> > And that shape tells you that _at some unknown point in the future_ progress will slow (but likely not stop). Now back to the point, what reason do you have to believe progress will stop soon?
> Because the premise that the singularity is just around the corner is far less likely than the premise that artificial intelligence is a lot harder than most people think it is and we're not that close.
I see no claim that the singularity is around the corner, so I'm not sure your reply meets the comment that you're replying to.
It seems overwhelmingly likely that AI will be significantly more capable 6 months from now than it is now. Even if there's little progress in the models, just the rate at which tooling is moving will make a big difference. And models still seem to be improving, so I'd be a little surprised if we hit a model brick wall.
> This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again!
She's not going to drive again.
> For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives.
This is something that humans suck at.
> Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative.
You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action.
Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
> You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action
You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to... she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation.
Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own.
> Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that,
Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
> the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
Yes, by confusing gas and brake. She clearly has significantly reduced capacity.
> You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
I do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity; unfortunately, humans losing capacity tend not to realize it or correctly estimate how much they have lost.
> she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen
Why? More importantly, why is it on the table?
> the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation
This seems incorrect. Lau was placed on probation for 2 years and had her license revoked for 3 [1].
> Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own
Straw man. Harsh and arbitrary are mostly orthogonal.
If you kill someone from behind the wheel, and you are at fault, the default punishment should be long-term license revocation and jail time. In almost no case do I see a reason for removing the requirement to spend time in prison altogether.
> Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?
Humans get taken off the roads and otherwise criminally incapacitated.
> do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity
I do. If the headline were she got years in jail, I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
> I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
See my comment just above, where I reply to someone who replied to you. "Confronting a relative"? Shit, I'd be happy if a few less relatives actively enabled people, "That doctor doesn't know what he's talking about, you're fine, mom, besides, it's kind of a pain for us to drive 10 minutes over to your house to help with an errand and then 10 minutes home. Just drive, no-one's going to pull you over."
> Straw man. Harsh and arbitrary are mostly orthogonal.
It's "arbitrary" because it's something that the legislature has not specifically allowed for. We do not allow judges to make up things on the spot for good reason.
> I do. If the headline were she got years in jail, I'd bet at least a few families would weigh the cost of confronting a relative against the risk that they have to see them behind bars.
I think the chance that grandpa might see prison time for driving is not really something that is going to change things much for families compared to "grandpa might kill someone" or "grandpa might get himself killed."
So your hypothetical is that someone reads the headline "elderly woman kills family of four with car due to incapacity, receives no jail time" and goes "oh, no jail? No biggie" but if they read a headline "... and receives life in prison" they're going to rush out and take away grandma's keys because now they care?
> And it doesn't work there, so why would it work for impaired driving?
It does actually. See how thieves resident in Florida travel to New York to work because of the different enforcement regimes for one of the clearest possible examples[1].
Even if deterrence didn’t work at all putting people in prison is good because of incapacitation. Committing crimes is stupidly right tailed[2]. Every career criminal in jail for a year is a year society doesn’t suffer their crimes.
Note that New York seems to have much lower property crime rates than Florida. It's usually difficult to compare this between jurisdictions but it seems pretty clear cut in this case.
It also seems like the percentage of goods lost to retail theft is slightly lower in New York than Florida.
c.f. you have a thirdhand cherry-picked quote from someone on a political site that implies differently.
> Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.
I don't defend that woman at all and as someone who walked by that intersection on the day of the incident, 70 mph seems physically impossible there for a reasonable driver.
But it was not a totally residential area, it was a major transit hub of that part of town, where light rail and bus lines meet, a verrry short block away from lots of retail and restaurants.. That actually is an argument to go slower than in a purely residential area, because it's actually a congested area.
Definitely not given back. If I didn't misread it, she needs to take a new driver's test at 83, which she already declined applying for (though it'll be her right; we'd have to see if she stays by the decision or if the examiner deems her a safe driver)
> You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.
Wtf? Try applying logic somewhere in the process. People don't enjoy killing others by accident, paying 64k, 200h community service, three years of trying to use American public transport before you can start the process of getting a license back, going through a whole court system, and, y'know, guilt that I'd imagine would cripple me for years
Edit: I'm very surprised, reading your other comments, they're overall legit sensible. Really struggling to comprehend how, here, you get from "someone did something by accident" to "you need life punishments or they'll have an incentive to mow the next person down". There's zero incentive for citizens to kill people in any society that I'm aware of, again even ignoring the internal problems it causes
> Definitely not given back. If I didn't misread it, she needs to take a new driver's test at 83, which she already declined applying for (though it'll be her right; we'd have to see if she stays by the decision or if the examiner deems her a safe driver)
Pretty likely that DMV Driver Safety has her record flagged and wants some additional evidence of medical capacity if she reapplies, too.
