Seemed like a pleasant experience, but not for the purposes of dating. It's just an opportunity to be social, which may very well be enough considering the isolation wave slowly cresting.
I haven't done online dating in years now, but toward the end I'd started "dating" purely as a social outlet. This created some friction. These women already had friends, whereas mine had moved, or started families. We didn't have the same agenda.
Re: "I think that this is what college does. It brings together a lot of young people, with a good chance that groups of friends will form as people meet one another in class and in various on-campus events."
In previous posts, Arnold makes a case that a "network university" will disrupt and supersede the selective residential college (which I deem a "total institution").
I suppose that a network university would have greater impact if "social connector startups" like 222 are *complements* to the network university. The network university and the social connector might jointly constitute a substitute for college as a total institution for elite coming-of-age.
I wonder how much these startups like 222 might morph into guided seminar evenings, where attendees go to e.g. a museum with a high quality lecturer (not just a random docent) to talk about the various pieces, then have dinner and open discussion of the topic. It would be more interesting that way, and people could demonstrate their character in discussion. Additionally it would be a very good sorting mechanism for "people who are interested in the same things I am".
That’s the filter. If you want to meet smart people who are interested in things and learning, you meet up for a certain set of activities. If you want to meet common people, you do whatever. The problem with college is that they stopped being a filter via letting everyone in and dumbing down the content such that most everyone can get through.
Besides that, I see two problems with what you say.
Being elite or smart doesn't come close to meaning one is going to like high-brow activities rather than what common people like. (I intend high-brow and common people to be descriptive, not judgmental or negative.)
I don't at all agree with your problem with college. Most or all two-year colleges and a sizable minority of 4-year schools have almost no admittance selectivity. At the other extreme, some are incredibly selective, with most being somewhere in between. There has been some dumbing down and plenty of grade inflation but this seems entirely separate from selectivity. Many schools have become more selective and still make it easier to get through.
Your ability to avoid thinking about what other people are saying while continuing to talk at them is, as usual, impressive. It is as though you actively try to avoid understanding in order to have someone to argue against.
I commented on something that seemed common to both John's and you first comment. Your response back COMPLETELY ignored my main point - it's a tiny group to get a customer base. Then you went in a new direction, voicing opinions about college I found weak, at best. And I'm the one avoiding what other are saying. Ok.
SOME number of robots CAN do it, but will they? And if the robot that can do 80% of physical labor humans can do is 2.5 million dollars, it really takes the wind out of the sails of widespread robot implementation and human unemployment.
"By 2030, a robot will be able to cook various meals in an arbitrary kitchen. (70%)
By 2035, robots can do 80% of all physical work at a human level. (70%)"
"various" and "can .. human level" pulling a lot of weight there. It's 2026 and robots can't even sweep, vacuum, or mop but we expect in four years it will be able to make steak au poivre. Oh wait he means an AI powered microwave hooked up to a coffee and cigarette dispenser for that French breakfast+cup-o-ramem dinner. And sure I have no problem believing robots too can sit around doing nothing but looking busy at a road construction site just like their counterparts but once again, given they can't even sweep or mop, I'm just not buying it. 80% of human physical labor is mostly household choirs, cooking, and childcare, I'm just not seeing affordable robots in nine years cleaning my fish tank, much less washing my car, polishing my shoes, nor even digging a ditch. "Could" they ("can"), sure with infinite budget I'm sure someone could design infinite task specific individualized robots that do task specific jobs as poor as most people but I just don't think thar was what the author meant.
AI and dating (222) I don't think is going to change anything as the incentives are to strong to game that with counter AIs, signalling, lying, revenue generation, etc. Also I highly disagree on the friendship thing here, you don't date or marry your friends; it's why marriages and relationships fail, because they aren't internalized as "not a long term friend with benefits". Relationships are a joining of two people, friends come and go with the wind and attributes which make good friendships aren't shared with those that make good relationships. Also their friends are irrelevant, as guys know, you have no friends after you get married, they have friends, you have a wife lol (tongue in cheek but also mostly true in modern Western marriage).
It's common to consider your spouse or partner your best friend. That was my opinion of my most serious partner back in the day. Of course we'd gotten to know each other in high school first, and the romantic aspect was sort of grandfathered in. The cold approach of someone in adulthood probably doesn't work like this, unless it's a coworker, but that's frowned upon.
I don't think it is, I think that is a recent (post Cold War) widely held trope held by a small subset of Americans, i.e. upper middle class white, and maybe Jews too, Americans. The problem (among others) with "my spouse is my friend" is that work/life balance problem the same as people who don't have friends outside work. You often overinvest and that is the death of all friendships long term, friends are something you have in moderation, unlike families; clingy friends grate on most people over a long enough time period. Marrying your friend is settling, accepting you just aren't going to get anything better and while that might be OK, it's not really something we should encourage. Also it's just creepy to creep on your friends IMHO, always hated it myself as do most people I know; that whole false pretense thing and disingenuity. Also don't confuse crypto passive aggressive dating with friendship, I see that a lot nowadays "We aren't dating, we are just hanging out", i.e. it's a fear of labels thing. Likewise to quote a friend of mine "Would person in their right mind would want to fuck up a good friendship by marrying them?"
