This is the classic expression of the fallacy that the value of something is based on the cost to create it from the seller, not the benefit it brings to the buyer.
Additionally, there are lots of examples where cheaper production has produced an inferior product yet the difference in price causes the inferior product to usurp in superior product. Building materials exhibit this effect frequently: plaster vs. drywall, asphalt vs. slate, balloon framing vs structural masonry, etc.
In media, TikTok exemplifies this effect. People watch fewer movies (expensive, high quality) and watch more short-form content (cheap, low quality).
Saying movies are inherently a superior product to TikTok shorts is incredibly untrue. I would rather watch 90 minutes of the dumbest TikTok crap imaginable than sit through Madame Web again.
Cheaper movies in terms of cost are often better than expensive movies because they have a humanity that shows through. Let me know when an AI can make a Jon Carpenter movie
This. Christopher Nolan, but yes. AI can never capture the subtlety of the (failings) of the human mind/memory and the implications. It would have to learn it somehow and I don't see a method with which that can be taught.
How are people so certain that there is something humanity does which is unmodelable?
There is an ancient hubris in this: the belief that there is something in humanity beyond physics, that we possess a soul or something else which defies mathematical/scientific comprehension.
I would like to believe in our specialness like this too, but I don't understand how someone can confidently proclaim that "AI can never capture" something humans do.
Whatever it is we think AI can never learn about us, is it unlearnable by humans too (i.e. inborn, instinctive)? Or is it learnable by humans, but inexplicable, unlearnable by a machine observing the behavior en masse?
> Art is the domain where "the cost to create it from the seller" matters.
Is it? Or does it boil down to: "This has been done and rehashed multiple times before, it's no longer interesting"? There is tons of recognized art out there that, in literal time spent, could be done in minutes. What is important is what people gain from the art, not the time put into the art.
Do you value that they wrote it, or that it's their opinion? Hypothetically, if there was a system to take one's thoughts on a topic and generate text that accurately represents them, would you be interested in reading it if someone sent you their thoughts?
I think it depends on the volume of words / content and time I have to spend parsing it. With AI it seems like the volume could easily skyrocket, and the person who subjects me to it may not even have read it.
This isn't just limited to AI though. As an example, I hate email generally, it feels like the land where people dump out words without trying to carefully say anything. It almost always requires lots of clarification later on. It's the land of careless communication.
I often wish there was an honest flag on emails that indicated "effort put into this email" so I could put the requisite effort into reading it ;). I don't want to spend a lot of time on something of the person creating it didn't spend much time on. On the other hand if someone did put a lot of effort into the content, I want to give them an appropriate amount of attention.
With AI it seems like the sheer volume of content could be even larger because of how little time it costs the sender. Thus eating up even more of the receiver's time.
I don't think that's true at all. Duchamp's "Fountain" is an example of something that is profoundly impactful, didn't "cost" him anything, yet an AI could never reproduce it.
Yes, 4 exceptions: castling rights, legal en passant captures, threefold repetition, and the 50 move rule. You actually need quite a lot of state to track all of those.
It shouldn't be too much extra state. I assume that 2 bits should be enough to cover castling rights (one for each player), whatever is necessary to store the last 3 moves should cover legal en passant captures and threefold repetition, and 12 bits to store two non-overflowing 6 bit counters (time since last capture, and time since last pawn move) should cover the 50 move rule.
So... unless I'm understanding something incorrectly, something like "the three last moves plus 17 bits of state" (plus the current board state) should be enough to treat chess as a memoryless process. Doesn't seem like too much to track.
Threefold repetition does not require the three positions to occur consecutively. So you could conceivably have a position repeat itself for first on the 1st move, second time on the 25th move, and the third time on the 50th move of a sequence and then players could claim a draw by threefold repetition or 50 move rule at the same time!
This means you do need to store the last 50 board positions in the worst case. Normally you need to store less because many moves are irreversible (pawns cannot go backwards, pieces cannot be un-captured).
