Greg's recent activity
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI don’t think I’ve ever been more ambivalent about something I’ve read! In a lot of ways I agree, the concept of collective societal aspiration and a duty to an abstract sense of morality rather...I don’t think I’ve ever been more ambivalent about something I’ve read!
In a lot of ways I agree, the concept of collective societal aspiration and a duty to an abstract sense of morality rather than to blind and selfish wealth maximisation does (at least subjectively) seem to have declined sharply.
But I see plenty of worse examples historically, plenty of situations where that abstract morality was either rewritten to justify the exact same kind of wealth maximisation (just within a strict hierarchy rather than the more freelance shittiness we see now), or it was used directly as a cause célèbre for atrocities.
I also don’t see what your goal for an outcome is. I’m fascinated by religion, more so in my experience than a lot of people for whom it’s a daily or weekly observance, but I don’t believe any of it and I’d be lying to you and myself if I claimed to. Morality is of deep importance to me, but religion is largely orthogonal to that from what I see in myself and others.
Lastly, I’d be fascinated to know your thoughts on the negative correlation between religiosity and quality of life at a nation state scale. And I’m not talking about GDP or other materialist bullshit, I’m talking societal trust, equality, happiness. I’m talking Denmark or Iceland or New Zealand vs any highly religious country you’d care to mention.
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Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech
Greg Link ParentAnd it’s the perfect analogy, whether either of you meant it to be or not! A movement triggered by the economic and political concerns you rightly point out, but one that responded by direct...And it’s the perfect analogy, whether either of you meant it to be or not! A movement triggered by the economic and political concerns you rightly point out, but one that responded by direct attack on the automation technology itself.
Then, as now, nuance is hard, and introspective nuance that hits one’s sense of self and sense of purpose is really really hard. I imagine some Luddites saw attacks on equipment as a means of direct action towards political and economic change and equitable distribution of the gains of automation. I also imagine a hell of a lot of them were justifiably scared and unbalanced by a change that shook their economic and social status, and absolutely wanted to hit pause and halt the technological change itself.
I see a lot of breathless corporate bullshit pushing AI in unjustifiable ways, and I see a lot of genuinely transformative power in the technology. I see a lot of very reasonable anti-AI backlash because of that corporate behaviour, and I see a fair amount of unexamined blind anger against the technology itself too.
90% of the time, when someone frames an issue as “taking jobs”, they’re contributing to the anti-technology rather than anti-corporate argument whether they intend to or not. The implication of “taking jobs” is that the jobs should remain, despite a machine being able to do them instead. Sometimes there’s a quality of work argument attached, which is where things get more nuanced again, but often it’s a genuine belief that jobs are a necessity and that blocking technological progress is preferable to eliminating them.
Wealth redistribution and work reform are legitimate anti-corporate arguments around properly allocating the gains of automation for the good of society as a whole, but both require an uncomfortable conversation about (a) the fact they probably won’t happen in a serious way without the kind of societal change that’s historically brought a whole lot of bloodshed as well, (b) they require a widespread severing of the “paid employment -> sense of self worth” link that many people hold dear and that needs to happen before a critical mass of people are willing to seriously push for reform (in a hopefully-nonviolent-but-let’s-be-realistic-about-history way).
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Comment on Router recommendations? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentMy view might be skewed from only using their crazy >100GbE stuff, but is Microtik the way to go for someone who considers themselves not that techie? I didn’t think they had a particularly strong...My view might be skewed from only using their crazy >100GbE stuff, but is Microtik the way to go for someone who considers themselves not that techie? I didn’t think they had a particularly strong UX focus even on the more consumer grade stuff.
