Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
maybe we can have the AIs fight out the civil war for us, claude vs grok or something. automate the unpleasant work.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
not really. firms would do their best to source leads from other countries’ academics, private labs, etc. in aggregate, the loss of leads from their premier source, US academia, would bite sector profitability, but there’d be lots of uncertainty which firms still managed to source winners.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
people say mastodon is some kind of lefty echo chamber, but i get some pretty wild stuff. clew.lol/notice/AqtFs...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
vandals.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
can they? they did a great job with Boeing. or with the banks before the financial crisis, the source of IBGUBG. does the valuation of NVIDIA represent a sober forward looking DCF exercise? Tesla?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if AGI is intelligence superior to human intelligence, we're testing the proposition you can achieve it by reducing the latter rather than raising the former.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the pipeline from basic research to profit$ takes some time. by the time there's nothing in the pipeline, IBGUBG.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
elon musk is a one man swarm of locusts.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
from @joemenn.bsky.social @jeffstein.bsky.social @ellenwapo.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec... ht @nathantankus.bsky.social // things most payment systems don't have to consider
Text: The Bureau of the Fiscal Service ensures that Pentagon contractors, software vendors and U.S. spies overseas are paid. With spies, the means of payment are varied and generally indirect to avoid revealing any U.S. government connection, according to former national security officials.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
me too! a 2002 book about the period 70 years prior couldn't be more current. no offense to your aunt, but i'd prefer it was your book that was current. i hope it will be very, very soon.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Orban just had to kick Central European University out. Trump has so many!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
( interfluidity office hours begin in a coupla minutes if anone wants to drop by www.interfluidity.com/office-hours/ )
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
We are very grateful you are here now. Whenever wonderful people come, we are delighted to have you.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
there's no need for formal background checks. Musk of course only hires the very best people, people of the very best character. these are kids or almost kids. juvenile misbehavior oughtn't permanently condemn them. but they have no business anywhere near secure mission-critical systems right now.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
never their fault. thin-skin is a genetic malformation. they are more sinned against than sinning, the poor dears.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
for a Trump contract, sure. that's why the example I gave was a Mayor. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
and the incentive also depends on unlikelihood. if the Mayor is likely to win reelection, prediction markets say 90%, there's an 11% return on what you bet to save him, less all the security costs, and a 900% return on what you bet to ensure he loses, less costs. that's an asymmetry! /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i love how the AI they think is so smart is in fact smarter than they are.
Session with claude.ai: Prompt: Can you please bring me a cup of tea? Response: I need to clarify something - I'm an AI assistant who can help with many tasks, but I can't physically bring you tea or interact with the real world. I can, however, help you with other things like providing tea recommendations, explaining different brewing methods, or assisting with any other questions you might have. What would be most helpful?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yes, but some things are easier to do than others. it's easier to light a wildfire, when conditions permit, than to simultaneously put one out. it's easier and surer to kill a person who might become Mayor than to work to help them become Mayor.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Text: I think of it as the far center: a loose coalition of disillusioned Democrats, principled humanists, staid centrists, anti-woke journalists, civil libertarians, wronged entertainers, skeptical academics, and toothless novelists, all brought together by their shared antipathy to what they regard as the illiberal left. The far center is for free speech and bourgeois institutions; it is against cancel culture, student protests, and radicalism of any kind. Yet it rejects the idea of a shared ideology or politics. Instead, its members see themselves as independently sane individuals — concerned citizens who wish only to defend civil society from the unbearable encroachments of politics. So the far center is liberal, in that its highest value is freedom; but it is also reactionary, in that its vision of freedom lacks any corresponding vision of justice. It can be difficult to tell the far center from regular old conservatism.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I hope it's possible. Everyone not horrible should absolutely divest from Tesla. Holding it is basically equivalent to holding $TRUMP. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
If there is a meaningful transition of power in the US, I don't see how an Democratic administration doesn't require more diversified ownership of SpaceX if it will continue to be an important government contractor. Or else, subsidize development of alternatives. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
The stakes are really high. Musk belongs in prison for violating a thousand procedures about handling government private and confidential data. Trump can pardon him, maybe, though if things go badly he may choose not to. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Regardless, a sane administration, if one returns, would not want to truck with him. He has put his wealth if not his life fully on the line for all this. 4/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I hate to wish ill on another human, but this destruction he's wrought is a thing he's gone out of his way to wreak, and I hope he loses his dangerous bet. /fin