xamdam

(I'm copying 2 relevant items from the previous thread, here is #1)

One suggestion I can make to Udacity is to partner with internal Universities in major tech companies. They have significant budgets and many also pay for employees to get advanced degrees at traditional local schools, which is expensive and inconvenient. I think appropriate Udacity courses with official certification (not accreditation) thrown in is something they might be willing to pay for, which increases Udacity's acceptance as a side effect. If that is something Udacity will consider I'll be happy to make a connection to an internal university at a major tech company.

My personal beef with Rand is that her characters didn't even try. E.g. the Francisco D'anconia character clearly seems to have significant political acumen and social capital, which he did not even attempt to use to steer the ship. Her protagonists' posture seemed to have been "admit that we're better and you need us, we don't need you". The books were interesting, and set up some good society design questions, but I don't think I like her values (admittedly she has the solid excuse of having lived through the Soviet Revolution and collectivisation).

Moving away from fiction, I think Elon's spread into 4 industries (Finance, Energy, Electric cars and Space) bodes well for his generality. Plus his friend Thiel is a highly strategic thinker, though he seems to perfer to operate from a contrarian position rather than being more of an insider (like Buffett and Gates).

Having just read AS I had the same thought, if only Hank Rearden went after 3-4 different industries... This is sort of a general flaw of Randian characters: they tend to be good at one thing (except for the pirate guy). If they spent 1/5th of their talents on psychology they would've effectively taken over the government without a shot, and not let the country starve first. Though this outcome seems in line with Ayn's utilitarianism highly skewed towards people she imagined being like her.

(I'm copying 2 relevant items from the previous thread, here is #2) As systems become more autonomous and intelligent, what kind or research do you think needs to be done to make sure the machines "understand our wishes" properly? Specifically what do you think about SIAI's efforts in this area?

No question about keeping all the content open. Just trying to find sugardaddys to pay for more open content!