Kshitij

On Scott Adams. A man finds, to his astonishment, that he exists. After the elation of childhood wears off, he asks, who am I, why am I here, how does this work? These are hard questions, so after a brief struggle, he selects a readymade answer and goes about the motions of life. Scott Adams was not such a man. He was a live player, ever curious, intent on figuring out this simulation that he found himself in. From first principles, Scott unraveled, understood, and ultimately controlled his own reality. He hacked himself with affirmations, others with persuasion, the world with simultaneous sips. He explained people as moist robots, two movies happening on one screen, his world as Gods’ debris. He carved a personal mission to “be useful,” and made us all better writers, public speakers, and persuaders. He preached the footwear theory of motivation, the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters, the skill stack, systems over goals, and of course, the Dilbert Principle. Besides cartooning, philosophizing, and teaching, Scott rose to the occasion and displayed, “the one virtue that cannot be faked” - courage. Scott had the courage to speak honestly as he saw it - about Trump, about his nation, and about his time, even though it cost him friends, audience, money, and his ticket to polite society. Scott had true courage, the kind that makes you unpopular, the kind that is always and everywhere in short supply, At the end, as any hacker of reality, Scott covered all of his bases - he left as a Buddhist, a Christian, and a player in the Simulation. Scott, we didn’t get enough time with you, but you were a mentor and a marvel. You were useful and you were courageous. You were incompressible and indivisible. One of a kind, and generous with your drawing, writing, and speaking. Unlike your squealing critics in the chattering class, you will be read generations from now. On this earth there are many long-lived hells but no lasting heaven. Each heaven must be created and nurtured, ex-nihilo, from mind and from mud. Scott, you created a small heaven for us all, and to a larger heaven you go. A man finds, to his astonishment, that he no longer exists. He asks why, what it was for, and how will the new reality work? When the rest of us get there, we’ll find Scott, ever useful, ready to explain, having figured it all out. Notes: • First line paraphrasing Schopenhauer. • Courage quote via Taleb.

Capital and talent always flow to where it is treated best. Where will it go if the U.S. melts down? Maybe China, except China isn't pro-immigration.

We are banning social media access for under 16s. These days kids must find their feet in a world where technology intrudes into every area of their life. I just can’t let that go on anymore. So we’re giving children their childhoods back.

Stop making loose comments. A foundational model needs 50/60b $ Huge hyper cloud capacity with hundreds of billion $

This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America. First thoughts: 1. Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology. 2. Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead. We must keep these two ideas in mind. What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones. With a bit of effort, we can make them work. Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you? We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted. So we can't afford the scale of money (of the order of $100+ billion to even get in the game!) and even if we could come up with the money, we can't get all the GPUs. I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway - the money has far better uses. Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there. Any remaining people in India who have delusions about globalization should wake up now.