Aren’t extremely wealthy people that wealthy due to the valuation of their stock? IIRC generally the higher the networth, the higher share is kept in stocks
And they don't spend money, they take debt against their existing assets to fund projects and investments. So long as they can service the loans across economic downturns, they don't particularly have to feel the effects of a recession, outside of the mentioned opportunities to buy the market at a discount.
I suspect $$ is just a number for them. Being able to control more resources is the ultimate game. You gotta have zillions of $$ to join the tournament, though.
Person A has a net worth of 2B
Person A has a loan at 500M backed by their holdings
Stocks drop 50%, Net worth is now 1B
Person A buys $500m of stocks
Market Recovers 100%
Person A now has 2B original holdings and 1B gains, $500m owned = 2.5B
Very simple example, and not the only way to do it - but people need to remember net worth being 500B is not 500B in the bank, and at some point the number doesnt matter
More importantly you keep the portfolio semi-balanced.
Just using Google / Gold as a comparison [1].
Assume you have 100 units of each.
In late 2021, Googs gone up ~100% so you have to rebalance because you have $200 in Goog and $92 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 80 Goog (160$) and 144 Gold ($130).
In late 2022, Googs gone down ~40% so you have to rebalance because you have $96 in Goog and $141 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 100 Goog ($120) and 118 Gold ($112).
So over the course of 2 years Goog has gone up 20% and Golds gown down 5% but your investments are overall up 16%. Obviously a 100% Goog investment is higher but with more risk.
If you didn't do any rebalancing then you have a gain of 7.5% (100*1.2 + 100*0.95 = 215)
We are moving towards gerontocracy - if pension funds will have large losses it’s very likely that young, working age people will be taxed extra heavily to keep the QOL of pensioners.
That would likely lead to a revolution: Millennials are 30-45 and they’re not in a good place; neither is Gen Z.
We’re already seeing revolutions elsewhere — and it’s likely that trying to loot them further by generations who sold out the nation will simply lead to social collapse.
Have you ever battled an 87-year-old wearing mechanized battle armour? They're crazed, hopped on speed, eyes goggling in their sockets
A pack of 3 oldies burst through our perimeter one winter night... the screaming woke me up. Outside my tent the forest was lit up red by our laser blasts, trying desparately to take them out.
We thought that a revolution would be a good idea, but an upside-down population pyramid is a hell of a thing when you're on the bottom.
> Everyone should live in pods stacked together, eat insects, not drive our own automobiles around or fly places, we should be able to get our entertainment and everything to keep ourselves happy from their subscription entertainment services.
Yes of course capitalists love when economy is bad. Sorry, these dystopic visions do not pass even simplest smell test.
It’s less complicated than that. Externalities are when an individual profits but others pay the price. Think of climate change. And when a small number are so rich they control the government, so there’s nothing to stop them. It’s narrow incentives driving the whole thing.
They love it when the richest people do well. They dont care about how anyone else lives. The poorer other people are better they feel about winning.
Those you call "capitalists" love monopolies as long as they are theirs. They love captured market. They dont care about competition unless it is someone not them competing to provide for them on lower price.
As of now, billionaires dont want or need strong economy as a "middle class and lower class doing good". They want the "our wealth goes up, we are getting tax breaks, if lower class pays for it cool" kind of economy.
Not really, the evidence that ldl causes heart disease and statins prevent deaths is very, very, very strong (lots of clinical trials, lots of causal evidence e.g. Mendelian randomization). LDL is extremely harmful!
So you are saying the human body manufactures a substance that is extremely harmful to the body. And yet lowering it artificially can lead to issues such as loss of short term memory. The body needs cholesterol! You could qualify your argument by saying that excess LDL is harmful.
The body needs SOME. Evolution doesn't care about when you die, just that you reproduce first. Even the highest cholesterol cases generally have kids old enough to have their own kids before they die. That is enough for evolution to not care.
As someone who lost the genetic lottery (has the high cholesterol gene) you bet I care. There is every reason to think that treating cholesterol will increase my lifespan - I'm hoping for quite a few more healthy years.
The body can produce needed cholesterol locally just fine. The PCKS9 inhibitor trials show that having basically no serum LDL is not harmful. People that have the genetic mutation that results in no PCKS9 have extremely low rates of CVD
Formal reasoning is the point, which is not by itself abstraction.
Someone else in this discussion is saying Euclid's Elements is abstract, which is near complete nonsense. If that is abstract our perception of everything except for the fundamental [whatever] we are formed of is an abstraction.
