Jevon's paradox isn't a physical law, it doesn't magically apply to everything. Millions more copies of Atari's ET game didn't cause everyone to pickup a cheap copy, and cause extra demand for a garbage video game. Some times (actually, usually, I'd argue) things are made that will sell for less than the cost of construction because of irrationality, and they don't induce extra demand and they don't change the negative profit margins.
You can't simply wave Jevon's paradox at things. Thousands of miles of canals were dug in the UK that couldn't be sustained and were abandoned. Thousands of miles of railways were laid that could be sustained and were abandoned. And those are potentially durable investments, unlike cheap walls, pillars and roofs laid over a levelled concrete slab full of fast depreciating IT equipment.
I'm so glad the tide here is turning on this talking point, brought on by exactly the same people beating us over the head with it for months while no progress is made towards it materializing.
Many, many people who post here are capable neither of real analysis nor distinguishing real analysis from memes. They aren't hackers, they are adherents of a cult that happens to focus on the same subject matter as hackers.
Jevon's paradox only applies to products with near infinite demand. Energy being the most famous example. I dont think its difficult to argue that compute/intelligence is also a base input into the economy and theres almost no limit to the amount of intelligence the world will want.
The article observes that the cost of frontier intelligence from 2025 has fallen 100x in the last year. It also notes that the energy to run models is also collapsing. Consumer hardware is borked right now because these new algorithms are revolutionizing the utility of a computer. Computing is technology who's cost has been collapsing for 90 years, and its a safe prediction that it will decrease again.
> Yeah okay bud, anyone checked in with the state of consumer hardware recently? Not the author, evidently.
RAM prices will crash when demand drops even a little. They'll probably crash to a lower (inflation adjusted) level than before. This has happened before.
Industrial scaling in general often looks like a sawtooth: price spike, capacity investment, crash, repeat.
Part of what's keeping prices high a little longer is that everyone knows this and is a little reluctant to plow resources into chip fabs for fear of having the bottom fall out before they recoup or sell that to someone else to hold that bag.
Graph the average compute and RAM in a mid-high end laptop at an inflation adjusted price point for the past 40 years. It's very exponential and hasn't slowed down much.
No. Prices will crash when supply side expands to meet the increased demand. Because demand won't go down to pre-bubble times any time soon. Unfortunately the supply side has been very slow in increasing production, partly because most steps of the production chain are all maxed out.
On a long enough scale you are right that prices will likely normalize to a better level, but before 2030? That would mean the factories are built quickly once they begin.
The entire reason why hardware prices are so absurd right now is because manufacturers across the board are doing everything to prevent that crash.
They all collectively chose NOT to increase supply with increased demand. So if the bubble pops, they just go back to previous prices without oversupply driving the prices to rock bottom.
There's been multiple YouTubers saying they've been paid recently to make... AI Doomerism videos (e.g. Sabine).
I imagine this is simply part of the campaign, AI doomerism followed by AI Bloomerism, it could even be part of the same organisation's campaign; selling the solution to a problem they put in your mind. Hype, criti-hype, it's all so tiresome.
AI doomerism more importantly I think legitimises current AI as being super powerful and useful. If something can take over the world then surely it's a powerful technology !
>could even be part of the same organisation's campaign
Eh we know its part of the same campaigns. "Please provide us with regulatory capture because our tech is an existential threat" has been going on for a while now.
> people writing in a non native language
This category of people are going to be most betrayed by LLM output: 1) the receiver loses the signal that the sender might need to be queried to find their real intent and 2) the sender doesn't have the ability to determine if what they are sending is what they mean
> people insecure in their writing
These people can grow up, I don't care. Not a good enough reason to send a slop grenade.
>people not used to writing in industry terms
Similar to the non-native speakers, but slightly less in magnitude. They can educate themselves though.
- people with the curse of knowledge that are aware that they can’t write for a general audience well
These people probably can get some value out of it but they should take care
Btw calorically dense foods are, in fact, hyper nutritious. While you may imagine healthy foods to be green vegetables and raw meats, you can buy - from regular supermarkets - roast chickens ready to eat, salad bowls and fresh fruit. You need not even store it, but buy and eat on the go.
People repeat the myth that healthy food choices are expensive (they aren't) and time & space consuming to make (they can be) so often that most people believe it. But it just isn't so: you can eat at McDonalds every day, and if it's only a part of your diet, it's healthy. If you can get fibre and some vitamins elsewhere, and aren't overeating, the protein and calories in a fries and a hamburger are fine. Good, actually.
