Anyone heard of Monero? Kind of their whole purpose... I know, I know, crypto bad, but when censorship comes for [insert your thing/country here], it kind of becomes obvious why people talked about crypto before btc was six digits. Anyone who knows how tech works and also any history about how authoritarian states work should probably see why crypto got so big in the first place, long before [insert scam that makes otherwise sensible people disregard an entire class of technology here].
Yes I have and I've used it, a website required that rather than BTC and attempting to use tumblers. So far as I know it's private. Transaction fees were low.
I've tried a couple times looking up address/wallet history and of course nothing comes up and every time I have that "oh yeah" moment.
I heard somewhere that they still found people who used Monero. I am not sure how, but apparently the Government has the tech to do so... allegedly. It might have been at the cash out stage or the process before that.
No expert, more a hobbyist, but my understanding is that most serious people with longer timelines all believe "embodiment" training data ie data from robots operating in the world is the data they need to make the next step change in the growth of these things.
How to best get masses of robotics operating in the real world data is debated. Can you get there in Sim2Real, where, if you can create a physically sound enough sim you can train your robots in the virtual world much easier than ours. See ... eureka ? dr eureka? i forget the main paper. Hand spinning a pen. The boston dynamics dog on a rolling yoga ball. After a billion robots train for a million "years" in your virtual world, just transfer the "brain" to a physical robot.
Jim Fan of nvidia is one to follow there. Then there's tele-operation believers. Then there's mass deployment and iterate believers (musk's "self driving" rollout), there's iirc research that believes video games and video interpretation will be able to confer some of that data from operating in the real world, similar to how it's said transformers learned utilized the implicit structure of language to learn from unclean data, even properly ordered text has meaning embedded in its relative positional values.
Just my summary of what I've seen of researchers who agree scaling text and train time is old news, I mostly see them trying to figure out how to scale "embodied" ai data collection. or derive a VLA model in fancy ways (bigger training sets of robotic behavior around a standard robot form factor maybe?) all types of avenues but yes most serious people recognize the need for "embodied" data - at least that I've read.
Literally had this report for years and literally heard the current president praise and endorse it on a hot mic. The fact that, presumably, educated people, are still acting surprised (or worse, legitimately are ignorant) when the reic-i mean presidency was explicitly planned out, in a commissioned by the wealthy, public to all, report by the most connected conservative think tank in the country.
Take one quick look at any wealth inequality graph over time and "who's winning" will be pretty clear. Someone always wins. This is simply a step at privatizing everything. Straight out of project 2025.
Kagi 2025 noaa. I shouldn't even have to link it. The fact that their entire game was publicly laid out years ago... and still, people act ignorant or are legitimately not paying any attention to politics... We deserve all that this administration will cost us as a collective.
Except not one of them could define marxism or point to any marxist policy. We are commenting on fascist policy happening in real time. Don't enlightened centrist your way out of reason.
I think your only problem is too-high expectations.
>examples where quality far exceeds our existing best in class work
I'm no expert, but what percentage of the economy needs/is best in class work?
I agree running up against the limits of these models after reading the marketing material can give the impression they're "a kludge for the mediocre" and they certainly are in part that, but they're also so much more.[0]
>A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments.
Surprising only to those who have not read literally any other study on UBI. They all come to this conclusion.
The only reason we don't have nice things like this: universal housing, healthcare, income, food security, is because a handful of dragons sit on and hoard unfathomably sized mountains of gold and convince the uneducated and those ignorant of economics and politics that the real problem is average people getting what they deserve - A dignified life where their basic needs are met and they have the dignified freedom to pursue a fulfilling life rather than spend it enriching aforementioned dragons for exploitative wages.
Capital and ideology by pikkety goes in to great detail in to how consent for gilded age wealth inequality is and has been manufactured. Most effectively, unsurprisingly, in the minds of... people like those replying derisively to my comment and this thread in general.
I greatly enjoy your casting of the existential struggle into fantasy role-playing terms. This is a relatively fresh treatment that is worth celebrating for its own sake.
In this context, what seems missing is the Ecclesiastes realization that 'fulfilling' (for some) is always going to mean becoming a dragon.
That is, the purported us/them separation between 'we' and 'dragons' is a mirage--there is only the full spectrum or humanity in view.
One example of a dragon was Saddam Hussein, who characterized oppression of the marsh Arabs as "being firm".
So it goes. One possible exit from the cycle is the realization the 'fulfilling' is not necessarily measured in materialistic units.
It's not that, dragons hoarding mountains of gold has always historically been an allegory for the rich hoarding wealth.
>'fulfilling' (for some) is always going to mean becoming a dragon.
Luckily we have anti dragon tools, like progressive taxation, wealth taxes, and robust social programs to prevent the dragons from sitting on too much gold.
>One example of a dragon was Saddam Hussein, who characterized oppression of the marsh Arabs as "being firm". So it goes. One possible exit from the cycle is the realization the 'fulfilling' is not necessarily measured in materialistic units.
Yeah, the fulfillment is the downstream byproduct of not having to worry about the difficulty of meeting daily material needs, not the justification for the policy itself.
> Luckily we have anti dragon tools, like progressive taxation, wealth taxes, and robust social programs to prevent the dragons from sitting on too much gold.
