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That isn't very convincing, as the stock market itself is largely a prediction market. People buy stock to bet on future success, whether that manifest in the form of stock price increases, splits, and/or dividends. It's merely a much more narrowly-focused prediction market.

For that very reason, insider knowledge, and especially the ability to influence future outcomes, become the subject of heavy regulation. And, the lack of such regulation for congressional members is also why their net worth tends to skyrocket once entering office.


That's fair. Insofar as the purpose of the stock market is to allocate capital to companies the market predicts are most likely to succeed, you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal (though not insider trading by those with the ability to influence outcomes).

But I think the way our current system solves this is by forcing companies to disclose important insider information to shareholders all at once, rather than by letting insiders profit by leaking the information through their market transactions. (The one possibly being related to the other, because insiders who could legally profit by keeping information secret rather than disclose it would be incentivised to do so.) I don't think a similar restriction is feasible for prediction markets, because often the thing you're trying to predict is not something that can be legally cajoled into giving up its secrets.


>you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal

Before Salman vs US (2016) it basically was, how do you think the oracle made bank?


I'd argue that the "purpose" of the stock market is matching investors with companies that want liquidity. Allowing insider trading hurts the purpose by driving away non-insider trading participants, and it does not really help in any way.

With prediction markets, the "purpose" is information discovery, and "insider trading" actually helps (=> via information from insiders).

Disclaimer: I'm somewhat playing devils advocate here, I personally think that prediction markets are for now mostly an ineffective zero-sum game (and legalized gambling with all the drawbacks that brings).


> I'd argue that the "purpose" of the stock market is matching investors with companies that want liquidity.

But you don't usually buy the stocks from the company itself, do you? Unless there is some shenanigans with buyouts going on...


Companies can issue new shares to take advantage of positive public sentiment.

It's easier to define safeguards and the definition of inside information for stock markets than for prediction markets though. There is plenty of information that should ban someone from prediction markets that also wouldn't meet the definition of material non-public information.

that's a very shallow analogy as the stock market has significantly stronger guardrails to curtain insider trading including fines and jail time these companies lack. But even if you were to bring prediction markets under the purview of the FTC, it would still not be a functioning regulatory scheme since the scope of prediction markets is just so much larger - you can bet on anything.

That sounds a lot more like confirmation bias than any real effect on the AI's output.

Gung-ho AI advocates overlook problems and seem to focus more on the potential they see for the future, giving everything a nice rose tint.

Pessimists will focus on the problems they encounter and likely not put in as much effort to get the results they want, so they likely see worse results than they might have otherwise achieved and worse than what the optimist saw.


That's a valid sounding argument. However many people with no strong view either way are producing functional, good code with AI daily, and the original context of this thread is about someone who has never been able to produce anything committable. Many, many real world experiences show something excellent and ready to go from a simple one shot.

I expect it's a bit of both.

I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in the US, it's not uncommon for people to walk on eggshells while reporting information to coworkers (and especially managers) because there's absolutely a large cohort who will shoot the messenger. Crocker's Rules are undoubtedly a reaction to the extreme whereby managers in particular fail to receive receive crucial information because their reports are too afraid to pass it along.

In other words, people fail to communicate out of fear born from an assumption on how the person they're communicating with will react. The original quote would have you ignore your own fear and hand over the information, while your modified version would indirectly address your fear by refusing to take responsibility for how the recipient might feel. Whichever way you go with it, you're largely accomplishing the same thing.


FWIW, I based my version on the source of Crocker's Rules linked in the article itself.

That's about as useful and true as "a programmer losing his/her job to AI is always a good thing".

There certainly exist bad regulations and bad bureaucrats, but many (most?) regulations are written in blood, whether it be from employees, customers, or merely innocent bystanders, and there needs to be a group of people who facilitate said regulations.

I'm all for aggressive and continuous re-evaluation of regulations and downsizing bloated bureaucracies, but blanket "all bueeaucrats/regulations are bad" sentiments gets us ineffectual and grifting BS like DOGE, and it creates the very real possibility we'll have to re-learn bloody lessons down the road.

Knee-capping the USDA will almost certainly to lead to some very painful education in the future.


Over and above the fact that everyone should already know that the SSN database is extremely sensitive, DOGE had to strong-arm people out of the way to gain access to it in the first place. Even a fresh twenty-something should have known better than to download the entire thing onto a flash drive and carry it around, let alone take it home with them, and especially not to share with a future employer.

The idea that could be done accidentally and innocently lacks any sort of credulity. It's so far out of the ordinary that I don't think applying Hanlon's Razor can be done in good faith.


> but it's a reasonable need too.

Why?

User names are for all practical purposes infinite: merely allowing 10 character alphanumeric usernames already gets you into the quadrillions, nearly enough for every person on the planet to claim a million unique usernames.

The username in question, while short, doesn't seem to have any inherent value, as it does not appear to be a valid word in any language, and the most common acronym expansion for it (Home Access Center) is too generic to be particularly useful as an identifier such that anyone but the original user would fight for its use.


Please enlighten us: which former presidents have been similar strong man caricatures engaging in anywhere near the level of cronyism and systemic corruption as the current administration? What precisely did they do which demonstrates such behavior?

We've certainly had some colorful presidents in the past, but the current president is engaged in a lot of blatantly impeachable behavior, and as far as I know, we've never had such a passive and complicit Congress before.


I’d probably guess there were plenty of bad eggs. Andrew Jackson for example. Who learns about him in school though? Who talks about his administration today? And he probably isn’t the only one either. 1700s government was still in flux with plenty of cases of selfish infamous people and behavior. 1800s worldview among people in power was pretty notoriously ruthless. 1900s not much different. FDR was certainly a strongman above norms too, luckily many of the things he did with his share of political power had great benefits to people.

Yes.

I'm rather curious where this is actually the case, particularly as you claim it's not uncommon.

My experience has been the opposite, though I'd hardly claim it to be representative. My prior employer had all single-occupant, unisex bathrooms originally, until one woman high up the management chain demanded there be women's only bathrooms. So, a women's only placard was placed on a couple of the unisex bathrooms, and suddenly, guys had to semi-frequently wait on for the remaining available unisex bathrooms during the day.

It was very clearly discriminatory, and I have no problem claiming the reverse would be just as bad.


If I generalize a bit for Sweden, small restaurants and shops generally only have a single bathroom. Fast food restaurants, schools/universities, work places, and train stations tend to have one or two large single-occupant unisex accessibility room and several smaller single-occupant unisex rooms. Airports, high-end restaurants and shopping malls tend to use US style of single-sex bathrooms. Tourist areas, venues for people to drink, larger gas stations, and bus stations often come with a urinal room for men-only, an unisex accessibility room, and one or two smaller unisex rooms.

The larger accessibility room is also for parents with small children.


Isn't the bus factor for urinals way better to the point where it would likely benefit women?

Complaining loudly about working with the government to build weapons and then continuing to build them isn't the same as people refusing to work for companies that handle weapons contracts. The window has indeed shifted, with tech workers now merely virtue signaling on social media.

I think my favorite exchange was the following:

Professor Hathaway: "I want to start seeing more of you around in the lab."

Chris Knight: "Fine. I'll gain weight."


Do you run?

Only when I’m being chased.


Ooh, I can't believe I missed this one.

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