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The Demoralization is just Beginning

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#771

Post by lannisterstark »

torlok wrote: post #275
danny_codes wrote: post #77

Well this was embarrassing to read. Good god man read an economics textbook or at least talk to an economist before posting. Is industrial capacity important? Sure. Is it the top of the value chain? No.

This guy spent a few hours trying to "solve" covid from "basic principles", ran some python on the DNA sequence, and then gave up. None of this is serious.

Remember when he wanted to "fix twitter search?"

Then a few weeks in he went "Anyone want a job? Fix this, make your code MIT and we'll see!"

...despite the fact that he just wanted to steal code and had 0 authority to give anyone a job.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#772

Post by pif »

greenhearth wrote: post #657
pif wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That takes planning, money vision and time. And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans, unless you either make huge efforts to ensure everyone gets their fair share (see Scandinavia) or you have a good plan for people being rich with not too much effort (see Switzerland and other tax havens). Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too la…

Plenty of authoritarian countries that have been economic disasters.

I'll fight for democracy over any form of dictatorship every day.

Preferring democracy is compatible with recognising its limits.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#773

Post by kelipso »

lxgr wrote: post #113
nextos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of a…

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Seems like you understand the point after all :) US tertiary education is the perfect export good: Like other intellectual property, it's almost infinitely fungible, and parents from all over the world will part with staggering amounts of money for it.…

For Master's degree it makes sense because the students pay tuition. For most PhDs, the students don't pay tuition and get an additional stipend, so it doesn't make sense. Plenty of (most?) PhD grads stay but we are currently paying international students to do their PhD and then provide very little incentive for them to stay afterwards.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#774

Post by Clubber »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #550
Clubber wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control? Why do people constantly and intentionally misconstrue arguments? It's so obnoxious and intellectually dishonest. I didn't say it was absolute. It's like people can't even have a conversation anymore without dealing with this. >I think that the harm of stoppi…

I did not see that as an attack towards you or miscontruing any argument you made, rather putting things in perspective for people who may believe JD Vance & co when he talks about freedom of speech. I also did not see your statement "seems abhorrent to americans" as a value judgement you hold in regards to european freedom of expression laws.

>> These things seem abhorrent to Americans who have nearly unlimited free speech protection.

> Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?

I said it was near unlimited protection and he claimed I said it was absolute so he could make a counter argument. He intentionally misconstrued my argument to make a counter argument. What am I supposed to do, defend and argument I didn't make? It kills any conversation or sharing of ideas. It's annoying.

The news does this all the time.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#775

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

danny_codes wrote: post #77

Well this was embarrassing to read. Good god man read an economics textbook or at least talk to an economist before posting. Is industrial capacity important? Sure. Is it the top of the value chain? No.

Their "about" page reads "home for poorly researched ideas that I find myself repeating a lot anyway"

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#776

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

dijit wrote: post #560
agentultra wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points. No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard. Seems like geohot should stick to jail breaking iPhones and mocking programmers and CTF challenges… and maybe read a few more books and attend some lectures if he wants to continue deepening his understanding of economics and political science.

I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". It immediately frames questions as "us vs them", if there's a talking point you hear come up frequently and it's easily dissolved: learn how to dissolve it. The fewer people walking around with incorrect ideas about things the better we all are. If people rebuff you, maybe they had a point the whole time? If they change the subject o…

> I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points".

You might hate the idea, but it's actually an excellent characterisation of how ideas spread in a polarised environment.

If you ever try engaging with both extremes over a long period of time eventually you'll notice that both of them repeat the same narrow set of ideas and sound bites over and over again. It's like these people train themselves in having arguments by repeating the arguments they read about. If you spend enough time with these people you can play a game with yourself, which is to try and map out the set of existing arguments and try and predict if you say X what will the person respond.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#777

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

globular-toast wrote: post #238
georgeecollins wrote: post #143

I get tired of people talking about how the US doesn't "make anything". I spent my adult life creating software that was super valuable. Along the way I worked with a bunch of people (from all over the world) who-- because of their brains and their education-- could have made almost anything very well. They didn't make steel or automobiles because that wasn't where their skills were best deployed.

