Because the social issues happen at a more biological level, hormones and cell signaling and stuff. Robots are at a much higher level. Online girlfriends are cool, but as we all know, not a replacement for physical touch, intimacy, and relationship building. Your body doesn’t release oxytocin from cuddling with your cold computer.
Maybe we can eventually “trick” the human brain, but I think it will be much more challenging than people think. I would imagine if people even just knew someone was a robot, the jig is up. For most people. It wouldn’t be enough to create the perfect humanoid robot. We’d also have to make them hidden in plain sight. Full Ex Machina style.
Wow, that's a different perspective. I should read more of your posts. For me the fact that 30% of men and 20% of women are not having intimacy is quite scary. I guess a revised edition of the book sextinction is in order.
I mean, the fact that relationships are falling apart is a big problem and I have A LOT to say about it. I just generally don't say too much about it, because it's a hard topic and you can't address it without bringing up the role of genderized socialization, the patriarchy, women's progress in the 20th century, the impact of the internet, the rise of the manosphere and similar toxic content, and more. It touches on virtually every aspect of human life, from biological, to social, to political, to technological.
I am also gay, so it's difficult for me to address these things because I completely reject the heteronormitive perspective. I basically believe all gender roles are dumb and should not exist, but generally straight people do not like to hear that. And, I can't blame them, because for them, they often don't have the option to reject gender norms. It's a mind field in the heterosexual dating world because everyone is forced to balance the new-age of gender progression mixed with millennia of gender norms and expectations. I do, however, think it will improve in time. We are very much still in the growing pains era.
I don't think so. At the first chance during COVID people started moving out of big cities. Most people don't need the city, they need a village. We are in cities due to jobs requiring us to be in big cities.
the two people i know who moved upstate from NYC have both independently moved back. i think the grass seemed extra green during the long tail of lockdown.
People moved out of the cities during COVID because close physical proximity to large numbers of strangers was a potentially deadly hazard to their health.
> ...and ditched the city for a more comfortable life
It depends on what you mean by "comfortable."
A lot of people who moved to less populated areas found they weren't fully prepared to live with fewer amenities and choice in every aspect of life, from hospitals to supermarkets to mates.
There was a meaningful post-COVID return to cities and it wasn't driven exclusively by return to office mandates.
I think by your own definition the headline is warranted in its use of gambling. The act of betting on predictions is in service of “being right” ostensibly. But is really just about the monetary reward. I don’t see betting on predictions serving any other purpose. Other risks in life have other purpose, in which the risk is accepted because of the reward of the other purpose. Gambling is risk without any other sort of side reward or effect.
It depends on the person making the bet. With sophisticated enough brain scanning technology, we could distinguish between "placing the bet to achieve a feeling" vs. "placing the bet because they believe it is mispriced".
It's not possible for a 3rd party to, at a distance, determine why someone placed a bet in a prediction market.
At a casino, it is possible. Most of the games are negative EV. So if someone plays any of the games, then it can't be because they are trying to maximize EV, it must be for some other reason (like a feeling).
I guess I’m trying to say that in both cases you outline, the purpose of the act lies solely in the risk itself. Believing something is mispriced simply means the perceived risk is very low (or even negative) but the action is taken _because_ of the risk itself. No other purpose is served. Unlike other monetary instruments which could be consider stores of wealth. or other life decisions which have outside intrinsic values in which the risk is a consideration but not the primary object.
> Believing something is mispriced simply means the perceived risk is very low (or even negative)
That's not what risk means. Risk is the amount you stand to lose, and expected value is the mean outcome (calculated by integrating across all possible outcomes).
The EV can be positive or negative, and that corresponds to a mispriced asset.
Risk can only go to zero, but it can also be arbitrarily high.
Managing risk is its own thing, but to give an intuition: How much should you bet on repeated fair coin tosses that pay out 3:1, if you have $100?
More than 0, because it is positive EV, but definitely not the whole 100.
Risk management is about playing vs. not playing and bet sizing.
Gambling is taking on risk without positive EV. A 1:1 cointoss is the quintessential example. EV is 0, you won't make or lose anything in the long run playing this game. But it adds uncertainty, you could have twice as much or nothing.
Gambling is risk-seeking, the variance of outcomes has value (to a gambler) on its own.
I fail to understand how your quote doesn't describe land lords? It is:
1. An act of growing one's own wealth (no other purpose to land lording)
2. It is accomplished by taking advantage of economic conditions (perhaps not "manipulating")
3. Does not create any new wealth.
And a little further down is this:
> Rent-seeking implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity.
Which to me certainly sounds like someone who's only contribution is ownership.
How does this make any sense in any context? An individuals actions can never have zero impact on others. The mass concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has an enormous impact on the rest of the population.
Like all problems, It’s possible there are many contributing factors. Power laws may be one. The usual suspects might carry some of the blame as well. These things are not mutually exclusive. It’s unlikely there is one “solution” that will fix the systemic issues that create reverse centaurs. I don’t see the value in writing someone off simply because they do not explore the entire solution space.
My original post fell short in that I criticized Doctorow without offering substance or examples. [Ironically, this is exactly what I accused him of!]
Later, in response to various people here, I wrote a more substantive critique, which I stand by. And I stand by my original opinion: Doctorow is a talented and entertaining writer, but I can't take him seriously.
One thing to consider is that Many people simply do not have the time, energy, and/or equipment to cook food from raw ingredients. These factors are common in poorer households where people are working multiple jobs, etc.
I literally just puts the thighs in the air fryer (I have a cheapy one from Tesco) for 30 minutes. The steamer I have was £15 in Sainsburys (it was on offer).
Most kitchen equipment except for the white goods is dirt cheap and even the really cheap stuff can last for years. Most meals take me 30-40 minutes to cook maximum.
That isn't 30-40 minutes me standing in the kitchen cooking. That is how long it takes to cook in the air fryer (the thighs take about 30-35 minutes). I literally have a timer telling me when to put on the veg and the potatoes. I think prep time is max 10 minutes and then 10 minutes to wash up.
In any-event. It is objectively more expensive to buy junk food, that includes the cheaper junk. Once I cut out the trips to the takeaway and the deli, I was surprised at how much more money I had per month.
That's certainly an improvement, but still involves me planning to eat in half an hour instead of just snacking right now. But I shouldn't be presenting myself as representative of any demographic except maybe bedroom coders. I tend to agree that junk and expense correlate. I don't eat junk, I eat random crap, it's very different.
Getting off this planet is easy without absurd missions like going to Mars. We could build space habitats or moon bases. Going to live on Mars is not an option for us at this time. We lack the biological resilience to do so. I won't even mention that it must be a planetary effort to even have some chance of success.
> If that's true what would be explanation of his gaming/streaming?
It's a PR stunt. He pays someone to play for him and level up his account. Then, he plays for a bit and it's painfully obvious that he's inexperienced.
He doesn't take criticism very well either. He recently removed a live streamers Twitter verification for pointing out his lack of skill. How's that for a "free speech" platform?
Elon is extremely partisan, insecure, and rich. That's it.
Looking back, the SSD was garbage so I ended up using my own nvme. But it’s a little solid piece. It came with some windows but I just put Debian on it.
The price is not that much higher than pi with all the accessories and give you multiples of performance
I have two of these. One caveat I'd mention is that the power buttons are flimsy. On one of them I have to push kinda hard to get it to do anything, so I dread it if they ever lose power.
Many people like living next to other people purely for social reasons.