6 Comments

@Brad DeLong

What are your thoughts on Turchin's grand view of revolutions in history? Given your own "guesses" on average GDP and wages going back even beyond teh ancient world, how does Turchin manage to determine the widining and narrowing of inequlaity in Ancient Greece and Rome? What abot state finances? Does he use some tested proxies to determine these trends? I can see this is possible once we reach the last 500 years of so, but 2500 years ago...?

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MAMLMs:

"Whoever captures human interactions in ways that create genuine understanding will be able to build AI that understands humanity... "

I don't believe that is true. At best it is a simulation that gets closer to crossing the "uncanny valley". The problem here is that "create genuine understanding" is lifting a lot of weight that is unsubstantiated, especially for an AI that is not embedded in the world.

Narrowing the scope of training I agree with, but this is just assuming a somewhat orthogonal data set will solve the problem...of what...appropriate human interactions?

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BREXIT

The woman who said "nibbling around the edges" told the whole story of the video. BREXIT will be nibbled to death.

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"and in turn with lower rates of innovation at the societal level"

So you think that a change in mindset results in reduced growth? The graph you reproduce at the top suggests that causation runs the other way.

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I agree with your question, and it seems more likely that economic growth rates affect mindset and not the reverse. .One could simply compare the post-WWII Gini index of inequality and get a similar relationship. It is so important that the causative variable is used, not another that also correlates.

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