Well yeah it’s a catastrophe. You can’t avoid it. Realistically, Trump was already edging out Biden in the polls, including the 6 swing states.

They need a new candidate immediately… but nobody else who has the party blessing (newman, kamala, Michelle, etc) polls as good against Trump as Biden.

So what do they do? Damned if you do, damned if you dont. They are probably goinf to lose the election.

The age thing was already a concern. Now it’s a panic. Even top Dems are avoiding question of whether to remove Biden.

The debate was a catastrophe. It really couldn’t have gone much worse.

First, this conversation has little to do with fair use. Fair use is when there is an acceptable reason to break copyright. For example when you are making a parody or critique or for education purposes.

What we are talking about is the act of reading and/or learning and then using that information in order to synthesize new material. This is essentially the entire point of education. When someone goes to art school, they study many different artists and their techniques. They learn from these techniques as they merge them together in different ways to create novel art.

Everybody recognizes this is perfectly OK and to assume otherwise is absurd. So what we are talking about is not fair use, but extracting data from copyrighted material and using it to create novel material.

The distinction here is you claim when this process is automated, it should become illegal. Why?

My opinion is if it’s legal for a human to do, it should be legal for a human to automate.

10% of people who voted for Biden last time are switching to Trump according to a survey from a few months ago.

The Pentagon was actively spreading anti-vaxx misinformation in Asia. Claiming that the Chinese vaccine had pork (so Muslims wouldn’t use it), that vaccines weren’t effective, etc.

It was an attempt to destabilize Asia. There’s a Reuters article released a couple weeks ago on it. Happened summer 2020 -> summer 2021. So roughly half under Trump, half under Biden.

Although it wasn’t exactly a “Trump policy” or a “Biden policy”

Obviously they ultimately hold responsibility for what the Pentagon does because they are commander in chief, but the military did act very sketchy in this case. They essentially used loopholes by considering the “Asian cyperspace” an “active warzone” which allowed them to do certain things without authorization from the state department.

What’s the limit? This needs to be absolutely explicit and easy to understand because this is what LLMs are doing. They take hundreds of thousands of similar algorithms and they create an amalgamation of it.

When is it copying and when it is “inspiration”? What’s the line between learning and copying?

I have no problem copying code either. The question is at what point does it go from

1. I’m reading code and doing research

To

2. I’m copying code

How abstracted does it have to be before it’s OK? If you write a merge sort, it might be similar to the one you learned when you were studying data structures.

Should you make sure you attribute your data structure textbook every time you write a merge sort?

Are you understanding the point I’m trying to get at?

Well let’s say there’s an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don’t. Some do it recursively, some don’t. Etc

I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.

Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?

As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that’s a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.

If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?

It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.

It’s a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It’s the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.

Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don’t have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.

The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.

The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it’s a “buy your policy” type of democracy.

Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example “fake elections” and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views (“misinformation” bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)

Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.

As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.

You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?

We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of

Government power <-----------> corporate power

The US leans more to the right.

Really what’s interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back… authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.

I try to view it in a zoomed out perspective. Will either president meaningfully make life better?

And for that calculation I take into account a couple things.

A) quality of life for average people. You know- being able to afford your necessities. Being able to comfortably feed your family, pay your rent. Not having to stress about rent money or go into debt when your car breaks down

B) war. War brings chaos. Political and financial instability and average people (who are already not priorities) get put further back on the list. For example right now the US extending the length of Ukraine war is more important than controlling inflation or interest rates. Not to mention public money given to defense contractors that could be building homes for poor, feeding people, building infrastructure, etc

For reference, we have given Ukraine more $$$ (not counting lots of ways military deflates the real number) than Biden’s infrastructure bill allocated for public transportation, roads and bridges, and airports combined.

C) and this is my personal bias here. We have 13 million illegal immigrants. People contributing to this country, filling a gap in the labor market, paying taxes, and yet they have to live in fear. Imagine walking around your whole life scared to see a police officer come out from around the corner.

These people have been here decades and every successive Dem promises to do something. All we get is lip service.

If I thought Biden was meaningfully better on any of those 3, I would vote for him.

But I think he’s marginally better on A (maybe not because at least Trump was willing to flirt with a psuedo basic-income)

I think he’s marginally worse on B (Trump is not likely to start WW3 over Ukraine, although probably just as if not more over Taiwan/Israel)

On c) they are both the same. Biden separates families like Trump. He was using same covid loopholes Trump was using to detain lawful asylum seekers at border.

Sure Trump has more harmful rhetoric but a border wall really does not do anything. Majority of illegals come on valid tourist visas and overstay. It’s political theater.

Similar to my home state of Florida. DeSantis & Rubio (may God smite them down) pushed for a law to make it illegal to drive around an illegal immigrant.

