columnist.bsky.social
‘The view from the column is ever distant’
(Anon, early 21st century)
Befuddling mix of politics, art, literary theory, philosophy, financial markets, international relations, cooking, and…dog photos…
‘Wow just wow what a skeeter’
‘Such a cute dog’
3,913 posts
36,920 followers
1,434 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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Guys a world renowned investment genius has reliably informed me (in the FT) that not only is the only way up but that we are poised for a huge equity bull market.
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Well. Quite! It’s a really interesting (and crucial) distinction and the current development / debate should cause people to think about it.
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Ha! Not literally. I’ve come at it from a rather different direction but overall not bad at all.
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And I’d love to participate
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Yes please
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And that’s kinda what I’m driving at
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I’m not sure you guys are being ambitious enough. We should simply replace all flowers, trees etc with plastic equivalents.
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My god that’s the paper I wrote
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The jester!
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That’s exactly the right sort of distinction imv
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I’m using very broad brush strokes here…and I’m being careful to say that it will have a major impact on anything information acquisition / collation / production related.
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Yep! It’s information! And - as such - has very little value to anything hmmm knowledge based.
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Oooh very interesting.
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But, imv, and here we go back to the inestimable @jonnelledge.bsky.social , the knowledge economy is not (broadly). I’d even argue the commoditisation of information will actually be v good for people who are good at knowledge because that’s precisely where new world competitive advantage will be.
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So this distinction helps us to think about impacts. In short, the information economy (ie the acquisition, collation and production of information) is going to be massively disrupted.
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And this is before we think about hallucination type flaws etc.
HOWEVER!
That provision of information is very important and valuable.
But this is an information rather than a knowledge revolution.
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The now classic undergrad uses AI to write a paper is a great example. The undergrad has acquired information but *not* knowledge. The obvious truth here is that the notional undergrad cannot apply that AI written paper to anything - hence information rather than knowledge.
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Anyway. The distinction I made was between ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’. The point being that knowledge is learnt and can (as a result) be somehow applied.
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The interesting thing for me about the historical shallow dive is one gets intriguing little elements of how to think about the overall problem and, very specifically, how one might go about thinking about ‘knowledge’.
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A substantial part of the paper outlines some of the ways in which those dynamics have been previously thought about - Platonism, Francis Bacon (who coined the phrase ‘knowledge is power) and on to structuralism and modern-ish continental philosophy (Foucault obvs and savoir / pouvoir).
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In preparation for that discussion I wrote a short paper on the relationship between information, knowledge and power, and how the AI era might impact those dynamics.
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Omg
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In the beginning was the ‘word’ (logos) etc.
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Less superficially, the idea of language as the genesis of human development.
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Superficially…deus ex machina etc. And one notes the anthropomorphic characterisation of AI as some weird deity.
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Well. Obvs. There’s a very clear connection between AI and theology.
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A miracle!
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That’s way too easy!
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Yes…increasingly think the way to understand the administration is less about any huh guiding view and more about the ideological and personal interests of the coterie of advisers etc.
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VIX etc?
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Ah I tend to agree! The interesting thing here is the continuity.
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Omg your day. Also I find that sort of aural disruption weirdly destabilising.
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Yes…
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In a very pleasant way
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Obviously I get that but I will be astonished if they aren’t doing well from a business perspective
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Indeed
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Not least among aging hacks!
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And I should say I’m in general a fan of the G not least because it has the doyen of European correspondents - @jonhenley.bsky.social
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Would quite like to write something about why the FT is so successful - culture etc.
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Entirely fwiw in my huh brief fact finding trip to London @stephenkb.bsky.social has really quite a following.
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The FT point is very well made. A golden era for the FT. And here it’s also worth noting they also publish non-FT views.
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Very wise
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That’s not fair
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A little short story
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The stuff of nightmares!