Friday, October 4, 2024

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"In 1800, 75% of [an American's] working man's expenditures went for food alone. By 1850, that had dropped to 50%. Today it is a little more than 11%. "--WSJ


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A preview of the coming problem of working with AI when it starts to match or exceed human capability: Doctors were given cases to diagnose, with half getting GPT-4 access to help. The control group got 73% score in diagnostic accuracy (a measure of diagnostic reasoning) & the GPT-4 group 77%. No big difference. But GPT-4 alone got 88%. The doctors didn’t change their opinions when working with AI.


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In this time of war, economic instability, and philosophical foolishness, here is 
Zycher on our esteemed candidates who have floated to the top:

"Donald Trump is a thoroughly despicable man, a narcissist, and abject liar devoid of dignity and incapable of consistent behavior worthy of the presidency. Even now when a George Costanza-type “opposite” suppression of his instincts would advance his political interests, Trump has opted not to focus on Harris’ policy absurdities and reversals, instead criticizing Harris’ crowd size estimates, ethnic background, and other personal attributes more appropriate for a junior high school lunchroom setting.

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Kamala Harris is a supreme lightweight who has never thought about policy issues in a serious way, who does not know how to do so, and whose instincts are profoundly misguided. Anyone who can believe that price controls will improve economic outcomes can believe anything. But in terms of domestic policies, as president she would prove profoundly ineffective, as the likelihood of a GOP takeover of the Senate this year is very high, and the major questions doctrine as decided by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v EPA will impose real limits on regulatory policy as a circumvention of Congress. Moreover, Harris would be a poor bet for reelection in 2028 precisely because of the silliness of her thinking, the perverse results of her policy preferences, and the incoherence of her rhetoric. The comedy potential of a future debate between, say, Senator Tom Cotton and Harris is a harbinger of her reelection prospects."

Sometimes competition and selection leads down blind allwys.

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