Nevermind the fact that Florida has some of the highest rates in the country and that entire industries use them as the foundation (construction, agriculture, landscaping,etc). What happened when illegals started refusing to come to Florida?

They explained the law was symbolic, wasn’t actually meant to detain anyone. They don’t want real economic consequences. They just want to bang the xenophobic drum. It’s absurd.

You can take a million little things and make it seem meaningful but the average position for the American has not meaningfully improved in the last 3 years just like it did not improve under Trump.

One thing I think Trump is better on is his refusal to get involved in a war against Russia in Ukraine. On Israel they are both lunatics.

Sure, Biden is better than Trump. He’s passed some environmental laws. Not nearly enough, but 5% of the way there is better than -5% that Trump may bring. Sure.

His infrastructure bill, even watered down, was good for the country and we will see benefits well into the future. OK.

But inflation shot up to nearly 10% under him and the only reason it went down is because of the Federal Reserve’s persistent dampening on the economy through interest rate hikes. So now Americans have to contend with higher prices AND higher interest rates making it even harder to buy a home or even just finance a car.

Meanwhile our government is pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars funding wars across the world- maintaining that inflationary pressure while killing countless young men in pursuit of “geostrategic goals”. We keep Ukraine barely alive on an IV drip meant not to save them, but just keep them fighting Russia.

Meanwhile Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics shareholders are popping champagne cheering on the end of the world

Biden has went 180 on immigration. Mr “empathetic policy” on campaign is now Mr “expand the wall and have a photoshoot on the border with CBP officers”

Mr “make the Saudis a pariah state for chopping up journalists” on campaign becomes Mr “billion dollar arms deals”

I’m not saying Trump is better than Biden. I like Trump even less than I like Biden. But in terms of life for the average American, the difference is not significant enough to warrant this type of attitude.

“End of democracy” and all that nonsense. Democracy is already dead because we have to choose between two bombs that will wreck us in different ways.

Either way we’re inevitably going to war in the Middle East. Either way we’re inevitably going to war with China. Either way we are going to let the large oligopolies do what they want with our people. Either way the climate is fucked. Don’t tell me 5 or 10% fundamentally matters when in 100 years we have millions of climate refugees.

I say voye RFK just because he’s absurd. And absurd is better than the other two choices. Maybe it’ll wake up the Dems and force them to come back to reality. The GOP has become a death cult and there is no saving them.

We’re headed to war and fascism either way. We’re just choosing the manner in which we arrive there. My gut tells me it’s the MAGA variety

Trump and Biden are two sides of same coin. They are not so vastly different as you portend

So many Trump policies Biden continued it almost feels like we live in a satire

I would prefer Mr brain worn wins at this point

Ideally I’d have a 10 inch cock but unfortunately I gotta settle

We’re not talking hobbyists. We’re talking top level athletes. Men aren’t just stronger. There are dozens if not hundreds of items they outperform women on.

The sports where women can actually compete with men are rare. For example marksmanship or long-distance marathon. Virtually every sport men have distinct and significant advantages.

Men have larger hearts, more lung volume per body mass, more red blood cells, more clotting factors which means they recover quicker and have a higher pain tolerance.

Testosterone allows for more rapid muscle gain as well as better recovery. So two people training the same exercises an identical amount of time, the man would have gained significantly more muscle mass and strength.

Men have higher blood pressure, which means they feel fatigue less than women. Men don’t lose iron to menstruation, which means there’s more iron for oxygen circulation in the blood.

These items basically make it so men are much better at almost all sports.

For example soccer. The US Women’s national team lost to a team of high school age boys.

Men can kick harder, sprint faster, run longer, train longer & they gain more from training & they recover faster from training so they can do it more, they feel less pain so they can stay at max exertion longer, they can convert oxygen into energy faster so they can sustain all of this more than women,

Etc

There’s a reason we have women’s leagues. If we didn’t have it, women wouldn’t get to compete at a high level.

At a lower level, like hobbyist or local leagues the story may be different. There’s more variance among the general population than amongst top athletes.

Serena Williams, #1 woman tennis player, can’t hold a candle to the 203rd best man. Look up her interview about it. She’s under no illusions about this

Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men.  It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.

There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.

Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).

So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).

Why?

Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.

There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.

There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.

When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).

This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.

So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.

Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.

So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both

a) external social factors

and

b) innate biological factors

Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.

I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one  research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.

It’s a question of

How much effort (man hours which ultimately translates to $$$) versus how much revenue lost (people not buying because of Firefox bugs)

In my experience this depends on your specific application. Sometimes there are weird bugs or behavior where you have to really hunt down what’s going on. Other times it’s as simple as changing a few css lines or something.

I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Every claim I’ve made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You’ll find multiple studies and recent studies.