I think it's not too surprising that the law treats people with diminished capacity differently. It's not a bug, it's a feature, even though it may feel upsetting. There's no winning solution in a case like that.
Well, if the law treats them differently when it comes to punishment, then maybe it should treat them differently when it comes to being able to drive in the first place?
Yup. And we do have some degree of safeguards here-- admittedly, less in California than many other states. They are: physician required reporting of disqualifying conditions, ability for other people to report concerns about capability to drive, and the requirement to show up and undergo vision testing and not flag other concerns in the process.
There's a tradeoff between reducing the very low rate of unsafe driving by the elderly and the burden added to the very old. People over 65+ are still possibly safer, overall, than teenagers.
You'd prefer to throw people with dementia and children in jail? Most of us agree that those outcomes are messed up, and the ability to form intent and/or understand the consequences of one's actions is important information to be considered in formulating whether to punish.
Someone got old and hadn't figured out they were unsafe to drive. It's not the same thing as me choosing to drive 100MPH in a city, operate a vehicle drunk, or keeping going after receiving clear evidence that I'm unsafe behind the wheel.
It did in the early 19th century. Check out the first and second Barbary Wars. They were not permanent solutions but they had lasting effects. The real blow was the French conquest of Algeria after that.
We have a 5gbps pipe; routinely download games from Steam at >3gbps; when I had to reinitialize my cloud backup it was >4gbps. All of this without impacting anyone else on the pipe.
Yah, our P95 bandwidth is just a few megabits per second. But it's not that expensive and routinely saves me a few minutes here and there.
10gbps on the LAN is more broadly useful. Pegging it for a file share is a daily occurrence.
Also storage has gotten super expensive lately, and rather than upgrading my machines/consoles I've been offloading games and downloading them as needed and now am routinely downloading dozens of GB just to play a game.
My gaming time is limited so the faster the better.
minor nitpick: I wouldn't call it stagnating. They were artificially inflated.
as an aside: for pricing, 20 years ago unmanaged 1G-BaseT ethernet switches were $20/port. That's the region 10G-BaseT switches occupy right now if they use realtek chips. And multiple sources confirm the realtek switch can do full line rate on all ports simultaneiously with a normal 1500 MTU
It's worth pointing out that wages in the US are vast compared to other developed countries, though, too. We outspend OECD by 35-40%, but our average national wage is also higher than OECD by 35-40%.
Labor compensation in the U.S. is also extremely unequal, which pulls the average up in a way that isn't very informative as to this particular issue. The average starving PhD would be a much better and more knowledgeable teacher to high school students in the subject she took her PhD in, than the typical high school teacher with nothing more than an Education credential. Are you sure that you need to pay such high wages to existing teachers?
>The average starving PhD would be a much better and more knowledgeable teacher to high school students in the subject she took her PhD in
i dont think this is true.
there is an art to educating (especially the ~10-15 year old range) that does not just manifest itself because you are smart: how to engage students, how to keep them engaged, how to adjust the message to the audience's level and communicate it effectively (which changes kid to kid), how to earn a kids respect without becoming over-bearing (or too friendly), and dozens of other things that your PhD in compsci or whatever does not teach you.
some of the smartest PhD holders i know would be very shitty elementary/high school teachers.
(context: i teach at the college level. its a lot easier than teaching at the high school level.)
Yeah there's some truth to this - I find that my Ed students don't always have sophisticated understandings of their content area (though honestly I find that ENGR and BIOL students don't, either). But they do get more content area teaching than in ED.
ED as a field is 100% all-in on AI, too, so there's a lot of discussion amongst them about what skills in the field need to be automated and what has to stay artisanal. But I'm sympathetic to zozbot's claims too - I do think the reading scores would be higher if there were more comp/rhet specialists in sec. ed.
~10-13 mostly comprises the junior high range. By the time the kids are 14, they're plenty old enough to benefit from a "college-prep" educational approach. Sure, some PhDs will be better, others will be worse. But you solve that by throwing out terrible teachers and rewarding the best ones. There's no guarantee that an Education-credentialed teacher with negligible education in the actual subject they're supposed to teach would be any better.
I'm retired from engineering. I did startups / exited / joined difficult technical domains for the funsies / etc.
I have taught 5 years at a private school. I do not have a teaching credential.
Knowing the stuff you're teaching is the easiest part. And I say that despite teaching in an environment with far better behavior, student buy-in, family support, and academic accomplishment than most places.
I thought that when I launched a student team doing spacecraft design (selected for orbital flight on the basis of the quality of their mission, btw, not their age) that the hard part would be teaching kids about power budgets, radiation aging, and the thermal environment.
