The lifetime value of a college degree in the United States is very high.
College is expensive, but it's nowhere near as expensive as the high private university tuitions you read about ($200K+). Most people have access to state universities that are much cheaper. Even at private universities most students are on sliding scale payments with scholarships. It's common for 10-20% or more of a university's students to be paying effectively $0 tuition.
While you definitely can skip college and still have a good career, the trades never really pay as well as internet lore suggests and the number of people who start startups and succeed is very small.
> the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc).
Graduate school is a mixed bag when it comes to prestige. It's fairly well known that grad student lifestyle is a grind, highly competitive, and a financial sacrifice. You go into it for a love of academics, not as a default next step.
As for prestigious jobs like FAANG: I think you're downplaying the extreme compensation offered by many of these jobs. It's not just about prestige, it's about unlocking a level of wealth that is hard to ignore. It delivers on the dream people have when they imagine a university education unlocking incredible career options.
> Getting a shitty fast food job is done not due to any kind of aspiration but simply because it's the default thing to do.
This is the kind of "tracks" I'm most familiar with: Especially in small towns where ideas like individual freedoms, bucking the trend, and turning your nose up at higher education are common, you don't see it translating to a lot of success in life. You see it trapping people in cycles of poverty and dead-end jobs.
From my observations, having low parental involvement and excessively unstructured upbringing doesn't automatically produce determined and self-directed adults. From my familiarity with several small towns, I would actually say it does the opposite. I can think of many people I knew as a kid who ended up stuck in small towns at dead-end jobs simply because inertia was the only thing they knew. Nobody ever jumped into their lives to push them to try different things or explore paths that weren't sitting right in front of them.
I couldn't agree more. Parental guidance or lack thereof can work differently for different people. There are incompetent and more competent parents everywhere. But that is beside the point. You can do better now. You can start steering your own ship. That degree you were pushed to get might come in handy
or not.
This was a fun read. I appreciate a journalist willing to dive into something obscure and reveal a lot of interesting process details and anecdotes as they go.
Before I knew anything about the film and TV industry I would have assumed the process was rather straightforward from concept to script to filming and then editing, almost waterfall style.
But no, it typically evolves and lives and changes through the process. Dialog and storylines are tweaked at every stage as the end product is incrementally manifested. Not unlike software development.
When they talked about how the first draft had the correct bird from the correct place making the correct sound, but what made it into production was the wrong bird from the wrong place making the wrong sound, I felt that in my software engineering soul.
The reasons were relatable too - real-world constraints got in the way, and ultimately this bug was way too minor to be fixed, in the face of all the big problems the movie faced.
I think a large part of the blame for this state of affairs belongs to people like the BBC's Natural History Unit who licence their material to film and TV companies far and wide. So, for example, in many a scene you can thrill to the song of Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilis) or Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), which would be knee-deep in twitchers if the birds were actually there.
Some useful context from Scott Alexander's blog reveals that the authors don't actually believe the 2027 target:
> Do we really think things will move this fast? Sort of no - between the beginning of the project last summer and the present, Daniel’s median for the intelligence explosion shifted from 2027 to 2028. We keep the scenario centered around 2027 because it’s still his modal prediction (and because it would be annoying to change). Other members of the team (including me) have medians later in the 2020s or early 2030s, and also think automation will progress more slowly. So maybe think of this as a vision of what an 80th percentile fast scenario looks like - not our precise median, but also not something we feel safe ruling out.
They went from "this represents roughly our median guess" in the website to "maybe think of it as an 80th percentile version of the fast scenario that we don't feel safe ruling out" in followup discussions.
Claiming that one reason they didn't change the website was because it would be "annoying" to change the date is a good barometer for how seriously anyone should be taking this exercise.
Ya, multiple failed predictions is an indicator of systemically bad predictors imo. That said, Scott Alexander usually does serious analysis instead of handwavey hype, so I tend to believe him more than many others in the space.
My somewhat native take is that we’re still close to peak hype, AI will under deliver on the inflated expectations, and we’ll head into another “winter”. This pattern has repeated multiple times, so I think it’s fairly likely based on that alone. Real progress is made during each cycle, i think humans are just bad at containing excitement
I think you mean "somewhat naive" instead of "somewhat native". :)
But, yes, this, in my mind the peak[1] bubble times ended with the DeepSeek shock earlier this year, and we are slowly on the downward trajectory now.
