Nikos VG

Random() thoughts of a Rocker,Software+Data Artist who is bringing Chaos in(to) Order and is a realist by demanding the impossible. Co-founder @TheGameplAi

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

The gun is the most misunderstood object in Western civilization. Not a weapon. A technology. The technology that made the idea of equality physically real.

1. The longbow democratized warfare – a peasant could kill a knight with a stick and a string, and Agincourt proved it. The gun completed the process. The armored warrior class whose claim to social dominance rested on physical superiority became obsolete. The aristocratic monopoly on violence ended not with a philosophy but with a mechanism. The gun is the physical enforcement of the idea that all men are created equal. Which is why the American founders put it in the second amendment – not as an afterthought, but as the guarantee of everything else.

2. The Roman citizen had the right to bear arms. The Greek citizen had it. The English yeoman had it. The Swiss canton built its entire civilization on it. The disarming of the population has always been, in every civilization, in every century, the first act of the government that intends to stop being answerable to that population. Show me a disarmed population and I will show you a population that lost something else shortly after.

3. The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is not about sport. It is about the relationship between the armed citizen and the state – the explicit constitutional acknowledgment that the citizen’s right to defend himself, his family, and his civilization against any threat, including the government itself, is not granted by the state and cannot be revoked by it. Power flows upward from the armed citizen, not downward from the armed state.

4. The gun defends the family. The woman alone with her children. The farmer on the edge of civilization. The shopkeeper in the neighborhood the police no longer patrol. The gun is the equalizer – the technology that makes the physical difference between a large man and a small woman irrelevant. Every argument for disarmament is, at its core, an argument that the state will protect you better than you can protect yourself. The evidence for this proposition is not encouraging.

5. In Europe, the disarmament is now nearly complete – and it happened precisely as the state’s ability and willingness to protect its citizens began to decline. The timing is not coincidental. A population that cannot defend itself must trust the state to defend it – which is a population that cannot effectively question whether the state is doing so. The dependency is the design.

6. The gun is a civilizational technology in the deepest sense: it requires responsibility, judgment, and the willingness to accept the consequences of your decisions. You cannot outsource it. You cannot have a committee fire it. It is the most anti-bureaucratic object ever invented – a direct, personal, consequential instrument that puts the full weight of the decision on the individual holding it. Which is precisely why the administrative state finds it intolerable. Not because it is dangerous. Because it is sovereign.

7. The family that can defend itself does not depend on the state for its most fundamental security. The civilization that can defend itself has not yet outsourced its survival to an institution that will negotiate the terms of that survival on its own behalf. The gun determines who controls violence – and therefore who controls everything that violence can threaten. Which is everything. The Sobieski who rode down the hill had a sword and sixty thousand horsemen. The equivalent today is the armed citizen who understands what he is defending and why. Every civilization that forgot this discovered it the hard way. The ones that remembered it are still here.

[Israel Foreign Ministry @IsraelMFA]

Israel reaffirms its unwavering support for the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus and stands in solidarity with Cyprus, on the anniversary of the 1974 Turkish invasion.

The ongoing Turkish military presence in the north of the island, alongside Ankara's persistent attempts to alter the status quo through unilateral actions, is unacceptable.

As a strategic partner and neighbor of Cyprus, Israel calls for the resumption of negotiations toward a just, viable, and lasting solution to the conflict.

[The All-In Podcast @theallinpod]

Friedberg: New study shows enzyme reverses skin age from 70+ years to 31

Chamath: That’s a $2T market.

Did Scientists Just Discover How to Reverse Skin Aging!?

“CML is kind of the predominant molecule that gets formed in this extracellular matrix that's driving aging, and nothing breaks it down.

So these scientists set out to try and create an enzyme, an enzyme is a protein that breaks something down, that can break down CML.

And so these guys kind of went out and they took the target, which is CML, and tried to figure out, ‘Okay, how do we actually degrade CML, clear that extracellular matrix, and reverse aging?’

They started to test it on the proteins that we would find in our body, casein, collagen, retinal proteins, which are in your eye, hemoglobin, and they were able to get rid of 52 to 97% of the CML, just degrade it away.