I use Grubhub regularly, they almost always have their own drivers. For a few pizza places that had existing delivery services, they're just a front end onto the pizza place's delivery service.
That’s all very well if you’re going thousands of km. For a plane journey that takes less than 3 hours, though, the train may still win, because the train doesn’t involve… airports. No getting to the airport, security, hanging around because the train is inexplicably an hour late (trains are sometimes late, but even in the worst systems not on the scale/frequency of plane lateness), no half-hour spent boarding the train, no taxi-ing, no sitting around for 20 minutes at the end while they get around to opening the train door, no walking through a km worth of airport.
Unfortunately, the monetary and political interests in security theater became entrenched after 9/11. I'm afraid something similar might happen to trains eventually, if they're ever used in a sufficiently theatrical instance of violence. I'm enjoying the ease of access while it lasts.
This is sadly too true for the Channel Tunnel railway linking Britain with France. The post-Brexit border security easily takes in excess of half an hour as several hundred passengers shuffle single-file through the scanners. Although it is still marginally faster than flying for me due to my distance from an airport (as well as Britain's underdeveloped domestic aviation sector in general) the time spent at the station usually exceeds my actual journey now.
What's most stupid about security for rail passengers is that the original fear from 9/11 doesn't even apply - you can't hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper!
The security scanners were always there for the Channel Tunnel, though the check is much less intensive than for air travel. They are looking for bombs, gas canisters, guns and maybe large knives.
London had terrorist attacks from the IRA long before 9/11, including attacks on the transport network. There were 13 in 1991, of which 4 were on trains or at stations.
The new delays are for the passport checks. What used to be ~10 seconds for each EU citizen — is the passport/ID card valid and does the face match? — is now 60+ seconds for British people entering the EU, as the official must check they haven't stayed more than 90 days in the last 180 etc.
It is impressive... though I must admit the prices are impressive, too. I'm going to be driving a relative to Florida next week from New England, and then flying back. Anyone that knows the seasonal migratory patterns of the new england elderbird knows that the market is heavily in my favor, but even still, the airfare, fees, taxes and everything come out to about $60 to fly over 1200 miles. That's like a nickel-a-mile. One round-trip ticket to the furthest spot in Boston's commuter rail system (terminating in Rhode Island) is nearly half that price.
Yes. I flew 707s etc. before jet bridges. And even after they became common in the US except for smaller very regional planes, it took quite a while longer for them to become common at some, even larger, international airports.
Sure, but… cities in the USA are thousands of km. Seattle to Chicago (the example given by the GP) are 2800 km distant. Those cities are slightly more distant than Lisbon and Warsaw. Chicago to Washington DC is almost the exact distance as London to Marseille (1000 km). Chicago to Houston, Texas is the same distance as London to Rome.
To go back to the first example, Seattle to Chicago is a 4 hour (scheduled, which already includes taxi time at both ends and a buffer for late departures) plane ride. Even a TGV running continuously at top speed (320km/h), with no stops, would take 8.5 hours to complete the same journey. Wikipedia tells me that the fastest start-to-end scheduled speed of a TGV is only 280 km/h, which would take over 10 hours.
Chicago to DC is about the break-even distance for high-speed-rail vs. flying. That's already pretty darn good, and it would eliminate a lot of flying.
Wait until you find out how quickly you can board and exit a train at a station that’s right in the center of the city, versus traveling to an airport, going through security, waiting to board, and then waiting some more for the plane to hopefully get its take-off slot from air control.
You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
Ah yes, the fake line of argument that for airplanes you have to drive an hour to get to the airport two hours before your flight, while in the case of trains, a powerful genie comes into your house, packs your suitcase and whisks you away in his powerful arms directly to your seat on the train 13.21 seconds prior to departure.
It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours.
Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens
only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains.
the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
So you're saying first we should invent time travel. Sounds practical!
