Being able to say 'I attended $famous_uni' counts for much if not most in many circles. Upper classes are beyond merit; being there and staying there is all that's needed. In fact, stepping in to save offspring is a way of life for them. School is just the first time it happens.
Mate, I’m visiting Europe right now. The tail of generational wealth is so long here you can even see it. We can certainly see a few examples of family wealth being squandered. And it makes a great narrative about karma and balance. But I’ve met even more families that while not individually wealthy will never, ever be poor in the foreseeable future for the next 5 generations at least.
That severely depends on legal and social system you operate it. It is not universal truth, that was artifact some concrete historical period. And the loss is frequently result of large war, revolution, violent displacement, that sort of thing.
You all realize that when AI takes everyone's jobs the only way people will survive is by pledging allegiance to AI companies so they feed and house them right? Its not going to lead to some utopia where people are free to paint and write novels all day. People will basically become slaves to these companies.
I would think twice about pushing for driverless cars and replacing people with agentic workflows.
Divorce is extremely cheap if you both agree on everything. Its literally one of the options on the divorce filing. You just pay the court fees. The problem is both parties rarely agree on everything and that's when it gets expensive.
Stock analysts have a success rate of 47% or lower for directional predictions. That's worse than a coin flip. All AI has to do is product fair 50/50 results and it can beat analysts. But you can do it too for the price of a quarter.
lol this is a great quote, it's like a couplet from a standup set. It's humorous, unexpected, on closer reading it's possibly true, and then you see the source and immediately realize it must be correct.
Any article you'd recommend about Renaissance? I've always been curious but not curious enough to read "just anything"
> Magerman told me, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.” … Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.”
I finally got to reading this! Honestly so far it's more about politics than I wanted and less about Renaissance, but it's certainly well-written. I particularly like this line, lol:
> Mercer has asserted repeatedly that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights movement. (Few scholars agree.)
People are scared of inhuman AIs taking over but maybe they should be more scared of the inhuman humans who've already done so. How many of the world's billionaires are emotionally stunted misanthropes like this? What do we do when we find ourselves in a system where someone with no emotional intelligence, empathy, or interpersonal skills can make themselves a gigantic pile of cash by pushing buttons on a screen without ever having to interact with another human, and then decides to find a sense of purpose by hurling their wealth around according to some seriously misguided views? It seems obvious to me that a core component of the problem is the fungibility of money, which over time absorbs all other figures of merit and rolls them into one, called "power", which subverts any system designed to contain it.
I don't think analyzing just the directional correctness is enough. Magnitudes shouldn't just be ignored. A trader can still make money even if more than half of their trades were wrong directionally, and can still lose money (or even go bankrupt) even if more than half of their trades were correct directionally.
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