And then they found several sites where they were able to degrade over 90%.

And then they took actual human skin from elderly patients that had donated their skin, and they put this enzyme onto that skin, and they were able to eliminate 55% of the CML on the skin, basically reverse the skin's age down to the age of a 31-year-old, this is from greater than 70-year-old patients, just by putting this enzyme on the skin.

And so it's kind of a groundbreaking demonstration of combination of AlphaFold, what's called directed evolution, where you change the order of the DNA that changes the structure of the protein to test different proteins, do high throughput screening, and ultimately make a novel protein that doesn't exist in nature today that can do something pretty profound for human health.”

Chamath:

“It will be a trillion-dollar market. If you can create a cream…”

Friedberg:

“I mean, dude, if you could put this enzyme literally on your skin and have it absorb in…”

Chamath:

“Game over. That alone is $2 trillion.”

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

The England football team lost for the same reason the country is losing: the people in charge fear taking a risk and try to hold on to what they have instead of being ambitious about the future.

This attitude permeates everything and it needs to change.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Consistent with the simulation hypothesis.

Like a video game, objects are randomly generated, with positional certainty only when observed.

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Brendan (can/do) @BrendanFoody]

This is the best way to end America's entrepreneurial culture.

Most founders I know endure 100+ hours of work/week because they are obsessed with their mission and the impact they can have on the world.

They make < $100K / year, fly economy, and live modest lives. The average American doesn't want their life.

Just because their company's valuation is growing doesn't mean they are "wealthy".

When you impose a > $100M tax on illiquid stock, they will declare bankruptcy or flee the country.

[tae kim @firstadopter]

CHIPS CHIPS CHIPS

FT: "Google has put limits on Meta’s use of its Gemini AI models after the social media giant sought more computing capacity than the rival tech group could provide, in the latest evidence of the infrastructure constraints facing even the world’s largest AI providers.

Google told Meta around March that it could not provide all of the Gemini capacity the company wanted to purchase, according to three people familiar with the matter, in a move that has disrupted and delayed some of Meta’s internal AI projects."

[Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 @RuxandraTeslo]

Here, Patrick explains with common sense & compelling examples that Europe has a degrowth/anti air-con mentality and is told that "these are just anecdotes". This is a type of argument often employed by so-called "moderates" that has done much damage in the past decades.

Basically, for every talking point, you have a bunch of degrowth/extreme left crazy people that are fairly well-embedded in institutions and "respectable". The polar opposite right-wing/libertarian position is almost never represented in respectable institutions.

Then, you have the moderates. They often distinguish themselves by insisting on "statistics" and hard facts and refusing to accept common sense arguments and "what is before their eyes". The "just anecdotes" dismissal treats empirical observations as epistemically worthless unless accompanied by a regression table.

But quantitative evidence itself is abundant for things that powerful intellectual institutions want to measure. It is scarce for things they would prefer not to examine too closely.

The intellectual landscape ends up looking roughly like this:

1) On one side, there is a well-funded, institutionally embedded, socially respectable body of opinion that is broadly degrowth, skeptical of markets, skeptical of air conditioning etc. These views appear in EU policy documents, in academic journals, in mainstream journalism and in NGO reports. They might not be held by most academics broadly construed (e.g. engineering profs), but they are held by the small minority that studies these topics and that is enough.

2) On the other side, the full-throated pro-growth, pro-energy and pro-development counterargument exists but is largely confined to think tanks that are routinely described as "industry-funded" or "right-wing," which in respectable discourse functions as a full rebuttal.

In the middle sit the moderates, who pride themselves on not taking sides, on demanding evidence, on resisting "populist" or "anecdotal" reasoning.

This moderate position is not symmetric in its effects and moderates do not apply equal skepticism to both sides. Overall, the lack of actually balanced perspectives leads to the polarization of those who are more right leaning and suspect something is amiss. But because they lack any institutional home, they end up becoming cranky and conspiratorial.
End result: broad erosion of public dicourse.