I love how you lot just redefine words to suit your purpose:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/formal
"late 14c., "pertaining to form or arrangement;" also, in philosophy and theology, "pertaining to the form or essence of a thing," from Old French formal, formel "formal, constituent" (13c.) and directly from Latin formalis, from forma "a form, figure, shape" (see form (n.)). From early 15c. as "in due or proper form, according to recognized form," As a noun, c. 1600 (plural) "things that are formal;" as a short way to say formal dance, recorded by 1906 among U.S. college students."
There's not a much better description of what Euclid was doing.
What you mean is someone has redefined the word to suit their purpose, which is precisely what I pointed out at the top.
Edit to add: this comment had a sibling, that was suggesting that given a specific proof assistant requires all input to be formal logic perhaps the word formal could be redefined to mean that which is accepted by the proof assistant. Sadly this fine example of my point has been deleted.
Every mathematician understands what a formal proof is. Ditto a formal statement of a mathematical or logical proposition. The mathematicians of 100 years ago also all understood, and the meaning hasn't changed over the 100 years.
> The mathematicians of 100 years ago also all understood, and the meaning hasn't changed over the 100 years.
Isn't that the subject of the whole argument? That mathematicians have taken the road off in a very specific direction, and everyone disagreeing is ejected from the field, rather like occurred more recently in theoretical physics with string theory.
Prior to that time quite clearly you had formal proofs which do not meet the symbolic abstraction requirements that pure mathematicians apparently believe are axiomatic to their field today, even if they attempt to pretend otherwise, as argued over the case of Euclid elsewhere. If the Pythagoreans were reincarnated, as they probably expected, they would no doubt be dismissed as crackpots by these same people.
Not all proofs are formal, and most published papers are not formal in the strictest sense. That is why they talk about "formalizing" a proof if there is some question about it. It is that formalization process which often finds flaws.
No, abstraction is the point and formal reasoning is a tool. And yes, what Euclid did is obviously abstraction, I don’t know why so you consider this stance nonsense.
Can you say how mathematics is inherently abstract in a way consistent with your day-to-day life as a concrete person? Or is your personhood also an abstraction?
I could construct a formal reasoning scheme involving rules and jugs on my table, where we can pour liquids from one to another. It would be in no way symbolic, since it could use the liquids directly to simply be what they are. Is constructing and studing such a mechanism not mathematics? Similarly with something like musical intervals.
Of course I can. I frequently use numbers which are great abstraction. I can use same number five to describe apples, bananas and everything countable.
> to describe apples, bananas and everything countable
An apple is an abstraction over the particles/waves that comprise it, as is a banana.
Euclid is no more abstract than the day to day existence of a normal person, hence to claim that it is unusually abstract is to ignore, as you did, the abstraction inherent in day to day life.
As I pointed out it's very possible to create formal reasoning systems which are not symbolic or abstract, but due to that are we to assume constructing or studying them would not be a mathematical exercise? In fact the Pythagoreans did all sorts of stuff like that.
> An apple is an abstraction over the particles/waves that comprise it, as is a banana.
No, you don’t understand what abstraction is. Apple is exactly arrangement of particles, it’s not abstraction over them.
> hence to claim that it is unusually abstract
Who talks about him being unusually abstract (and not just abstract)?
> is to ignore, as you did, the abstraction inherent in day to day life.
How am I ignoring this abstraction when I’ve provided you exactly that (numbers are abstraction inherent in day to day life).
I’m sorry but you seem to be discussing in bad faith.
> Apple is exactly arrangement of particles, it’s not abstraction over them.
No. You can do things to that apple, such as bite it, and it is still an apple, despite it now having a different set of particles. It is the abstract concept of appleness (which we define . . . somehow) applied to that arrangement of particles.
> I’m sorry but you seem to be discussing in bad faith.
I think Waymo has huge potential for being much larger than Uber - people are willing to pay more compared to ordinary uber drive just to avoid dealing with taxi drivers and tech will only get cheaper.
More than that, I think the ride-hailing business is just the fist volley in the self driving vehicle space. It’s a short jump from there to self driving trucks, self driving package delivery, self driving private vehicles, and on and on.
Can any of those companies catch up on self-driving faster than Waymo can pivot to their niche? Cruise seemed to be a distant second, but did themselves in with an attempted cover-up.
Cruise was nixed by GM execs, whom I believe were looking for whatever excuse they could find to shut the operation down. They simply couldn't afford to stay in the game for the long haul. Cruise was under pressure to appear more capable than they were, and they took risks.
Waymo is distinguished in that it doesn't need to pander to nervous investors to keep getting money. The company is Sergei and Larry's baby. Google's founders will ensure that Waymo is patronized until it can stand on it's own.
> ...I believe were looking for whatever excuse they could find to shut the operation down
Cruise's self driving license was suspended because humans displayed poor judgement by omitting from the official report details of their stopped car dragging a knocked-down accident victim under the car for dozens of feet. They took "risks" alright, and their harebrained cover-up was discovered by chance by the oversight body.