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Comment on Router recommendations? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentFor what it’s worth the UCG series (their consumer/small office routers), and I think the UDM series as well (same market segment, WiFi integrated rather than separate, although I strongly prefer...Unless they've changed significantly, Ubiquiti makes unfortunate choices with their management software being arranged around needing a constant, and often very heavy, management service, arguably to sell cloud services and extra devices
For what it’s worth the UCG series (their consumer/small office routers), and I think the UDM series as well (same market segment, WiFi integrated rather than separate, although I strongly prefer separate), have pretty solid CPUs for the price and run the controller software locally nowadays.
I get the impression they’re moving away from the separate controller (either software or hardware) that used to be their default and just beefing up the gateway devices to be the controller as a way to either make for a cleaner user experience, or increase vendor lock in, depending on your viewpoint.
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Comment on An AI researcher writes about his crisis of faith in ~tech
Greg Link ParentReally? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human...Really? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human dev work a couple of years when slop code works its way into critical systems and starts imploding”, through “we need architects, but half the jobs are going to be gone soon and nobody’s training juniors anymore”, and right up to “fuck it, I’m off to become an HVAC tech”.
And to put my cards on the table here: I want my job automated away, assuming a machine can do it well enough. We don’t need jobs, we need purpose and we need the means of acquiring food and shelter. The former I can find for myself, and if it really comes to it I’d rather fight tooth and nail for equitable distribution of the latter than waste my life emulating something a computer can (in this hypothetical) do just as well because I’m forced to facilitate some cargo cult justification of wealth distribution.
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Comment on Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump at Beijing robot games in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI think you’re right about any research aiming for absolute 1:1 human parity, but I do think there will be a genuine market for broadly human shaped and sized robots, with bipedal motion to...I think you’re right about any research aiming for absolute 1:1 human parity, but I do think there will be a genuine market for broadly human shaped and sized robots, with bipedal motion to traverse any human-navigable terrain, a 1m-ish reach on each of two actuators, a roughly similar range of gross motions, a main camera around 170cm from the ground with the associated field of view, etc etc
For what it’s worth I wasn’t even entertaining home use as a possibility, and I was thinking ballpark $25-50k cost. That’s where companies are going to start having them operate existing machines because it’s not even worth the downtime to retrofit those machines with automated controls, let alone the engineering time to design the custom modifications they’d need. Same goes for working in bits of the power plant crawlspace that were sized and shaped with very specific constraints in mind, or carrying equipment across the walkways with all the steps that bounce a little too much and have very specific weight tolerances, or reaching the lever while standing on the foot pedal, or whatever.
Could a skilled engineer design something custom for each of those jobs? Absolutely! Will they even get to the end of the meeting about timelines before the director has seen that engineer time cost > robot cost and bought one of these instead? I doubt it. And that goes triple once companies have a few around from previous projects and know they can repurpose them for new projects without buying again or redesigning.
Task specific robots make sense for home users who need mass produced minimum cost, and for new commercial projects where they can build for automated efficiency from the start. General purpose ones that more or less fit the human mould make sense where you want to automate, but retrofitting your existing warehouse, or fleet of excavators, or printing press, or whatever would cost mid six figures or more.
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Comment on Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump at Beijing robot games in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThe use case as I understand it is pretty much “drop into the billions of situations that are already designed around humans doing the thing, and have the robot do the thing without needing to...The use case as I understand it is pretty much “drop into the billions of situations that are already designed around humans doing the thing, and have the robot do the thing without needing to retrofit the whole environment for them”. That and it’s goddamn cool, of course.
So as with a lot of tech recently: a kind of amazing leap that would’ve been sci-fi not so long ago, and one that takes the complexity of the human environment as it is (physical now, as well as linguistic and visual over the last few years) rather than fighting a losing battle to impose computational order on chaotic reality. But all the wonder is going to be sucked out of it because we all know it’ll just be used to siphon yet more money up towards like six dudes, despite its huge potential to do actual good otherwise.