It won't be slow for long, once people start realizing Sama was telling them a fairy tale, and AGI/ASI/singularity isn't "right around the corner", but (if achievable at all) at least two more technology triggers away.
We got reasonably useful tools out of it, and thanks to Zuck, mostly for free (if you are an "investor", terms and conditions apply).
> They went from "this represents roughly our median guess" in the website to "maybe think of it as an 80th percentile version of the fast scenario that we don't feel safe ruling out" in followup discussions.
His post also just reads like they think they're Hari Seldon (oh Daniel's modal prediction, whew, I was worried we were reading fanfic) while being horoscope-vague enough that almost any possible development will fit into the "predictions" in the post for the next decade. I really hope I don't have to keep reading references to this for the next decade.
> while being horoscope-vague enough that almost any possible development will fit into the "predictions" in the post for the next decade.
This is a recurring theme in rationalist blogs like Scott Alexander’s: They mix a lot of low-risk claims in with heavily hedged high-risk claims. The low risk claims (AI will continue to advance) inevitably come true and therefore the blog post looks mostly accurate in hindsight.
When reading the blog post in the current context the hedging goes mostly unnoticed because everyone clicked on the article for the main claim, not the hedging.
When reviewing blog posts from the past that didn’t age well, that hedging suddenly becomes the main thing their followers want you to see.
So in future discussions there are two outcomes: He’s always either right or “not entirely wrong”. Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee. Combine that with the almost parasocial relationship that some people develop with prominent figures in the rationalist sphere and there are a lot of echo chambers that, ironically, think they’re the only rational ones who see it like it really is.
> Hari Seldon is a fictional character in the Foundation series of novels by Isaac Asimov. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor, Seldon develops psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms
> The scenario is such that a difference of a couple of years is basically irrelevant.
2 years left and 7 years left is a massive difference, it is so much easier to deal with things 7 years in the future especially since its easier to see as we get closer.
The reason climate change isn’t solved is that it’s a problem that can’t be solved by technology alone. We already have all the technology we need to decarbonize. We lack the political will to make the necessary investment.
Do you feel that you are shifting goalposts a bit when quibbling over whether AI will kill everyone in 2030 or 2035? As of 10 years ago, the entire conversation would have seemed ridiculous.
Now we're talking about single digit timeline differences to the singularity or extinction. Come on man.
> 10 years ago, the entire conversation would have seemed ridiculous
Bostrom's book[1] is 11 years old. The Basilisk is 15 years old. The Singularity summit was nearly 20 years ago. And Yudkowsky was there for all of it. If you frequented LessWrong in the 2010s, most of this is very very old hat.
It is a bit disquieting though that these predictions instead of being pushed farther away are converging to a time even closer than originally imagined. Some breakthroughs and doomsday scenarios are constantly placed thirty years into the future; this seems to be actually getting closer earlier than imagined.
I see them as funhouse mirrors, the kind that reflect your image to make you skinny or fat, except they do it with semantics, big deal. I've never had an interaction with an llm that wasnt just repeating what I said more verbosely, or with compressed fuzzy facts sprinkled in.
There is no machine spirit that exists in a box separately from us, it's just a means for people to amplify and multiply their voice into ten thousand sock puppet bot accounts, that's all I'm able to grasp anyway. Curious to hear your experience that's led you to believe something different.
Try steel manning in order to effectively persuade. This comment does not address the argument being made it just calls a field of study icky. The unfortunate reality is that shouting down questions like this only empowers the racist HBI people who are effectively leeches
> Try steel manning in order to effectively persuade. This comment does not address the argument being made it just calls a field of study icky.
Disagree (the article linked in the GP is a great read with extensive and specific citations) and reminder that you can just make the comment you'd like to see instead of trying to meta sea lion it into existence. Steel man away.
Hold on a sec. "HBD" is not a field of study; it's a meme ecosystem. There are (at least) two fields of actual scientific study that intersect with HBD: psychometrics, the subspecialty of psychology that deals in IQ measurement and twin studies, and molecular genetics, the quantitative subspecialty of genetics that studies correlations in the genome across large populations with marked traits (which can include things educational attainment).