I believe any driver who covers up the details of injuries in an accident permanently lose their license, because they'll definitely do it again. What good is a self-driving subsidiary that can't operate on public roads?
> There are already self-driving trucks on the roads.
2 trucks?! I suppose that's the minimum number required to make your pluralization correct.
I will stand on my earlier statement regarding this particular outfit: they'll need to catch up because Waymo started class 8 variants in 2021 https://waymo.com/blog/search/?t=Waymo%20Via
I see Australia in the article and pardon my rampant scepticism, simply don't believe it.
Lo and behold:
>A six-month trial of driverless trucks on public Victorian roads has been put on hold just hours before it was meant to begin after the transport union labelled it “shambolic” and “sneaky”
> "the futures of our truck drivers are jeopardised due to this poorly executed plan."
> “It’s unacceptable that these trials are being pushed by corporations that continue to disadvantage our hard-working mums and dads that work day in, day out to carry Victorians.”
Now this sounds far more like the Australia I know.
Looks like the entire trial was scrapped due to union pressure and never resumed. Same reason we can't even have Driver-Only Operation on NSW trains, despite specifically purchasing DOO trains that operate safely worldwide.
And plenty have failed. Perhaps a smaller problem space but still really, really hard. Some self driving freight company failures: Starsky, TuSimple, Embark, Ghost, among others.
One promising self driving truck startup, Aurora, was forced to put a safety driver back in the driver's seat after testing in May.
"Forced" by the truck maker, who was forced by their insurance company. All these companies will face that hurtle. I suggested to my girlfriend, who is a corporate defense attorney, that she get involved in this area of legal practice. It's a legal minefield.
Buy a Comma.ai and install it in a supported vehicle, and just try it out. It doesn't talk to GPS, but it handles left right gas brake on the freeway well enough, and that's with two fairly shit optical cameras and a radar system. Granted, geohot helped start the company, and he's no slouch, but if their system is that good, a couple things are true. A) Lidar isn't necessary b) Extensive mapping that Waymo does also isn't necessary c) that last 10% gonna take 500% of the time to get to L3/4/5 autonomous, and that last 1% is maybe never. The other day I was in a Waymo, and there was a semi totally blocking the street, backing into a loading dock. The Waymo correctly identified that there was an object in the way, and stopped and did not plow into it. At first it crept up to the semi, blocking it from making progress as well. It might have started backing up, I've seen them do that, but I was already on the customer support line as soon as I saw the semi blocking the road.
Comma.ai is probably the purchase I'm most happy with this year (to be fair though, I buy a lot of crap off Temu). Drives are now just "get on the freeway, and just chill." Pay enough attention because it's not collected to GPS and just in case something goes wrong. So to be clear, Comma.ai is not autonomous driving, it's classified as an ADAS, advanced driving assistance program. It just makes driving suck that much less, especially in stop and go traffic, for $1,000, and compatible with recent vehicles that have built-in lane guidance features. Waymo's got to be light years ahead of them, given how much money they've spent, so it's my belief that Waymo's taking it very slow and cautious, and that their technology is much more advanced than we've been told.
There are several “last meters” delivery robots developed.
Short range drones are being used in Australia.
And I heard of at least one company working with apartment architects to standardize a “port” on the building exterior to which a truck/robot would connect to “inject” packages to the inside.
> "Short range [delivery] drones are being used in Australia."
Last I read (late 2023 IIRC) these were being cancelled in various areas, if not everywhere? People in neighborhoods were getting annoyed by the noise of drones buzzing overhead.
This was just an acquaintance some years ago in SF, but I recall it was fancier with conveyor belts and a protocol for the robot to communicate the size and weights of the packages being delivered.
But to be serious, there may be a way of doing it, it just seems very far off unless you're talking about Amazon hub or something like that, where it would be more feasible (but still difficult to achieve).
Think of Waymo Driver as the equivalent of Android for vehicles. It's an operating system and a suite of cloud services for both autonomy and ride hailing.
What about all the expensive hardware, gpus, lidars? That’s like having iOS on your phone and if you want android you need to buy extra things that are worth same price as your phone.
Statistically Waymos are more expensive than Uber rides, but practically as an individual they are often cheaper than Uber, its very easy for the stated price to be lower
You might, but most people wouldn't, and more to the point, overwhelming more people will choose to drive their own car (or take transit) vs either Uber or Waymo.
If Waymo can drop its price by 50%, it could steal a lot of demand from normal cars and transit, but that doesn't seem like it's even on the conversation right now.
