Amazon is the biggest used bookshop in the world, in the sense that they pack books so badly that any book you buy from them will be a used book by the time you get it.
**RT @Rainmaker1973:**
In January 1697, Johann Bernoulli challenged Isaac Newton with a six month deadline to solve this problem: Newton solved it going to bed that same night with the brachistochrone curve
\[read more: bit.ly/2jjD2kW (https://bit.ly/2jjD2kW)\]
https://nitter.moomoo.me/Rainmaker1973/status/1652986218718830592#m
**Response to @paulg:**
I'm sure this isn't the only reason math and science and engineering are becoming more popular at elite universities, but it's interesting to think that merely making admissions more competitive will tend to change the distribution of majors at a university.
**Response to @paulg:**
More competitive should mean the average undergrad is smarter, and smarter people choose different majors. According to one study I found, the average IQ of physics majors was 133, vs 120 for English and 114 for sociology.
Far fewer students major in the humanities at elite universities than used to. E.g. at Harvard only 7% now do, vs 30% in the 1970s. It has also got much harder to get into elite universities. Maybe these two changes are related.
If it had stopped here, NYC would look like a European city.
nitter.moomoo.me/vintagemapstore/status/1652764536884043779#m (https://nitter.moomoo.me/vintagemapstore/status/1652764536884043779#m)
English people and Canadians both apologize a lot. The difference is that Canadians always mean it.
**Response to @paulg:**
Puritanism = default no on happiness. You can't be happy about something unless you can prove it's justifiable to be happy about it. It might be a good idea to switch to default yes: you can be happy about something unless you can prove it's unjustifiable to.
**Response to @paulg:**
Why do we even think happiness should obey conservation laws? Because our puritanism doesn't want anyone to be happy about things they shouldn't be happy about. There's a laundry list of those, but one of the items on it is fake things.
11 yo is delighted that he caught a shiny. Shinies are made up; 11 yo knows it; and yet his happiness is genuine.
There is a lot still to be discovered about how happiness violates conservation laws.
**RT @Rainmaker1973:**
The London Underground has its own subspecies of mosquito that lives exclusively in the stations and tunnels. The appropriately-named Culex pipiens molestus came to be over the Underground’s 150-year history
\[read more: buff.ly/3N4iUlB (https://buff.ly/3N4iUlB)\]
https://nitter.moomoo.me/Rainmaker1973/status/1652580092000829440#m
**RT @NAChristakis:**
“Across the country, a growing number of administrations and faculties at universities are waking up to the realization that academic freedom needs to be protected, and that student outrage on social media should not dictate university policy.” washingtonpost.com/opinions/… (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/29/university-campus-free-speech-censorship-fight/)
https://nitter.moomoo.me/NAChristakis/status/1652461485593853952#m
**RT @jbrowder1:**
I decided to outsource my entire personal financial life to GPT-4 (via the @donotpay (https://nitter.moomoo.me/donotpay) chat we are building).
I gave AutoGPT access to my bank, financial statements, credit report, and email.
Here’s how it’s going so far (+$217.85) and the strange ways it’s saving money. (1/n):
https://nitter.moomoo.me/jbrowder1/status/1652387444904583169#m
My 11 yo told me that I gave him the marshmallow test when he was about 6, but after sitting him down with the marshmallow, I forgot and never came back. He never ate it, so technically the test is still running.
**RT @robertskmiles:**
Making safe AGI is like writing a secure operating system. It's hard to do it, and it's easy to convince yourself you've done it.
Anyone who actually manages to do it, knows that it's hard. If you've written an OS and you think making it secure was easy, that thing ain't secure
https://nitter.moomoo.me/robertskmiles/status/1652333109998678017#m
**Response to @paulg:**
But the nerdy enthusiasts will build stuff for them on top of AI as well. Which will also presumably have higher adoption rates, since so many end users will already be believers.
**Response to @paulg:**
I think the difference is that ordinary people don't have to wait for the nerdy enthusiasts to build stuff for them on top of AI. It's useful right out of the box.
AI is probably as big a deal as microprocessors or the web. But for the first few years only nerdy enthusiasts cared about those, whereas everyone is using AI.
Cold email from a startup claiming 12389% growth. Which does send a message, but not about the company's growth.
I don't know if there are Galileo-scale ideas to be discovered in evolutionary psychology, but there are certainly Inquisition-scale forces creating a shadow for ideas that big to hide in.