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general thoughts on world, not necessarily coherent.

localization

2025-05-10

"attention" by charlie puth appeared on one of my recommended playlists lately, and it reminded me of how, back when this song was on the radio, local radio networks played an altered version with "every party in la" replaced with "every party in the bay." i always found this really funny. the idea of messaging localization is interesting though and is even one reason the democrats lost this election. the value of cohesion is frequently overlooked, and trying to combine and appeal to many disjoint parts of a system to hopefully form some productive amalgamation is inefficient in the long run. the democrats were incoherent - flipping stances on gun rights, immigration, economy, etc. based on audience and speaker, but there is inherent human ability to sniff out non-genuine messaging. even in india, heavy coalition governments have always been extremely fragile and struggle to pass policy. 

a lack of cohesion introduces too many points of failure. two of the great american companies, tesla and epic systems have prioritized consolidating components of their business for the same reason. epic has never acquired and has built everything in-house. consequently, they produce arguably the most stable and error-free software in the industry. 

takeways here are 1. ensure messaging (and decision making generally, e.g. what to do/build/sell) is always formulated bottom-up (i.e. crafting a manifesto and deriving all insights/communications from there). this might seem slow and resistant to adaptation but my conclusion is that it is the best option. this is like how the us government defaults to the constitution as a single source of truth - it might make passing radical policy difficult, but it hedges against losing the country's identity entirely (which can actually happen fairly easily if not protected against). people-pleasing is dangerous and distracting. 2. keep systems centralized and build in-house as much as possible. this has strayed very far from attention by charlie puth, now that i think about it. in any case, i don't think it is difficult to build anything except compute-intensive software locally, so this should be doable. or, can create a sanitization/standardization layer to interact with external software stably. like an actionable systems observability tool (datadog but not impotent), which should be doable today.

hope

2025-05-08

driving home today and was distracted around el monte/280 on-ramp, so fsd was suspended for the rest of the drive. still, as i drove down the highway, i felt my hand itching to press the stalk again and try and enable autopilot, even though i knew it was suspended. eventually, i caved and did press the stalk, and unsurprisingly, it just displayed the error message. this revealed the relative importance of "hope". to use more general terms, i knew something was nearly impossible with high confidence, but something still drove me to shoot for a low-p (really only if tesla code malfunctions somehow?) outcome. although i suppose this is not really generalizable or practically important because the cost to flick the stalk was low? in any case, hope precludes rationality. even when i know something is wrong or not going to work, i will still go back to it, because i have hope that it will work in the future. good, and keeps the rats swimming. 

paradox of agency

2025-04-25

this is partially derived from the last post, but i think acceleration is dramatically outpacing our structural response. we have basically cooked so hard that we haven't adapted our workflows accordingly. 

premise is that ~every economically productive task can be accelerated by some form of ai. my natural assumption was that this would increase output proportionally to the increase in efficiency. however, it seems like the efficiency isn't the bounding constant determining the limit on output, but instead output itself appears to be constant - and the roughly defined output = input * efficiency equation means that as efficiency goes up, input declines in turn. e.g. if you have a task to complete, say writing an essay, of which using ai would halve the time required, it is the general tendency to fill the saved time with consumption of some slop or even just idling instead of completing a second task in the same time. although, i suppose this insight isn't really new. the issue is that societally demanded output from each agent hasn't really increased much, so people have much more time on their hands. 

the impact here is that competition for greatness will actually decline, instead of increasing. the average individual's attention is so vulnerable that they will actually pose less of a threat, because the ensuing replacement of previously productive tasks with slop will accelerate the <Q3's cognitive decline even more than in the status quo. this is based on a general observation that the <~85th percentile prefers slop over doing more than is asked. this means that even though the playing field is likely as level as it has ever been and social mobility is notionally at a local maximum, agency is progressing inversely to capability. as it has always been, a few high-agency low-status individuals will move up the ranks, and in general, the rich will continue to get richer. 

