“But…” LOL

Let’s not act like executives are the only morons in this world. Plenty of rank and file are leaning on AI as well.

Sometimes I am preparing a high stakes communication for work and struggling for brevity. I will ask AI for help reducing my word count and I find it is helpful as an impartial editor. I take its 25% reduction, sigh, accept most of what it sacrificed, fix a word or two, and am done. It’s helpful.

Right? That’s the entire point.

More steps required to perform something is very squarely within the definition of complicated, no matter how straightforward those steps are.

It baffles me because in many of the quotes they are clearly trying to be understanding and respectful toward those who disagree with this, but then they come out and call them children

Ironically, that’s a really childish thing to do.

I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.

Dude if there’s one thing we’ve done it’s listen to far too much of the drivel that man has to say.

It is, though there are more forces than that at play.

Competition is supposed to help lower prices. If one tennis racket manufacturer overcharges, then another can charge less and steal all their sales.

But if landlord #1 owns an house and overcharges while landlord #2 owns a house and does not, it’s not like landlord #2 gets all the tenants. They still just have one house. There is no way for one of them to win by benefitting tenants. They can however both win by both hurting tenants.

I guess where there is too much housing, one apartment building can keep full occupancy by charging less, while another building across the street might have 60% occupancy because they overcharge. But rarely is there too much supply anymore. And rarely are there such head-to-head commoditized situations.

Ah well. The book frankly does look like a fuck toy for Christians. One of those long winded philosophy gasbags that aims to make religion sound epistemologically exactly like science. Whatever.

deleted by creator

I flit, I float, I take responsibility and apologize to Lord Vader

I think you’re right to be skeptical. And I think he’s at least a half step more honestly curious than most of the “just asking questions” douchebags. But there is a lot more to talk about on this subject that’s more interesting than whether or not “god did it.”

Ultimately I think of him as an engineer, and not a scientist. I think engineering is much more compatible with religion, because they cover orthogonal material. Engineering is all about “how” and religion is “why.” And the image of the great-engineer-in-the-sky is tempting to them, I think.

He asked if the complexity could be reduced or not, so he raised the topic. But he didn’t imply that the thing is too complex and can’t be reduced therefore god. He stopped short of that.

And it is a fair topic for anyone to think about. I’m an “atoms bouncing around” guy and I too want to know if the complexity can be reduced because if not, that means we must have waited a long long time for some of these assemblies to appear.

Okay here’s my full transcript of what he said on this.

“This is fascinating stuff. It also opens up a huge debate. People say ‘how can something this complex come to be out of nothing?’ Well, the logic goes like this. If this motor system is composed of complex individual parts and al these parts work together to perform the overall function of rotating, then how did the individual parts come to be?”

“Did it all have to happen at the same time? Or is there some evolutionary advantage to the cell for every intermediate stage of development? Is 15% of this motor advantageous to the cell? What function would 50% of the structure perform? What were the steps these components took to assemble into such a complex molecular machine in the first place?”

“Scientists are trying to figure this out, and I encourage you to read their papers. Many seem to be focusing on the type 3 secretion system which works like a hypodermic needle that a cell can use to inject other things. This device looks similar but it’s quite different in its protein structure. The complexity and origin of the bacterial flagellar motor is a really interesting conundrum.”

“As I was a younger man and I would read things on the internet and find people saying ‘hey, you gotta believe all this over here.’ People say ‘hey, you gotta believe all this over here.’ There’s a big war going on between science and faith and you’re either in one camp or the other. Get your flag and figure out where you’re going to put your flag.”

“And the more I have matured and started to not really care about defending where my flag is, the more I’ve been able to learn from people no matter where they are. I’m still working on this.”

“There’s a really interesting book I’m reading. I can’t speak for everything in the book, I’m not done with it. It’s called Where the Conflict Reall Lies. And it talks about this interplay between science, religion, naturalism. It’s very interesting. It goes into more into the areas of philosophy and I love it because it challenges me and it’s fantastic. And this is what I would encourage you. If you have your flag in a camp somewhere, I would encourage you not to defend your flag. I would encourage you to look at a flagellar motor and just think about it. Think about how it is and what it be. It’s a fantastic thing to think about. How did this get here? You have intelligence and you get to make up your mind. And I love that about consciousness and I love that about life.”

“And so for me, the flagellar motor makes me happy. I feel joy. You know how when you go outside at night and you look up at the stars and you see all these stars and you feel small and you feel wonder. Thats what this makes me feel like, even though it is small. I feel awe and reverence toward this thing.”

(Okay so far so good, really. I mean it depends a lot on if that book really is just a defense of creationism. But there’s nothing here I can disagree with. And then…)

“And as a Christian, this makes me want to thank God that it exists. I feel compelled with gratitude that this thing is so awesome. So that’s just where I’m at. But what I would encourage you to do is just think critically. You have a brain. Don’t defend a flag. Just think about how things are. And I hope you are happy and experience the same joy I feel about this no matter what you think about it. So anyway, enough about that.”

Okay you’re right. He absolutely turns it to god at the end. It was a really intricately balanced little speech he was making there, and for 90% of it I thought he might be talking to Christians and helping them open their minds to possibilities. He talked about not getting dogmatic. And then he proclaimed “I’m a Christian and I thank god for this!” Which was a pretty idiotic 180 after everything he had just said about not planting flags. And that made me flip and think he was talking to atheists and trying to tickle us into being open to possibilities.

It makes me sad because he’s clearly very intelligent, but if you’re raised on religion it can be extremely hard to ever shed. It’s like getting someone to forget the language they used until they were 10. You can teach them any number of new languages but it’s unlikely they will forget that one.

Ah I didn’t catch that part. I’m going to go watch again.

Those riots absolutely were news, and are not buried in this article either. It is news when elected officials make a public call for the industrialist responsible for the riots to take action. I’m understand why you so dislike Musk getting any attention but that feeling does not make this not news. If you dislike Musk you should be glad to see media amplifying public officials criticism of him.

Okay thanks. I’m not compelling you to find examples. How I missed it is I probably have never or almost never watched any of his videos to the final frame and then sat there examining what I saw. It’s YT and when the “thanks to my friends at xyz like and subscribe” talk begins I tend to move on.

I guess I don’t object to someone being christian and exhibiting some outward signs of their cultural membership in it, any more than I object to someone being Jewish and wearing a Star of David or someone having a Disney tattoo because that’s what they are into. as long as they aren’t pushing it or using it to judge others, I can live and let live, especially for someone who is doing a lot of other valuable things. But that’s just me. You do you.

I did absolutely stop watching Samurai Carpenter when he took an entire video to talk about how Jesus saved him from his alcoholism and porn addiction and saved his marriage, and he said it all in a very preachy way like all of you guys listening should find it in yourselves to do the same while you still have time. The guy is clearly a miserable SOB too so it just rang hypocritical as hell. THAT’s where my line is drawn.

That “go fuck yourself” video is so sad. First of all he’s wearing a flight jacket as some kind of security blanket - clue number one that he’s high as a kite. Secondly he’s inarticulate. And of course there’s the obscenity and anger. He’s emotionally unhinged and jittery as hell.

This really makes me mad because in my own career I’m at the upper end of the senior management tier trying to break into the executive tier and a huge part of that is cultivating a stable demeanor and showing that you won’t break under stress so that the C-suite or Board or whoever will trust you with the fate of their millions. Elon is out there absolutely spraying diarrhea out of both pant legs on this score. He just amassed too much power first for anyone to do much about it. It’s pathetic.