Healthy foods are simply principally marketed to, sold at a large markup to, middle to upper class Americans so they believe that's the usual market value.
Now, it can be expensive in time, effort and equipment for struggling, hard working, irregular shift workers. That's a different issue though.
I don't want to hear about it: yours, hers (Aella) and I'm certainly not going to tell you what my deal is, either.
Problem is, Aella has made it her business to speak about it publicly, and the parent commenter(and I)'d be happier if we didn't read about it. It's fine to say that.
I'm not hung up about anything others are doing: but I genuinely, passionately, don't want to be informed about it.
That's the solution the parent commenter had! And the gay furry (self identified) complained about! If you have a problem with his announcing the solution (to stop reading) then maybe you should just not read his comment, or my comment, or...
I guess what OP wanted to bring up (as I understood) is that if somebody says "I am straight" it does not usually induce people turning the internet off. But in any case they are free to choose that and that does not really matter in anything (a person not wanting to read sth). I still think it is worth bringing it up as OP did.
I don't think the woman in question has participated in this thread. On the other hand, all the pleas to "stop making me read about sex" reminds me of:
"Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?"
> Just don't read her stuff if you're not interested.
This retort is disingenuous when almost everyone is on algorithmic social media and trying to chase clout and drive revenue with engagement bait.
I would never read Aella's Substack in my free time, but I have a good idea who she is and what she posts just by virtue of having a feed that mostly gives me tech and politics stuff.
>Also, I’m really unimpressed by any “one shot” demo that’s out there in the wild. It means nothing for serious software engineering.
If a person, or team of people, can build a demo quickly then it's good odds that they can build the real version (though, famously, not a guarantee). However, it turns out that a machine that can spit out 100 demos of whatever can't actually build the real thing.
Similarly, a chess engine rated to 1000 Elo doesn't play like a 1000 rated human being. The mistakes that each make to reach the equivalent level are different in size, frequency and kind. The thing that makes a human reach a good demo is very close to the skillset to reach the finished article. This isn't so for LLMs but we have yet to update our priors.
This resonated with me. "Developing ideas and artifacts using AI breaks our normal intuitions along many meaningful axes and we've yet to update" is a really clean idea.
One of my favorite delusions is that men are only better at sports than women because they are socialized to be so from a young age - that if women & girls were encouraged to be strong, fast and competitive; and if boys were scolded or perhaps asked nicely to play... board games or roleplay or whatever, then there'd be an inverse. Oh, and this delusion is comorbid with the idea that the reason sports are segregated by sex is so that men aren't embarrassed when they are beaten by women.
What's fun about both of these delusions is that they are easily disproven by even mild contact with reality. Any level of sports training with a member of the opposite sex disproves this with incredible speed. You can read social media comments from women about the first time they wrestled or playfought their mostly inactive boyfriend for the first time, and asked them not to hold back. And this doesn't even need them to engage in any kind of sport.
To hold this, you have to wilfully, intentionally dodge all physical activities with the opposite sex from schooling to your adult life. And yet, it does exist! I've met people who believe this, in the face of all reality. And then these sports-dodgers will have consequently wrong opinions on e.g. transwomen in sports, whether transmen should be allowed to take steroids and compete, equal pay in sports...
That said though, I could believe there's some crossover point in ultra-ultra endurance sports where performance equals out between the sexes.
i recall mcenroe said serena couldnt be considered greatest of all time in tennis regardless of sex because she wouldnt even beat a man ranked inside the top 100. he said she'd herself be ranked somewhere at 700.
we arent even talking about women only asked to play 3 sets vs men playing 5 sets (at least in slams).
I think McEnroe was very unfair, and that men and women can be completely equal in technique and skill, even if not in physicality. But in my opinion, the women's game is what you watch if you want _even more_ tennis, or perhaps you really like the story lines of your favorite athletes for whatever reason. Similar to watching Formula 1 is just being a regular sports fan, but watching the Formula 2 season marks you as a slightly obsessive motorhead.
You can't simply wave Jevon's paradox at things. Thousands of miles of canals were dug in the UK that couldn't be sustained and were abandoned. Thousands of miles of railways were laid that could be sustained and were abandoned. And those are potentially durable investments, unlike cheap walls, pillars and roofs laid over a levelled concrete slab full of fast depreciating IT equipment.
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