The System and Its Adaptation

On this day:

1514
Pope Leo X issues a papal bull against slavery.
1539
Spain annexes Cuba.
1639
The “Fundamental Orders”, the first written constitution that created a government, is adopted in Connecticut.
1784
American Revolutionary War: Ratification Day, United States Congress ratifies Treaty of Paris with Great Britain.
2000
A United Nations tribunal sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years for the 1993 killing of over 100 Muslims in a Bosnian village.
2005
Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan.

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A recent M.I.T. Media Lab study monitored 54 participants writing essays, with and without A.I., in order to assess what it called “the cognitive cost of using an L.L.M. in the educational context of writing an essay.” The authors used EEG testing to measure brain activity and understand “neural activations” that took place while using L.L.M.s. The participants relying on ChatGPT to write demonstrated weaker brain connectivity, poorer memory recall of the essay they had just written, and less ownership over their writing, than the people who did not use L.L.M.s. The study calls this “cognitive debt” and concludes that the “results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of L.L.M. reliance.”

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Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses from its devices business (Echos, Fire TV Sticks, video doorbells, Kindles), according to The Wall Street Journal.

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When did anonymity become an American virtue?

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The System and Its Adaptation

 “I do think that it's incumbent on the people that do very well under that system to be taxed in a manner that takes reasonable care of anybody that is not well adapted to that system.”--Buffett

A statement of this implication by a man like Buffett deserves consideration (with appropriate humility). What does it mean? Is this just government-mandated charity? The problem is in the phrase 'not well adapted to the system'.

What is the American system? Financial success? Is it the system of voting? Social order? Equality before the law? Gun rights? Mediocre public transportation? The Chicago Board of Trade? 

How would one envision a successful life that pursued 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' in that system? Would one be 'well adapted' pursuing his eccentric religious beliefs, working on engines, traveling the world in the merchant marine, in a marriage freely entered, raising 17 children on a small sustainable farm, or any other in the countless galaxies that life offers?

Or is something else going on, a world of counting houses and ledgers, where some are judging the accomplishments of others, grading their lives?

Is the American 'system' nothing more than a commercial bazaar where freedom does not include the freedom to fail, and results are weighed and moderated by avuncular oversight??