it is tomorrow

2025-04-23

everything is here now. no matter how much we try moving the goalposts defining agi, it is foolish to understate current progress. from inside an exponential curve, everything looks linear, so it's time to zoom out. i expect that the distilled o4 genuinely has a higher (aggregate) operating intelligence than ~70% of the population. xiaomi is building end-to-end, no-hitl factories with 1 phone per second output. spacex broke its streak last july and has already strung together 122 consecutive successes since. launches are nominally publicized, simply because of how routine they have become. the issue with success is that once normalized, it dulls. in the same way that an aged lebron james is almost expected to score 20 points every game, the greatness of the current pace of innovation has been trivialized. 

the cure for all disease is coming, an ai-derived panacea. even private european companies are launching rockets now. if europe is innovating, that is sufficient evidence to prove the uniqueness of these times. yet we still argue about politics - i posit that an overwhelming majority of political issues will be rendered irrelevant within 5 years. healthcare will be solved and costs driven to pennies, conflict will decline because of a reduction of reliance on existing/vulnerable supply chains, and the very foundations of the economy will be disrupted. arguing politics today has immeasurable opportunity cost and societal waste, akin to haggling over the price of fish as magellan set sail, or self-righteously debating union law during the development of the greatest american automobile company in history (joe...). this is no time for ego-boosting policy. it is time to build. 

independence and rigor of thought

2025-04-02

it is easy to speak - today, there are constantly thousands of claims being dispersed at once, many of which directly oppose one another. at the same time, it is becoming easier and easier to access accurate information, since truths are no longer buried in a select few libraries or distributed by the religious or political elite. yet, there is increasingly less value being placed on actually being right. trends select for more sensationalist content at the expense of fact, while it has also become easier to share. i expect that greater than 50% of my intake is actually logically or factually unfounded. this isn't bad in isolation, except i have found myself frequently making decisions based on the comments of one or two or some other small sample of people. i must hold myself to higher standards of rigor in all of my non-instinctive decision making and make sure i can form a defensible path of reasoning (on good premises). this approach also serves the purpose of excising dogmatism - instead of alignment based on political factions, it's advantageous to evaluate each issue independently. it's not logistically hard to be correct, but it is time to start devoting cognitive effort towards being right.

objectivism

2025-03-20

idea gist: man exists for his own sake, highest moral purpose for any man is the pursuit of his own happiness, and sacrifice to benefit others is folly. anti-altruist. fundamentally just radical rationalism, rejecting faith, intuition, and emotion as heuristics for decision making. aligns with "ethical egoism," deeming an action morally right if it promotes the self-interest of the agent. achieving one's own goals produces happiness.

it appears that objectivism is the new norm. there is strong correlation between people becoming emotionally desensitized (consequence of social media, violence in media, etc) and distanced from faith and the general dissolution of societal harmony and collectivism. most humor and banter has become unkind or offensive, but i think this is all cope. why is all humor mean? common jokes go something like "male friendship is about making fun of each other," but, at the risk of sounding weak, i think this is just masking an inability for most people to form genuine emotional connections with those around them. defaulting to darwinian evolution perspective, i struggle to see how unkindness is natural or necessary. have to think about this. regardless, selfishness and lack of empathy is crippling for society. ayn rand is ultra-cynical but perhaps turning out to be right. 

serendipity

2025-03-17

basically, exposure solves serendipity. i consider myself to be an agency truther and firmly believe that nothing is innately beyond my reach, but have to reconcile with the sheer randomness of life. perhaps there is no "randomness" per se but because of the high volume of interactions with other people, institutions, forces, etc life isn't fully in my control. actually, i don't think there is this "ontological randomness" at all, that is inaccurate. there is just this general epistemic uncertainty with this agency hindered only by missing information, and nothing truly incomprehensible or incalculable (barring scientific unknowns). Following this line of reasoning, I align with Laplace's Demon: if i knew all forces and the state of every particle (assuming that i have the intellectual capacity to process this ~infinite volume of data) nothing will be "uncertain" and so I will be able to make 100% informed decisions. thus, must gain exposure to the world and spend as much time interacting with other people as possible to become informed enough to locally maximize agency. the idea of serendipity can be gamed then, basically just by brute forcing exposure to increase knowledge and the probability of "having good things happen."

