This is why I found this essay very interesting but not very useful. I don't have trouble identifying interests, I have trouble pursuing them with the intensity of a PG. I don't mean this as a criticism at all. I don't think it would be possible to write an essay that would solve this problem.
I simply don't have the personality to work hard. In general, I don't believe people change after adolescence. Therefore I am most focused on contentment with the person I am, while nudging myself gently towards greater discipline. Meeting myself halfway, so to speak.
Many people underestimate the worth of two educated parents looking out for you. I love my parents, but I can only rely on them for emotional support. Somehow I ended up being far more academically gifted than both of them and it made me end up in a very alien environment. I'm starting to become content with mediocrity since I've already climbed a significant rung in the social ladder in my eyes. I think that an understanding parent or close one can really support you in getting out of such a comfort zone. On the other hand, someone who has grown up without any support whatsoever might have build up enough autonomy to get out of such a spot without help.
Practically speaking, network effects make it nearly impossible for alternative platforms to achieve the scale of their mainstream ancestors. Right-wing communities exiled from Reddit have much smaller audiences in their new homes.
I'm not so concerned with this level of "censorship" in and of itself. But what happens, when, inevitably, the media starts to demand the same out of Google, AWS, ISPs? That's the truly scary prospect.
If there is a paired dataset, I guess this could be "easy". The stylegan "input" is essentially used to control parameters at various stages within the network, so you could adjust them one at a time, or on varying schedules or something, to get the sort of gradual effect.
I know that randomly instantiated neural networks can produce some pretty trippy image transformations as well, so maybe there is a way to bootstrap without paired data.
Lastly, I doubt this is on the right track but it would be cool if you could produce appropriately styled images with a "compression" approach. ie, trying to fit the audio information into some small visually meaningful latent space, and then using that to generate images.
edit: ok just watched the first example, back to square 1 for me. Its literally pulling stuff from paintings.
We're using audio analysis, and applying that to control the output of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) trained on a particular set of images, which define the visual theme.
Thanks! I didn't notice the first example where its more apparent there are paintings used as a source material -- are the other examples on the landing page produced from paintings or some other original source? It would be an interesting task to try and design images knowing they will be used as the GAN's inspiration.
Also out of curiosity, did you determine anything about the legality of training the GAN on copyrighted images and decidings its output is its own creative work, or using public domain images?
You might be interested in the novel "The Goldfinch". It's pretty relevant to this post, and somewhat relevant to your comment. But it isn't a heist so to speak.
It annoys me slightly how - at least of the questions that make it to air - some are almost totally unanswerable unless you went to a private school and studied classics. I can sometimes go the best part of a series without getting a Physics or Mathematics one wrong, but some questions just do not represent knowledge actually held by all but few of the student populace (considering the name of the show).
It's not a cultural divide amongst academics, just that the questions often feel like they were drafted by recruits of the Cambridge five back in 1935. Quite often no imagination at all, i.e. You can usually get a point on most pop music rounds by guessing Bon Dylan.
I'd been hoping the Cambridge five were what the Sex Viri changed to after Haldane, but they added a member instead of subtracting one, becoming the Septem Viri in a fit (worthy of classically-trained cunning linguists?) of prudishness.
As to Dylan, Bob Roberts is worth a shufti. The soundtrack wasn't available at release, but from what I've seen floating around the interwebz, it, like The Onion, has been outstripped by reality.
Anyway: if the Cambridge five were more up-to-date, wouldn't they be setting questions like "which Alexandrov tune has been set to english lyrics by both Paul Robeson and Greg Camp?"
As an ex-competitive Science Bowl participant, I’m mildly annoyed by the extra stall time allowed by registering with a long last name and being able to prefix your answer with “is it” :/ In Science Bowl you’re referred to by {A,B}{1,2,3,4} and prefixing your answer is an instant stall disqualification. It’d be interesting to see someone go and train them to buzz based on the extra time they get…
Personally, it strikes me as profoundly illiberal that we allow and expect from local governments such complete control over private use of private property.
It is probably one of the most important policy issues from an economic/social perspective, and yet it doesn't have a clear valence in today's binary, identitarian political discourse. I see people from all backgrounds and affiliations arguing for/against upzoning/housing density.
I tend to agree that it is problematic to embed so much power into local governments. They are ill equipped to handled the research required to make those choices meaningfully. The smaller and poorer the towns, the less equipped they are to be informed.
There is a kind of loop that happens in this debate, though.
1. we want progress,
2. progress requires money,
3. money requires growth
4. growth requires change
5. change is not always progress...
Whether or not you agree with the premise of any items on that loop, it seems to happen that the loop is the refrains of all small governments (and maybe large ones?) who need to fund all of their actions out of current and future receivables. Without changes that increase property value (and therefore taxes), many small governments in the US have few levers for progress. If they levy higher taxes in other forms, it puts a regressive burden on their poorest members, if they do nothing then they can't be progressive.
I tend to think of the shortcomings as a matter of debt, mostly. Debt is the ultimate anti-progressive force, since it sticks around long after mistakes have been made. many municipalities have increased levels of debt to keep up with the levels of progress they require, but the debts need to be funded by future revenues, which means growth in future revenues.
An uncomfortable conclusion of this is that even if our smaller governments acted with the best of intent, They will be left paying for their mistakes for many years to come, and that those financial commitments to projects which did not pay off in hindsight may cripple their ability to make correct choices now.
