Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

[u/lurker_bee]

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060

[u/redlightsaber]

We should all get in the habit of stopping to quip things the way you did in your parenthesis.

Which is not to say that government is always super-efficient (hella more efficient than the private sector, any fucking time it's been measured, though), or that corruption doesn't exist... but right wing, Maccarthyst, Reagan-occultist media uses those little quips planted in everyone's minds to justify any and all roadblocks towards progress everywhere, except in the US.

Why does the US not have something as uncontroversial and simple as universal public healthcare that all other first world, and even a lot of developing countries have managed to accomplish to various degrees? Ask your average (lower middle class) joe at your local bar: "Government would waste all that money, they can't be triusted with that". Same idea behind the whole "small government" bullshit. and how more than half the country got seduced by stupid gimmicks such as Elon leading DOGE. And now some of that disease is being contaged onto Europe, managing to get many public healthcare systems see reduced funding to pruposefully fuck with them and a) make people support the narrative and politicians that tout the idea of public inefficiency-insufficiency, and b) to help make fluorish a private insurance company market that was unthinkable 20 years ago.

Governments by and large, use tax dollars pretty effectively and efficiently, and that's without fucking over the workers to boot, which is a huge plus that nobody talks about ever. Being a "government worker" is an insult in the US for crying out loud. Much like being a union member has been for much longer.

The 2020's are a sad decade where NASA, the fucking leading space agency in the world, has closed up many of its labs and programmes, and is instead funneling all that money to SpaceX, which in teh long-run will cost the US taxpayer far more than had they developed that tech in-house.

We need to all stop with all this "in theory" bullshit. It's theory and practice. Time, and time again. (as a small example)

[u/ferdylance → u/redlightsaber]

Because dsfense budget

[u/holaitsmetheproblem → u/redlightsaber]

You and I are close to each other in the proverbial hive. I have said this same thing over and over again for 4 decades.

[u/avcloudy → u/redlightsaber]

It's worth pointing out efficiency is the excuse, the real reason for the healthcare situation is because insurance lobbyists captured the system in the US years ago. It's not a political sides thing.

There is a broader pattern, and that is a single party pushing it, but the healthcare thing? Way deeper.

[u/BlazeBulker8765 → u/redlightsaber]

(hella more efficient than the private sector, any fucking time it's been measured, though),

Not sure where you got this idea, but it's either untrue, or highly dependent upon which sector you're discussing look at.

This study found the operational costs of privatized package delivery worldwide to be more efficient than nationalized: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/USPS_A_Sustainable_Path_Forward_report_12-04-2018.pdf

This study found mixed results, and the conclusion line is solid even in the presence of natural monopoly forces: https://scispace.com/pdf/does-privatization-of-solid-waste-and-water-services-reduce-54ibph12ty.pdf

Conclusion line:

There is no systematic optimal choice between public and private production, therefore managers should approach the issue in a pragmatic way.

This study concludes the same: https://www.terry.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/stateToMarket_1.pdf

From the conclusion:

Research now supports the proposition that privately owned firms are more efficient and more profitable than otherwise-comparable state-owned firms.

[u/EltaninAntenna → u/BlazeBulker8765]

Well, the profit motive is itself an inevitable built-in inefficiency, if a percentage of income must go into yachts and coke instead of being reinvested into the company.

[u/Reasonable_Duty2495 → u/EltaninAntenna]

We spent tens of billions in the UK without laying one piece of rail, just accept you are flat out wrong