If you want to build a transit hub outside the city center and link it via subway, that's no easier or more convenient for a train station than for an airport.
what i am saying is that i realize that building central trainstations in US cities is a bit harder due to not being able to reuse existing historical trainstations, it is certainly not as hard as building a central airport. and most importantly, it would be easier than in a comparable european city without a central trainstation because european cities tend to have dense historical centers where you can't build, whereas in the US it is probably possible to find some sufficiently central property that is up for redevelopment.
> but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours
Just driving to the airport in Denver is nearly an hour for most of the city. It'll take a half hour to get from Uptown Dallas or Frisco or Saginaw to DFW. It's like a half hour to get from Orlando International to any of the Disney resorts. About 20 minutes from downtown KC to MCI. All of this is without any time parking or going through security and assuming traffic doesn't get bad.
Dallas has a train station downtown. Same with Fort Worth. Kansas City Union Station is downtown. Manhattan has several train stations. A lot of cities have a big train station downtown, as many cities were built around the train station. A decently sized train station uses considerably less space than a busy airport.
Which of these seem easier for the people in the city to actually get to and use?
Don't get me wrong, I agree even door to door air travel will usually be faster when talking about the kinds of distances a lot of US travelers go at and often people act like a train is 0 minutes of time getting to/from the station, but arguing the whole travel time getting to/from the airport and dealing with more security is only 20 minutes is a massive stretch for a ton of Americans. Most people should budget probably an hour before their scheduled boarding time to deal with the about half hour drive, the time navigating the airport, and the time dealing with security. Plus add another half hour after landing to actually get someplace interesting.
And then there's San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans... there are plenty of cities that have airports that are very convenient to them, and train stations that aren't.
My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center, you aren't building a train station in its center, in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it. We're all at the mercy of history here, unless you're going to try to build a new planned community where there currently is only light population.
SFO is still about a half hour drive in decent traffic for most of San Francisco. I've only flown in once, but it took like 40+min in traffic for me to go from there to Moscone. Meanwhile the train station is an 18min walk from Moscone.
LAX, sure, it is mostly surrounded by the city on three sides, but the sprawl there means the vast majority of the city sees 30+min traffic. Meanwhile Union Station there is right downtown and far more central.
It's incredible how your first two examples are such massive swings and misses at naming cities which have airports more convenient for their city than their train stations. In both the train station is more central to the actual city with a lot of people having a shorter walk to the station than most would have as a drive to the airport. About the first city in that list where the airport is actually more conveniently located is Las Vegas but largely because Amtrack just doesn't serve Vegas by train at all. Sounds like you didn't bother actually researching the list at all and just put down some cities that came to mind. Did you bother actually looking where the train stations were in comparison to the airport?
Another example, New Orleans. It is a half hour drive to/from the French Quarter. It is like a half hour walk from the train station to the French Quarter. Assuming the train and the plane arrived at the same time one could walk there from the train station before you even left the parking lot of the rental car agency.
> My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center
Just continuing to ignore most historic US cites (and the vast majority of the large ones) do have train stations in the middle of the city
> in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it
Just continuing to ignore the massive difference in land use requirements for even a medium airport compared to a train station. Just look at those Maps links I shared earlier. Look at how much space Penn Station in Manhattan uses. Think we can build an airport like JFK or even La Guardia in that same footprint? How would they even take off/land? Its way easier for a city to build a train station in its core than to put a whole airport with multiple runways and taxiways and tons of hangars large enough to hold a 737. It's incredible you think they're on the same level of scale to build in terms of land use.
There is no real train station in San Francisco: you're insane if you think that the Caltrain station could move significant fractions of the traffic that SFO does. SFO is more convenient to a much larger percentage of the people who live in the area (sure, not the strict city limits of SF proper) than a hypothetical station in downtown SF would be.
Like, this is pure fantasy. It's just people who have some kind of weird identity built up out of "liking trains" ignoring the actual world.