And costs should be lower in the long run if you don't have to share the ride fee with a driver (not case yet because seems like they still have alot of staff to manage the cars)
I would need to see Waymo be able to handle something like Southeast Michigan before I could even get comfortable with trusting it to get me ubered t/o from home for maintaining the vehicle I need to commute when I can take a remote day or two...
And then also delivering that for a good cost.
I put it that way because, I do tip Uber drivers well (unless they cray cray) and they would need to properly 'undercut' uber with whatever model they serve up in more complex areas.
Why is southeast Michigan difficult to drive in? I don't know anything about the area but I would guess if GPS navigation works and it's less dense than SF/LA, most of the major issues are solved?
Anyone who's taken enough Ubers and/or has had bad enough luck to have gotten a terrible Uber driver. Pretty much everyone I know, along with myself have had multiple awful Uber driver experiences.
Did uber/lyft get radically better in the last 12 months?
I had one rapidly cycle their prius between 50 and 70 on the freeway because regenerative brakes save gas (I felt carsick for hours after arriving at my destination), and another actually get an angry mob to tap on the windows and berate their driving. (The mob was justified.)
Since then, I’ve given up on using them whenever possible.
> rapidly cycle their prius between 50 and 70 on the freeway because regenerative brakes save gas (I felt carsick for hours after arriving at my destination)
Weird take to me, unless you were on a lot of hills; at least in my Maverick [0] 55-65 is 'ideal' MPG range for long trips, going between speeds tends to trip things up and actually -avoid- the weird 'battery has enough juice where we just kinda lug the engine' mode.
Doing regenerative 'braking' compared to using physical brakes, absolutely can give energy for momentum/acceleration and save on the physical brakes wear and tear, OTOH any normal cyclist would say it's better to 'maintain' a given output power vs allowing deceleration and then going back up to speed.
As for why, well I'm not a physics person, but in general it's that you are having to overcome the rotational mass/etc of the wheels (i.e. tires, axles, etc), and no regenerative braking within the current laws of physics will make slowing down and speeding back up more efficient, at least on a flat road.
[0] - OK It ain't quite a prius but it works fairly close aside from overall drag...
That TC article doesn't substantiate its overly broad claim. "People" aren't paying more, in general, across its US markets; it only shows that a subset of its customers in what is already the top-5 most expensive cities (SF) in the world are prepared, and at that, only 10-27% are prepared to pay significantly more ($5-10). Still fewer than the 40% who would pay “the same or less.”
Quoting: "Perhaps even more striking is how people answered a question about whether they would be willing to pay more for a Waymo. Nearly 40% said they’d pay “the same or less.” But 16.3% said they’d pay less than $5 more per ride. Another 10.1% said they’d pay up to $5 more per ride. And 16.3% said they’d pay up to $10 more per ride."
There are going to be lots of causal factors: number of rider(s), time of day, safety, gender, wait time, price estimate, predictable arrival. Let's see an apples-to-apples comparison/regression breaking out each.
I think waymo actually has a better km/accident ratio than the average driver. Plus if you haven't done it before, it'll be a cool experience to ride in a car with no driver!
But in the long term I think the point of waymo is that it'll be cheaper: no need to pay the driver if there isn't one!
The words women and woman appear exactly once each on this thread. If there's one thing tech product management needs, it is to ask a woman. This is the most obvious blind spot in tech.
Maybe with the HN readership, but in general the public don’t want to drive in driverless vehicles and don’t want them on the streets. It’s going to be a long uncertain road for them to be accepted.
> AI can displace human work but not human accountability. It has no skin and faces no consequences.
Let’s assume that we have amazing aj and robotics, better than humans at everything - if you could choose between robosurgery (completely automatic) with 1% mortality and for 5000 usd vs surgery performed by human with 10% mortality and 50000 usd price tag, would you really choose human just because you can sue him? I wouldn’t. I don’t thing anyone thinking rationally would.
The relation won’t invert because it’s very easy and quick to train guy pilling up bricks while training architect is slow and hard. If low skilled jobs will pay much better than high skilled then people will just change their job.
That’s only true as long as the technical difficulties aren’t covered by tech.
Think of a world where software engineering itself is handled relatively well by the llm and the job of the engineer becomes just collecting business requirements and checking they’re correctly addressed.
In that world the limit for scarcity might be less in the difficulty of training and more in the willingness to bend your back in the sun for hours vs comfortably writing prompts in an air conditioned room.
Right now there are enough people willing to bend their back in the sun for hours that their salaries are much lower than these of engineers. Do you think that for some reason supply of these people will drop with higher wages and much lower employment opportunities in office jobs? I highly doubt it.
My argument is not that those people’s salaries will go up until overtaking the engineers’.
It’s the opposite, that the value of office/intellectual work will tank, while manual work remains stable. Lower barrier of entry for intelectual work if a position even needs to be covered, work conditions much more comfortable.