health

2025-03-16

i have neglected my health for far too long, productivity and energy is completely gameable, it is time to figure this out. at the most basic level i can identify nine (?) parameters: 

1. sleep duration
2. sleep quality
3. sleep frequency (weighing naps, etc)
4. consistency of alignment with circadian rhythm
5. frequency of eating
6. quality of food consumed (vague by convenience, but this can probably be broken down into 3-4 categories of its own)
7. frequency of water consumption
8. volume of water consumed
9. oxygen concentration (roughly ∝ 1/(carbon dioxide concentration)) 

probably more that i'm missing, but this is enough to work with for now. i do think that these params are each weighted differently, one-shot calculations as follows:

sleep duration: 0.6, sleep quality: 0.2, sleep frequency: 0.2, circadian rhythm: 0.5, frequency of eating: 0.4, food quality: 0.5, water frequency: 0.7, water volume: 0.6, oxygen concentration: 0.7. will align accordingly and record impact on energy levels. it is all in my control.  

doing hard things

2025-03-03

i think doing hard things is a habit that needs to be gradually and continually practiced, even without any immediate feedback. the main reason people like to do things that are easy is fundamentally that easy things offer quicker reward cycles, so success dopamine is easier to access. going back to the (somewhat tired, admittedly) example of social media scrolling, it is perhaps the easiest thing to do in this sense: one or two movements of your finger, and a dopamine reward is immediately presented. some things have slightly more friction, like going on a walk or run, which does increase dopamine/endorphins, but requires more effort. the drop off is almost immediate though, because getting started is hard, even though large rewards do eventually (and definitively) come. 

doing hard things in the context of learning is even more difficult (tautological, my fault) because learning already has less evident reward mechanisms. you really only get reinforcement when you (a) ship something cool, (b) solve a problem, or (c) answer a question or just generally seem smart with others. the actual learning process isn't rewarding (although gamification attempts to solve), so drop off is even steeper. 

yet, if instead of viewing learning as some abstract concept it is perceived as a habit as fundamental as pushing in your chair after a meal or brushing your teeth before bed, you can reshape your expectations for reward during the process itself. i suppose this is somewhat flawed, since those habits may have been trained with negative reinforcement during childhood, but there are undoubtedly examples where this happened organically (note to self, need to pinpoint). then, there isn't an expected immediate reward, but instead prediction of future reward (e.g. respect, no cavities, etc.) serves as the motivator. although, that does logically exclude learning things for the sake of learning them, because that has no long term motivation either. i think this is where it's important that learning is almost auto-rewarding in the process itself. when i learn something new, i get a kick of joy or some equivalent feeling. i'll investigate this a bit deeper. 

i think even ignoring the unfinished "auto-rewarding learning" idea, one way to get a close enough high-n riemann sum of rewards is constantly doing one of the (a), (b), or (c) listed earlier. after every incremental bit of learning, either build something, solve a problem (or problem set), or talk to other people either discussing or explaining the content you just learned (ideally in the context of maximal past learning also). this will definitely take longer than if you just read content in isolation, but that isolated reading won't actually happen, so you might as well do it this way. 

i also think we are innately programmed to dislike failure, but that is a double edged sword. yes, a distaste for failure might disincentivize you from trying something difficult in the first place, since you might not be able to even access the first reward after the first batch of learning, if you forfeit in frustration of your self-perceived inability to one-shot the comprehension of the content you are reading/exposed to. however, this distaste for failure might also mean that once you do get to the evaluation (project, problem solving, explanation) stage, if you fail then, you will be driven to go back, re-study, and return to the same challenge and conquer it successfully this time around. this basically sets you snowballing, since you will learn whatever you don't know and pick up everything you need to, and at every stage your evaluations will drive your desire to learn. however, this means that the most direct point of failure is in the pre-evaluative stages, when you are just being exposed to content. maybe this means that evaluations should be first? so that you access that motivation instantly. regardless, if that hurdle can be surpassed, it should be smooth-ish sailing from there.

