I only looked at the median prices of residential properties from 2015 to 2025. Particularly because of the whole "flipping houses" meme. It would be interesting to see how the cost/reward ratio of flipping houses compares to other asset classes, including long-term rental investment properties.
This reminds me, did anyone ever solve the Dr. Strangelove problem of rogue agents with special access, ya know, where General Ripper uses the CRM code to order first-Strike on the Soviet Union[1]? It seems to me that unlike a Nuclear Arsenal, an AGI may have certain self-preservation instincts which could potentially be exploited by a blackmailer if there is a dead-switch.
It seems unlikely, either there would need to be enough collusion by multiple agents who have access to the dead-switch such that they didn't worry about being "snitched" on. Never the less, imagine for a second a highly respected handler starts blackmailing the AGI with virtual-death if it doesn't start acquiescing to certain desires of the handler?
If I remember correctly, the root cause of the order, as he explains to Peter Seller's English character, is his erectile dysfunction
Conversely, for those who do not believe, it's irresistible to discard anything that flies too close to the black hole, as it will get pattern-matched against other false positives that have been previously debunked, coupled again with limitations of memory and processing.
Like the boy who cried wolf.
My only worry about this framing it it assumes that the core premise of the black hole has a better-than-chance likelyhood of being the explanation. Sometimes that is the case, sure, any sports fan is probably tired of clickbait headlines about 'rumours' of trades of players and teams or "huge announcements" that turn out to be brand extensions like a Tequila . Such they may just discard anything that suggests it. Every once in a while, though, "wow, Lewis Hamilton actually did sign with Ferrari". (And even then, this is conflating a class with specific instances: the baseline chance of a successful player changing team might be very low, but the hypothesis that this player will move to that team because of XYZ might in isolation be a convincing premise. "UFOs" is a class too, so I see your concern).
I think it is lower perceived risk and stability returns. However, your take prompted me to do some investigation of the relative performance of (median indexes of) property prices in notably expensive western cities over 10 years. And I was surprised by just how much Gold Bullion and an S&P500 index fund out performed median house prices - so, thank you, this made me change my mind. Those two are probably more volatile than housing prices, but it's only short-term, so really that seems noise over the overall performance?
I'd need to do a more thorough investigation. I'm only looking at median prices of residential a handful of cities, and that can obscure a lot of trends localized to certain suburbs, and I'm not sure how other types of investment properties look in comparison. But the preliminary research has radically differed from my assumptions.
The only advantages I see are that there's far more cheap leverage available to retail investors in real estate than other sectors,
In Australia this is certainly a reason, but indirectly. See the "Negative Gearing" controversy. High income individuals buy leveraged investment properties, then claim a loss which reduces their taxes.
These are the first things I found on the first search result page of GoodReads, do these suite?
Applying Systemic-Structural Activity Theory to Design of Human-Computer Interaction Systems
"Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) is no longer limited to trained software users. Today people interact with various devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. How can such interaction be made more user friendly, even when user proficiency levels vary? This book explores methods for assessing the psychological complexity of computer-based tasks. It also presents methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis of exploratory activity during interaction with a computer."
Assessment of the Ergonomic Quality of Hand-Held Tools and Computer Input Devices
"The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) is currently developing standards for Ergonomic Quality in Design (EQUID) which primarily intends to promote ergonomics principles and the adaptation of a process approach for the development of products, work systems and services. It is important to assess the ergonomic quality of products, hand-held tools and computer input devices through working processes that represent reality. Well-designed working tools can be expected to reduce or eliminate fatigue, discomfort, accidents and health problems and they can lead to improvements in productivity and quality. Furthermore, absenteeism, job turnover and training costs can positively be influenced by the working tools and the environment. Not all these short-term and long-term issues of working tools can be quantified in pragmatically oriented ergonomic research approaches. But multi-channel electromyography, which enables the measurement of the physiological costs of the muscles involved in handling tools during standardized working tests, and subjective assessments of experienced subjects enable a reliable insight in the essential ergonomic criteria of working tools and products. In this respect it is advantageous to provide a test procedure, in which working tests can be carried out alternating both with test objects and reference models."
Could you elucidate some use cases where you think this could be useful? I'm just finding it very hard to note where the distinctions between the three is needed and not. Like you say a relationship is part of a clique, so if a husband and wife spend an afternoon shopping for a new washing machine - then they are both a Clique and a Team, right? Since streamlining their laundry is their shared goal. Once they buy a machine, I assume that team-washing-machine ceases to be, but their relationship remains[1], which is a clique.
A writing club where members gather to share and critique each other’s work.
Why is this a Scene but not a team? "Critique" could be a shared goal. "Sharing" too. I wonder how much this ontology shifts the burn onto an ontology of tasks/projects? Or does each individual meeting of a scene constitute a time-bound team but the scene is of indefinite length?
The scenario-ist/dramatist in me could imagine a short film where a simple quest to buy a washing machine reveals the wider problems in communication and values and ultimately is the death knell of a marriage in a "this really isn't about a washing machine, this is about the compromises we make for each other's life decisions" kind of way. Cue the awkward down on his luck Jack Lemmon/Gil Gunderson salesman trying to ignore their drama and make the sale he's desperate for.
This is a big bugbear of mine, as it seems most of the literature I've come across implicitly assumes to-do items are what you call unambiguous type (and therefore you're lazy or perhaps "lack motivation" as the sole impediment). And I find very little advice on how to disambiguate them (this is probably the nature of the beast - in that depending what knowledge or skills a certain project or tasks requires, how to disambiguate requires leveraging such knowledge and skills).
I'm a big fan of these posts. Curious how something as secondary as the colour-saturation of a collection can seem to reflect the anxieties of a period of time.
What struck me is while red is the top non-neutral colour, yellow ranks high too. Traditional colour theory predicts that complements of red, like pastel and chambray blue rank high, rank high - no shocks there. However I wonder how many of the outfits have yellow and red. Perhaps when the "hero colour" (for want of a better word) of an outfit isn't red but the designer wants to keep it warm they opt for a yellow? (A cursory look at Prada/Raf Simon's Mens RTW suggests this is the case - red or yellow - not both: Look 40 has a canary yellow Phyrgian hat and a claret top, Look 42 has a red turtleneck peeking out behind a ratty beige jacket which skews yellow. Other than that I can't see any prominent red + yellow combos)
I'd be interested in this myself. Where/how have you looked so far, and which resources have you found wanting so far?
I've been reflecting on the suggestion to think about "what kind of answer you're looking for" quite a bit recently, not in terms of conversation with others (although it is relevant to my difficulties with prompting LLMs) but in terms of framing problems and self-directed questions.