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Dean Pomerleau

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About Dean Pomerleau

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  1. Hi Brian! I think such a list would have to include anabolic agents like testosterone and HGH. --Dean
  2. If by "we" you mean rich western societies. Are you saying that, once the robots and AI have replaced everyone's jobs and are making their owners oodles of money, those rich westerners are going to be generous enough to give all these services not only to everyone in their own country (including undocumented immigrants) but also to everyone in the global south, when climate change is wreaking havoc within our own country and causing a surge of climate refugees to cross our borders? Yeah - good luck with that.
  3. Putting aside questions of the viability and timeline of the technology that would make this possible, how do you foresee such a transition to a "work optional" society coming about Gordo? Do you imagine the emergence of a real populist movement (not the fake one we're seeing now on the Right) that would gain sociopolitical power and then tax the rich beneficiaries of such a technological revolution to fund universal basic income for all the people who no longer have jobs? Do you think billionaires like Elon Musk or Sam Altman are really working with the best interest of everyday people in their hearts and would be happy to equitably distribute the vast amount of wealth they are accumulating to everyone on earth? Color me skeptical. I can't see how we get there from here, given the polarization our society is already experiencing around cultural issues that are trivial by comparison. When you combine societal strife and dysfunction with growing geopolitical tensions, destabilizing technology, climate change, and the illusory promise of the "energy transition", I'm not optimistic about humanity's or the planet's prospects over the next few decades.
  4. That sucks Gordo. Give M* my best and tell her that I hope she and your son recover quickly.
  5. Only $100 per month for rapamycin to keep your dog young and healthy... "Although we don’t have all the answers yet, rapamycin appears to be the single best way to prolong not just lifespan, but also the general health of all mammals studied to date!" Lol.
  6. "Harvard professor falsely proclaims in a press release that a product he is selling to pet owners has “reversed aging in dogs”. To me, this is the textbook definition of snake oil salesman." Says professor at another university pushing rapamycin as a cure for aging in dogs... Lol.
  7. It's pretty crazy how precise some of the coffee geeks are with their Aeropress formula. I actually brew upside down and flip it over to plunge. I really like how strong you can make the coffee with relatively little ground beans.
  8. Yeah - I often got burnt or bitter taste from the moka pot. That Hario switch looks cool, but it seems coffee geeks think the Aeropress is faster, more foolproof and makes better tasting coffee: You should try it!
  9. No health reason. The Aeropress makes some of the best coffee in the world, in single cup size, in two minutes. It's cheap, easy, and trivial to clean up. I used to use one of those little Italian Moka pots. But they are a pain in the ass comparatively, and the coffee doesn't taste as good, at least to me.
  10. You are just learning now that too much selenium can be a problem? I cut way back on my supplemental selenium years ago based on concern about excess. I hope you stopped those Brazil nut binges...
  11. @BrianA - I just received Gary Marcus' latest substack newsletter in my inbox. It is a good summary of my current thinking: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/what-if-generative-ai-turned-out -
  12. I'm not saying never. Funnily enough, in 1997 during the $100M USDOT-sponsored "Automated Highway System" demo I was one of the leads for, as part of our pitch I predicted that in would be about 20 years until self-driving cars would become widely available. That was optimistic. These days I'm still saying 10 years for cars you buy, and at least five before robotaxis become reasonably common in cities. That was before the Cruise implosion and I may have to increase that ETA further. And I still think there is a good chance robotaxis may never be viable for financial and sociopolitical reasons. Same goes for AGI. I think it could eventually happen after a few more major breakthroughs, and it could be very disruptive / dangerous when it does. And in the meantime, the crappy LLM-based "AI" systems we're stuck with now may do as much or more damage by poisoning our information ecology and destabilizing society.
  13. Call me when you're brave enough to hop in a Tesla with FSD, punch in a destination 30 miles away, and then close your eyes until you arrive. Come on. If you're so impressed, prove it by putting your life on the line. I hope you didn't buy a Tesla with FSD based on Musk's promise a couple years ago that Tesla's would soon become an "appreciating asset" because you'd be able to rent them out as part of his fleet of one million self-driving robotaxis and make oodles of money. How's that working out for Tesla owners now? How has the price of used Teslas held up? Two of my former students from CMU who worked on self-driving cars with me in the 90s both own Teslas. Neither of them trusts Autopilot anywhere but limited access highways and even then they say supervising it is more stressful than actual driving - with phantom braking still a very annoying issue particular in traffic. Both are very wealthy tech geeks who worked on self-driving cars for a living but neither have purchased FSD. Too dangerous and they don't want to be one of Musk's guinea pigs. I worked on self-driving cars for my entire career, and in 2018 I did the technical due diligence for SoftBank when they invested $2B in Cruise. I recommended against their investing, saying it would be many years before they could hope to deploy at commercial scale even in fair weather cities. I also said that the amount of remote human supervision / intervention that would be required even when the do eventually deploy would be cost prohibitive. I also pointed out that Cruise was playing fast and loose with the totally bogus "disengagements reports" they were showing investors and the California DOT, and that their then CEO Kyle Vogt (now disgraced and no longer with the company) was acting irresponsibly. Sound familiar? SoftBank ignored my advice and went ahead with their investment in Cruise - saying they had a "long time horizon." It was at the peak of the hype cycle for self-driving cars. But SoftBank was smart. They sold their shares back to GM after two years, breaking even before the sh*t hit the fan.
  14. Tesla Autopilot and similar automated driving systems get ‘poor’ rating from prominent safety group https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/cars/insurance-group-rates-tesla-autopilot-safety/index.html The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which rates cars and SUVs for safety, examined so-called advanced driver assistance systems such as Tesla Autopilot and found them wanting. These systems combine different sensors and technologies to help a driver keep their vehicle in its lane and avoid hitting other vehicles in front and to the sides. Usually, these systems work only on highways. Some can even allow drivers to remove their hands from the steering wheel but all require drivers to pay attention to the road and vehicles around them at all times. Of the 14 systems tested by the agency, 11 earned a “poor” rating including Tesla’s Autopilot and so-called Full Self Driving systems. (Full Self Driving is not actually fully self driving but, unlike Autopilot and almost all other such systems, it is designed to work on city and suburban streets.)
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