Doesn’t one major fund reducing investment in fossil fuels and increasing investment in renewable energy precisely migrate towards the notion of helping solve demand and encourage technological breakthroughs and innovation?
I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others. This is mostly fine in western rich countries, and we already do this to some extent by putting extra taxes and fees on petrol, carbon emissions and stuff.
Becoming reliant on countries you dont want to be reliant on, and pretending we dont desperately need this to get the wheels turning is a strategic blunder.
Higher global fossil fuels costs have strong negative effects on peoples welfare, especially in poorer countries. Whenever we get high oil/gas prices, we get price jumps on artificial fertilizer, food, transport and energy. Everything gets more expensive. Its straight up national emergency when something threatens supply of oil and gas in many of these countries when we get events like closing of the hormuz strait.
> I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others.
I too thought this for a long time. But after watching taxes on consumption basically be a non-starter in the US for a long time, I’m not so sure anymore. Gas taxes are also regressive, which means the people who feel it the most are the ones least able to pay it. Raising the gas tax while retaining one’s elected position is challenging in the US to say the least. In most places in the US, driving is not a luxury.
To be clear, I think we need to move off of fossil fuels to the greatest extent possible as soon as possible. For those with means, it is a great moral failing to continue to drive a gas guzzler and heat one’s home with fossil fuels when there are better affordable alternatives. I’ve been driving an EV for nearly four years; it is now not just more affordable than a gas powered vehicle, it is more convenient. For me, the cherry on the top is that I also do not pay for electricity, because I took advantage of the pre-Trump II era solar tax subsidy and built a massive one.
The tax break was good for me, and it’s a shame that is gone (I paid off that panel in 5 MONTHS with the help of the subsidy), but tax breaks really only help the relatively wealthy. We need an investment in infrastructure for the masses to break their dependence on fossil fuels. I’m not really sure what that is.
Generally, academia has always had a measure of bias to it. However the bias was never so blatant and never so against producing an environment where good research could feasibly be created. The vast majority of research is non political increments of existing non political increments where the main conflicts are personal beefs among flawed individual PIs and maybe being asked what fig leaf one offers to ensure that the funding doesn’t just go to a bunch of white wealthy straight men. Once you have funding you can be set for years to focus on your work, assuming you don’t do something dumb like make sexist or racist remarks, and even then your funding is generally secure you just might not get a new round 3 years later(probably will though because controversies die pretty fast).
I know a lot of hay and media exists about how academia is yadda yadda biased and anti intellectual. But of course a lot of that is cherry picked examples of controversial figures or individual missteps among individual institutions. This is a bit like taking a classroom with one rowdy asshole and then declaring the whole school must use physical violence as discipline from now on.
I believe the evidence claimed is that there aren’t better outcomes for smart kids. Schools that claim they have better outcomes just selected for kids that would always have better outcomes. Like if I claimed my basketball team has better outcomes because I got to make sure all my players were above 6 foot. These 6 foot players don’t necessarily benefit from being in a team with other 6 foot players, but I’m saying people should apply for my team because I’m doing so much better than the team that can’t make those weeding out decisions. I’m intentionally conflating the success of my capacity to select for success with my capacity to coach a team.
But surely if having the best possible basketball team is important for national success, then it makes sense to pour more resources into the players with more talent
I think games don’t have to be fun. There’s plenty of games where fun would be super inappropriate and yet the games are very popular. This applies to a lot of psychological or survival horror games. I think better is that a game must be compelling. There must be something encouraging you to play more, more so than any frustration or conflict the game introduces.
There really isn’t that much incentive to accuse a much wealthier man of rape. Famously, justice is rarely (if ever) metered out when the accused person is wealthy and influential. This guy (allegedly) violently raped a woman on his boat and he still gets a speaking gig, so.
If you’re so confident it’s a solid way to get ahead, please go ahead and try it yourself.
> Famously, justice is rarely (if ever) metered out when the accused person is wealthy and influential. This guy (allegedly) violently raped a woman on his boat and he still gets a speaking gig, so.
"So"? The fact that someone is alleged of rape and doesn't lose their invited speech is hardly evidence of injustice. Allegations are not convictions nor proof of guilt.
It seems you are against the presumption of innocence. This presumption is itself a cornerstone of justice, not the opposite.
Note that I was not speaking on the guilt or innocence of any specific person, just pointing out that when it comes to committing sexual violence the incentives to make accusations don’t appear to actually mete out as is claimed because the people who are accused rarely, if ever, have any actual negative consequences.
> actually mete out as is claimed because the people who are accused rarely, if ever, have any actual negative consequences.
I think the opposite is true. Accusing someone of rape is often very bad for the accused person, even if the claim is never substantiated. False rape accusations are defamatory.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle.
This is not a legal forum. (In either the literal "this is an internet forum" sense, or the broader "place for discussion" sense.)
If you want to defend your techbro idols of charges far, far too many of their brethren are unquestionably guilty of, you're going to need a stronger argument than "you're not allowed to say you think he's guilty unless a court agrees with you!!"
I really like Ray Nayler’s work, who intersects his real experience in international politics with science fiction technology. His Tusks of Extinction uses the sci-fi notion of brain transfer and bringing back mammoths to explore the economical pressures behind poaching. His “Where the axe is buried” explores surveillance state technology with political bodies that feel like real modern nations.