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Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance
Greg Link ParentMy bet would be on some kind of market-modulated socialism; I’ve done enough computational modelling of complex shit that I don’t trust myself of anyone else to get it right when it depends...My bet would be on some kind of market-modulated socialism; I’ve done enough computational modelling of complex shit that I don’t trust myself of anyone else to get it right when it depends heavily on predicting human irrationality, but I do trust the ability of large groups of irrational humans to follow incentives. Just need to change the ownership system to align those incentives a bit better rather than trying to fight entropy and control the downstream allocation system.
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Comment on Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta class spaceship in ~space
Greg Link ParentFrom a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the...From a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the side when they were having technical problems with the London Eye, I was genuinely expecting Spacey McSpaceface to be an approved option.
[Edit] Or an option to just call it Steve. That feels oddly appropriate too, cheers @JXM.
I suppose either of those are a bit too dry British humour for the specific brand of breathless Bay Area investors they’ll be courting to go up against SpaceX, though…
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Comment on AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThat feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably...That feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably fail to do the practical job the community actually wants here even if it did stand up to legal scrutiny. Tightening noise and vibration requirements, power draw limitations, water requirements, etc is the way to do it; it stops someone from filling the space with a non-datacenter business that turns out to be just as bad, and if someone does manage to build a datacenter that complies then problem solved.
For clarity, I haven’t actually checked the legal wording - not sure if it was bad or if the plaintiffs are just chancing it - but it seems like there is a sensible way to write that law.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentI appreciate the chat, it’s interesting and all too rare to discuss this kind of genuinely principled disagreement in good faith. I think all I really have to add is that the CEO explicitly chose...I appreciate the chat, it’s interesting and all too rare to discuss this kind of genuinely principled disagreement in good faith.
I think all I really have to add is that the CEO explicitly chose to take the duties and the enormous monetary rewards of that position, with full knowledge of what it entailed. I try not to blame the subsistence level worker for the job the system imposes upon them under pain of homelessness; I absolutely do blame the multimillionaire CEO for the consequences of the job they freely chose to take on. Whatever your thoughts on what happened to him as a result, I do think he bears the moral weight of choosing that specific way to participate in the capitalist system imposed on us all.
For what it’s worth fiduciary duty is also a little more nuanced than people often think. But to me the stronger case is still his choice to accept the duty, however it was understood.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg (edited )Link ParentHard to say, and I’ll be honest here and admit that I’d been remembering anecdotal evidence as stronger than it was. There are a decent amount of anecdotes, there are some suspiciously timed...- Exemplary
Did that actually happen?
Hard to say, and I’ll be honest here and admit that I’d been remembering anecdotal evidence as stronger than it was. There are a decent amount of anecdotes, there are some suspiciously timed u-turns, and there’s an industry wide change for the better a year after it happened. But those are circumstantial, it looks to be too early for real statistical research to have been done, and I was probably overconfident on the assertion.
Under most frameworks, murdering someone is not justifiable even if it does directly save the lives of others
Really? This doesn’t match what I see: I mentioned the “shoot the person who’s shooting others in order to stop them” example for a reason, because from what I see it is widely considered morally acceptable to do so in the real world.
The organ donor example flips the ethical question (killing an ostensibly innocent party to save others, vs killing a guilty one to prevent them enacting further harm on others). Should that distinction flip the ethical view? Personally I think yes, intent matters a lot, but we’re back into classic trolley problem variants again now, and utilitarian purists might disagree with the importance of that nuance.
However, this argument falls apart pretty quickly.
I’m sorry, but I absolutely, vehemently disagree with you on this. Systems like the NHS specifically and explicitly allocate their fixed budget between priorities with the goal of maximising quality adjusted years of life among their population of patients; they deny some to save others. For-profit companies maximise profit regardless of the impact on human life; they deny some to keep the money. The fact they both sometimes deny care is absolutely in no way an equivalence.
