And it could do that, effectively, with all the so-called “pre-training” data, the stuff written by real people... The assistant transcripts are different. If human minds were involved in their construction, it was only because humans were writing words for the assistant as a fictional character, playing the role of science-fiction authors rather than speaking for themselves. In this process, there was no real mind – human or otherwise – “inhabiting” the assistant role that some of the resulting text portrays.

But the base model already has to predict non-well-written fiction, because there is plenty of non-well-written fiction in the training data, no? 

Do we have any data showing if base models do better or worse at predicting fiction compared to non-fictional texts? I'd naively expect bad fiction to be easier to predict than good fiction, as well.

More generally speaking: every way you can change a source program without changing the compiler output is a way it contains information that the machine code doesn't. And compilers do a lot of non-injective transformations, that is, transformations which have same outputs for different inputs. Loop unrolling, replacing for with while (or vice versa), etc. 

The higher-level language contains things like "for loops," which are much easier for a human to understand than an incomprehensible string of binary which you feed directly into a wire as changes in voltage, but I don't think it contains any information that the machine code does not.

As trivial examples: comments, variable naming, etc. are information contained in HLL programs, but not in the corresponding machine code programs.

The other way around seems closer to right, but even there the compiler can provide additional information.

Do we know the tradition predates Christianity separating from Judaism? The particular story is later.

In fact, it seems at least possible (but I don't know how plausible) that the causation is the other way around: the story is supposed to tell the readers that Rabbi Yeshua's miracles don't prove he's right either.

I mostly agree, but it's a double-digit percent increase in bankruptcies which ends up being (from the post)

about 4bps (0.04%)/year of additional bankruptcies

But, crucially, if one product is not available, then these people will very likely form an addiction to something else. That is what 'addictive personality disorder' means.

Except whatever they got addicted to before the legalization of online sports betting, it apparently led to much lower bankruptcy rates etc. 

I feel that the discourse has quietly assumed a fabricated option: if these people can't gamble then they will be happy unharmed non-addicts.

This post isn't quietly assuming something: it's loudly giving evidence that they will be much less harmed.

Do you expect anyone to answer "agree" to the starting question?

Bywayeans are pretty censorious and scrupulous about violations of the NAP

Except against people who enjoy sunsets, apparently?

He’d walk on over to nearby industry labs with candy and a sales pitch for why they should use his services. He primarily targeted top, Nobel-prize-winning research groups

and

Plasmidsaurus has historically done very little ‘traditional’ marketing — no brochures, few cold reach-outs

seem to be a bit contradictory?

If people followed Brennan’s advice, those ignorant of their lack of knowledge would keep voting, while well-educated people might think they’re not competent enough and abstain.

I'd add that people ignorant enough not to know or not to understand Brennan's argument would also keep voting.