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Approx. 5% sessions? That's insanely high.

> Apple is great at winning capitalism.

Exactly, they deliver products that are better than their competition and thanks to that they got extremely rich. It's a great example of capitalism working as intended.


I'm 100% certain it will sell out at the release and you will have to wait few months to get it. I don't know where people get the idea that only few people will be able to afford that phone.

The idea that most people can’t afford a $2,000 phone?

The idea that few people can.

Yeah, to support this point I'd also like to point that mobile gaming is larger market than both PC and console gaming.

Extra-EU immigrants are not uniform group. E.g. in Denmark non-western migrants at some point are (weakly) positive net contributors to public finances, but MENAPT immigrants are on avg. net negative their entire life. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...

Is being able to move to Switzerland really an universal human right?

You've made lots of (wild) claims, but provided zero support for them. Also didn't bottom income quartile see the largest growth in last few years?

Something tells me that you have some kind of anti-AI agenda and that you are not really looking at things objectively. Maybe it’s your nick “ai_fry_your_brain”, maybe it’s “ If you disagree with me, you're a slopper.”, who knows!

Either human-like attributes can be described using physics or they are magic. If they can be described using physics then they can be simulated. If they can be simulated then they can be simulated in any Turing complete system, include AoE II.

By that logic an abacus has human-like attributes. Just because it can simulate the processes involved does not mean it is at all practical to compute them.

Besides, LLMs are not a simulation of the physics involved in human consciousness to begin with.


This is the right take. In my opinion, AI can’t ever be conscious but I can’t really prove it - moreover it’s not even a scientific stance because it’s not even falsifiable. But it probably doesn’t matter.

Physically describable doesn't mean computable. You're making too many unjustified logical leaps which makes your argument circular & conflates "physical" w/ "computable".

We don't know any physical processes that allow to compute Turing-incomputable functions. An assumption that the brain uses such a process is not based on any positive knowledge.

Argument from ignorance is not as well known as other fallacies but very common in discussions about sentience, consciousness, and computability, i.e. not having evidence for something doesn't mean that thing is false. It is possible there are physical processes that are not computable & not being aware of such processes doesn't mean the alternative (everything is computable) is true.

So instead of making any unjustifiable claims like "everything physical is computable" you should instead just say "I believe consciousness is computable and that is why it is possible to instantiate it on any computational substrate, including strategy games like Age of Empires, properly arranged dominoes, and water wheels".


OK. I know that we haven't found any processes that violate the physical Church-Turing thesis, and I believe that we will not find them in the brain that got intelligent enough only after scaling to a hundred billion of neurons and hundreds of trillions of synapses. And, BTW, we don't have theories (except the controversial Orch OR) that allow such computations.

Key word being simulated

Taking this word as a "key" just leads to a philosophical zombie dead end which is not tied to anything observable.

"Nobody supposes that the computational model of rainstorms in London will leave us all wet. But they make the mistake of supposing that the computational model of consciousness is somehow conscious. It is the same mistake in both cases."

You can easily find a rebuttal. Why do you think that consciousness is like rain and not like, say, arithmetic?

Sorry, how is arithmetic different?

Because computers don't actually do arithmetic, they simulate it. When you take 2 sticks, add 2 sticks, and obtain 4 sticks, that's arithmetic. Having a raised flag with one lowered flag to the right and the left of it and then changing this configuration to having a single raised flag with two lowered flags right to it, and interpreting this charade as having added 2 to 2 and obtained 4 — that's just a simulation. It didn't actually have added 2 and 2 of anything.

Well, if I write "2 + 2 = 4" on a piece of paper, am I doing arithmetic, or merely simulating it? After all, there are no sticks involved.

But I'm also willing to accept that a computer is simulating arithmetic, and not actually doing it. That makes no difference to me, as long as the output is the same. In fact it's kind of a boring distinction to make.


So just the same, it shouldn't make a difference if LLMs simulate "human-like attributes" or actually possess them, right?

That depends on the question. If the question is “are LLMs conscious” it would matter a lot actually.

"A human brain runs a perfect model of human consciousness. Some people make the mistake of supposing that that makes human brains somehow conscious."

Isn't basically every decile getting richer (i.e. able to afford more things) thanks to economic growth?

No. It's a k-type curve where the high deciles are getting higher and the lows are getting lower, so to speak.

There is increasingly becoming more of a divide between haves and have nots, and it has a temporal component because of how equity has appreciated over the last decade or so. Both housing and stocks.

