Sounds like the work of mustering up instructions... like programming...
So how do these LLM's completely remove us from having to do this work of mustering up instructions? Seems to me someone still has to instruct LLMs on what to do, and that the only way this reality will cease to exist entirely, is if humanity stopped desiring computers to do what it is they want. I don't think that's happening anytime soon.
However, maybe fewer programmers will be needed, but then again, the same was said of Fortran and COBOL and look at where we are today, more programmers than ever...
> Sounds like the work of mustering up instructions... like programming...
Again, try Deep Research. You make a vague request, and it works with you to make it specific enough that it can deliver a product with some confidence that it will meet your requirements. Like a product manager, business analyst, requirements engineer, or whatever they call it these days.
I disagree with the notion that life isn't zero sum. It only looks this way using a definition that conflates wealth with value, or from a viewpoint far from the limits of nature that would otherwise make this kind of nature obvious. Arguably what we've done, is merely transformed wealth into other forms we valued more.
Certainly value isn't zero sum, as we can always change our minds and value something else more, but I don't think this is a good argument for life (or wealth) not being zero sum. Anything we create, takes energy or resources from elsewhere (zero sum). Every path you choose to go down in life, is a path you didn't go down (zero sum). Simply put - everything has a cost. Sure we may not value costs equally (not zero sum), but remove our arbitrary valuations for things from the equation, and it is zero sum.
It seems like your conflating the meaning of zero-sum. It's specific to limited contexts where one party's gain must come at an equal loss to another party. "Every path you choose to go down in life, is a path you didn't go down" has nothing to do with the concept of zero-sum.
Our entire civilization is built on non-zero-sum cooperation. Technology is the byproduct of non-zero-sum cooperation.
If you're going to try and argue against game theory, your going to have to bring a much better argument.
^^ Redefines meaning of life to be dollars, accuses opponent of redefining zero-sum.
Silicon Valley is built on the attention economy. That term is a euphemism for making people spend their waking hours on addictive crap, taking away from the useful sum total. That's my definition.
Silicon valley is built on transistors, and by extension computers and software. The media industry is built on the attention economy.
Competing for people's attention is a zero-sum game, but building technology that helps people be more productive and do new things they couldn't before is not zero-sum.
Are you accusing me of redefining the meaning of life to be dollars? If so, I completely deny that accusation as it doesn't remotely align with my beliefs or what I said in my comment.
A master password (e.g. to access a password manager) needs to be both remembered and stored somewhere (ie the password manager, not your brain). A secret heuristic doesn't and so is more secure by simply not also being stored somewhere outside your brain.
Depends on the implementation. For example with 1Password it is not stored anywhere unencrypted, it is derived with a slow password hash and mixed with a secret key (this part is stored) to unlock your vaults. You can't access your vault without both.
You asked what the difference was. Simply put, you can't hack what does not exist. LastPass also stores passwords encrypted and was hacked.
In other words, no matter of how well 1Password handles the storing of your master password (encrypted/decentralized or what not), the fact that it does is inherently less secure than something that doesn't store anything at all, such as the case with a secret heuristic.
LastPass didn't properly implement E2EE and because they used a weak password hash which affected low entropy passwords.
> In other words, no matter of how well 1Password handles the storing of your master password (encrypted/decentralized or what not), the fact that it does is inherently less secure than something that doesn't store anything at all, such as the case with a secret heuristic.
When I say 1P stores your master password encrypted, it usually does it as an item in the vault. You can easily remove it from the vault and therefore doesn't store it anymore, and you can have the same security as your secret heuristic. Storing it in your vault is of negligible concern.
If your master password is not stored anywhere, there is no way for 1P to know what your master password is - and so no way to validate what the correct password is to access your vault. Even if 1P doesn't store the master password on local disk, their servers, on a hard device, encrypted, unencrypted, or does it completely algorithmically or whatever... it is in fact stored somewhere outside your brain, and therefore more hackable than something that isn't stored anywhere other than your brain.
It is used ephemerally to unlock your vaults. It isn't stored anywhere. You're really clutching at straws here.
Given a sample set of passwords derived from a secret heuristic, it could be reversed. The secret heuristic isn't completely safe either. Moreover because it lives in your brain the algorithm is inherently low entropy and the resulting passwords will be as well. Furthermore the old adage applies, don’t roll your own crypto.
Your the one that's grasping at straws and doesn't understand that 1P needs to store something in order to validate or generate your master password. The fact that this does happen, makes it less secure in comparison to not storing anything, as you can't hack something which does not exist.
> Given a sample set of passwords derived from a secret heuristic, it could be reversed. The secret heuristic isn't completely safe either.
Sure but this isn't the argument being made. As an analogy, not using any E2E is inherently less secure than using some E2E encryption, but using E2E encryption doesn't automatically mean you're more secure. Simply put, you had asked "What's the difference between a master password and a secret heuristic?" And that difference is a master password (or ways to generate it) must be stored outside your brain, and doing this is inherently less secure than not doing this.
