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Comment Re:I remember a time when... (Score 1) 93

There are even some mathematical proofs for that by now. For example, "creativity" of gen-AI seems to be limited to below the level of a professional by the very approach used: https://www.psypost.org/a-math... This is a pretty devastating result, because in a larger context, it means that AI-slop is not a temporary problem, but the only thing the tech can really produce.

Cropley modeled creativity as the product of effectiveness and novelty ...This finding indicates that large language models are structurally incapable of maximizing both variables simultaneously, preventing them from achieving the high scores possible for human creators who can combine extreme novelty with extreme effectiveness.

This proof seems to be limited to modeling the output of a single LLM. But there are plenty of examples of multiple AIs being optimized for different abilities and then used together as a team. For example, creating new mathematical proofs: https://www.theneuron.ai/expla...

Comment Re: Covid 19 (Score 1) 118

The only way the vaccination helps the elderly is if the vaccinated do not catch the disease and therefore do not expose them to it.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...

If different vaccination rates by age are driving changes in COVID-19 mortality by age, another way to see this should be to compare elderly to nonelderly COVID-19 mortality rates, over the course of the pandemic. We would expect the ratio of elderly/nonelderly mortality rates to be high in 2020, when no vaccines were available, but to fall in the first half of 2021, both because vaccines were available earlier on to the elderly, and because elderly vaccination rates were higher. The ratio might rise again in the second half of 2021, because non-elderly vaccination rates rose more rapidly than elderly rates during this period. In Figure 7, we confirm these expectations. The figure report three ratios of PFRs in the three Midwest areas by month during the pandemic: for age 85+, ages 65–84, and all elderly, each relative to middle-aged adults aged 45–64. Consider first the PFR ratio for elderly aged 85+ to adults aged 45–64. This ratio is generally above 20 during 2020 and is over 40 in December 2020. It then plunges in early 2021, a period in which the eldest were offered vaccines, generally ahead of everyone else other than health care workers and continues to fall to about 5 by June 2021. For persons aged 65–84, there is a modest fall during the first quarter of 2021, a period in which many people in this age group could not obtain vaccines, and a sharper fall in the second quarter of 2021, as the vaccines became widely available. The ratios then rise somewhat in the second half of 2021, as vaccination rates for the non-elderly rise faster than rates for the elderly. This is association, not causation, but strongly supports the protective effect of vaccination.

Comment Re: 300 years of scientific progress (Score 2) 118

Private companies developed those vaccines, but usually via funding from the US and the EU. For example, the US put over $200M to CEPI, which funded the development of the Chikungunya vaccine. Another $100M was approved by congress for CEPI for work on other vaccines but was frozen and there is no plan for future funding. Moderna had a $700M contract with the US government to develop pandemic influenza vaccines (including bird flu) but we cancelled the contract last spring.

Comment Re:Obvious but Misleading (Score 1) 39

Exactly.

These projects span a broad range of difficulty, with costs reaching over $10,000 and completion times exceeding 100 hours. All project costs and completion times come directly from human professionals who completed the work.

The correct comparison would have also included professionals doing the projects with the help of AI tools.

Comment Re:Papers please! (Score 1) 275

In the Mexican Repatriation during the early part of the Great Depression, between 300,000 and 2 million people of Mexican heritage were forcibly removed from America, even though a large percentage of them were born here.

Your source:

However, voluntary repatriation was far more common than formal deportation and federal officials were minimally involved.[5] Some of the repatriates hoped that they could escape the economic crisis of the Great Depression.[10] The government formally deported at least 82,000 people,[11] with the vast majority occurring between 1930 and 1933.[5][12] The Mexican government also encouraged repatriation with the promise of free land

Comment Re:Micro dramas and micro attention (Score 1) 59

According to the consulting firm’s report, people are currently living a “32-hour, 17-minute day” by multitasking throughout their daily routine online, and consumers spend over 13 hours on media daily by utilizing various social media platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok.

Want to bet the consulting firm uses similar math when reporting billable hours?

Comment The big drop was the 1960s (Score 1) 176

The birth control pill was first approved in 1960 in the US and 1961 in Finland, at the beginning of a huge drop in fertility rates for both countries:

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fin/finland/fertility-rate

That drop alone brought the US down to about the current total fertility rate: 1960 (3.65), 1973 (1.88), 2024 (1.79). The drop from 2007 (2.12) until now is pretty minor in comparison. I of course won't say that birth control is the only thing that changed in the '60s: a lot of other factors starting converging then as well.

Overall I think the biggest contributor to the drop has been in unintended pregnancies: rates dropped the furthest in teenagers up to age 24. Most people, rich or poor, when they have a real choice, choose to 1, wait to have kids, 2, have fewer of them.

Comment Re:Advertising drives up costs (Score 1) 64

Well, logically, every dollar they spend on advertising could be spent on research or simply not added to the price.

That assumes the amount of revenue generated by the product isn't affected by advertising, but in reality in the US (though the intersection of those two sets seems to keep shrinking every day) drug revenue is strongly tied to advertising. Ads get people to go to the doctor about a condition sooner rather than later, they also get people to refill prescriptions sooner rather than later. And those increases in revenue happen immediately. On the other hand money spent on early stage research today won't even begin to generate revenue during the current CEO's tenure, and so should be avoided if at all possible.

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