You have to learn to think like a drug dealer. The first hit is always free.
Companies and developers are growing more and more dependent on coding agents. Eventually, the owners of the AI will be able to charge whatever they want. What are you going to do? Go back to coding by hand? Do you even remember how?
> 99% of the traffic now is AI scraping the sources
I wonder if we should stop fighting this and instead create an API specifically for this purpose? Or, a central repository that you could send your data to and say to anyone wanting to scrape, "safe yourself some time and just get my data from this other place"
> Programming competitions are not the same as real-world engineering
That's true but irrelevant. Nothing is "the same" as anything else. My question was, what evidence is there that offshore Indian devs are of high quality. One expected signal with be ...that they demonstrate their programming skill.
> these countries have way more people trying to use these competitions as a gateway to good jobs
That's ridiculous!! You're claiming that Turkey, with a population of under a million, has "more people trying to use these competitions" than India, with a population in the billions????
> many good engineers emigrate to higher-income countries
Okay, but the claim was, "offshore Indian devs are good" - that cohort (i.e. the ones INSIDE INDIA) excludes the cohort you're talking about (emigrate to higher-income contries).
So, unless your point is, "yes, I agree with you, there is no evidence that offshore (still in India) devs are of high quality, and the reason is that the good ones emigrated" I think this statement is irrelevant.
What evidence is there of the quality of Indian devs specifically?
One signal I'd expect to see, for example, would be success in programming competitions. Here's the list of winners of the IOI competition [1] - India has won 3 times.
Meanwhile, Turkey has won 4 times, Estonia has won 5 times, and Vietnam has won 22 times!
Why should we suspect that there are more or better developers in Indian than in any of the countries that has produced more winners??
Here's a test to know if this is/will be true: look for a situation where the "needs" of AI (e.g. land, electricity, etc) conflict with the needs of people (e.g. land to live on, grow food on, electricity to light our homes).
Find a place where the needs of AI conflict with people, and observe who wins out.
Does the entity that owns the datacenter say, "oh sorry! I guess we're using too much electricity. No worries! We'll stop doing that" ...or does it say, "lol too bad, all the electricity belongs to us!"
Does the entity wanting to build a datacenter say, "oh sorry! We thought you'd be okay with us using this land. But if you're not that's okay, we wont build here" ...or does it say, "lol too bad, we own the government and they're seizing the land under eminent domain!"
> Killing someone for pushing you over is not "self defense".
> This is a category error.
No, it's a definition error on your part. Let's define self defense.
A person is justified in using, or threatening to use, lethal force, in order to defend themselves or another person against:
(1) eminent death (e.g. being shot or stabbed)
(2) great bodily harm (i.e. injuries that could lead to death)
(3) the eminent commission of a forcible felony (e.g. rape or kidnapping)
A 72 year old woman being violently attacked by a young man unambiguously qualifies as condition (2). I'm terrified and disgusted that you watched that video and then characterized it as "pushing her over"
Some reports I've seen indicate that this woman, who is in her 80s, died [1]
Intentionally attacking an old woman is very, very likely to cause her great bodily harm, and completely justifies a lethal response. If you disagree, I encourage you to show that video to your friends and family. I'm interested to hear how many of them can dismiss it as you just did.
> The question should be: why do you have a right to bring a gun to a fist fight?
Great question. The answer is: bad people are often significantly stronger than their victims.
Have you ever seen this video [1]? The woman is 72 years old. She might be able to defend herself with a gun, but she has no chance with fists.
How about this video [2]? I have many, many examples like this. It's honestly kind of terrible that you hadn't considered this: guns give average women a better chance against strong, violent men.
So the question should be: why do you seek to deny women this right?
Great! So, let's start with your first study. Note this quote:
> it is possible that conservatives’ relatively low accuracy about political information is a by-product of the fact that issues used in forming this assessment were selected with an eye toward detecting misperceptions among the political group
That's definitely a way to bias a study against conservatives. It's good that this study claims it avoided that bias. But did it? They don't list the questions that participants were asked. I checked the list of supporting documents, and couldn't find it.
Without that list, I can't accept this source. Sorry.
If I went out and asked a bunch of Liberals, "did Trump say that Neo-Nazis are 'very fine people?'" I suspect that upwards of 90% of Liberals would answer "yes" ...and they would swear they heard him do it! You may (falsely) believe this yourself!
I could ask, "did Trump advise people to drink bleach?" and many Liberals would swear he did.
He didn't do either of those things. But many Liberals emphatically believe he did. I could very easily design a study that included only these sorts of questions - questions that Liberals will get wrong.
The only way to spot this bias would be if I included the questions in the study, so that you could vet them yourself. Without such a list, it is completely reasonable for me to reject your source.
Should I continue to the next one, or are they all like this?
I'm having a hard time understanding your point. Here's what I think just happened:
Me: I value the right to self defense
You: Guns are used for self harm more often than self defense [as an aside, I don't disagree that this is true - I've heard this stat many times]
You: This is ironic!
Please help me to understand why you think that's ironic. What do you feel would be a non-ironic position? Is it this....
Me: I value the right to self defense, but one day I might want to kill myself, so I guess I'd better give up the right to self defense.
Is that a non-ironic position? To me that seems like an irrational position. Those two issues (self defense and self harm) seem orthogonal, and conflating them because of a superficial similarity (they both involve guns) seems odd.
A lot of people are incapable of contending with hypotheticals or thought experiments. It's okay.
If you'd like to try again, I encourage you to read up to the point where something doesn't make sense. Quote only that sentence, and ask me to explain.
Notice how I'm not even asking you to read the whole thing - just to the point where you have trouble. This is very reasonable.
> "I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"
When you pretend to quote someone, but you alter the quote, you're being dishonest. What you just did suggests that you don't really have any good arguments on your side - that you don't have any arguments that would stand on their own, without requiring a lie.
So, if we were having a debate, I'd say that you lost.
> I would think that the right to life would take precedence
Well, let's do a thought experiment to test this. Which of these two rights takes precedence: (1) life (specifically in this case, the right to not be murdered) or (2) freedom of movement
That's an easy question, isn't it? (1) takes precedence. But how many 9's of protection are you willing to "purchase" at the expense of (2)? How much of (2) are you willing to give up in order to get a little more of (1)?
If we reduce (2) to 0 ...by locking every person in a padded cell, then we can achieve 99.99% protection of (1).
Presumably though, you don't like that idea. Presumably, you'll want to be let out of the padded cell, and get a bit of right (2) back. But giving you a bit of (2) back is going to cost someone their life! If we let you and others out of the padded cell, someone somewhere is going to get murdered.
What this thought experiment demonstrates is that the issue is not as simple as, "(1) takes precedence over (2)" - the thought experiment demonstrates that there is an amount of (2) that you will not spend in order to purchase a marginal increase in (1) - a situation where (2) actually takes precedence.
> Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership
And I totally respect that. Just to be clear though, "gun ownership" isn't really the issue. Gun ownership is a proxy for the actual right: self defense. You place a low value on the right to defend yourself and your family. Again, I totally respect that. You've "spent" that right to purchase lower gun crime. Have I mentioned how much I respect your personal decision?
As for me, I value the right to self defense above all. I've looked at the data, and I've realized that I'm much more likely to be stabbed or beaten to death than I am (well, was when I was in school) to be in a school shooting.
So to me, having actually looked at that data, it seems obvious that the right to self defense should take precedence. I think that my way of thinking is perfectly rational, and I think you're way of thinking is not ...but I totally respect your personal decision. I'm sure you also respect mine.