I'm not convinced that software is really intrinsically valuable. We write it to help us make and deliver things that are actually valuable, which are physical goods. The whole service sector would be nothing without the physical. Finance doesn't exist just to see numbers changing on a screen. It's there so we can buy food after we retire etc. Maybe games are truly software that isn't tied to anything physical. I can…

Software is tidbits of automation. It is intrinsically valuable because it lowers the cost of some process. (This is obviously assuming it's a process you care about. If you automate a worthless process then of course its components will be worthless too)

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#778

Post by southernplaces7 »

flyinglizard wrote: post #483
southernplaces7 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>democracy was protected by codes of conduct, honor, and most importantly, strong content moderation in the form of monopolistic legacy media. 50 years ago? Perhaps some of what you describe applied, in very limited form and only if you view a small segment of the media/political landscape with extremely rose-tinted glasses, but go read more of U.S media history to see how completely off base you really are. Media in…

50 years ago someone like Trump wouldn't have a way to obtain a platform from which he can amass a big enough public following. Anyone that wanted to play had to play nice with the establishment. 50 years ago, editorials mattered. Any messaging of a politician or candidate would be followed with context, analysis or discussion by journalists.

you really don't know what you're talking about. 50 years ago, Trump, or someone like him, being very wealthy outside of politics, could have just bought his own media source, or several smaller ones, and let em rip with yellow attack journalism while promoting his vision. Failing that, he could have made paid agreements with all kinds of supposedly "reputable" mainstream media sources to promote his politics. This is indeed exactly what a lot of dirty politics across the decades did and your vision of some golden age in which it didn't apply is completely false. This is particularly so considering how many mendacious lies and other garbage these same major media outlets sold to the public over decades on behalf of government. We should applaud their golden past? Get out of town.

Today at least, if anything, people have access to a vast plurality of views that despite many of them being absurdly mistaken at least through the mechanism of their existence let massive cracs rapidly open in any official or propagandist narrative. On the whole, this is what major media truly hates, while couching its complaints in fear mongering about misinformation.... Much of that fear mongering surged especially strong during the recent pandemic, while media at the exact same time promoted several major official narratives that were obviously politically motivated rather than being based on any thing resembling solid editorial standards.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#779

Post by feoren »

greenhearth wrote: post #723
feoren wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. They say the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, while the worst form is a malevolent dictatorship. The problem is that the former almost always turns out to be the latter in disguise, or at least devolves into it rather quickly.

What a ridiculous statement. Any dictatorship is a subpar expression of a state. We don't have to figure out the best government. We already have all kinds of ideas about this collected from millennia of thought on this subject. We just have to study and bring it into reality.

> We don't have to figure out the best government. We already have all kinds of ideas about this collected from millennia of thought on this subject.

Except for 99.9% of those millennia, humanity had very different challenges than it does today. One of the biggest being effective communication between people. There's a reason the U.S. constitution talks about sending delegates to Washington D.C. Another being an abundance of basic necessities that simply did not exist when Voltaire was writing. Increased globalization, vast changes in technology, bitcoin, AI, automation, social media, etc. Why would you assume political theory from even 100 years ago holds up in the face of all those differences?

And political theory, like history, tends to be written by the victors. What percent of all laws ever written were about maintaining the status quo for the people currently in power? It's a lot; I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 90%.

There's no reason to believe that humanity has "figured government out" by now. There's still plenty of room for experimentation in what works best in today's world. For example, why can individuals not collectively draft legislation, in the same way they can draft Wikipedia articles or open-source software? What would it take to make that happen?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#780

Post by feoren »

bad_user wrote: post #700
feoren wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. They say the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, while the worst form is a malevolent dictatorship. The problem is that the former almost always turns out to be the latter in disguise, or at least devolves into it rather quickly.

Who is "they"? People that don't know any history?

> Who is "they"?

Galadriel. She would be a great and terrible queen. All would love her, and despair.

> People that don't know any history?

For some reason, I find that people who accuse others of not knowing history tend to be the most ignorant of it themselves. History buffs don't seem to be walking around telling other people they "don't know any history". Just an observation.

For an example of a benevolent dictator, look at King Leopold II of Belgium, the Builder King. Loved by his people. Created the Royal Trust, donating a most of his properties to the Belgian nation. Brought culture and prestige to Belgium.

For an example of the atrocities of a malevolent dictator, look at King Leopold II of Belgium. The butcher of the Congo. Unbelievable exploitation and atrocities committed under his rule.

Or look at Ashurbanipal, the last "Great King" of Assyria, who built one of the greatest libraries in history; a collection of human knowledge surpassed in the ancient world only by the Library of Alexandria. And a genocidal maniac who spent months not just pillaging and raping opposing cities long after they had been defeated, but destroying any trace of the people who lived there, salting the land, and seeding the ground with weeds so that it would be impossible to ever re-build.

A wise builder-king with the power and drive to make the nation and world a better place for all its people would absolutely be the best government humanity has been able to achieve so far. Checks and balances are a necessity for a functioning government, but they do bog things down.

My point, of course, is that this is completely counter to human nature, and has (almost?) never been achieved, even in those times that it appears that it has.

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