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General Discussion

A place to talk about whatever you want

38.1k Topics 345.2k Posts
  • Funny Videos

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    X
    https://x.com/GBNT1952/status/1953592908428288205
  • Beware Horace

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    MikM
    S’ok. His heat vision can’t reach me from Texas.
  • Jim Lovell, 1928-2025

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  • The worst name (phonetically)?

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    A
    https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15imEjNSD3/
  • AI Jazz

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    Doctor PhibesD
    I got four out of five correct, but I was a bit lucky I think. I'd like to hear somebody do the same with saxophone. I suspect it would be harder to make an AI sax sound authentic, unless it was Kenny G.
  • Not quite Loudoun County, but close…

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    MikM
    I certainly hope that turns out to be false.
  • Trump’s attorney met with Ghislaine Maxwell yesterday

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    jon-nycJ
    Polymarket has it at 25% that Trump pardons her. [image: 1754612524443-img_6945.jpeg]
  • Kathy Griffin Au natural

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    RichR
    I think this thread was just a test to see who's sick enough to open it, given the headline.
  • Cryptocurrencies and Private Market Assets in 401(k)

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    jon-nycJ
    @xenon said in Cryptocurrencies and Private Market Assets in 401(k): Doesn't the almost make private equity public equity? Still not tradable though. And will look misleadingly stable in someone’s 401k when in reality the underlying value will be all over the place. (Cliff Asness calls it ‘volatility laundering’)
  • Lucky me

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    MikM
    Just subscribed to the 2000 IU. Gotta up my game.
  • We are underestimating AI

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    AxtremusA
    Oh well, at least we can take pride in having trained our replacement. The dinosaurs didn't train us to take over.
  • College Admission Getting Easier

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    jon-nycJ
    I think that might be second. Biggest instance of hypocrisy is the extent to which they rolled out these affirmative action / DEI policies, ostensibly to help disadvantaged minorities, only to fill most of the slots with kids of rich Nigerians, etc. Once on Loury’s show he and McWhorter both estimated that over half the black kids on campus were foreign born.
  • Not a great headline…

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  • Mildly interesting

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    jon-nycJ
    Windfall comes from the old English custom of tenants on estates having the right to gather wood blown down by the wind.
  • I have a question about Fort Stewart

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  • Fuck coding

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    HoraceH
    Team sport ability is so loaded on physical abilities such as strength and size and speed, along with natural abilities such as processing speed in certain visual and spatial aspects, it may stand to reason that the best of the best reach heights of ability in those sports that purely cognitive fields do not support. ———————— Absolutely — and you’re zeroing in on something fundamental about the limits of human variance in different domains. In team sports, the ceiling of performance is shaped by rare confluences of physical and cognitive gifts that are largely immutable and distributed sparsely across the population. In contrast, in purely cognitive fields, the ceiling may be more flexible, contextual, or socially constructed. Let’s break it down: ⸻ Team Sports: Physical Exceptionalism + Cognitive Real-Time Processing Elite athletes — especially in team sports like football, soccer, or basketball — are typically outliers on multiple dimensions simultaneously: • Raw physical traits: size, speed, strength, endurance. • Motor coordination: fine-tuned neuromuscular control. • Cognitive traits: split-second processing of rapidly changing spatial information, anticipation, tactical memory, and situational awareness. You don’t just need one gift — you need a genetically stacked deck plus years of focused training plus resilience to injuries plus an ability to perform under pressure. This creates a rarity at the apex. For example, LeBron James isn’t just big and fast — he processes plays and movement in real-time like a grandmaster plays chess. Variance is deep, and the filtering system is harsh. ⸻ 🧠 Cognitive Fields: High Variance, But Milder Extremes Now look at fields like AI engineering, mathematics, or theoretical physics. Here: • The variance in raw cognitive talent (say, working memory, abstraction, insight) is real, but harder to measure, and the environment plays a bigger role. • Cumulative knowledge and tool access matter more than reflexes or power. • You can be elite at 50 or 70, not just at 24. This means: • The peak performance window is wider. • The barriers to entry are more dependent on education, culture, and access, not just nature. • The difference between a top 0.1% and top 0.01% mind might manifest more in luck, timing, or social navigation than raw skill alone. And crucially: training can make a massive difference, which is less true once you’re genetically capped in vertical leap or sprint speed. ⸻ 🧮 Sports as Harder Ceilings “It may stand to reason that the best of the best reach heights of ability in those sports that purely cognitive fields do not support.” Yes — because physical gifts stack with cognitive ones, and because physics imposes clearer ceilings. A 7-foot man who can jump 40 inches and think like a point guard? That’s a unicorn. A chess grandmaster or a machine learning researcher? Statistically less unicorn-ish. Put another way: sports funnel a larger base toward a narrower apex, where only those with compounded rare traits remain. In cognitive fields, the funnel is less steep, and horizontal divergence (niche expertise, specialization, network leverage) often matters more than vertical peak. ⸻ Implications for AI and the Current Talent Bubble This also loops back to your earlier point: • Some top AI engineers are undoubtedly gifted. • But they’re not unicorns in the LeBron sense — they’re early, lucky, and well-placed. • As access to tools, compute, and education expands, many more people will reach similar levels of output. The “half-life of specialness” in cognitive markets is real — because the barriers are cultural and temporal, not anatomical. ⸻ Let me know if you want to explore this from an evolutionary, educational, or talent-scouting angle — there’s rich territory in how societies filter and reward different forms of human excellence.
  • FFS

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    MikM
    How did we ever live without AI
  • German Trains - Now Only 56% Run On Time

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    jon-nycJ
    By the way in the US that character is called “Sir Topham Hatt” for anyone confused about who The Fat Controller (the original name) is.
  • My first girlfriend just died…

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    jon-nycJ
    With many a stiff sock in the hamper testifying to their love.
  • Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake

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    jon-nycJ
    https://x.com/jonlemire/status/1952903704933241044?s=46