epistemic speciation

2025-01-30

i was speaking with mt, who asked "when are humans going to evolve to being creatures of more intellect?" adjacently, km believes that the extinction of learning is inevitable because we will have physical ai integrations with us at all time (think syed's glasses/the meta ray-bans or friend/humane ai wearables), reducing the need to comprehensively understand topics at an intuitive level. i.e. in a world where humans have low-compute RAG always accessible, there will be no need to learn and retain information. unintentionally, short-form content prevalence is already facilitating this transition by shortening attention spans. even i, hoping to alleviate the burden on my already weakened LTM, yearn for a tool that i can speak to verbally and have automatically "file" information, tasks, and thoughts in a low-latency database distributed across all devices, wearables, etc (eventually with task-completion capabilities by either agentically connecting to public facing apis or operator-style cv). however, though i only intended for this to replace my LTM for things like biographical data and ungrouped opinions, i now see how, over time, this obviates the need to intuitively understand ideas. still, i disagree with km: i do not see humanity facing an extinction of learning, but instead, i predict an intellectual speciation (with conversational accessibility as a wedge). 

i expect a good litmus test for ~"intellect" is the capacity to rationally have existential conversation. my reasoning follows: even with high-spend ai research the general consensus is that the median human is still more intelligent, else it would be somewhat universally agreed that agi has been achieved. what is intelligence here? in my model, intelligence is the ability to process information to form conclusions. i use this definition to facilitate a direct parallel with artificial intelligence, which can fundamentally be characterized as a data processing algorithm. neural nets are trained on finite datasets, but if benchmarking was only done on training data these models would display remarkable accuracy. it seems intuitive to think of humans as different and not "overfitting" in the same way because we aren't formally trained on a fixed dataset, but i expect that we only possess one or two reasoning "layers" superior to existing models, and with self-reasoning models like r1 and o3, even this superiority is blurred (is this agi?). humans perhaps learn these parameters from the world's data more quickly than these models, but the proposition that we have less formalized data "training" fails because we are exposed to millions of sensory data points every second, so humans really are just physical rl and self learning trained neural nets. with this premise, i claim that our day-to-day processing is still roughly an extension of testing on training data because patterns propagate, so experiences are never wholly unique. 

conversely, imagination is inference. i.e. imagination definitionally involves generating information beyond patterns of reality. here is where the divergence begins, seen with existential conversation as a vessel. discussing the nature of existence and evaluating forward-facing claims about our trajectory requires an ascendant level of critical thinking. beyond simply processing input sensory information and forming pattern-based conclusions, it is the thinker's burden to produce the input information for analysis prior to applying rational thought to these premises to evaluate whatever framework is on hand. any human by nature can engage in basic thought. this capacity for intellectual conversation is dwindling. now, generalize this to all hypotheticals - there appears to be a tangible distinction between basic reasoning and this "hypothetical-processing" intelligence. in fact, as dangerous conspiracy theorizing can be, it still aligns with this more meta-level thinking and requires abstract thought. for simplicity, we can label those capable of just basic reasoning as "reasoners" and those able and willing to productively engage in discussions on the nature of value, religion, morals, belief systems, etc. as "thinkers". 

this is where the divergence begins. 

first, for comparison in the status quo, we can borrow from Brave New World, equating thinkers to a superset of the "alpha" and "beta" groups while reasoners are similar to a combination of the "beta" and "gamma" classes. there is overlap, which i defend because there are people that are borderline and are capable of intellectual thought sporadically but generally have nothing churning. the cracks already show. then, the overfitting becomes pervasive and irreversible, identical to how overfitting cannot be reversed when training a model. with instant access to any piece information on-demand, we will stop thinking deeply about the patterns that would have organically led us to that information. ~ learning the guitar just by playing tabs of specific songs versus through systematic learning and theory. but, if you learn the guitar song-by-song, unless you play thousands of songs (and retain learned patterns), making inferences to new, unlearned songs will be arduous, and sometimes impossible. generally, with context-specific information becoming our only consumption, those who lean heavily on ai will forget how to recognize patterns and draw inference. also, short-form content is the other driver. consumption of this rapid-fire content, which is almost stochastically distributed for what it covers (your preferred content, which is already distributed + app-recommended/trending content), leaves one with (1) a flood of hyperspecific and uncategorized information and (2) little time to actually process and sort said information. so, capacity for inference begins to decline and incipient speciation is put into motion. 