Man this approach and philosophy about art baffles me because the greatest and most moving works of art to me couldn’t possibly be created by an LLM. For example “Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate”, which is the only item remaining when the artists lover (Stephen Earabino) died of AIDS and his family threw out everything he ever owned leaving just the box fan. It’s just a box fan but there’s so much loss and pain in that installation. Same as “"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) ", which is just a pile of colorful candy that audience members are welcome to take from, whose original weight is the ideal weight of a Ross who diminished and died of AIDS.
There’s no gatekeeping in the processes of these works, no secrecy, not even really whatever you’re talking about. These works would in fact be utterly diminished by being produced by an LLM because they’re trying to capture the stories of real, existing people who had real, painful experiences. I have no empathy with a machine but I have all the empathy of a man who loved a man whose family hated him so much when he died they wouldn’t even leave his lover with anything more than a box fan and so he decided to declare the box fan to be art.
What you’re talking about is found object art so I’m confused. These objects are not created by the artist at all. In fact, they were created in a factory by machines. You’re responding to the story behind it, which is also something a LLM could’ve created. I understand if you’d feel betrayed if someone put a found object piece in a museum with a fake story created by an LLM, but let’s not pretend like a LLM is not capable of doing exactly that and getting the exact same response out of you provided that they can convince you it’s real. You might be tempted to argue that what’s real matters and what’s not doesn’t, but now you’re just stuck having to figure out what the hell is real or not. A lot of human biography is arguably fake already.
I fw found object art in general, but let’s be clear: found object art is a great example of exactly what I’m talking about. It argues that art doesn’t need to be handmade with intention by an artist. Instead, it can be a random object, created by an environmental process that the artist has little control over
No, sorry, a lot of the original post I was responding to was my bafflement that artists are supposed to be gatekeeping their strategies or techniques when it’s very evident to me that the art that moves me the most really didn’t gatekeep anything, and in fact the opposite. I’m not particularly anti LLM being involved in the creative process, I just had no idea wtf you were talking about with gatekeeping artistic intent. I also think these pieces fundamentally don’t work if the story they were telling was fiction. There are fictional stories like Pose that speak to very similar cultural moments but Pose is not Paris is Burning and that distinction is fundamentally important to the place of art in society. I’m very baffled that you’re seemingly saying as long as I am lied to about what I think is true, thats the same as a real work existing.
Iirc this is an attorney who cannot quit his job because he’s actually a military lawyer, and subject to military law (quitting is a dereliction of duty and comes with criminal consequences). It’s likely he was voluntold and is now stuck in an unwinnable situation.
Trick is to not get into the unwinnable situation. I think the correct response is to not shield clients from blame when they refuse or are unable to comply with court orders and throw them under the bus. Which is what Julie Le did when she informed the court the violation was intentional, and was fired for.
"Julie Le, was removed from her post in Minnesota after she told Judge Jerry Blackwell the violations were the result of both a personnel shortage and lackluster procedures intended to ensure orders are followed." “And, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I’m trying to fix it,” she said. “The system sucks. This job sucks.”
If he's held in contempt, it's an excuse to stop doing the things he probably personally disagrees with anyway (since the government is essentially a rogue actor). At least the poor overworked soul will get some rest
He's not going to get any rest, he is just being fined $500 per day until the petitioner's personal effects are returned to him. His caseload hasn't changed.
It’s more like, millennials got older and started drinking less (as happens), and Gen Z drinks different things like hard seltzer, and also drinks a bit less overall. Plus there were just way too many craft brewers making hoppy ipa to begin with.
Unfortunately, hoppy IPA seems to constitute the majority of the survivors. I have no interest personally in suffering through another hazy sour grapefruit triple ipa, but that seems to be about 90% of craft brewery output these days.
Interesting, where I live in Brooklyn it seems this is no longer an issue. Tons of non-hoppy craft options like pilsners, stouts, lagers, etc at ~every craft brewery or gastropub.
The thing that makes me nervous is the statement that they plan to use AI. AI? The thing that is mathematically incapable of perfection, on finance information, for which perfection is table stakes? Not to mention all the privacy issues (although that boat has sailed).
The people in charge have a pathological hatred for the IRS. AI is just an excuse to continue destroying the capabilities of the IRS. In the meantime, they’ll keep borrowing to fund the government while telling everyone it’s ok because they slashed programs that make up a tiny portion of the budget. This can go on until there is a major economic shock related to US debt, but honestly, most of them will be dead by the time that happens.
I thought I would give the Treasury the benefit of the doubt for a moment and check whether they meant LLMs like we're all assuming, or possibly a more specific finance-focused type of AI. Like how we have specialist neural net AI helping with radiology.
Looking at their official info document[1]... "a secure AI-based chat solution"... "AI-assisted code development"...
1. Rich cheats for whom complexity is the goal. Reduced enforcement benefits them without the guilt. They can construct nonsensical schemes but if no one ever audits them they get to feel like they are paying what they owe despite being freeloaders.
2. Strangle the baby types: they hate the federal government. They deliberately want to reduce its income to force cuts to government spending (programs and staff). If they can they will cut other parts of the government then use that to justify reducing taxes. Nothing else matters except shrinking the federal government as much as possible via any means possible. These types also enjoy taking any government service that works and people like and making it as terrible as possible to kill popular support thus making it easier to cut the program entirely.
Most tax returns these days are prepared and submitted electronically so the basic work of the arithmetic involved should be as close as possible to perfect already. Evaluating that is going to be pretty mathematically intensive though and LLMs have been pretty bad at that. Tool usage has gotten it better so maybe they'll just hand off the validation to the existing traditional computing and mostly be vibes based, 'does this return look legit?' evaluation.
