. This energy pump _could_ take care of entropy but in all likelihood it does not

Eyeballing

https://youtu.be/B5cMfyFqKmM?t=24m8s it seems to be buried in the g(S) term but I'll have to get into the weeds)

Whatever is not (vaccuosly) true about T's model should be something he hasn't yet anticipated. Ime with other proven-relevant models

what about Seldon's :)?

Re: What happened to nerds?

#532

Post by yuye »

pesus wrote: post #484
lossyalgo wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet even more nerds than ever are devoting themselves to AI. I just wonder - to what end?

The phrase "fuck you, I got mine" comes to mind. The logical end seems to be another case of pulling up the ladder behind them as they climb up, others be damned. Sadly seems to be a pretty universal human trait, whether intentional or not.

I'm a SWE, helping build AI infrastructure.

I get where you're coming from, but I haven't "got mine", at least not yet. I'm still relatively early in my career.

If AI fulfills its promise, I might lose my job. If the bubble bursts, I'll definitely lose my job.

For now, it's where the money is. I'd like to make money now so that I won't have a completely horrible time if things ever take a turn for the worse.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#534

Post by yuye »

AngryData wrote: post #473
jnwatson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates is a great counterexample to the article's premise. Always clearly a nerd, yet led a company that no one loved and many people hated for its strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. Post-CEO, he had completely refurbished his image via philanthropy, only to throw it away with the Epstein stuff.

Gates has done some good with his money but a lot of stuff about him reads like pure PR to me. Its like hearing about how Ford supposedly increased wages so people could buy cars, but when you actually look at the details that was just the PR spin to having hired, worked to injury, then fired so many people that large wages were the only way to keep enough employees to run the factories by convincing people in other…

>Most every "good" story about him outside of donating money later on ends up with not so great details and reality.

It's pretty well known he was a huge antisemite.

Then again, from what I understand, antisemitism was pretty popular in the US in the early 20th century. It was only after WWII that it became more of a taboo.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#535

Post by simonh »

8note wrote: post #497
simonh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is a fascinating example. Incredibly hard working, visionary, detail oriented. Without him we'd probably not have had reusable rockets for another generation or more. With Tesla he also accelerated electric car adoption. He was also brutally honest about their chances of success, when pitching SpaceX to the other initial investors he gave it a 10% chance of success. He was little more confident about Tesla, sayi…

we probably would. the key to both those things was government money and support

Sure, but I've no problem with that. I think there is a role for government helping get new technologies and industries off the ground. It can make sense to offer tax breaks to get new future sources of tax revenue going for example. I'm not a fan of intrusive industrial policy in general, but that's a practical and not an ideological objection. It can make sense to meet some strategic goals.

The government also legitimately needs space launch capacity, they're a customer for that. Look at how commercial companies invest in the buildout of supplier infrastructure, or offer framework contracts to help suppliers to make necessary investments.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#536

Post by oliculipolicula »

oliculipolicula wrote: post #531
plaidthunder wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Turchin's overproduction of elites doesn't suggest a birth and death cycle right? It's a system that gets out of balance and needs to adjust over time. He calls the process that moves the system out of whack the "wealth pump". I don't think tech oligarchs are responsible for the wealth pump, they just benefit from it. Whatever causes organizational structures to decay seems like something more general than…

https://youtu.be/B5cMfyFqKmM?t=25m37s You can play with his model To your other points, I need to clear cache for them overnight, not now.. maybe I can have a response tomorrow I haven't played with the model myself, it's possible that there's energy getting pumped into the model (unlikely to be the same thing as the wealth pump--- that seems to be internal. This energy pump _could_ take care of entropy but in all li…

Louisiana (or say. Crimea) X GPT

Re: What happened to nerds?

#537

Post by hattmall »

wk_end wrote: post #463
hattmall wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss the point, it's not that they were morally good or only in pursuit of lofty goals. But the culture was different and the profession wasn't dominated by monetary opportunity seekers. Look back in historical newspapers and you won't find a single ad for personal injury attorneys.

That's because it was illegal for lawyers to advertise their services until 1976. See Bates v. State Bar of Arizona: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_v._State_Bar_of_Arizona

Yes ultimately it's advertising the leads heavily to the enshifification of any industry.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#538

Post by hattmall »

fragmede wrote: post #445
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an IT department doesn't appear to be slacking off it is doing a poor job. It's much better to pay someone who prevents fires and sits around appearing to not be doing much, than a team constantly running around putting out fires that are costing a tone via lost productivity but look really busy. I imagine scientific inspiration/insight comes in flashes. The ability to be honest in the job/what is going on/realist…

We pay firemen to just sit in a house and hang out! I saw them the other day, just going for ice cream! How do we apply the perception that that's a desirable state elsewhere?

That's the basic tenet of bureaucracy. A formalized way of doing something when nothing actually needs to be done but in a way that you can notice and respond to things that actually do need doing.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#539

Post by ph4rsikal »

lojban wrote: post #454
ph4rsikal wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For tenure-track positions—the pipeline for future faculty—white men have gone from 49 percent in 2014 to 27 percent in 2024 (in the humanities, they’ve gone from 39 percent to 21 percent). https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

27 percent is roughly the same percentage of white men that are in that age bracket in the US. The lower 21 percent in the humanities could be explained by there being less interest in the those fields from the white male population in the first place. I wouldn't call that disenfranchised; I'd call that a correction. I suppose you could make the argument that more white men should be incentivized to go into the human…

You only say that because you benefit from it.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#540

Post by alsetmusic »

initramfs wrote: post #418
jimbokun wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is publishing papers an unreasonable expectation? Isn't that the primary mechanism for exchanging knowledge and driving discussion among academics? If not, what should replace it?

I have published all my papers since 2023 on the web. None were peer reviewed, but on pre-print servers. Einstein's 1905 papers were published without peer review. I still get spam emails asking me to pay for papers I've already uploaded to public servers years ago. Here's one from this morning- already deleted by Google's spam filter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h8YVu5-DEx-1mOibiLpfJHrErvX... The actual article…

> A writer who is able to break free from the belief that his being is at his core, a writer, can break writer's block. He may also discover how to be a better waiter during his night shift.

Fantastic!

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