I read for a full 5 minutes and the author had not said anything substantive, just their own thoughts about pigeon love based on some pigeons he saw in his backyard once. Ok.
> I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing
You're reading too much into Sam's quote. This is almost certainly because East Asia has zero PC culture (homogenous populations; nothing in history), so he doesn't feel those particular pressures there that he's reacting against here. That's all.
I think fact that you get fired if you bring up biology at your company's brown bag on diversity (a la Damore), means, just maybe, that you can't actually say some of those things.
You know Sam, if you stopped censoring controversial positions or posts from hacker news I might take you seriously.
Coming from someone who is now almost automatically moved to the bottom of threads or the ridiculous "See More" section you all implemented, who as a result just doesn't post much anymore.
The effects of vehicular pollution? If sitting in your garage with a running car kills you, obviously being surrounded by traffic all day in the cities we live in must be absolutely terrible for you.
It's not complicated. The only people who should get to be super-rich are the industrious risk takers who drive our world forward. That type of person is not deterred by tax rates. Raise em and weed out the leeches.
You're still extremely optimistic about the 'intelligence' of state of art data driven approaches, even if they aren't general intelligence. I'm not sure where that optimism is coming from.
The chess example... "They were wrong about AI never beating grand masters, they're going to be wrong about X". Well, if you make the board bigger, there won't be an AI system that can beat a human.
Play Dota 2, but introduce a random variable that can't be known beforehand by anyone, like things in the real world, and the AI will always be beatable.
Great for specific domains, obviously, but your optimism about doing more advanced stuff, perhaps doesn't seem so grounded.
Out of curiosity, we would need ~500 of these stations in their current form to offset a typical coal power plant (7.5 thousand tons co2/ year, a claim from Climework's about video, v. 3.5 million tons co2 / year), or about 5-6 million stations to offset global co2 yearly emission (40-45 billion tons co2/ year).
What about the world of contracting? You can also be someone who has flexibility on where/ when they work and for who, and it's probably a more viable 'path' in tech than in any other industry.
Since the vast majority of founders fail, having significant financial cushions from your family or years working prior is probably the top pre-requisite if 'founder' is your path.
I'll throw a line to Zizek. In his serious works, he does set out a systematic ontology of reality. I don't fully understand it, if there is even something to fully understand, but along the way he without doubt makes you think, and gives relatively accessible interpretations of a ton of other thinkers.
He's not a major philosopher like Kant, but he is much more than a charlatan or provocateur.
To his credit, I probably wouldn't have picked up his serious work if his antics hadn't first put him on my radar many years ago.
I believe everyone should give critical theory a fair shot. But I find the majority of the thinkers to have pretty simple ideas that are heavily dressed up and typically exhausting to get through, with little personal benefit, except perhaps social cachet in certain communities. I personally think you're better off grappling with the dead philosophers who critical theory seems to be predominantly in conversation with, like Kant and Hegel. And then add in Marx and Freud.
If you believe I am off base, I welcome suggestions of thinkers who are an anti-pattern here.
I wouldn't be so sure, within the last year it's now "Hechy Hech mixed with groundwater", you may have seen the pre-emptive advertising on buses when they rolled it out. My feeling is that it is probably worse than it used to be.
Wow, The Game I had totally forgotten about. Along with the 4 Hour Work Week, those are two books that gave me totally new measuring devices for success and attractiveness when I was in my early 20s. 4HWW redefined 'elite' as young entrepreneurial globe trotters (location freedom), and was probably the main igniter of the digital nomad movement, while The Game redefined attractiveness (for men) as a predominantly behavioral thing - boldness, non neediness, confidence etc. - not a wealth, credentials, or even primarily physical attributes thing (and pretty much ruined going out to bars for half a decade). Agree or disagree, those books really, really impacted thinking for millennials.
Prepared to take the hate too. Answers seem fake under the question about relation with parents, and your voice does not strike me as a 13 year old, in particular seeming too controlling of situation. I don't buy it. I apologize in advance if I'm somehow proven wrong in some verifiable way.
You're going to have to elaborate on complex tasks. I would argue the majority of successful, money generating software based in NLP/ NLU, i.e. the majority of the industry, is "rule based" (used in a general sense to mean non DL). Personal assistants, search, chatbots, etc.
WeWork basically parodies itself.