Stephan J. Guyenet

@anup_malani The problem is that they no longer produce much pleasure once a person is addicted. They mostly avert withdrawal symptoms

Their logic: smoking today makes you want to smoke more tomorrow — each cigarette raises the value of the next one. A rational person knows this going in and still chooses to start, because the pleasure now outweighs the future cost. That’s not a disease. It’s a tradeoff.

Why do smokers keep smoking when they know it might kill them? The standard answer: addiction is a disease that overrides choice. My advisor Gary Becker and my friend Kevin Murphy argued the opposite. Addicts are rational.

@AdrianViti @theproof Average person in the US eats about 300 g/d of carbs

@theproof No, it's only Paul Salandino, and his total carb intake is still only 100-200 g per day, as far as I can recall. Much less than the 400-500 g carbs per day of the average person

Lot of fruit in the carnivore diet these days.

My ancestors buried half their children. All mine are alive. My ancestors' house had a dirt floor. Mine is wood. I have indoor plumbing, I have hot water, I have never in my life hauled a full bucket half a mile and I probably never will. Do you know how rare it is, in human history, for small children to wear shoes? Mine have multiple pairs. I can speak to my relatives who live thousands of miles away, for free, at any time. Video, if we want video. With machine translation, if we speak different languages. The original Library of Congress had 740 books in it. I have more than that. If I run out of books in my home my local public library has 350,000. If I want to take a hundred books with me on vacation, they all fit on a device that fits in my purse. I have heat in the winter and AC in the summer and a washing machine and I have never, ever, ever had to scrub a dress clean by hand in the stream. I can look up recipes from more than a hundred different countries and I've tried dozens of them. I ride a clean and modern train across my city for $4, or take a robot taxi if I'm out too late for the train. I donate $40,000 every year to the cause of getting healthcare to the world's poorest people and even after the donations I never have to think about whether I can afford a book, or a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee. There is a great deal more to fight for, of course. I hope that our descendants will look back on our lives and list a thousand ways they're richer. Maybe we ourselves will do that, if some of the crazier stuff comes true. But the abundance is all around you and to a significant degree you aren't feeling it only because fish don't notice water.

@TermLimitsNow48 I'm going to use AI either way. The question is whether I'm paying a company that has more regard for safe and responsible development, or less. The answer to that is clear.

you can't regulate the future - its coming we all need to adjust , otherwise you get eaten by China. The main point is don't be so high and mighty about Anthropic they are all going to steam roll over millions of jobs. What needs to happen is education and a plan on how to adjust.

I switched my personal AI subscription from ChatGPT to Claude today. Anthropic (Claude parent company) has repeatedly shown that it cares more about responsible, ethical, and safe use of AI than the other leading AI companies.

@Sroneous Comments that start with "you do realize" are emotional

@sguyenet You do realize what you call it when Corporate rules become the law of the land, right? It's called Corporatism. Do you know what another name for Corporatism is? According to Mussolini it's synonymous with FASCISM (and he should know since he created/defined Fascism).

@tradergrl I started to, but found that ChatGPT's memory about me contained a bunch of incorrect info, so I started from scratch

@sguyenet Did you try to import your history?

@TermLimitsNow48 They're all going for that. I do think it would be logical to slow down and consider regulating AI dev in general, for the reason you cited.

@sguyenet so wait , you changed to the company where the CEO openly says they are coming to replace millions of white collar workers within 36 months. And they have the moral high ground? Retarded

@kavehkavoosi It devotes more resources to AI safety and responsibility research than the other companies, and its public-facing materials show more concern about them

@sguyenet More curious about this. Saw the one with the government, but what are examples of ‘repeatedly’ that come to mind?

Thankfully, Claude is a great model! claude.ai

These uses of AI are widely understood to be unethical and dystopian at this time. Anthropic is denying access to them at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in US government contracts. Restricting these uses is a really low bar that only Anthropic cleared.

@erik_arnesen I'm not. My understanding is that it's a much smaller community, and has a narrower diversity of views. But I haven't tried it. What do you think?

@sguyenet Are you on Bluesky?

Hi all -- I've decided to step back from X. X has a lot of value, but I increasingly see the cost/benefit balance as poor, both for myself and for society. I'll still pop in occasionally.

@vahidmalbouby Thanks. I'm open to suggestions!

@sguyenet I respect your decision, but I wanted to let you know this will be a net loss for a lot of us! Is there any other platform we can follow you to read your comments about newly published research/books? (other than Red Pen reviews)

I'll miss the people and the intellectual community we have here. I'll still check in every now and then. Email me if you need anything. Take care!

I'd like to see a platform that has room for all voices, structurally favors connection and truth over conflict and propaganda, and has prosocial ownership. I think that's what this country and the world needs right now.

Selective silencing of the CDC: ~50% of surveillance databases have halted updates —87% of these were vaccine related acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/AN… editorial acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/AN…

@StefanFSchubert Maybe so, but it seems likely that the damage will extend well past this administration. Unless it gets bad enough that there is bipartisan appetite for serious reforms.

I don’t think we can know this with the confidence Fukuyama expresses. Seems premature to talk of an enduring legacy.