Neither of these fields does "IQ maps", which are an article of faith in HBD circles. As soon as someone breaks out the Lynn IQ maps, they lose the "we're just doing science" card. Alexander did a whole recent article about them. We are past the point where anybody gets to high-horse criticism of his HBD stuff as un-rigorous.
In my root comment, when I said "good point" I didn't mean good point as good, it was meant as a good point of maybe not taking seriously whatever he says. I realize it wasn't clear because reading my root comment again I'm not sure either what it was meant to be understood by the readers
I have no doubt that many people reading this comment section could extract the map data and write a script to translate it to a .CSV very quickly.
But there’s something to be said for a mindless, long-term repetitive project that you can chip away at when you feel like occupying yourself with something unimportant for a bit.
I get this satisfaction from mining big spaces in Minecraft, mindless but satisfying.
Unfortunately this specific activity in Minecraft very easily turns into an enormous time sink which unless I was really too tired to do anything else and sleeping wasn’t an option, I inevitably regret afterwards.
> apparently some people with fatigue diseases have damaged mitochondria (eg, Dianna Cowern aka ThePhysicsGirl who has had a terrible long COVID illness)
In these conditions it’s more likely that mitochondrial dysfunction is part of the chain of events leading to the fatigue, not necessarily the root cause of the condition.
Also I have to tread very lightly on this topic to avoid giving the wrong idea: Be a little cautious when taking statements about Long COVID and ME/CFS from individuals, as it’s not uncommon for people to present hypotheses as more concrete than the research suggests. With all due respect to Dianna Cowern, some of her past updates on the topic have blurred the lines between conjecture and fact and she’s collaborated with at least one Long COVID / ME/CFS organization that is known for having members that are sometimes less than scientific about their personal theories. It’s a very difficult and complex topic and it can be hard for patients to stay on top of all the different directions the research is looking.
Thank you for posting this :) I've have chronic fatigue for 6 years, and yeah, there's tons of uncertainty here (if there was an easy answer we would've all used it by now, lol). ME/CFS overlaps a lot with long covid, but there's also common comorbidities that further muddy the picture (MCAS, POTS, ehler-danlos syndrome, CCI, fibromyalgia, etc).
The #1 sign of ME/CFS is post-exertional malaise, which is a delayed crash after even mild exertion, with the crash arriving anywhere from 4-48 hours later, and lasts for days after. Exertion can be taking a shower, thinking hard, etc.
I just recently ruled out ME/CFS for me personally after figuring out that I don't have delayed crashes, but I still haven't figured out source of the fatigue (potentially MCAS?).
>I still haven't figured out source of the fatigue (potentially MCAS?).
MCAS is easy to self-diagnose or at least it was in my case. Mast-cell symptoms are triggered by exercise, sun exposure, orgasms and having the connective tissue in your abdomen jiggled (e.g., by riding in a bus with bad suspension along a road with many potholes). For me it is always the same symptoms (fatigue, maybe irritability, maybe a feeling of heat on the skin) regardless of the trigger. Sometimes exposure to one of these things is not enough to trigger symptoms, but then a second exposure before the body has had time to recover from the first exposure will trigger symptoms.
Also (after you remove yourself from any triggers) if the symptoms ameliorate slowly but surely over a period of 2 to 4 hours, that is a pretty strong sign that that the symptoms were caused by mast-cell "granulation" (activation) or at least it is a strong sign in my personal case: I have other chronic conditions that can cause similar symptoms, but if one of the other conditions causes a bout of fatigue or inability to stay productive, the severity of the symptoms will increase and decrease in chaotic or unpredictable ways.
Hmm, that doesn't line up with what I've read... Dr. Afrin talks about how MCAS is a lifelong issue that only gets worse later on. Things like a history of bloody noses, strange allergic reactions (random hives or asthma), ear infections as a child, etc.
According to him, there should also be at least a couple of active symptoms, such as alternating diarrhea/constipation, edema, skin rashes or hives, foods that are high in histamine, pain while urinating, a constant feeling of being cold, hot flashes, and some others. He also encourages exercise as it helps regulate the immune system.