second, the divide accelerates along current gaps in wealth. even though the cost of compute will go down, i still believe that the wealthy will amass compute. notwithstanding the ideas of the "democratization" of ai, i expect that the proportion of the population that has the technical capacity to work on ai development and distribution is marginal, so the compute-rich will retain control. then, they fully control what the beta/gamma reasoners consume. companies like meta currently control the content that 500m+ people see daily. the impact is as follows: these content-distribution algorithms gradually eat at the beta/gamma reasoners' belief systems. if people no longer have the time or ability to critically think about the information they "process" (not even processing information anymore, really) those with current systems of belief will see them slowly dissipate and others will never develop these systems at all. with no independently-constructed values to defer to when one is posed with a decision or dilemma, the herd mentality that is already growingly present will become dominant - but only in the beta/gamma class. so, interacting with km's initial prediction, i expect that learning won't go extinct globally, but perhaps for the beta/gamma class. as learning falls, so will opinions, because opinion and disagreement is predicated on the capacity for critical thinking. case in point [cow], who is arguably a vegetable already and is perhaps among the first to have fallen. now, with opinion and skepticism dwindling, terminal speciation begins.

i foresee the creation of three classes during this process. first, traditional thinkers (epitome: mt) who have harnessed critical thinking and applied it to literature, the arts, and philosophy. they will find meaning in independent abstract thought, irreplaceable by any artificial intelligence. second, builders, who are the technically gifted minority subset of the population that constructs the tools and systems used to entertain, control, sustain, and leverage the general populace. people in this beta group are capable of understanding systems, innovating, and leadership, setting them apart even if the technical barrier ceases to exist. i do not think of these two classes as distinct species - rather, they are one species subject to niche differentiation, finding commonality in critical thought. however, there will be a concrete and irreversible divide between the thinker and builder superclass and the remaining majority of the population. what was once a beta/gamma class of reasoners who retained even sparse capacity for intellectual thought will regress into a fully gamma and even potentially majority-"delta" population. they will be consumers, generally averse to thought, and more of a market than contributing group to the general economy. perhaps the gamma/delta class will be given ubi of some sort. i say "speciation" not because i expect a barrier in reproduction (although with gene editing techniques initially accessible to the wealthy, i cannot rule this out completely), but instead because i predict the accessibility of conversation to be the barrier. the alpha/beta species will be unable to engage in meaningful and fulfilling conversation with the gamma/delta groups, and the formation of different intellectual classes will propagate to new social classes, eventually creating a relatively firm distinction between the groups.

some people (sd, an) are academically successful and innately technically proficient, but incapable of intellectual or deep thought and succumb to the same intellectual overfitting. in conversation with dq, we concluded that as the value of academic prowess declines greatly, only intellectual and emotional capability will matter. the speciation will be anisotropic, with the divide extending strongly on the line of intellect, but marginal on the academic grain. there will be academics on both sides. we continue that (dlt, al)-esque thinkers will thrive, despite their current perceived weaknesses. discussion also involved theorizing about how to insulate from overfitting. obviously, the brain must be exercised and trained with intellectually stimulating tasks (eg: dq annotations) and reliance on shortcut tools and overstimulation must be mitigated. however, dq claims that if one can make a clear distinction between (1) "non-stimulating" or "rote" tasks to be completed with the freedom of artificial intelligence, along with limited doses of short-form stimulation and (2) intellectually demanding and necessary work to which critical thinking must be applied, there can be a moderate approach involving both. the only problem i see with this is that this forces the individual to place the burden on himself to accurately determine what is intellectual or not, which i see as extremely easy to misjudge. however, this can perhaps be achieved with strong will and proper reference points, and maybe the ability to accurately judge what is intellectual/not and moderate information consumption accordingly can actually serve as a self-selector to enter the intellectual class. interesting to see how this plays out, but for now i will strive to avoid bad influence altogether. 

deepseek alleged gpus

2025-01-24

alexandr wang claims that deepseek has 50k nvidia h100s that they can't disclose because of export restrictions, which is adjacent to the asml situation. basically just ordering h100s from singapore and taiwan and shipping them to china to bypass export restrictions. half of nvidia's revenue is from china, so makes sense. alibaba and bytedance are already buying up h100s and apparently tencent bought and disclosed 50k h100s in a single quarter. deepseek, etc underreporting ai investment to avoid scrutiny. realistically, it is no surprise that chinese ai is outperforming american models. they basically have access to all american training data + internal chinese data, so their models are trained on basically a superset of our data. chinese model costs are lower because of better infrastructure and cheaper energy. need to rapidly scale up nuclear to compete.