[Edit] And yes, I know, private insurers also prioritise quality adjusted return on treatment cost. Doesn’t change the fact that they deliberately reduce the overall pool of money spent on care in order to pay shareholders.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentYou’re right, I’ve never found a belief system that purist that actually survives contact with messy reality and I was mostly talking it through conceptually, although I do find a fair amount to...You’re right, I’ve never found a belief system that purist that actually survives contact with messy reality and I was mostly talking it through conceptually, although I do find a fair amount to like in utilitarian philosophy.
But I also think you’re kinda doing what I alluded to at the end and underestimating the many thousands of lifetimes of potentially-lived years the healthcare industry is willingly and knowingly choosing to trade for profit. I would’ve loved to see real reform and I agree that we didn’t, but even the few weeks of “ah shit, just approve anything even remotely borderline” after it happened was already more than enough to put Mangione’s lives saved/lives taken ratio well up there in the double or even triple digits, alongside people widely thought of as heroes.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentGoing on pure utilitarianism, he’s almost certainly saved more lives by acting than by doing nothing. Trolley problem goes here. The nuance in the utilitarian argument comes down to the question...Going on pure utilitarianism, he’s almost certainly saved more lives by acting than by doing nothing. Trolley problem goes here.
The nuance in the utilitarian argument comes down to the question of whether acceptance of his actions does or doesn’t constitute a wider unacceptable risk (justification of vigilantism, normalisation of political violence, etc), because his actions taken in isolation helped more people than they harmed by a pretty significant margin.
It’s vanishingly rare for a genuine good guy with a gun who kills a mass shooter to receive anything other than accolades and adoration. The cause and effect is clear and direct, and people applaud them for it, even though there are plenty of injuries and deaths attributed to mistaken identity or straightforward inaccuracy from people trying to be a good guy with a gun. Even so, the ones who get it right are treated as heroes.
So I don’t think the arguments against Mangione’s alleged actions are really because of the things it could encourage. I think they’re because the widespread killing perpetrated by an insurance CEO choosing to dial in profit margin against patient care is so indirect, so well insulated, it isn’t thought of as “real” killing at all. And in a system where consciously choosing to curtail thousands of person-years of life not only isn’t condemned but is actively rewarded, is it really that hard to empathise with someone who decides to take direct action, even if you ultimately come down on the side of it being unjustifiable?
Wow, this sure does dovetail nicely with another conversation I was just having…
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~food
Greg Link ParentIncentives are hard, and honestly if we got enough people debating the nuances of their alignment the pragmatist in me would probably consider that roughly as good as finding a beautifully elegant...Incentives are hard, and honestly if we got enough people debating the nuances of their alignment the pragmatist in me would probably consider that roughly as good as finding a beautifully elegant and perfectly aligned system of governance!
Like you say, we do have a few examples of genuinely well aligned systems, but at this point I’d be happy if people would just stop going all Patrick Star when discussing the system we currently have.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~food
Greg Link ParentWhich can also be reframed as: our current system explicitly incentivises and rewards sociopaths and people emulating their behaviours. We all know the “reward for hard work” rhetoric is largely...Which can also be reframed as: our current system explicitly incentivises and rewards sociopaths and people emulating their behaviours.
We all know the “reward for hard work” rhetoric is largely bullshit, but I don’t think enough people take that next step through to “reward for actively harming people” being the observable reality. It’s not a natural law that allows sociopaths to win, it’s the choices we as a collective have made and now refuse to back out of.
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Comment on The magic is in the language in ~tech
Greg Link ParentMCP servers are pretty much this, just a REST API and a standardised JSON file that tells the model how to traverse it. Assuming you hook it up to a reliable data source you get more or less that...MCP servers are pretty much this, just a REST API and a standardised JSON file that tells the model how to traverse it. Assuming you hook it up to a reliable data source you get more or less that exact behaviour (not 100% perfect because there’s still that bit of nondeterminism in how it presents the data it parses from the API, but pretty damn close on anything that’s available in a clear way via whatever data sources you’re using).
