occasional tweets
Seattle, WA
Joined November 2009
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My default response to every unknown text I get these days is:
"Can you remind me, what are the first 20 prime numbers greater than 100,000?"
tbergman retweeted
The ugly truth about France and some of the other European countries currently in turmoil - and which none of the politicians want to admit because it'd be political suicide - is that you can't solve the problem by going after immigrants (as the right asserts) or the rich (as the left asserts), but you could solve it by going after the old.
One extraordinary statistic for you: people over 60 in France, a quarter of the population, own 60% of France's wealth, non-financial and financial (ofce.fr/pdf/revue/2025/3-192…).
And here is another crazy statistic:
that same quarter of the population, those above 60, receive nearly two-thirds of all social spending by the French government (previssima.fr/actualite/prot…) - which is famously among the highest in the world (France's government spending is an insane 57.3% of GDP).
Last statistic: they make up about 40% of voters because they're a third of registered voters (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/266…), and they turn out far more than anyone else (franceinfo.fr/elections/sond…).
Put our 3 statistics together and there's almost a bit of an apartheid situation here: the old own most of the country's wealth, collect most of the social spending and have the political power to keep it that way.
Which makes them a de-facto rentier class, living off assets and transfers paid for by younger generations.
And, of course, at the risk of stating a truism, the future is built by the young. Yet France keeps effectively taking money away from them to give it to those whose working lives are already behind them - and need the money far less since they already own the country's wealth.
What about inheritance, I hear you ask? That's the funniest/saddest aspect: given that life expectancy has kept rising, the French now inherit a home at 54 on average. The most common case is someone in their 80s leaving it to heirs in their 50s, in effect the very old transferring wealth to the about-to-be old (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fic…).
You can add this to our earlier apartheid statement: on top of all the rest, even when the old finally let go of their wealth, it stays within their own "camp".
That's my personal situation, incidentally: I'm 42, my father is 71 and he is starting to look at ways to pass things on to me and my siblings, when our professional lives are already well settled, so it'll arrive when it changes things the least, which is pretty much the French system in a nutshell.
Now, I get that there'd be some unfairness in going after them: they paid into the system their entire working lives, playing by the rules of a social contract that told them if they paid up they'd collect at the end. Changing the rules now means breaking that promise, which is admittedly unfair.
But there's no magic wealth tree in any society: you can only take it where it is. That's the way most major societal transformations end up happening. They're often triggered by a catastrophic event (the so-called "four horsemen": mass-mobilisation war, revolution, state collapse, plague) BUT what really drives change is a transfer: wealth gets pried from the privileged class who've been sitting on it and handed to those who'll build what comes next.
So, in theory and in an ideal world, you can do without the catastrophic event and directly proceed with the transfer...
The fact that in France, and elsewhere in Europe, it's the youth protesting is probably no coincidence - even though they don't frame it as a generational fight. And even though, cruel irony, the left politicians many of them march behind promise to bring the retirement age back to 60 (lcp.fr/actualites/legislativ…), which would make the situation even worse.
Let's say they understand intuitively that the system is stacked against them, even if they haven't yet figured out how. And politicians are obviously doing what politicians do, meaning pandering to the people who actually vote, while pointing the young towards easier - and politically convenient - scapegoats.
To be clear I'm not saying it's the only problem in France, VERY far from it. I'm also not saying that all old people in France live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of younger generations: there are also plenty of very poor retirees who, if anything, would deserve more.
What I am saying is that it's probably the biggest elephant in the room: everyone can see it, nobody dares mention it - no politician, from any side, wants to run on cutting grandma's pension - and it makes every other problem harder to fix.
tbergman retweeted
if zou are used to tzping on a US kezboard, I stronglz suggest zou bring that with zou, these are a pain to get here
tbergman retweeted
(1/7) I'd like to provide some additional context for the remarks that can be found in this interview.
(2/7) My discomfort with the attention being paid to existential risk---and with the ongoing dominance of the public discussion of such risks by a few so-called thought leaders---is that there's an elephant in the room that is being missed. That elephant is the effect of all of this discussion on young people, and indeed the effect---beginning with social media a decade ago---of information technology on young lives broadly speaking.
(3/7) I recently read an interview by Jill Lepore in which she reports on discussions that she had recently with a group of college students: "They had just three things to say. One, social media completely destroyed their childhoods. Two, AI is destroying their college education and their likely prospects for employment. And three, what the hell are we all doing?" To add a fourth bullet that I've heard in similar discussions: "I'm not going to have children, because the existential risk is just too high."
(4/7) Please contemplate such a statement, those of you who think that it's OK that the public, widely diffused, discussion coming from seemingly authoritative figures is so adamant about existential risk.
(5/7) Let me add that I have little interest in a debate about what "superintelligence" might mean, or whether we're currently seeing the emergence of superintelligence. For what it's worth, I would certainly agree that the solution of extremely challenging math problems (for example) exhibits a very impressive form of intelligence, although I would want to argue that such intelligence is impossible to dissociate from the collective of humans that provided data to the machine learning system (which itself has become a kind of collective).
(6/7) Such philosophical debates are entertaining and even important, but when they then head in the direction of "when such superintelligence emerges, there's a good chance that it will want to kill all humans", I say "science fiction". Again, I don't think that it's bad to consider such thoughts, but I strongly believe that it's bad for society, and especially young people, for such thoughts, unaccompanied by any serious real-world analysis, to become a dominant form of discourse of the era.