2025-01-25

never mind actually. glossed over the fact that this is alexandr wang, so he is probably incentivized to defend scale and say that non-data innovation to train better model is fraud. skeptical.

2025-01-26

musk backs up alexandr wang's claim that deepseek has thousands of undisclosed h100s. there are two possibilities: either this is insane cope from musk after cortex or deepseek is actually lying. i think the latter is more likely.

europe :(

2025-01-23

whole continent appears to be lost. newest issue is netherlands exempting asml sales to china from export requirements. essentially, asml DUVs no longer fall under "dual-use" export reporting requirements, and this has been the case since september 2023 but only revealed now. dutch dual export rules essentially require any goods with both commercial and military applications to have all exports disclosed. the only reason they have to disclose EUV sales is that the EU considers EUVs "sensitive technology," but DUVs aren't in that bucket. main purpose behind this is so that analysts are aware of states' military capabilities, but it seems like netherlands is tossing that out of the window. this seems like an immediate response to the trump victory, and netherlands just trying to play both sides. or, this could just be asml trying to cash out asap before china develops a super-EUV machine, which seems inevitable at current rate of progress. filing this behind recent uk gang violence stories and denmark-greenland situation. 

paris climate accords

2025-01-22

initial reaction to trump withdrawing from paris climate accords was negative, assumed he was making reckless, destructive decision. after reading about the accords themselves though, now clear that pulling out is a good idea for a few reasons. first, america reducing carbon emissions today offers no solvency for climate crisis. china emits more carbon than usa, india, and eu combined, over 34% of global emissions. ok, staying in paris accords might mitigate american emissions marginally, but china already established zero desire to target net zero emissions. today, china building more coal plants than any year prior. so, benefits of american presence in accords are negligible. in contrast, energy investment is actually desperately necessary today in regard to national security. united states has zero nuclear plants in development, lagging behind in solar, currently only producing 2210 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) of energy. china in contrast is building 25 nuclear plans currently, with plans to add 150 new reactors by 2035 and will surpass us in nuclear power generation by 2030, producing 2950 mtoe total right now. this is bad for three reasons. first, china nuclear dominance offers them stronger insulation against energy price fluctuations relative to usa. second, china is exporting reactors, injecting soft power through energy dependencies in developing countries. third, china controlling uranium supply chains for mining and processing, which is self-evident in its threat. third, paris accords are inherently flawed. even though it might seem that every country is signing onto the same commitments, what is actually required and requested from each country varies. small, developing, poverty-stricken countries might be requested to stop dumping in their river or something, while america might be required to enact almost degrowth-adjacent policies. also, article 9 of accords states that "Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention." obviously there is no enforcement but we are still sending $2B+ every year. also, china and india are considered developing countries, by definitions in the paper. this is absurd, we do not need to be gifting them millions. similar principles apply to the WHO also, where we have poured billions of dollars in similarly. so, perhaps not a preposterous decision after all. 

becoming part of a struggle

2024-10-15

university protests seemed to be dying down, but students walked out at columbia last week again. no comment on the specific politics, but youth protests seem to be constant, so it is important to understand why. importantly, many of the people participating in these protests are wealthy with no direct ties to people involved in or directly affected by the conflict. high schools are holding student walk-outs in support of palestine. people shared social media posts about the conflict, some radical. in parallel, the black lives matter protests also saw high youth turnout (some posted black squares on twitter in support), and this theme can generally be observed in close to all trending social issues. the truth is that people want to become part of a struggle even if they are not directly affected, because by siding with a marginalized group, they start to see themselves as marginalized as well, which brings them some type of satisfaction. people have not suffered a day in their lives, and so they engage in this "suffering tourism." but just like actual tourists, they are not actually deeply invested, but instead only care about issues at the superficial level. they do not care about solving the problem, because their goals are inherently selfish, despite their pledges to the cause. this can also explain why (besides simple incompetence, which might also still be the case) people choose to use protest as their weapon for societal change, even though protest is impotent at its core. 

