Completely ignores externalized costs, and focuses entirely on purely end-user retail costs to operate, not even vendor internal operational costs. Can't even find the words "energy" or "electricity" or "scale" in the post. Whatever point this person is making, it is of such dramatic limitation that I am going to contentedly ignore it. Point people at this all you like, Juho Snellman. I for one will merely ignore you.
Also laughably excludes this one from openai's pricing details:
o1-pro-2025-03-19 Price per 1M tokens
Batch API price -- Input: $150.00, Output: $600.00
And this doesn't even address quality. Results quality is also explicitly ignored. I personally find most results from cheaper models to be far, far worse than any results I find using search prior to the LLM content flood. But of course, that's 1) subjective, and 2) completely impossible to conduct any analytical comparison now since indexed search has been so completely ruined by SEO and LLM junk. Yet another externalized cost for which accounting is completely impossible, but is likely to have immeasurably negative impacts on the world's ability to share information.
Seems like a not difficult and quite worthwhile exercise to come up with at least one or two values that are so basic and fundamental that everyone could share them. Maybe that's what OP is talking about. Why be obtuse about shared values?
Because historically it has never been done. The closest we got is when a group (religious or political) finds something most people somewhat agree with, declares it a universal value and proceeds to suppress, drive away or eliminate those evil people who do not share it.
It is much better to define acceptable boundaries on actions and let people believe what they want if their actions do not violate those agreed on boundaries.
Switzerland is the oldest democracy in the world. Your comment certainly doesn't fit the way this country handles its citizens. There is the Law, the "what is tolerated" and what isn't. That's the "boundaries on actions".
But any malicious mind won't bow down to those intentional principles.
People absolutely heed laws that they find personally inconvenient but are afraid of the penalties (parking restrictions, paying taxes, loud music and that is not even stepping into hot button topics).
The reason Swiss stayed democratic is likely not because they share universal, similarly understood values, but because they feel that their system that only defines acceptable norms is working okay as is.
I don’t believe that Switzerland is the oldest democracy in the world, but I could be mistaken. Iceland has had a democratic-ish parliament since the 900s[0].
> to come up with at least one or two values that are so basic and fundamental that everyone could share them
Please do try this, I've tried it in the past, and always been able to come up with counter-examples to whatever I came up with. It's surprisingly hard.
"Always be kind" is one example that for me should obviously be shared with everyone, but it's almost disgustingly easily to come up with whole cultures or countries where this is actively seen as a "bad thing" because of reason X and Y, or has to have exceptions because of Z.
In practice there are always exceptions to everything. You don't be kind to murderers, for instance.
Kindness isn't really a value, though.
Shared values are simply things that people decide are important for a society to function as well as possible. Respect for human life and dignity, for example. Good thing right? How many mental gymnastics does somebody have to go through to find some exception to that?
Tell you what though, if I come across somebody who says that they don't respect human life and dignity, I am absolutely going to avoid that person and shun them from any kind of society that I am a part of.
Why not? I think everyone deserves kindness, and I'm not alone in thinking that.
So even something that for me is obvious, it isn't as obvious for everyone.
> Respect for human life and dignity, for example
It's very generic, and subjective, which again leads me to believe not everyone would agree on what it means.
For example, does "respect for human life" mean you should let people live where they currently live, if they and their family lived there for 100 years say? Lots of Israeli settlers would disagree with that, but for me that would be a sign that someone doesn't have "respect for human life".
> if I come across somebody who says that they don't respect human life and dignity
Of course everyone will say "Yeah, of course I do!", but where the rubber meets the dirt is how people define that. Not being kind to people who made mistakes for example, wouldn't be "respecting human life" for me, but you might disagree, as you think we shouldn't be kind to people who committed murders, but you would still claim you "respect human life".
This is suddenly a too-online conversation. Please do go be always kind to murderers. Society is definitely better off without anybody agreeing to value respect for human life and dignity -- just so generic and subjective! Too hard to get anybody to agree on what that even means!
Well they are going to have to suffer the consequences of your smarty-pants bad decisions for way longer than you, so I say, we give them a vote proportional to the statistically average remaining years they have left on this planet.
There is no reason at all for anyone but the Head of Household to vote, who's ever paying the bills and keeping it together.
Democracy becomes less stable as voting increases and individual equity falls. It becomes a race by politicians to dumb down the population and elections a race to see who can offer the public the most free stuff from "the government."