I already told you what it needs to store and it isn’t the master password. No master password needs to be “validated” even when authenticating to 1P servers. You clearly have a fundamental misunderstanding of cryptography. Anyways this is all explained in the 1Password security whitepaper.
No I understand dual key encryption, and like I said, there is still something stored (the key as well as the passwords in the vault). What you do not understand is how this is inherently less secure than not storing anything at all.
To give you a concrete example, 1Password doesn't guarantee you from say, being compromised by a keylogger, and someone stealing your master password (never mind the key which is in fact stored). A secret heuristic doesn't necessarily face such risks. Sure that doesn't automatically mean a secret heuristic guarantees you better security, but that's not the argument.
Sure I’ll cede that storing nothing is safer. Yes an _authenticator_ is stored implicit in the MAC of the ciphertext holding the vault key, so in a way a key stretched version of the master password is validated. So with both a secret key and vault key wrapped ciphertext you can launch an offline attack.
But the keylogger or malware argument is a lazy one tbh, not only does it affect your secret heuristic as any input password is affected, basically no software can be guaranteed to be safe from malware or keylogger except maybe that running in something like a Secure Enclave or if your OS supports secure entry on certain fields (1P on Mac does this). If you’re in that position you got bigger things to worry about anyway.
But anyways it all depends on implementation as I said. 1P also supports passkey unlock eradicating the need for the master password (secret key stays), so you can still have the security you desire, particularly if you use a FIDO2 security key like a yubikey.
I'm still in my 30s, but I wonder how much mental decline is actually due to physical decline. I notice I feel more sluggish, sleepy, less sharp and motivated during periods when I'm more sedentary. And while exercise is tiring, I feel it gradually improves not only physical stamina, but mental stamina as well. Clearly a large part of our brain power is spent controlling our bodies, for when a stroke happens, becoming paralyzed in an area of your body can result. And clearly our body caters to our brains needs (e.g. nutrition), so if the body declines, then it shouldn't be surprising to see mental capabilities decline as well.
I don't buy the argument that every transaction in theory creates wealth. The only way that holds true, is by using a subjective/arbitrary meaning of wealth, which would imply, I can become wealthier/poorer by merely changing my mind. In such a case, I can be the wealthiest man in the world, and the poorest 10 minutes later, when no transaction or anything really even happened.
Sure mind over matter, but I'd prefer using a more objective definition for wealth, rather than an arbitrary one. It makes measuring and comparing things much more sensible, otherwise you are free to reason whatever you want and have no culpability, which is very unscientific.
If you can truly come up with an objective measure of wealth, I believe there might be a (quasi) Nobel Prize in economics for you.
The reason economics is hard, in part, is that there isn't some core firmament you can rest on; there is no fundamental, provable truth. And yet, with fancy statistics and clever experimental design, you can still make intelligent statements and understand the world better.
To me, economics is the field with the purest expression of "all models are wrong, some are useful." Which is actually sort of cool, if you let it be.
I think some people need to step back and ponder what's the purpose of economics? Why do we even study it? What are we hoping to achieve in analyzing it?
I can only think it began with the philosophy for making better decisions, solving problems, and improving society - particularly in the allocation of its resources.
As so, I think a huge part of the problem with economics, including most economists, is that people equate value for wealth. Value certainly is subjective, I mean, do you value having $80k, or a nice car? How about a pool, or a boat? Do you value your time less than the cost of a flight? All very subjective. But I think it's flawed to conflate value for wealth. Wealth is something real, the things you are evaluating in trade. Time is wealth. Money is wealth. Oil is wealth. Land is wealth. Why don't we simply measure these things, and how they're allocated? IMO, it seems more practical and more noble of pursuit to figuring out if someone actually needs food in society, rather than what people with plenty of resources ascribe their values to.
Economics has two broad disciplinces, micro and macro economics. Macro economics is for if you're trying to plan or consider the economy, micro economics is if you want to understand a business or person and how it makes decisions etc.,. Broadly, there's also normative and positive economics. Normative economics is stating opinions about what's right (e.g,. there should be a minimum wage so that no one can be paid less than X for their work) whereas positive economics is about facts (e.g., if you raise the price of something, you'll generally sell less of it).
Anyway, idk if that's useful. I'd say though, economists don't really need to care about what people value, except to the extent that they can e.g,. learn about what people value by observing their behavior, or use how they ascribe value to something to predict their behavior. That is to say, "real" economists _do_ study allocations of physical resources etc., don't think they just try to model some theoretical value function :)
> If you can truly come up with an objective measure of wealth, I believe there might be a (quasi) Nobel Prize in economics for you.
Is it actually that hard?
