Even in the West, the vast majority of us are stuck in the same rut as you are. Somehow some people make more of their lives. It looks incomprehensible, of course, to those of us who can't manage it!

Does the paper really claim that every one of us has this tendency to the same degree?

The framing of the whole paper makes the point implicitly. They open with Aristotle’s claim that all humans by nature desire to know, then argue the converse that choosing not to know is equally a part of human nature.

The examples they use span medical patients, Nobel laureates, lawyers, investors, and ordinary citizens across multiple countries. The paper treats it as a species level cognitive phenomenon.

> Last year we had "homicide rate lower than any other UK city"

Ah but as GP so astutely observed, an awful lot of murders go unreported. They saw it on Twitter/read it in the Telegraph/heard it on Talk. It certainly explains how all the foxes are so well nourished.

GP said many crimes go unreported which is certainly true of minor theft but not so much with murders.

(a source on murders https://www.london.gov.uk/londons-homicide-rate-capita-lowes...)

There is quite a lot of shoplifting, phone snatching etc.

I think the foxes live on takeaway pizza leftovers.

And yet... TFA

I have tried and failed to get an LLM to make any useful contribution to my project in real-world mathematics. So maybe don't believe the hype. I suppose it's possible that at some point they will be more capable than humans, but it's by no means assured.

On the other hand, as was noted before the AI rush and before the recent political turmoil (but they will only have exacerbated it), the value of capital increasingly outweighs the value of labour. So if you want to have grandkids you might want to make money using your own skills while it's still possible.

You haven't said why you are home-schooling?

Thanks for your thoughts. I am curious to hear more about how AI did not help in your math project, if you are happy to share. Also curious to why you think in some cases it seems to help[1], and others it does not (your case).

I also definitely notice how the value of capital keeps increasing, while the value of labour stagnates. I think your advice about making money now is absolutely fair. I strongly dislike that this is the case (it feels like it's leading to a world with little meritocracy, and little improvements), but I guess, yeah, we have to accept the reality as it is.

Regarding why I am home-schooling, there are a lot of small reasons. I guess in a short summary, there was no school where my kid was happy within a 30 minutes drive radius, where I live. I am not against school at all (I have other kids at school), but we tried several in his case and that was a strong failure.

[1]: https://officechai.com/ai/gpt-5-2-and-harmonic-appear-to-hav...

> The analogical form of the English expression "what it is like" is misleading. It does not mean "what (in our experience) it resembles," but rather "how it is for the subject himself."

Nagel "What is it like to be a bat?"

You've only told us that you're scared of being mugged by dealers! That doesn't even count as anecdotal evidence that it's likely.

Been mugged twice in London, police weren't interested at all, even with the one where I was assaulted pretty bad.

Got my car totalled on the m40 by a teen with a license of 6 months who was clearly on his phone - that one I was for sure lucky, could've easily been the end of me. The police? Didn't even show up. My police report that I filled out while still shaking got a response letter of "We don't care m8".

Every government aims to stay in control whether or not lynchings are on the horizon. Your comment would be more informative if you explained why they might feel that striking an attitude uncooperative with the US will help to achieve that.

That is true. Every government's aim is to stay in power which in itself is the answer to your question. Eliminating regional threats to any country's dominance is paramount, as you noted.

This is especially true now, in my opinion, since there is a small likelihood of China invading Taiwan in the near term with some estimates predicting a 10-35% likelihood by 2027-2028. Longer term, the likelihood increases, but that's just my opinion.

If this is the case, however, the US economy can survive the loss of ~$180B annual Taiwan trade ties, but with "severe" recession; GDP down ~7% in conflict scenario. It would be chaos in the US, so a stable region, is paramount for survival and economic growth.

With that being said, Venezuela's 303B barrel reserves could boost US energy security via increased production (potentially 2-3M bpd), lowering oil prices, but effects delayed years.

Basically, even if sanctions lifted and investment resumed immediately, significantly increasing Venezuela's oil production (to meaningfully impact global/US supply and prices) would take 3–10+ years due to:

-Infrastructure decay -Need for massive new investment -Technical/logistical rebuilding -Contract/legal negotiations

Short-term relief would be minimal.

In my view, it would take more than Venezuelan oil to be able to counter a protracted economic war with China over the loss of ~$180B annual Taiwan trade ties but stabilizing the region could help strengthen the West's position.

I would not bank much on this humble AIs opinion :)

The country doesn’t have much to do with it. Norman Forster travels all over.

Sure, I was just giving a different perspective. Congrats to Norman Foster for having such strong opinions about architecture, I also have an opinion and in this case it runs contrary to his.

Norman Foster is the architect not the critic! His firm is based in London and does its stuff all over the world.

The proof is actually of their equivalence as propositions. This is only possible because the binary digits are represented as Bools, and a Bool b can be coerced to the proposition that b = true.