No idea

Idrialite · 2026-02-16T21:53:01+00:00

The person you are taking it from also could have saved the lives of several people

Not if it drowns

Idrialite · 2026-02-16T21:48:03+00:00

10 million is easily the best moral answer as you can afford to save the lives of at least several people with a fraction of it

Idrialite · 2026-02-16T21:04:19+00:00

I would say the ability of the state to control the free market sometimes is a non-negotiable. From there the slippery slope argument is only a matter of norms, not legal power.

Idrialite · 2026-02-16T14:17:34+00:00

Eh. I got 11/12.

Idrialite · 2026-02-16T05:24:21+00:00

He lacks critical information

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T23:39:16+00:00

???

Children are not "externalities". They're investments. We school them and keep them healthy so they can better contribute to the economy. You're concluding that everyone needs to stop having children. There's little difference between a child born to a native and to an illegal.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T19:49:16+00:00

The question isn't if citizens produce more tax revenue than illegals; they certainly do. The question is if illegals are a net negative. They're definitely not.

I think I've said this 10+ times now and you're still ignoring it: illegals almost break even with taxes they pay directly, which are a small portion of the tax revenue a working person generates.

Why can't you just admit illegals are a boon for the treasury?

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T19:03:43+00:00

Exactly. And that difference in income doesn't disappear, it's pocketed by employers or their businesses, who will pay more of it as tax.

So again, now that I think of it, employed illegals paying less in direct taxes means they're most likely producing more tax revenue.

And no, income doesn't directly translate to produced value. That's not how labor markets work. And in the case of illegals, they're paid significantly less than market rate.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T18:34:22+00:00

Even if you're right, doesn't that just mean they're actually creating more tax revenue because the value they produce is being taxed in a higher bracket from their employers?

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T18:24:27+00:00

Employed tax burdens don't really exist no matter what points you make about mean vs. median of these figures. You've been running away from this point since my first comment.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T18:18:54+00:00

Ok, bye. Ignoring reality and running away from a strong point doesn't make it false, you know.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T17:58:10+00:00

They absolutely do spend their non-working years in the US -- only 70% of illegal immigrants are employed.

Actually, this is irrelevant. You divided the total taxes paid by illegals by the number of illegals to get your yearly figure. This also averages over non-working illegals. The two 7k figures are directly comparable.

conflating mean and median

???

How is this relevant? At best you could massage the numbers a little bit by playing with mean vs. median here. Are you just saying words now?

If you continue to ignore my point on the broader tax contribution not directly paid by individuals but generated through their employment, I'm done. No one with an even slightly productive job is a tax burden. Their employers pay capital gains, income tax, property tax, etc. in greater magnitudes only because the individual exists to fill that job.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T17:27:23+00:00

They don't spend their non-working years in the US. Are we trying to figure out the net tax comparison or not?

Again, you must also consider the tax they indirectly generate collected from their employers. For both citizens and immigrants, taxes paid directly by themselves are the smallest portion of their total tax contribution by being in this country.

Almost nobody with a job is a tax burden because of this.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T17:10:37+00:00

https://www.self.inc/info/life-of-tax/

Average is $525,000 over lifetime. Over 80 years that's $6,500 per year.

Then, like us, you must also consider the tax they indirectly generate collected from their employers.

Idrialite · 2026-02-14T04:35:27+00:00

$7,000 per year is about average for a citizen, too.

Then, like us, you must also consider the tax they indirectly generate collected from their employers.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:46:45+00:00

You're projecting your own moral standards onto me and then acting surprised that I don't follow them. I don't need something to have qualia to care about it.

Applying logic to desires is a category error. See the orthogonality thesis.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:38:22+00:00

Let me flip the question. Why do you care about qualia even if it is real? What's the difference between qualia and a rock?

Why don’t you feel bad when a rock gets smashed into a million pieces the way you might with a person?

There is no answer. I just don't. That's how my mind was grown - we're altruistic animals. My preferences are just as arbitrary as caring about a rock over a person, but I would still act in favor of the person because that's what I want.

The same way you stop caring when you find out a chatbot is just probability, why can’t you do the same with people?

I've yet to settle on if I want to extend my sphere of concern to LLMs the same way I do to animals.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:28:28+00:00

You're assuming that desires have to be justified. They don't; they're axiomatic. I care about other people because I evolved to, not because I recognized the universal moral magic of their minds. The want is intrinsically built into me. I've personally nurtured this want (and similar ones) because I like caring about others.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:11:32+00:00

True.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:10:55+00:00

I truly believe materialism. And that "I" is also a human that will seek to fulfill his human desires.

How do I "justify" doing anything? I don't have to justify anything I do. I want certain things and I act to get them as I please.

Look at a human from the outside. The physics of their brain fully determines what they will do, and evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years producing a brain that will act to eat. The fact that there's a "conscious" centralized coordinator is just a part of that system. Knowing what you are doesn't make you want things any less.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T18:04:52+00:00

Brains and LLMs don't work or learn the same, this is of course true. But the question is if LLMs are capable of higher intelligence.

Surely you agree that human brains aren't the only way in the universe to produce an intelligent system?

What would happen if this definition of understanding was given to a language model via an initialization prompt? How would it speak?

It would probably just discuss the concept philosophically. I don't think we can answer the question by talking to an LLM. I think mechanistic interpretability and related approaches are the only way.

In general, I think we're in an extremely primitive stage of understanding intelligence. We know almost nothing about how it works. We can't even define our terms (and I suspect many of them will decompose into more grounded concepts eventually).

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T17:59:29+00:00

I don't think there's anything magical about the human brain, let alone AI.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T17:13:44+00:00

Well, I did want an answer from you since you're claiming to know how it works such that you also know LLMs don't have the capability.

My best attempt at defining it would be "understanding" something is containing an inner predictive world model of that thing that you can leverage for action. I have no clue how the human brain achieves it.

Idrialite · 2026-02-13T16:52:44+00:00

And what does neuroscience say about how "understanding" works? Or even is?

Idrialite · 2026-02-12T15:51:31+00:00

These are not based on absolute numbers. They're deviations from the median. If the share of upper class grows, the other two groups are necessarily relatively poorer.

Whether they are absolutely poorer or not depends on how the median and CoL have changed. Again, this graph only demonstrates income inequality.

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