Also if you wonder why AC has become a right wing shaped topic, it's also because of the craziness of the discourse, caused by the above.

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

I think the pity and mockery stems from so many Europeans (usually institutions/"experts") dismissing AC's utility. The vast majority of the debate is not over the mechanics and logistics of deployment, but whether widespread AC is in principle desirable in the first place. I think it garners so much attention from Americans (and Europeans such as myself) because it's a vivid distillation of the self-destructive "degrowth" hysteria that is so prevalent and harmful in many European policy matters. It is the same impulse that led to Germany decommissioning its nuclear capacity, and it is a substantial contributor to the broader economic challenges of the continent.

[Code-Reinho-Tactical @CodeReinhoTac]

Vous cachez une climatisation sous votre plancher n'est ce pas ?

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

I asked Claude about the air conditioning debate in Europe, and it really didn’t pull any punches.

[Nikos VG @Nivol3000]

@AndreasSteno I literally cancelled my subscription yesterday when I read that article.

[ludoonchart @ludoonchart]

Nassim Taleb built his fortune by realizing that to survive wall street, you must be perfectly comfortable looking like an absolute idiot

speaking to microsoft's top engineers, he shared the exact math from 1987 that built his empire:

"it started with the crash in 1987. i realized that if you position for a massive 20-sigma event, your portfolio is so mathematically convex that you could literally wait 400 years for it to happen again, and you would still be okay"

"so i told myself i will only specialize in extreme events. you sit there and wait 3, 4, 5 years. everybody on the trading floor tells you you're an idiot. they tell you you're not profitable"

"and then suddenly the crash happens. the crowd blows up, they completely disappear, and you take absolutely everything"

watch his full 1-hour microsoft masterclass on the math of extreme risk

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

.@BernieSanders , it is a time to celebrate. @elonmusk has created enormous value for society by building @SpaceX, driving down the cost of rocket launches and creating a global satellite communication network that has brought high speed, low-cost internet and communication access to hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people along with critical advantages for our military and our nation’s defense.

SpaceX and its technologies will cause an acceleration in the growth of wages and wealth creation globally, including in some of the poorest communities in the U.S. and around the world.

Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere.

SpaceX will materially bring down the cost of compute, advancing AI and humanity.

Meanwhile, 4,000 SpaceX employees yesterday became millionaires, including hourly wage employees who you claim you are trying to help.

The Elon Musks of the world drive growth, global GDP, and provide access to goods and services at lower cost that would otherwise not exist.

Elon’s nominal trillionaire status is due to his ownership of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, the Boring Company and his other initiatives that have brought new technologies that improve our everyday lives.

Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon’s companies don’t pay dividends. They reinvest all of their capital to accelerate innovation and value creation.

Elon is working 24/7 for all of us. He deserves respect and appreciation, not smears.

Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built. Socialism has only proven to impoverish mankind and lead to death and destruction.

We need to create the conditions for more SpaceXs to be built, not attack the great entrepreneurs who are helping to advance our country.

[Andrew Kang @Rewkang]

Researchers trained a humanoid robot to play tennis using only 5 hours of motion capture data

The robot can now sustain multi-shot rallies with human players, hitting balls traveling &gt;15 m/s with a ~90% success rate

AlphaGo for every sport is coming

[tedfrank @tedfrank]

So the reason this Polymarket “prediction market” is performing so insanely high is because there’s a second market asking if this market will go above 5%. People in the derivative market are manipulating this market. Which defeats the public policy case for prediction markets…

[Nikos VG @Nivol3000]

@LKCOYB

[Nikos VG @Nivol3000]

@aggeloschoriano Σύμφωνοι, αλλά πραγματικά δεν καταλαβαίνω γιατί στην Συρία στηρίζει τους τζιχαντιστές. Αυτούς που σκότωναν Αμερικανούς στρατιώτες…. Τα λόγια του δεν συνάδουν με τις πράξεις του..

[Nikos VG @Nivol3000]

@CFCPys @kierangill_DM We don’t know in what condition he will be in once he returns, he may never recover to previous level