Most people live in dream worlds and do not understand cause and effect relationships, especially young people. Getting more and more uninvested people to vote is not a magic alchemical process. If so the biggest corporations would use the model to gain even more power.
But they don't. You need to own shares in companies to vote. That's how they align their decisions with their future needs.
> There is no reason at all for anyone but the Head of Household to vote, who's ever paying the bills and keeping it together.
What about healthy families that share this duty between the parents?
> Democracy becomes less stable as voting increases and individual equity falls. It becomes a race by politicians to dumb down the population and elections a race to see who can offer the public the most free stuff from "the government."
You're not going to improve this situation by reducing the voter pool. This makes it even easier to "dumb down the population and elections".
> Most people live in dream worlds and do not understand cause and effect relationships, especially young people.
You're telling us you've understood that only having the "Head of Household" vote is good. Why is it good (in ways not trivially countered as above)? Show us that we really are living in dream worlds, and you are not.
> Getting more and more uninvested people to vote is not a magic alchemical process. If so the biggest corporations would use the model to gain even more power.
> But they don't. You need to own shares in companies to vote. That's how they align their decisions with their future needs.
Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why would "the biggest corporations [...] use the model to gain even more power"? Who is saying "the electorate can gain more power by becoming bigger" or "the votes are worth more if there are more"? This is a strange non-sequitur.
It is worth mentioning that if the Senate bill version of Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, then previously employer-funded healthcare becomes one less thing for union leaders to have to negotiate with employers.
Why? It just raises the bar for the unions: negociating co-pay, dental plan... Plenty of healthcare things will not be covered by Medicare. Unions will negociate about this.
"All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...
Obviously, there might be some edge cases. This is where private insurers could still fill a role. I can't imagine that extra/supplemental private insurance could be too expensive, if it had to compete against a unified 350 million+ person insurance pool.
Edit: It is worth noting that the US is pretty unique when it comes to the separated dental insurance coverage plans and main health insurance plans.
That's actually great! But what will the actual terms and conditions be? Some existing examples: a maximum number of psych visits, (medical) dental work up to xxx$ per year (if you had a checkup last year), limited coverage for experimental treatments for like cancer.
The US is not (wont be) the only one which seperates dental (as in infections, teeth removal) from orthodontic like braces and fake teeth.
Would nationalized healthcare cover orthodontics? I could see an awful lot of union members being interested in supplemental family dental from employers.
"All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...
Not immediately. Universal health coverage means employers lose the ability to use health plans as a benefit and/or part of an employee’s total compensation. So unions will likely then be negotiating to see that turned into cash.
Although, universal health plans also mean employees, unionized or not, win the freedom to change jobs because they’re no longer tied to jobs they hate just to remain insured. I don’t think many people are considering or discussing this at large in the conversation about MfA. This will be a huge social and employment benefit for people with families/children, as well as those with existing—especially serious and costly—conditions. It could be something unions will temporarily grapple with in defending their importance.
I have no doubt, however, that something will replace healthcare at the negotiating table. Capital and labor are forever locked in conflict.
> Although, universal health plans also mean employees, unionized or not, win the freedom to change jobs because they’re no longer tied to jobs they hate just to remain insured. I don’t think many people are considering or discussing this at large in the conversation about MfA.
Really? From where I sit it's been a central point in discussions about universal coverage as a goal, regardless of mechanism being debated, at least since it was an issue in the Clinton campaign in 1992.
I absolutely recognize it has been a goal for those who support universal coverage. I have yet to hear anyone against or unsure about MfA even bring it up. I probably could have worded that much better.
I’m referring to what media coverage I’ve seen—and perhaps it’s heavily related to the area I live (US South) and the media coverage that dominates here—but whenever I mention it and try to discuss that point with others, people often stare blankly. It takes time to even get the concept to click. And there’s a lot of, “I never even thought about that!”
Single payer specifically does this, not universal healthcare in general. You can have a universal healthcare system in which private healthcare is a thing, including employer-provided healthcare. Many countries do just that.
Partially. It will take basic medical care off the table, allowing unions to focus their negotiations on better wages and working conditions. M4A entitles everyone to a common set of benefits, but doesn't preclude extended benefits (medical or otherwise) outside that set.
Everyone you don't like is Hitler.
Democracy is not just when more than one "party".
Just because a fascist or fascist adjacent party is disallowed, does not mean democracy is absent.