I was actually thinking of exactly that when I said even Microsoft does a respectable job! If it’s properly set up on a corporate plan it’ll pull in data from Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, etc by default and has one click plugins to do the same with JIRA, Confluence, GitHub, and a bunch of others. It’s feels less like Star Trek when you’re asking it to find mundane procedural info that’s scattered across 15 different corporate docs within a sea of 10,000 others, but it is extremely useful, and we can comfort ourselves by thinking the Enterprise crew had to spend time looking up Federation HR policies and whatever else offscreen too! It very much wouldn’t be able to do that on data encoded into the weights alone.
If you want the “personal database” kind of behaviour, I’d prime it with the ability to query Wikipedia (bonus points for using an offline dump and a local model), and then tie it into your note taking app of choice as well so you have a channel to add personal data too. You can even just give it access to a Google Drive directory and put whatever you like in there.
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Comment on Instantly peeling a potato (with extremely high pressure steam) in ~food
Greg Link ParentSpecifically, one of the first 15 employees at what became a 1000 person, billion dollar company. That’s a very good way to end up with a couple of million when your stock options vest (the hard...The guy was a lead engineer at Formlabs for a while
Specifically, one of the first 15 employees at what became a 1000 person, billion dollar company. That’s a very good way to end up with a couple of million when your stock options vest (the hard part obviously being picking the one that becomes a billion dollar company at all…).
A 5m subscriber YouTube channel is no small income stream either, but given the pace of video releases and the general vibe, I always got the impression that it’s essentially his retirement project too!
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Comment on The first website was launched thirty-five years ago in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThe NeXTCube Tim Berners-Lee built/hosted it on used to be on display in the lobby there, complete with handwritten “This machine is a server DO NOT POWER DOWN!!” sticker, which always made me laugh.The NeXTCube Tim Berners-Lee built/hosted it on used to be on display in the lobby there, complete with handwritten “This machine is a server DO NOT POWER DOWN!!” sticker, which always made me laugh.
A wonderful quote to live by, from a faith I know less about than I’d like to, so thank you for that.
Framing personal salvation as not the purpose of religion appeals to me in a meaningful way (not that I’m going to find myself becoming religious, but in terms of where the philosophical purpose can be found). It’s hard to say that most faiths are embodying that: I rarely to never hear religious people or leaders putting service over salvation, I see them “selling” salvation and if we’re lucky using that as a means to encourage service to earn the reward. If more religions (as practiced, not just “no true Scotsman” readings of scripture) framed earthly good as an end rather than a means, I’d be substantially more comfortable with them.
On the nation states side of things, I’m not just going on numbers, I’ve spent significant time over the course of a few decades travelling in places right across the spectrum of development and of religiosity. I’ve had incredibly warm welcomes almost universally, and even then some that truly stand out have indeed been in extremely religious countries. I also consciously chose not to name names on the countries I was painting with the less positive brush: I specifically wasn't trying to tie it to economic development alone and for what it’s worth I consider the US as a soft entrant in the “more religious” grouping.
So yeah, I’m absolutely not dismissing the close ties, the community, the togetherness that does genuinely seem to exist more strongly in places that out outside the Western individualist bubble. But. And it’s a big but. I’m also not willing to wear rose tinted glasses when a so called “good person” perpetuates stark sexism, or homophobia, or racism, or corruption, which I’ve also personally witnessed as extremely strong in the more religious parts of the world and, as a microcosm, even the more religious parts of the US since you mentioned it specifically. Those are all longstanding traditions too, explicitly or implicitly baked into many of the same religious structures that bring closeness and community. And bluntly: I’ll toss out the community bonds if the price to pay for them is abuse of an out group. I don’t think it is the price, I think we can have the good without the bad, but that needs a genuine shake up to happen.
I chose the countries and metrics I mentioned in that first post carefully. Not economic powerhouses, not measures of comfort, just measures of trust and happiness that my subjective experience says do exist in those places without the negatives that often come with them in more paternalistic strong communities.
cc @lostwax