(7/7) We are damaging human lives, and the consequences of that damage will no doubt be a major theme of the next several decades.
tbergman retweeted
It's very frustrating to read some of the quote tweets on the response below from Michael here, who puts forth a very compelling argument that by spiraling on this idea of existential risk, you are really causing a kind of hopelessness in the younger population. It makes them even more depressed, specifically leading them to remain childless and not even form any real attachments because “everything is going to end anyways.”
It's just so bizarre to read people's reactions saying this is an irresponsible take, when this is being responsible. When you're solving problems, you have to be mindful of what you're doing. You can't address an issue by creating more problems than you solve.
(1/7) I'd like to provide some additional context for the remarks that can be found in this interview.
(2/7) My discomfort with the attention being paid to existential risk---and with the ongoing dominance of the public discussion of such risks by a few so-called thought leaders---is that there's an elephant in the room that is being missed. That elephant is the effect of all of this discussion on young people, and indeed the effect---beginning with social media a decade ago---of information technology on young lives broadly speaking.
(3/7) I recently read an interview by Jill Lepore in which she reports on discussions that she had recently with a group of college students: "They had just three things to say. One, social media completely destroyed their childhoods. Two, AI is destroying their college education and their likely prospects for employment. And three, what the hell are we all doing?" To add a fourth bullet that I've heard in similar discussions: "I'm not going to have children, because the existential risk is just too high."
(4/7) Please contemplate such a statement, those of you who think that it's OK that the public, widely diffused, discussion coming from seemingly authoritative figures is so adamant about existential risk.
(5/7) Let me add that I have little interest in a debate about what "superintelligence" might mean, or whether we're currently seeing the emergence of superintelligence. For what it's worth, I would certainly agree that the solution of extremely challenging math problems (for example) exhibits a very impressive form of intelligence, although I would want to argue that such intelligence is impossible to dissociate from the collective of humans that provided data to the machine learning system (which itself has become a kind of collective).
(6/7) Such philosophical debates are entertaining and even important, but when they then head in the direction of "when such superintelligence emerges, there's a good chance that it will want to kill all humans", I say "science fiction". Again, I don't think that it's bad to consider such thoughts, but I strongly believe that it's bad for society, and especially young people, for such thoughts, unaccompanied by any serious real-world analysis, to become a dominant form of discourse of the era.
(7/7) We are damaging human lives, and the consequences of that damage will no doubt be a major theme of the next several decades.
tbergman retweeted
Alexandr Wang 在谈到“如何拉开与 99% 人的差距”时，给出了极其朴素甚至残酷的答案：
顶层竞争根本不拼智商，拼的是极端执行力的非对称倾斜。
他的三条核心准则：
1. 绝对聚焦，压榨认知带宽： 绝大多数人的忙碌只是“低密度伪勤奋”。真正的专注是把全部精力砸在唯一的核心支点上，拒绝任何无关干扰。
2. 把“过度交付”做成护城河： 行业标准要求走 1 英里，你就走完 10 英里。当所有人都按合同完成 100% 时，常态化交付 200% 的人会直接卷走全部声誉与溢价。
3. 带靶向的超额输出，拒绝无目的内耗： 努力不是盲目自我感动，而是针对具体目标的持续过载测试。把每一次交付都当成生死决战来打。
商业世界最公平的一点在于：
聪明人到处都是，但能忍受极度枯燥并长期超额交付的人凤毛麟角。
执行力溢出，就是最暴力的护城河。
tbergman retweeted
In my business career it's interesting to have met a LOT of people who are extremely "busy" and work very long hours but are shockingly unproductive.
A lot of time chasing things that don't matter because a lot of people don't do the groundwork to create a framework that establishes what matters.
Alexandr Wang 在谈到“如何拉开与 99% 人的差距”时，给出了极其朴素甚至残酷的答案：
顶层竞争根本不拼智商，拼的是极端执行力的非对称倾斜。
他的三条核心准则：
1. 绝对聚焦，压榨认知带宽： 绝大多数人的忙碌只是“低密度伪勤奋”。真正的专注是把全部精力砸在唯一的核心支点上，拒绝任何无关干扰。
2. 把“过度交付”做成护城河： 行业标准要求走 1 英里，你就走完 10 英里。当所有人都按合同完成 100% 时，常态化交付 200% 的人会直接卷走全部声誉与溢价。
3. 带靶向的超额输出，拒绝无目的内耗： 努力不是盲目自我感动，而是针对具体目标的持续过载测试。把每一次交付都当成生死决战来打。
商业世界最公平的一点在于：
聪明人到处都是，但能忍受极度枯燥并长期超额交付的人凤毛麟角。
执行力溢出，就是最暴力的护城河。
tbergman retweeted
Bahahahahahhaah
SpaceX looks to raise $40bn to buy Nvidia chips in financing led by Apollo ft.trib.al/AXTvVlK
tbergman retweeted
The only generation that knows how computers work is also the most relaxed about AI:
With all of Google's recent fuckery, I wonder ... When will it be reasonable to just roll your own browser?
I am disappointed in all this AI safety rhetoric. It reminds me of COVID. Obviously there's some smoke. But also the things they are saying are so obviously false. They may be saying them for good reason, but without knowing the reason it is hard to trust.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