People from a decade ago have seen absolutely unsustainable appreciation in their assets while doing nothing. That is putting them at structural advantages against younger generations that will not see those same appreciations. It's like the bus has left without them. No matter how hard and fast they run, someone asleep on the bus will always be ahead of them.


> It's a k-type curve where the high deciles are getting higher and the lows are getting lower

The lowest quartile of income have had the highest growth the past four years.


[flagged]


He didn't post a source either. Go look at the Atlanta Fed's wage growth data if you're actually interested.

Ok I did, and I still have no clue where you’re pulling your numbers from. This shows the bottom quartile has the lowest median growth rate in nominal wages. So low in fact it’s negative. In nominal wages. Not even accounting for inflation.

https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/wage-growt...

If you make an outrageous claim with no evidence, don’t be surprised if you are met with skepticism.


> No. It's a k-type curve where the high deciles are getting higher and the lows are getting lower, so to speak.

Could you provide source? I don't think that's true.


That's not true. The highs are getting higher and the lows are getting higher as well.

Looking back in human history, what was the ultimate outcome for similar economic conditions?

A lot of let them eat cake

What if I don’t care about affording more things? And instead want to live in an ethical society that prioritizes stability and universal access to housing, healthcare, and education?

It's perfectly legal for you and like-minded people to set up a commune, and create the society you want.

Or join an existing one.


Would you extend that same sentiment to the extremes of the libertarian crowd too?

I can answer that if you can explain what you mean by extreme libertarianism.

I can go into detail, but for the sake of the argument let’s define it in the Norquist fashion: a government small enough that it can be drowned in the bathtub. A stricter definition might be anything beyond and to include minarchism.

You'll need to be more specific.

“beyond and to include minarchism” is pretty specific.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-watchman_state


Ok, I see that. But you cannot set up such a community within the current US, as it runs afoul of the primacy of Federal law.

A commune, however, can be.


I think the argument that minarchists take is that federal law should be modified to only cover military, courts, and police. A coherent libertarian could only interface with those, although it would be difficult and probably start to look very much like the commune types. The Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal seems like the clearest example. The larger point is that both extremes seem incompatible with modernity.

I don't think it would look like a commune at all. More like the early United States, excluding the slave South.

Right, that’s the yeoman farmer ideal I brought up. I just don’t think that works with anything remotely like modern society so it’s a romantic but impractical idea. IMO it can only work in relatively small groups, just like the commune. Once society reaches a certain level of complexity, necessary practical tradeoffs erode that romanticism.

BTW, the best I can figure is the average commune member quits after about 2 years, cured of the notion that communism is for them.

Same is true for most eco villages, back to the land farms, etc.

It’s a mix of the lifestyle not being exactly what people thought plus them getting culty. In many cases it’s more the latter than the former.


What happens is people get tired of other people not working very diligently, but still getting an equal share.

That’s a real aspect, but only one dimension. Nonetheless, it’s telling that it’s what you distill the entire problem down to. There are many other problems that make the problem hard:

a) these communities often depend on consensus decision making. Problems that require collective action get nearly impossible when the society gets too big

b) People underestimate how much they depend on greater society in a modern context

c) It’s normal for future generations to have evolving values. The original idealistic notions tend to lose their luster to those who were born into it

There are others more unique to communes, but I highlighted those because they also make it hard for the inverse libertarian ideal to work as well. Meaning it has to do as much with human nature as any ideology.


> And instead want to live in an ethical society that prioritizes stability and universal access to housing, healthcare, and education?

Then talk to your local NIMBY. Housing crisis is not due to capitalism being evil, but due to constraining people from building. Healthcare is getting better all the time, we had MASSIVE breakthroughs this year at ASCO (which were made possible by big pharma!). As for education yeah, it could be better but it's completely tangential to the topic.


I think a lot of these statements are, at best, incomplete. For example, healthcare quality can get better while access gets lower, still resulting in worse outcomes for patients. Or, housing cost should be normalized based on size since until recently, houses have been getting larger on average.

i think the reason for your deluge of downvotes is that a society the promotes more things becoming affordable is one that prioritizes stability. universal access to housing, healthcare, and education that people want is only possible in a society that is immensely productive.

Exactly. Those big ticket items that people are pissed off about are "things" too.

Welcome to the forever dissapointed club.

The society you desire can’t exist unfortunately as much as I’ve thought it could and worked for it


There’s no utopia but that doesn’t mean you can’t bend society in one direction or another.

Nobody is talking about utopia

Society has always (yes always) “bent” toward dominating hierarchies because individuals want the stability of being part of the dominating group.


>The society you desire can’t exist

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