1. If you think that a Bezos, or a Buffet, or a Musk, is paying a "fair" amount, then fine. Your faith in mortal systems stands rewarded.
2. This is less a question of basic needs--look at how fat and unhealthy so many are today--and perhaps more a question of envy. Do I really think that joy is a function of loot? Is more stuff the answer to our existential questions?
Sorry, I guess I should've been clearer and added Properly implemented anti dragon tools. I assumed that was self evident. I suspect it is, given you clearly are capable of recognizing the problematic dragons I allude to.
>2.
No, it's definitely a question of basic needs. I exclusively mentioned income, healthcare, housing, food security as the policy objectives, and not cheap consumable goods/treats. There's a wealth of evidence that a society that provides guarantees around those basic needs has way fewer issues downstream. For a start, look to the healthcare outcomes in countries that have universal healthcare vs the US.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say.
> There's a wealth of evidence that a society that provides guarantees around those basic needs
I'm totally in agreement, in the abstract. It would take a sick mind to enjoy observing poverty/starvation.
The details of how a sustainable economy that affords all the opportunity to thrive is provided is still non-trivial.
The Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union, to drop a specific example, were full of great ideas, but the society was corrupt and everyone lied about the reality, until the lies collapsed at the three-quarter-century mark.
Taxing the workers and giving the money to the 'poor' is an indirect subsidy to the dragons. Dragons are rich and cunning enough to afford to 'plan' their taxes, so it's not like they need to contribute to the UBI. They just reap the benefits.
The German UBI experiment we're discussing didn't involve 'taxing workers to give to the poor' - it gave unconditional payments to people across economic backgrounds, most of whom continued working.
Your assertion about tax planning misses that proper UBI implementation would include tax reform to ensure the wealthy can't avoid contributing. If anything it demonstrates your clear understanding of whom would actually be taxed to achieve the funding for such social programs. The dragons.
More importantly, the data shows UBI recipients spent money locally on necessities and small businesses, not funneling it to large corporations. The 'indirect subsidy' theory contradicts spending patterns observed in UBI trials.
Well, all I can say that if I was a major shareholder of Volkswagen I'd be 100% in support of UBI and made sure everyone can afford a new car, not just a used one.
It's a poor analogy. Dragons take the gold from the people and kept it from them so it can't be used.
The 200 billion that Bezos is assumed to be "worth" is currently in the hands of the people, being used by us. If we wanted to fix society instead of buying amazon shares we could do it today. Bezos hasn't "hoarded" it, we have it.
"To the dismay of Thorin, Smaug the horrible turned out to sit on a pile of paper that anyone could buy if they wanted to and all the gold was already in circulation in the town of Bree."
If the taxes are landing just on "the workers" then that sounds like a poorly designed tax system, not a problem with UBI. Replace UBI with anything (roads, defense, welfare) and it is the same problem.
Not the economy as a whole, but there are some aspects of the economy that are. Indeed, negative externalities can be worse than a zero-sum game to those affected.
To be frank, this whole “the economy is not a zero-sum game” argument is kind of a meme at this point.
>The only reason we don't have nice things like this: universal housing, healthcare, income, food security, is because a handful of dragons sit on and hoard unfathomably sized mountains of gold
This is simply not true. Barring pathologies like dictatorships, Billionaires ("Dragons") are generally not hoarding anything that affects anyone. Their fortunes are not "mountains of gold", but an estimate of how much value they could theoretically get from the rest of society if they sold their company.
It's not money that is "kept away" from the rest of us, in any way at all. We already have it. And if we don't, neither does the Dragon.
A wealthy society will create more billionaires ("Dragons") than a poor one, and a wealthy society also has more hospitals and food to share with the unfortunate than a poor society does.
Bezos, Gates etc are not hoarding hospitals, cheese or apartments. They cause more hospitals, cheese and apartments to exist since their companies employ people that need and can pay for all those things.
Even China has realized this by now. Hundreds of millions of people in China have had immense increase in standard of living the past few decades, while a few hundred billionaires have appeared.
Nobody has figured out how you get one without the other.
Try to give an example that isn’t under broad based global sanctions. What you’re currently doing is akin to pointing at Haiti and saying “Look, emancipation doesn’t work.”
Funny how a retort to UBI experiments' success in Germany immediately jumps to Marxism and command economies - systems completely unrelated to modern UBI proposals. These programs are being tested in capitalist democracies with positive results.
Regarding Cuba and Venezuela - their economic challenges stem from complex factors but primarily U.S. sanctions, embargoes, and intervention attempts, not the "Marxism" you're hallucinating. More relevant examples would be the successful social welfare programs in Nordic countries, which maintain robust market economies while ensuring basic needs are met.
Try to focus on actual evidence from UBI trials rather than silly McCarthy era rhetoric.
>There is support for UBI from socialists too. The opposition comes from the "centre - people whose main concern is maintaining the status quo.
Yeah, almost like that MLK guy knew what he was talking about. Changes from the original quote will be italicized
"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the economic moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the poor's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the libertarian or socialists, but the economic moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the poor to wait for a “more convenient season.”
The reason people don't have those things in, say, the US, is "ideologies like marxism"? What was the success of Marxism in the US? What do Venezuela or Cuba have to do with anything your parent poster is saying?
