Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** More examples: - Aadhar dramatically reduced cost of ID verification - Branded e-commerce increased trust among Indian consumers, relative to small roadside stalls - Basic infrastructure has improved; you can trust that c… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627904172262825985#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

This is a specific case of a general pattern I'm seeing. Technology is helping India *escape* some of the low-trust traps that historically bedeviled its economy. Here, the introduction of a digital trusted intermediary keeps both sides honest. nit… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627903162349920258#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** You can argue this is obvious in retrospect. The US spent trillions in Afghanistan, but ultimately the locals had a lower cost of replenishment. They kept churning out fighting men and won the long game of attrition on a … https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627900996323262464#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** This article adds economics to a Lanchester-style model. Good takehome: raw budget size is not the only factor. "These equations...can also be used to "back out" how successful a weapon would need to be against its counte… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627900124793024513#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** "Since it was first proposed during World War I, the Lanchester Combat Model... in various forms has been used to address quantitatively the competition between opposing forces." [1]: maa.org/book/export/html/115… [2]: t… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627898736289673217#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

Interesting analysis that reminds me of Lanchester's laws. If you have two militaries that are trying to economically attrit each other, you can't just compare raw budgets. You also need to account for replenishment costs in PPP terms, counterweap… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627896597626621953#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

Why might LLMs have weird personalities? They're trained on social media posters, like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Twitter users. And these folks are cognitively...atypical. Put another way, the strong and silent type isn’t part of AI training data. https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627744768062066724#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**RT @sidhant:** India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and Singapore's PayNow digital payments systems to be linked. Event to be witnessed by Indian, Singapore PMs. https://nitter.moomoo.me/sidhant/status/1627642074953814016#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** US regulators are just as corrupt as the military industrial complex. The SEC hungers for financial crises like Raytheon hungers for wars. That’s their meal ticket, that’s when careers are made. Moreover, even when s… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627606586964447233#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

After failing to prevent the financial crisis or dotcom crash, was the SEC disbanded? No, their budget was increased. It’s flat during good times and rises in crisis. More failure, more funding! nitter.moomoo.me/jespow/status/1627415364111040513#… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627605868828332032#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** Being too mimetic of course can make one an NPC. But being reflexively contrarian is itself a form of mimesis. So is language acquisition itself! Trivial, but — the optimal amount of mimesis on anything is somewhere bet… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627509040686440449#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

AI is mimetic That’s what supervised learning is Shows that “avoid mimesis” is not always the right strategy https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627507834329108480#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** Btw, I’m not even saying all the criticism is bad or even wrong. Criticism of actually existing markets can sometimes reveal market opportunities. Criticism of actually existing politics can sometimes reveal political … https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627370872251240448#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** When comparing civilizations past, present, and future one might talk about architectural aesthetics or sheer population size. But aesthetics have a degree of arbitrariness, and even a locust swarm is numerous. Math and … https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627351831092535297#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** The out-of-sample attack… “the tactic exploited by Pelrine is rarely used, meaning the AI systems had not been trained on enough similar games to realise they were vulnerable, said Gleave.” ft.com/content/175e5314-a… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627295029239898112#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

Reminds me of work on adversarial images. Is this an adversarial strategy, where a human/computer combo finds a strategy that beats another computer — but not a human? nitter.moomoo.me/moreisdifferent/status/1626968428601909249#m https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627294763098718212#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** The reason wokes don't like to be called wokes is because they want to be naming you rather than vice versa You are an x-ist, y-ist, and z-ist. But they are just good people. This works. When the immune system can't tag … https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627278590529400837#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** I find some of these more or less plausible; one can add other X-risk scenarios. One observation is that in some cases, like the COVID lab leak theory, those working on X-risk also ended up actually creating what they war… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627038539069403142#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

The ABCDs of catastrophe AI: AGI kills us Bitcoin: Hyperinflation bankrupts us Climate: Warming ruins us Democracy: Authoritarians conquer us https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1627037705287897091#m

Balaji / @balajis (RSS Feed) 2 years ago

**Response to @balajis:** To be fair, the author does hedge. "So are chatbots doomed to fail? Not at all. But it does suggest that it’s still very early days for chatbots..." But even five years later they were still at the trough of the hype c… https://nitter.moomoo.me/balajis/status/1626968429747146754#m