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The End of the Computer Age

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Re: The End of the Computer Age

#71

Post by Williamrussell »

Animats wrote: post #39
taneq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then, it is literally communist because China loves AI; it hates crypto. And so that, I think, tells you something. China also loves cheap r/c cars, does that make them communist?

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Re: The End of the Computer Age

#72

Post by Omnitaus »

chrisco255 wrote: post #7
TheRealPomax wrote: post #3

"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…

Maybe not so elegantly put, but there's no question that China has embraced AI as a tool for spying on its own people. For whatever reason, spying seems to be a consistent Orwellian feature of communism. It was a central feature of the Soviet Union and China just seems to be taking the franchise to new heights with its approach to AI. I don't know what to say about the Harvard quote, but with the recent admissions sc…

I'm not sure America is as different from China as you seem to imply here. You don't manage to incarcerate more individuals than "an authoritarian communist dictatorship" four times your size without massively scaling the state's ability to monitor citizens.

20% of the world's prisoners are in America. Is spying a consistent Orwellian feature of American capitalism?

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#73

Post by honestoHeminway »

fadisaleh wrote: post #13

"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…

This is not a bug, this is a feature. Electronic consumption reduces physical consumption, as in demand for new statussymbols, new infrastructure, new every thing. And this was the goal all along. Harden humanity against alot of ugly scenarios.

Have distributed tutorials on video to restore society from the ashes (check)

Have self-surveilance to keep civil, even when the state fails, becaus observed permanently. (check)

Reduce ressource consumption, while keeping intellectual active and contribooting (even on lower level) (check).

All this is a bonus to the wastefull 60s, which scaled to the planet, would bankrupt us in years.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#74

Post by shadowgovt »

flir wrote: post #57
buboard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough the main culprit is regulation. There are other markets which build modern cities at breakneck pace the same thing is going to happen to tech now that regulation is kicking in

As someone who saw Grenfell go up from his bedroom window, I'll take the regulation thanks.

Agreed. You can take software as an example; it's far less regulated than most infrastructure sectors, but how many outages per year does Facebook have? How many times per year are our PII gutted out of an under-secured dataset?

Now, that level of sloppiness, but applied to bridges and skyscrapers? No thanks.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#75

Post by shadowgovt »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #19
bitwize wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been to Connecticut? I-84 is still constantly in rough condition, even as property and income taxes climb.

As a Korean who visited LA this summer, I was shocked to see how unmaintained the roads were, especially the highways. (There were cracks and debris all over the place)

It is worth noting that the US has several orders of magnitude more roads than Korea does to maintain.

... but that doesn't excuse the under-spending on them, because we're also under-spending.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#76

Post by helen___keller »

icebraining wrote: post #51
buboard wrote: post #47

This talk mostly reiterates his basic talking points so it feels a lot like rambling. And the title is not justified by the argument. There is, however, a case to be made that the computer tech age has reached an end. Tech companies turning to investing in banking and real estate is not a good sign.

Tech companies are still doing tech. It's more that the "tech" label is being applied to other companies incorrectly.

Train companies are still doing trains, but the era of railway mania (and its associated venture capital bubble) have long since evaporated.

We'll see the same with tech, maybe in a few years maybe in a few decades.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#77

Post by frickinLasers »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #3

"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…

Isn't this the guy who founded Palantir?

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#79

Post by jefurii »

shadowgovt wrote: post #75
lasagnaphil wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Korean who visited LA this summer, I was shocked to see how unmaintained the roads were, especially the highways. (There were cracks and debris all over the place)

It is worth noting that the US has several orders of magnitude more roads than Korea does to maintain. ... but that doesn't excuse the under-spending on them, because we're also under-spending.

Most people in the U.S. have never been to a country with an actual transportation system. They can't imagine that it could be any different and will get angry if you point out to them.

Re: The End of the Computer Age

#80

Post by incognition »

classified wrote: post #64
wrs wrote: post #32

This mostly just reads like stream of consciousness gibberish to me. Is there an actual coherent argument in here somewhere?

This is the top 1% celebrating themselves. If they had any coherent arguments, we would have been convinced long since. As it is, they're just laughing their asses off while taking candy from a baby (i.e. getting even more rich and powerful).

Is it me or has his thinking got more sloppy?

A couple examples, his indictment of the Obamas is that they sent their kids to Harvard but his indictment of America is that we don't focus on the things we do well... such as universities?

The assault on science now without any prescriptive solutions. Is he arguing for more populous interpretation of science? Has he had any first hand experience and investigation into the mechanisms of double blind peer review? (In my experience, still prone to gaming but often rigorous and the best method we've got).

Re: The indictment of the SV elite. I don't move in the same circles as he does but it's obvious that he's still smarting from the SV elite's rejection of him.

His hypocrisy from being owner of Palantir and yet seeming indictment of AI software for governments? Another layer of hypocrisy of espousing libertarian values when he's come to embody the system as much as anyone (in the administration, numerous govt military contracts with Palantir). And yet he's even more shifty than that, embracing NZ citizenship for possible tax evasion avenues.

His indictment of Twitter yet entrepreneurs have made material progress in traditional sectors (his old buddy Elon making headway with Tesla).

Our indictment of him should be that he's turned his back on values he's formerly espoused, content to rankle in a 'get off my front lawn style' on his large pile of capital while often committing the same hypocrisies of which he feigns disgust.

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