everything comes back to attention-seeking. infants cry because they need attention. this mindset carries on into adulthood. many people join these movements for their own social purposes, with no intention of actually solving a problem. by latching onto a "marginalized" group, people begin to view themselves as marginalized as well, and this self-pity often acts as a magnet for attention. further, this becomes an issue of purpose. as a well-to-do, politically connected, full-tuition columbia student with everything practically spoonfed throughout childhood, one will inevitably begin asking the existential questions, and joining a protest that appears to (at least superficially) have a real mission might fill that missing purpose for them. nowhere is there an actual motivation to solve the problem. in fact, if these conflicts magically disappeared overnight, these student protest leaders would be left without publicity, along with the power they wield within these rebelling organizations. they are inclined to drag these protests out as long as possible. this relates to longshoremen issue in a way, need to discuss that later. so at least among the leadership, the incentives do not point toward solving these problems. expanding on "publicity", this doesn't mean media coverage in the general sense, but instead just increased attention in general (human nature). this is actually just a variation of the trump effect. while trump's camp argues that any of his failures are because he is a martyr or victim to the system, youth protesters have the same, dangerous ideology. especially considering that the youth are not fully mentally developed, it is rash for them to believe that any criticism of one's movement or course of action is just unjustified persecution. however, attention becomes a very territorial issue. hearing criticism from another party might seem like the critic is trying to take attention away from you, which could be why there is so much hostility. 

protests are also the worst possible choice for actually making change, which is why i am more even inclined to believe that the people in charge of these groups don't care about change at all. in any given scenario, the opportunity cost of protesting is always time and money that could be spent taking concrete action to actually solve the problem. congratulations, you and 100 other high schoolers just walked out of class in support of palestine. you have achieved nothing except wasting time that could have been spent learning to prepare for future concrete contributions for your cause, or even directly participating now. same thing applies for university protests as well. schools aren't going to stop investing in american weapons companies just because some students were upset about it. protest is futile. spend time on solutions, not complaining. this is especially true for the youth, because they have no societal leverage. the women's suffrage movement triumphed through protests because of the immense leverage they had - it was during the height of world war one, when the entire american economy rested on women's shoulders. their bargaining position was as high as it could have been, while for the youth of today, there is no negotiating power whatsoever. but there is no way people do not know this. actually, these specific protests are net negative to a pretty significant degree. first, they unintentionally hurt and subsequently alienate people that would otherwise have considered supporting the cause. for example, the people who illegally blocked off golden gate bridge did nothing except draw hatred for the conflict. even people protesting at schools only really make people think that their cause is obnoxious. but worse, these protests are quickly fueled by the herd mentality towards turning into blatant hate against specific races/religions/groups of people, which is very ironic. so this means people who protest (recall, people of privilege) are actually so desperate for attention that they are willing to sabotage their own "movement" by conducting these net-negative protests, just because it feeds their own attention-seeking desire. careful, then. 

degrowth disease

2024-10-13

spacex launched starship and caught it with mechazilla first try earlier today. we can reuse rocket ships and cure cancer and kill terrorists from thousands of miles away. how in the world do people subscribe to degrowth?? this ideology is just the highest form of cope. it is not hard to get cracked but the first step is to stop complaining as talk is a substitute for action. i am being hypocritical writing this but even talking about what you are going to do is bad, gives artificial and false sense of completion and leads to complacency. just learn more and get better and solve bigger problems. it's not that hard. 

but humans have always craved something they can blame for their faults or misfortunes. if one is poor or unhappy with their way of life, it's easy to point at people who are more successful and say that they are somehow the reason why. also, this fundamentally stems from jealousy again, because people cannot bear to see others be more successful. however, degrowth is this but to an unreasonable scale, not only blaming technological progress but advocating for its elimination. yes, we didn't have global-warming-causing cars and factories 1000 years ago but we also lived to 25 and were miserable for at least 24 of those years. societally, we need to focus on solving new problems in novel ways, instead of reverting to a time before these problems existed. the solution to climate change isn't to stop using nrs but to innovate. 