I said, "there's about a 20-40 minute advantage to train stations" and you're like trying to go to bat for the idea that an intracity commuter station which is 12 minutes from the airport somehow disproves that.
Ozempic's mechanism of action is not "ramp up your metabolism" or "make you absorb fewer calories from food." It's "make the desire to eat less intense, making it easier to remain on a diet plan." That diet plan could be, "eat exactly the same things but less of them," but it will often be, "cut out unhealthy snacks" or whatever.
>It's "make the desire to eat less intense, making it easier to remain on a diet plan." That diet plan could be, "eat exactly the same things but less of them," but it will often be, "cut out unhealthy snacks" or whatever.
If people can't be convinced to eat carrots over chips, what makes you think they're going to suddenly eat carrots over chips after eating medication that makes them want to eat less?
I'm not sure how making someone less hungry magically makes them want to eat carrots over chips. Is the reason why they're eating chips because they're so hungry and so pressed for time that they're reaching for the highest calorie food? Or do they eat whatever's the most delicious? If it's the latter, I doubt being less hungry is going to make them choose healthier options over more delicious ones.
People aren't idiots. They know what foods are healthy.
A lot of people struggle with intense cravings for foods that they know to be unhealthy. These cravings stack up against their willpower and sometimes overcome that willpower and they eat in ways that they know are unhealthy.
If the cravings are less intense, willpower wins more often, cravings win less often.
I think that you will indeed see that some people on ozempic eat much the same mix of foods as before, but less so. But others will in fact change their dietary mix. And I'm pretty sure that the empirical evidence supports me on this.
Oh I can answer this one. I've never liked chips but was still ~230lb before Ozempic. I tried various diets, but the willpower to maintain one was pretty overwhelming if anything else was going on in my life. I tried eating carrots to get full. And let me tell you, it feels very strange to eat half a pound of carrots, feel your stomach be full, almost painfully full, and still be just as hungry. Same with salads. I would still feel hungry, even though the stomach is full. Even though I liked the taste of the carrots or the salad. It felt like I hadn't actually eaten, and that I was still hungry for an actual meal. With Ozempic? I can just eat a salad, feel good about it, and feel satiated for hours. It just works?
From my friends who are on ozempic, yes it has literally done just that. Along with the fact because they are driven to eat less they, in general are less snacky (and thus eat less chips) and tend to avoid greasy/fried foods because combined with the medicine it leaves them feeling worse afterwards than eating a similar "healthier meal".
Yes N=2, small sample sizes, but I could also see how being less snacky makes one less likely to eat chips. (Why I almost pathologically don't keep easy to eat food in my pantry, granted this can also backfire too).
People prefer the chips because their brains are broken and they have a fixation on tasty foods. It clogs their thoughts processes - basically, they have an addiction.
If you don't care much for food then you don't mind eating the carrots and you don't mind losing the chips. If your entire life is food, then you do mind.
Hard agree. It is true that being a slave in one culture is much better experience than others. But that’s only a matter of degree.
Example: You intentionally killed someone and are convicted of it. You have done a bad thing. The how and why only determines your sentence, not whether or not you committed a crime
Your pronoun antecedents got confused there, but just to be clear, France is 5x larger than the UK in terms of land area.
I don't know that this really points in one direction or another. The UK might have more difficulty doing large projects due to being relatively "crowded" and having less free space, but on the other hand it might also benefit from needing to build less total mileage of road and rail, and for amenities which are mostly bound by the travel distance to them being needed in less quantity.
Your point about total mileage of road/rail etc is interesting though isn't that contrary to the point the OP is making - building more stuff makes you richer?
Building infrastructure that gets productively used makes you richer, if the infrastructure costs less than the productive use of it. Spending more money for the same amount of infrastructure productivity is bad. There's no magic here where, ceteris paribus, spending more money on infrastructure is itself good.
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