Turns out the hard part is helping them figure out how to navigate the social dynamics of talking to each other, organizing their work, realizing what other people know, and coping emotionally with setbacks. Kids will teach themselves the stuff if you have buy-in and the culture in the room is right.
Yes to this! What makes a great teacher is the willingness to hold kids accountable for their behavior and their work. Sure, it helps to be a subject expert, but that won't matter if you can't manage your classroom.
And parents play an equally important role. One of the best things you can do for your child's education/life is support the teacher when they call you up and say, "Your child is making poor decisions..."
> Sure, it helps to be a subject expert, but that won't matter if you can't manage your classroom.
I've known plenty of highly credentialed teachers that were very poor communicators and/or could not manage their classroom. I think the idea that this can be, or is, effectively taught as part of the "education major" is very suspect.
Indeed, the worst-performing school districts are precisely those where "classroom management" is a serious problem, versus better districts where the children come to school ready to be managed. It seems older styles of classroom management now out of vogue and untaught by universities were more effective.
My first year of teaching high school mathematics was nearly a disaster. Managing my classroom was a nightmare. Fortunately, we had winter break which gave me an opportunity to step back and reflect honestly on why and I realized I was making a number of mistakes so I made some necessary adjustments and things went much better thereafter. I firmly believe the first year of teaching is when many teachers either rise up or give up.
Regarding managing kids...every school I've worked at (or my wife has worked at) has a mix of kids who are ready to learn and who need to be taught to learn. That includes districts in more wealthy areas and less wealthy areas.
In fact, my wife would tell you the students who cause the most problems in her classroom are from more affluent families. Why? Because they have entitled parents who don't hold their kids accountable and don't support the teacher.
Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries.
It depends a lot on the state. Some actually do pay alright. Some pay terribly (and may have serious issues finding enough staff, as a result).
Unions are similar. People cry about them being a huge problem, but they have effectively no power (as in: don't even collectively bargain for contracts) in lots of states, including many of the ones with poor school performance. In other states, they really do have quite a bit of power.
In states with lower teacher pay, most teachers without a much-higher-paid spouse take summer jobs or teach summer school. Also, none of them get as much time off in the summer as the kids do. Plus, you can't pay your mortgage with vacation days.
Given the (often ongoing) educational requirements, if you pro-rate it you still come out much below most positions with similar requirements. We absolutely under-pay teachers in virtually every public school.
My mother retired after working her entire career as a teacher, and I earned close to double her final salary my first year working in tech. She has her masters degree and I did not graduate college. And if you count the stocks I got at the end of that first year, it was over triple.
She was a special ed. teacher teaching emotionally disabled grade schoolers (including a first grader that tried to kill his grandmother with a tv power cord). There is no way that I worked harder than she did.
You sure they're not on 20 pay contracts? Everybody tells me "it must be so nice, getting summers off" and I'm like "actually I look for summer courses because I don't get paid."
Here average teacher salary is over $100k. Projected to be $120k by 2027 due to their new union contract.
Newbie teachers start around $70k last I checked, and hit six figures in 5-6 years.
This is roughly double median salaries.
That said, I think they earn every bit of it even with "summers off" and their relatively lucrative benefit packages. The work environment is utter shit. Basically zero ability to manage a classroom and get rid of any shitheads - with very little supportive parenting or administration having your back. Even if salaries were $500k/yr I wouldn't remotely consider taking such a job.
Pay itself though? Not an issue for one of the worst performing major urban school districts in the nation.
I'm planning on transitioning into teaching due to not being employable (apparently) in tech anymore. It's about the only career I can transition into. I wish I could make six-figures!
Move to Chicago and get a job in CPS - you'll be at ~$100k in 5-6 years!
The idea of it actually sounds initially fun to me, until I talk to friends who actually work those jobs. For my temperament I know better. At best I'd rage quit, at worst I'd end up in prison.
PhD holders are, on average, not starving. Some of them could make good primary/secondary school teachers, but knowing how to teach children effectively is a skill by itself. It's quite different from working as a college instructor. That's why earning an teaching credential is important (although the quality of some teacher training programs is terrible).
> Because the premise that the singularity is just around the corner is far less likely than the premise that artificial intelligence is a lot harder than most people think it is and we're not that close.
I see no claim that the singularity is around the corner, so I'm not sure your reply meets the comment that you're replying to.
It seems overwhelmingly likely that AI will be significantly more capable 6 months from now than it is now. Even if there's little progress in the models, just the rate at which tooling is moving will make a big difference. And models still seem to be improving, so I'd be a little surprised if we hit a model brick wall.
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