I would hope that increasing density doesn't require much upfront investment. It's definitely true that density creates more strain on public goods like roads that are disproportionately funded by yesterday's taxpayers. I guess that is a pretty reasonable externality to incorporate into permitting fees.
It’s the load on parking, sewer, electric, gas lines, school districts, hospitals, etc. it all adds up, and if you recover all the costs from the permitting, then nobody will build. It is quite complicated.
The thing is, it was sold to current owners of single-family dwellings as a sort of “right” not to have too many neighbours to know them all, so if you take that away now, it is going to be unpopular.
I think part of this could be solved by just not living in the Bay Area, and choosing to live somewhere with a better zoning law (like Houston) and take a cycle to genuinely understand how politics produces that good before voting, I know that sounds crazy.
Ultimately it is about protection of personal property. The value and and desirability of your personal property is directly tied to adjacent properties and the neighborhood. Height restrictions prevent someone building a tall building and blocking your view, which would have significant and direct cost to your asset value. Zoning restrictions ensure the neighborhood stays safe and quiet, another direct contributor of asset value.
This is not sustainable at scale, clearly density is necessary. But, there is a legitimate case for protecting private property values, creating density where it makes sense but not where it doesn't.
I wonder if there is any data on how upzoning affects suburban property values. I would prefer not to live in a single family detached house next to condos. Then again, the optionality to put 10+ units on a lot has to be worth something.
Ridesharing created a more or less competitive market for this slice of the transportation sector. Competitive markets are the best way to allocate resources. If you don't agree with that, it will be hard to have a productive discussion.
But if you do agree with that, shouldn't we resolve inequalities by directly supporting the least fortunate (with cash) rather than force parties into arbitrary economic relationships?
Competitive markets are the best way for capital to extract value from workers, because without collective bargaining they pit individuals against huge corporate operations with wildly disproportionate access to legal and financial power.
They are not the best way to allocate resources - not least because they have huge social and political opportunity costs which are rarely understood by their fervent devotees.
Cash is not a solution to this, although it can be a productive first step in some limited circumstances.
The "arbitrary economic relationships" here are the ones being peddled by Uber and Lyft.
The point is neither Uber nor Lyft are viable businesses. Even with its advantages Uber is somehow managing to lose $3bn a year on its ride sharing service.
It only exists at all because investors hope it will somehow be able to throw its beta-drivers under the proverbial bus when self-driving cars finally become a thing, and too many of its drivers aren't aware of this and are expecting it to act like a long-term employer.
Competitive markets combined with regulation are the way we allocate resources in virtually every country. Unchecked competition can lead to exploitative races to the bottom, concentration of capital in the hands of people who cannot use it efficiently, and wanton externalising of costs (pollution, insurance, congestion). Ridesharing did create a competitive market and now its negative aspects should be curtailed.
I'm not in favour of a return to the 40 hour workweek which seems arbitrary and archaic and smacks of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would prefer an equivalent to the 40 hour workweek for contractors, we have price controls for farm workers, but for some reason act as though it's normal for Uber drivers to work for effectively well under minimum wage. We need to ensure the drivers are getting a bigger share of the proceeds at the time the profits are being generated, not afterwards after labour has lost all of its negotiating leverage and granted a massive warchest of money to capital. States like California should be competitive and fight for a share of profits, not passively roll over.
i think the word that jumps out at me here is "best". what does this mean? is there an absolute agreed-upon best, or is best relative?
in this situation (re: ride-share companies), i think it's entirely possible that there are overall market wins -- more money ends up circulating -- but that there are local losers, specifically the employees of these companies, and local winners -- the management, investors, and employees of these companies -- and that the group of losers actually outnumbers the winners.
some folks put the rideshare-using public into the group of winners, which i think is debatable.
either way, i think it should be permissible to defend the group that's least able to defend itself -- rideshare drivers who are doing gig work to make ends meet -- even if that results in "suboptimal" global outcomes.
i think this debate broadly parallels the overall debate in neoliberal economics. for instance, yes, trade makes everyone better off on average, but in practice it makes some folks (the 1%) much, much better off, and impoverishes broad groups of other people.
the term "economic piety" -- the naive idea that by growing the pie, everyone becomes better off. this hasn't proved to be true in practice, and some economists are beginning to regard the idea with a bit of embarrassment.
I meant "best" in the sense of achieving some sort of maximum total utility, mean utility, median utility, etc.
My point is that instead of inspecting every economic relationship for "winners" and "losers", we should tax the winners and support the losers at a global level.
It's not really a "competitive market" if the new entrants are massively subsidized by investors and therefore never had to compete on equal economic footing.
I agree, but there are base rules in most markets, which is why AB5 exists.
For example, an upstart McDonalds-like chain that uses App-ordering could charge much less for a burger if they paid $3 an hour. Consumers would obviously choose this chain if tyhe product is still good as it is much much cheaper. (Capitalism obviously doesn't have a conscience.) For this reason, we have minimum wage laws and (somewhat as a hack, I don't agree with the rules) health care mandates for employers, to create fair and legal playing fields to ensure that businesses' are taking action to better the economy and the American people.
I suppose a universal point I am trying to state here is: Corporations exist to better the people. Wouldn't it be overall more efficient if the the company paid fairly and the people who work for that company don't have to then request funds from the government? This ensures competition is possible by setting a floor on the race to the bottom costs.
(edit) made my comment a bit less confrontational in tone