bigger issue is that degrowth-adjacent philosophy is already institutionalized. at a governmental level this is because of incorrect priorities, but these priorities do come from voters who are inherently misguided as mentioned earlier and in uber shuttle notes, so it all goes back to that jealousy then. for example, doj is suing spacex currently because they discriminated against asylum seekers during the interview process. also, faa is being uncooperative with launch auth. this company is catching rockets with robot claws. development at this rate is unprecedented, and these bureaucratic cows are worried about spacex not wanting potential threats to national security working for them. at the same time, they keep fattening the impotent pigs that are boeing and nasa. hopefully starship test five will prove to be pivotal from a regulatory approval standpoint, but only time will tell. for them, equity is about dragging everybody down instead of bringing everyone up. 

uber shuttle nyc

2024-10-12

uber launched new shuttle from laguardia to a few locations in nyc for $18, each vehicle holds 16-18 people. bandwagon reaction is "congrats, uber just invented buses" but that is so silly man. straw man of the century, but the worst part is that its unironic. really, the bigger issue here is that people can't come to terms with the correlation between poverty and being societally destructive, and even the people that do understand this get the causation wrong. poverty does not cause bad behavior. millions of good poor people disprove. people who are unfit to behave in society - e.g. criminals, or socially obnoxious people - trend towards being poor due to that behavior. the reason people want to avoid buses is not because they hate poor people, but because they hate degenerates that also happen to be poor as a result, thus forced to ride the bus. nothing backing this, but i bet if you asked 100 poor people if we need to be harsher on crime, 70+ would say yes, but left paints this picture that going hard on crime is anti-poor. honestly the poor are even bigger victims of this destructive behavior, since they don't have protection. back to uber...18 dollars isn't even crazy. this hate all stems from jealousy, because i cannot fathom why anyone would buy into this anti-cap degrowth agenda for any other reason. rich get richer, people are too ambitionless to succeed, so they fallaciously complain. degrowth is a disease. 

2025-05-16

it is happening again. people are very quick to decide that these large companies are some mindless, illogical entities ("why would uber just reinvent the bus?"); it is willful ignorance that prevents them from asking why.  infinite routes, on-demand, no fentanyl. why are people so opposed?

inertia

2024-10-11

mind and body are reluctant to change circumstances, so it is important that the initial set of circumstances put in place is productive. for example, when listening to music or audio, my brain is resistant to changing the song. so, if i play something peaceful, meditative, or focusing initially, brain's reluctance to change it will mean that i maintain peaceful or focused state.

price gouging

2024-10-10

price gouging is key, price caps are destructive, americans need to know econ. hurricane helene (north carolina) and hurricane milton (tampa) are destroying the east/south east united states right now. consequently, prices for everything are going up. saw guy on twitter getting 400k likes for saying that airlines increasing ticket prices out of florida from $1200 to $3000 bucks is devil's work. shows how little most americans know about economics (or they just want something to hate, people have lots of hate in their hearts). realistically, price gouging key for three reasons. First, greed drives supply flow. If airline knows that they can charge 3x flying through florida, they will fly more planes through florida. no airline has an incentive to fly through any particular region if there are price caps - realistically, they would be inclined to avoid disaster areas for safety. no price gouging, no flights. Second, demand-adjusted pricing filters buyers. if prices are low or artificially capped, people will fly even if they have alternative non-flight options. however if prices are inflated, people with other options will avoid flight for cheaper alternatives - only people with flight as their only choice will take the flights. ultimately, price gouging ensures demand is filtered generally to only people who need x. third, generalize first reason to all sectors. people bringing barrels of gas to sell at highs or even like household goods during covid are only there because they can make more money. price caps don't lead to everyone getting goods at a lower price, but instead just no one having any goods at all. alternative to price gouging (high prices high supply) is not some magical low prices high supply scenario, but just low prices low supply. pls kamala no price caps
think (rocket)