The material worth of something is what someone will pay you for it, i.e. the value it would sell for at auction. Your material wealth is the sum of the worth of what you have.
That means if you own something and the market price of it changes, i.e. someone changes their mind, then your wealth changes. But is that even wrong?
The real trouble here isn't measuring wealth, it's measuring surplus. If you sell your widget for $5, that implies it was worth less than $5 to you and at least $5 to someone else, but the gain isn't $5, it's whatever the difference is between how much you valued it and how much they did. If that was $4.50 and $5.50 then it's $1. If it was $3 and $1500 then it's $1497, even though they only paid $5. Imagine, for example, a $5 generic drug to someone who has what it treats.
> The material worth of something is what someone will pay you for it, i.e. the value it would sell for at auction.
The problem is that this i.e. isn't right, because the vast majority of market transactions are not auctions. The value a pallet of rice would auction for is very different than the value a rice farmer would accept to load it onto a truck, which is very different than the value a supermarket would pay to get one a month deposited in its loading dock, which is very different than the sum of values individual consumers would pay for the bags on that pallet.
That's because those are all different products. Water in the desert is a different product than water at the river and they can still differ in value even in a competitive market because of the cost of transportation.
I think that's a very reasonable way to look at it. But it still means that the auction strategy doesn't always work, because water flowing to me is a different product than water flowing to the auction winner.
Those are differences in the buyer/seller rather than differences in the product. It's why people value something differently, not why something is a different product. Even if the water is in the desert in both cases, you might still value it less than someone else, e.g. because you already have some and they don't, but that isn't a difference in the thing being sold.
Well, it's hard to solve a problem you don't understand right? When a problem fundamentally lies in a domain no one understands, how will it ever be fixed or solved? Best you can do is paper over the problem in some way, or somehow get randomly lucky.
The current administration aren't really isolationists. Hell, they've threatened buying/invading Greenland and the Panama Canal.
They're opportunists, protectionists, and authoritarians. I mean, Trump himself has praised Xi for ruling with an iron fist, and extending tenure 'for life', remarking he'd like to do the same. Musk would pretend to support democratic views if they were the dominant view of the current administration, or somehow thought it would benefit him. But like I said, they're opportunists - people who exploit current circumstances to gain immediate advantage rather than being guided by consistent principles or plans. They're not really isolationists...
Because the free trade policies aren't the root of the problem (ie inequality). As given enough time, global free trade policies should lead to income/wealth equalizing across the globe. Rather its unequal access to credit, and its costs, which is the real engine/cause of inequality. US has the money printer to the world's largest reserve currency, and the government as well as those who are directly subsidized by it, are those who benefit greatest. You'd be rich too, if the government printed and handed you $50 billion and didn't do the same for anyone else.
I don't think this is at all guaranteed by free trade. You could have one country stuck in a rut where they're exporting only raw goods, and they have to buy everything from a (smaller) country making more advanced goods and selling them back. Of course, the balance has to even out, but it the money is spread between more people on one end then it doesn't mean they'll be as well off as the other country.
No, that's wealth equalizing. Raw goods moving from one country to another, means equalizing those raw materials across the globe. That is, those materials are not all concentrated in one country and forgone in another (inequality), but now spread more equally between the two countries. Same for advanced goods.
But you're not wrong, the real crux of where the inequality happens is in the bond between people - represented by money - which is nothing but an IOU, a promise of a favor. There's a reason why 2 nations are often leery about what currency to trade in, as it can easily be manipulated for unfair advantage.
I don't think currencies work the way you seem to be implying. While there are certainly economic advantages to being the currency everyone trades in (in particular for your ability to finance your way out of a recession with less impact on your currencies value), I don't think it is the source of any long term difference in economic strength, this has more to do (imo) with government policies and such. See e.g,. the wikipedia article on the resource curse.
Well no, economic strength is really a matter of labor productivity, and I do not disagree in that the difference stems from government policies, I am not sure what statement I said makes you think I disagree?
The OP questioned people's stances on wealth inequality and free trade, implying that the growing inequality stems from free trade policies. This is understandable from solely an American perspective, but globally and economically speaking, this is untrue. My argument is that it's rather government policies around credit (and its costs (ie taxes)) which fundamentally drive economic inequality.
There's probably a sweet spot. Same with people. Too much context (especially unnecessary context) can be confusing/distracting, as well as being too vague (as it leaves room for multiple interpretations). But generally, I find the more refined and explicit you are, the better.
Sounds like the work of mustering up instructions... like programming...
So how do these LLM's completely remove us from having to do this work of mustering up instructions? Seems to me someone still has to instruct LLMs on what to do, and that the only way this reality will cease to exist entirely, is if humanity stopped desiring computers to do what it is they want. I don't think that's happening anytime soon.
However, maybe fewer programmers will be needed, but then again, the same was said of Fortran and COBOL and look at where we are today, more programmers than ever...