> Although Zitron's past predictions have generally been wrong, maybe he'll be right about something in the future. Perhaps some of these companies will have valuations decline for some reason. But, even if there's some kind of massive AI crash and OpenAI and Anthropic go to zero, in terms of the societal impact, if on top of that, some other event occurs that prevents further progress in models beyond whatever AI labs have internally right now, that's still going to result in a fair amount of change. Which companies are successful will change who gets rich, but particular companies failing won't stop changes that fall out of current or next generation model capabilities from happening; it just moves around who benefits the most.
> If Zitron ends up being right about some company or other collapsing, that's pretty uninteresting to me compared to how capabilities have developed and will develop, where he's been wrong to date. It also happens that he's been wrong about the financial predictions he's made to date, but that doesn't really interest me, though I included a number of financial predictions for completeness.
Not sure how you can "get the big picture right" while having many egregiously wrong predictions.
You made a poor characterization of the content of the post and were rebutted with direct quotes. It happens, thats okay! Its not an attack on your character. There's no need to feel defensive!
it's not just reasonable to question, it's all but obvious and anyone who comes up with a retort like "what about millions/billions of years before civilization" is being, at best, insincere
What are your sources?
From 2013:
> Leading up to the construction and just afterwards NE 65th St performed very similar to both controls, however two quarters after the project was finished NE 65th St experienced a 350% increase in sales index, followed by another jump to 400% sales index the following quarter.[1]
From 2020 [2]:
> "Both the trend analysis and DID analysis show that the protected bike lane on
Second Avenue corridor positively impacted employment, especially in the retail
sector, when compared to the Fourth Avenue control corridor"
> "In conclusion, the protected bike lane on Broadway triggered a significant
employment increase in the food services industry after installation, indicating an
improvement in business vitality as a result."
The overall study finds that
> - On the Second Avenue corridor, the protected two-way bike lane contributed to
higher employment and improved business vitality in the retail sector.
- On Broadway Avenue, we find that the protected bike lane triggered a significant
positive impact on food services employment after installation, indicating an
improvement in business vitality as a result."
and
> In terms of retail service sector, we found either mixed results or insignificant results. [...] However, the insignificant results may be significant in this
context, indicating that there does not appear to be a negative causal impact of right-of-way
or parking lane removal on economic outcomes.
Anecdotally, many people in Seattle seem to use the bike lanes, even to commute to work. I also saw a lot of people using them during the world cup.
And yes, I'm _very_ aware of these papers. I used the same methodology as they did :) Note the timestamp on them, they are from the time when Seattle was booming.
And I even specifically looked at the Fourth Avenue that they used as a control because it also got a protected bike lane.
I have _not_ yet checked this hypothesis thoroughly, but from a cursory look at the data, the increase in business can be explained by highly-paid professionals moving into dense housing nearby (we can see that by looking at real estate prices and historical apartment rent data) and by tourists from cruise ships. It's further corroborated by the fact that the percentage of bike commutes did not increase significantly enough.
A friend of mine from back home mentioned he hadn't heard anything about the White House UFC fight because he's solely focused on himself right now. Honestly, I think that’s becoming ubiquitous; all of us are navel-gazing and trying to "optimize" looks, diet, exercise, Ai skills, supplements. We can sit through four hours of a Joe Rogan podcast, there are so many long form podcasts! We are all just living inside our own little bubbles now.
Vought, Miller and others in the Admin, are evil, but not stupid. This is intentionally destroying the system to make it very difficult for a future administration to get it going again.
> Although Zitron's past predictions have generally been wrong, maybe he'll be right about something in the future. Perhaps some of these companies will have valuations decline for some reason. But, even if there's some kind of massive AI crash and OpenAI and Anthropic go to zero, in terms of the societal impact, if on top of that, some other event occurs that prevents further progress in models beyond whatever AI labs have internally right now, that's still going to result in a fair amount of change. Which companies are successful will change who gets rich, but particular companies failing won't stop changes that fall out of current or next generation model capabilities from happening; it just moves around who benefits the most.
> If Zitron ends up being right about some company or other collapsing, that's pretty uninteresting to me compared to how capabilities have developed and will develop, where he's been wrong to date. It also happens that he's been wrong about the financial predictions he's made to date, but that doesn't really interest me, though I included a number of financial predictions for completeness.
Not sure how you can "get the big picture right" while having many egregiously wrong predictions.
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