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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Here’s a counter-example that proves the rule:

    • Born in 1992
    • Graduated from MIT in 2014 at 22
    • Joins a proprietary trading firm after graduation
    • Founds a quantitative trading firm in 2017 at age 25
    • Founds a cryptocurrency exchange in 2019 at 27
    • On the 2021 Forbes “30 under 30” list at 29, and is recognized as a billionaire
    • Found guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy in 2023
    • Currently in prison

    Sam Bankman-Fried got to $1b before 30, and he didn’t inherit his wealth (but he certainly started with a lot more wealth than most people). But, the way he managed to hit $1b before 30 was via massive fraud. Without massive fraud, I don’t know how you go from an entry level job at 22 to $1b just 8 years later.








  • What’s interesting is that in the early online days, there was still a lot of misogyny. In the early days of Friendster / Myspace there were a lot more guys online than girls. By the time Facebook started to come around, being online was more of a normal thing, so there were more women and girls online. But, at least at the beginning, the feeds were smaller (mostly just posts from friends) and tended not to be algorithmic. It was a timeline, not a feed.

    So, there was a bit of a golden period when all young people were starting to go online, so it wasn’t just a small, male-dominated space any more. There also weren’t algorithmic feeds yet, or influencers, and nowhere near the level of surveillance-based advertising. These days the big social media companies feel that their audience is locked in, and have nowhere to go, so they’re squeezing them, trying to extract as much value as possible.

    If you’re a 15-year-old girl your options are really being ostracized by the other teens for not using the apps, or using the apps and dealing with all that shit. I don’t know if being a teen girl has ever been a wonderful experience. But, I sure wouldn’t want to be one right now.


  • I agree with your sentiment here. Obviously, it’s possible to avoid using Instagram and TikTok, and it’s basically impossible to avoid using the street.

    On the other hand, if you’re a teenage girl, it may be nearly impossible to not use these big corporate social media sites. A big part of being a teen is socializing with other teens. A big part of being an adolescent is learning to fit in with other adolescents without constant adult supervision. It’s one of the reason that home schooled kids have a rough time once they hit college, university or work. Many remain deeply strange for a long while after that.

    If all the other teens in your social group are using Instagram and TikTok and you’re the one person who isn’t, you’re probably going to be ostracized. Liking and commenting on each-other’s social media posts is an important ritual of friendship at that age.

    Sometimes parents ban or restrict social media usage by their kids. To a certain extent that can shield the kid, because it’s no longer their fault, and their friends might accept that. But, still, if the kid isn’t on social media, they’re probably not getting invited to in-person events, they don’t know what the important topics of conversation are, and so-on.

    I mean, the nerve of saying “don’t use social media” on a social media site is pretty rich. And, don’t think a 15-year old is going to switch from TikTok to PeerTube or something. You might be able to get them to try it out, but you’re not easily going to migrate her entire friend group. The content is also not there. Plus, fediverse sites are inhabited by deeply strange people. I love you all, but I wouldn’t want you interacting with a 15 year old girl.










  • That’s what makes them shitty though.

    When I have a hard technical problem I often search for and read through a dozen different sources. Many of them are wrong, or are right but not covering exactly the situation I’m looking at. Eventually I’ll find one that’s either right and answers my problem, or gives me the clue I need so I can figure out the solution for myself.

    If I ask an LLM to solve the problem, it will make up an answer that would seamlessly blend in with all its training data. In other words, it’s most likely to produce something that’s wrong, or something that’s right but not for my particular case, or something that’s close but incomplete. That’s effectively useless. At worst it blends in with its training data enough to convince me it’s right, while not actually being right. At best it’s something that is close enough to give me the clue I need. Most of the time it’s going to be something that’s wrong and I know it’s wrong because if it were that simple I wouldn’t have had to resort to the AI bullshit generator.