I certainly don't mean to invalidate your own experience—I know how hard it can be to not be understood—but perhaps there's something else that would explain it better? I'm happy to be corrected :)
MCAS is actually one of the trending diagnoses that has attracted a lot of misinformation and misdiagnosis.
Specialists who treat MCAS are overwhelmed by referrals and requests from patients who don’t meet the criteria or don’t have any basic lab work that suggests MCAS. Many of the diagnoses from primary care or self-diagnoses are from people who have been led to believe that it explains their vague symptoms. There are also a lot of people who believe they have MCAS despite negative labs, non-traditional symptoms and a non-response to medication, which is another way of saying they probably don’t have it.
So watch out. It’s trending among doctors who dabble in alternative medicine or who use it as a catch-all explanation for vague symptoms, but the social media version of MCAS has diverged from the medical definition.
Ehlers-Danlos is another self-diagnoses that is spreading in these communities. This one is so bad that actual Ehlers-Danlos specialists have difficulty sorting through referral requests because so many people and even doctors think it explains vague symptoms. It’s also trending heavily on TikTok.
CCI was briefly popular as an explanation due to a few high profile influencers. For a few years everyone was demanding imaging and sending it to one of a few doctors who specialized in it. Unfortunately those doctors were found to be excessively quick to diagnose. There were a lot of people on forums who rushed into those surgeries with no improvement at all.
Be really careful on the forums. When people start claiming they have a long list of hard to diagnose conditions (MCAS, Ehlers-Danlos, CCI, etc) all at once it’s more likely that they’ve been either self-diagnosing with each trend or they have a doctor who will confirm any vague diagnosis they suggest. These things come in waves of popularity and you can tell when some of these people joined the social media circles by their list of self-diagnoses. Sadly, so much time has been wasted on chasing dead end diagnoses that spread via social media.
Thanks for the warning :) I have responded to mast cell stabilizers and H1/H2 blockers, which is one reason I'm pursuing further treatment. I've also read Dr. Afrin's 70 page paper on MCAS diagnosis, so I have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't MCAS. And after 6 years of pursuing and failing to find treatment, I've also got fairly good at avoiding quacks...
> There are also a lot of people who believe they have MCAS despite negative labs, non-traditional symptoms and a non-response to medication
Will agree on non-response, but the typical blood test (tryptase) is not accurate in many cases[2]: "For example, in contrast to proliferative mastocytosis which usually drives significantly elevated tryptase levels, relatively non-proliferative MCAS usually presents with normal tryptase levels;"
> When people start claiming they have a long list of hard to diagnose conditions (MCAS, Ehlers-Danlos, CCI, etc)
Yes and no. [1] is a recent review that finds that these things really are quite comorbid with ME/CFS. All of them at once? Probably not, but a couple is common.
I have a thing where I can do abnormal exercise and two days later feel like a truck is hitting me slowly. is this similar? I've always just brushed it off.
Really hard to say from just that, what do you define as abnormal exercise?
Couple of thoughts:
1. PEM is triggered by things that would be fine for a normal person (walking to car, standing in a line, etc). Over exercising is definitely a thing, but it's not the same as PEM
2. Does the following fatigue cause significant impairment, and does it last for a few days?
There's some other criteria, but those are the first cut.
In these conditions it’s more likely that mitochondrial dysfunction is part of the chain of events leading to the fatigue, not necessarily the root cause of the condition.
To rephrase, it's possible she already had an underlying mitochondrial dysfunction that was not caused by COVID, but then when she caught the virus it triggered some symptomatic metabolic dysfunction that's persisting even after she cleared the virus. This kind of thing is known to happen in some people with some viral diseases, but it's poorly understood.
College is expensive, but it's nowhere near as expensive as the high private university tuitions you read about ($200K+). Most people have access to state universities that are much cheaper. Even at private universities most students are on sliding scale payments with scholarships. It's common for 10-20% or more of a university's students to be paying effectively $0 tuition.
While you definitely can skip college and still have a good career, the trades never really pay as well as internet lore suggests and the number of people who start startups and succeed is very small.
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