Though this particular story for weight exfiltration also seems pretty easy to prevent with standard computer security: there’s no reason for the inference servers to have the permission to create outgoing network connections.

But it might be convenient to have that setting configured through some file stored in Github, which the execution server has access to.

Yeah, if that was the only consideration I think I would have created the market myself.

Launching nukes is one thing, but downvoting posts that don't deserve it? I'm not sure I want to retaliate that strongly.

I looked for a manifold market on whether anyone gets nuked, and considered making one when I didn't find it. But:

• If the implied probability is high, generals might be more likely to push the button. So someone who wants someone to get nuked can buy YES.
• If the implied probability is low, generals can get mana by buying YES and pushing the button. I... don't think any of the generals will be very motivated by that? But not great.

So I decided not to.

No they’re not interchangeable. They are all designed with each other in mind, along the spectrum, to maximize profits under constraints, and the reality of rivalrousness is one reason to not simply try to run at 100% capacity every instant.

I can't tell what this paragraph is responding to. What are "they"?

You explained they popped up from the ground. Those are just about the most excludable toilets in existence!

Okay I do feel a bit silly for missing this... but I also still maintain that "allows everyone or no one to use" is a stretch when it comes to excludability. (Like, if the reason we're talking about it is "can the free market provide this service at a profit", then we care about "can the provider limit access to people who are paying for it". If they can't do that, do we care that they can turn the service off during the day and on at night?)

Overall it still seems like you want to use words in a way that I think is unhelpful.

Idk, I think my reaction here is that you're defining terms far more broadly than is actually going to be helpful in practice. Like, excludability and rivalry are spectrums in multiple dimensions, and if we're going to treat them as binaries then sure, we could say anything with a hint of them counts in the "yes" bin, but... I think for most purposes,

• "occasionally, someone else arrives at the parking lot at the same time as me, and then I have to spend a minute or so waiting for the pay-and-display meter"

is closer to

• "other people using the parking lot doesn't affect me"

than it is to

• "when I get to the parking lot there are often no spaces at all"

I wouldn't even say that: bathrooms are highly rivalrous and this is why they need to be so overbuilt in terms of capacity. While working at a cinema, did you never notice the lines for the womens' bathroom vs the mens' bathroom once a big movie let out? And that like 99% of the time the bathrooms were completely empty?

My memory is we didn't often have that problem, but it was over ten years ago so dunno.

I'd say part of why they're (generally in my experience) low-rivalrous is because they're overbuilt. They (generally in my experience) have enough capacity that people typically don't have to wait, and when they do have to wait they don't have to wait long. There are exceptions (during the interval at a theatre), but it still seems to me that most bathrooms (as they actually exist, and not hypothetical other bathrooms that had been built with less capacity) are low-rivalrous.

None of your examples are a counterexample. All of them are excludable, and you explain how and that the operators choose not to.

I'm willing to concede on the ones that could be pay gated but aren't, though I still think "how easy is it to install a pay gate" matters.

But did you miss my example of the pop-up urinals? I did not explain how those are excludable, and I maintain that they're not.

Thing I've been wrong about for a long time: I remembered that the rocket equation "is exponential", but I thought it was exponential in dry mass. It's not, it's linear in dry mass and exponential in Δv.

This explains a lot of times where I've been reading SF and was mildly surprised at how cavalier people seemed to be about payload, like allowing astronauts to have personal items.

Sorry, I didn't see this notification until after - did you find us?

I agree that econ 101 models are sometimes incorrect or inapplicable. But

I don’t know how much that additional cost is, but seemingly less than the benefit, because three months later, the whole of Germany wants to introduce this card. The introduction has to be delayed by some legal issues, and then a few counties want to introduce it independently. So popular is this special card!

The argument here seems to be that the card must satisfy a cost-benefit analysis or it wouldn't be so popular, and I don't buy that either.

Ah, I can sometimes make fridays but not tomorrow. Hope it goes well.