Briar Patch Observatory Podcast
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- https://briarpod.net/. https://twitter.com/PLanghaus
- Pedro Domingues - seminal book on machine learning.
- George Hotz - open source people. Open source self-driving cars.
- Centralized vs decentralization - some things work better than not in a decentralized. We must observe - what emerges? Does an army work better centralized? Decent. Nimbler. Centralized command can be slow. Decentralized army does not end up winning a war. You want centralized decision making, but communication about lessons learned.
- Where we organize centralized or decent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz. Post-modernist - don't believe in grand theories.
- Individual sovereignity - a technical problem. If I have a box that makes food, water, shelter - why do you need the state?
- Replace the state - better technical not ideological. State loses, freedom wins. Focus as a technical question not political one.
- What about protection? Defense wins over offense.
- Whether offense or defense wins - depends on time. In military history - it shifted. Defense may work.
- Why we need to defend ourselves.
- George dissociates from power. If you have
- You may not be interested in politics, but politics are interested in you - Trotsky.
- Algorithms. China does AI for oppression.
- Desire slaves!
- Ask everybody if they would want to be the king of the world? Oppression is very costly.
- Democracy -
- Algorithms.
- Pedro - constitution was designed so idiots could run it.
- Ex. Separtion of power vs checks and balances. Sharing power so no branch could dominate others.
- Pedro - not good enough if you have small fiefdoms of freedom in a centralized world. Dynamics that made it happen - are positive feedback loop for centralization.
- Centralized platform also provides freedom for decentralization - small businesses, etc. Amazon sellers.
- Platforms are centralized. But opens up opportunity for decentralization.
- Where does the platform end, and user begin?
- Platforms as monopolies - they are not that big. Ex. Vampire vs Twitter - $1B to switch over. George is not worrried about platform dominance.
- Network effects - can transcend by incentivizing other platforms?
- To take over a platform - is very difficult. A better search engine will not take down Google. It is data that backs up the old one.