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@RFishBlueFish Just randomly choose a day and accept that you are going to fail 1/7th of the time. Alternatively, don’t set a time limit, but say “I’m going to execute you with probability 1/(2^n on a day n days from now. So there’s a 1/2 chance you are executed tomorrow, 1/4th overmorrow…
one of many reasons this is a bad idea: if you do this then right leaning EAs start donating to the Rs, and you’ve spent EAs money netting itself out. Better to do something else which is not that and both agree to buy bednets.
can EA & lab employees please start donating to the dems instead of malaria nets or whatever I'm almost certain the cost per life is far less also probably better for the lightcone
@enzoreds There are many fair criticisms of tech bros, but this isnt one of them. Misuse of the word “ontological“ very much started in the humanities.
When I worked at Apple, I remember seeing code that was 15 years old. Every file had a comment at the top with the date and the author’s name. You’d open a file and read through it, sometimes touching a feature no one had touched in a decade.
Everything felt very permanent, like a house made of bricks. Everyone who made a brick put their name on it before slotting it into the house. Even in a massive company, you were proud of your bricks. Each one fit so satisfyingly into the bricks around it.
When someone was renovating a room you had worked on years ago, they’d reach out and say, “I found this brick with your name on it. Can you tell me what it was doing here?”
Sometimes old bricks would get taken out during a renovation, but they were usually kept in a pile in the corner to reuse in the future.
Now you can will whole houses and neighborhoods into existence. You don’t even see the bricks go in. They just tumble in from the sky. You walk into the new house and wave your hands to push walls back, throw up a chimney, or drop in a kitchen.
It's so fucking cool. But you forget what a brick feels like.
And it’s hard to know how sad to be about that. The houses are better, they go up faster, and building them increasingly feels like magic.
Still, every once in a while you miss holding a brick.
@KelseyTuoc Automatic A electives have the advantage of not rewarding additional optimization, and therefore allowing those who are so inclined to actually take the most interesting ones. That said, in a world of better incentives, these subjects could be graded with the rigor they deserve.
@KelseyTuoc Had the class been graded on our actual performances as guitarists, rather than on a completion basis, I would have failed, but as it was I was fine, and got the chance to make a real (albeit unsuccessful) attempt to learn something worthwhile.