Also I'd suggest it's more of a male thing too and a result of modern feminism forcing them into male apologetics, I don't think I've ever met a women who genuinely considered their husband their best friend. In my experience, no woman would treat an actual friend like she treats her husband regardless what she says, though the inverse is not true.
Regardless I'd going to snark a little here with "how's that working out for society; that date and marry your friends thing". I'm going to suggest not so well as it leads to social isolation, fear of commitment, and a mentality that is generally anti-long term relationship coupled with a fear of others. Many women nowadays are terrified of going on a date with a stranger and it's leading to social problems as their friend pool gets smaller and smaller until they are settling with "my best friend from high school whom I've friend zoned for years as a hedge". When I look around at successful marriages that do their job (i.e. have kids), the traditional ones tend to last the test of time, i.e. economic necessity, arranged or effectively so with strong cultural prohibitions on divorce, effective cousin marriage, or people with their own lives who have settled in and invested highly in the relationship, not friendship, after being around the block a couple dozen or hundred times.
We all love the story of two high school sweethearts that elope at seventeen and stay married for seventy years but I'm going to suggest even in that case, they still probably weren't friends first because that culture didn't really exist until recently (i.e. the kids that initially grew up on it are the middle age and younger adults now) and what we have out of it is an epidemic of divorce, loneliness, and fear. Treating marriage as a long term cohabitating friendship with benefits which exists purely to help you self actualized and "complete yourself" has not been good for the world. Trauma bonds are some of the strongest and most consistent long term bonds in the world and that includes minor variations of them such as "need", "status", and "peer pressure".
I recall an interview on this substack where the guest just visited an AI conference and one takeaway was the robotics industry is not benefitting in the same way from LLM. Complexity of the physical world will be more difficult if I had to bet.
I would place money that a robot would not be able to load a dishwasher by 2030.
Great links and I'm being inspired, as a non-programmer, to start learning vibe-coding. Surely this will be an uphill climb for me, but am beginning to believe evangelists such as you, Mowshowitz, and others, that this skill may be useful for even an retired dude like me.
I think that the advantage that a programmer has in working with an AI is that sometimes the AI gets stuck in a way that a programmer can say how to fix it. But they are getting stuck less and less with each new release.
In my experience, starting to code without academic/computer science training is less about figuring out *how* to do the stuff and more about *what* to build. Like cool, now I have a “Hello World” app or whatever, but so what? So much of the evangelization focuses on the models’ ability to make some parts of programming easier (like IDEs do/did) but completely ignores the problem of what the software you’re building is supposed to be useful for.
I'd like to see a post analyzing the 'business model' behind the use of AI to generate fake videos of selected analysts on youtube. Victor Davis Hanson and Yanis Varoufakis (interviewed on Unherd) are the latest victims of this scam. Yanis says it took him considerable time and effort to get Google to remove the offending fake youtube channels, but almost as soon as one channel went dark, another one popped up in its place. He agreed with the interviewer (Sayers) that Google could use AI to prevent these fakes from airing in the first place, but he argued that the fakes are part of youtube's ad-based business model. That makes sense to me. He further noted that he doesn't have the deep pockets that would be needed to sue Google to stop the practice. Perhaps I am mistaken, but the other youtubers I'm aware of that have been targeted by this problem tend to be 'small potatoes,' as opposed to those with the largest subscriber bases and viewership, like Rogan. Do the scam artists behind these fake channels selectively target only the small potatoes because they know they can get away with it, or does Google selectively use AI to weed out the fakes for the largest and most famous podcasters to avoid getting sued?
Her is an article from the LA Times written by someone who went on a 222 "date" https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2023-10-18/can-ai-curate-a-better-night-out-in-los-angeles#:~:text=I%20know%20it's%20unattractive%20to,if%20222%20chose%20me%20back.
Seemed like a pleasant experience, but not for the purposes of dating. It's just an opportunity to be social, which may very well be enough considering the isolation wave slowly cresting.
I haven't done online dating in years now, but toward the end I'd started "dating" purely as a social outlet. This created some friction. These women already had friends, whereas mine had moved, or started families. We didn't have the same agenda.
Re: "I think that this is what college does. It brings together a lot of young people, with a good chance that groups of friends will form as people meet one another in class and in various on-campus events."
In previous posts, Arnold makes a case that a "network university" will disrupt and supersede the selective residential college (which I deem a "total institution").
I suppose that a network university would have greater impact if "social connector startups" like 222 are *complements* to the network university. The network university and the social connector might jointly constitute a substitute for college as a total institution for elite coming-of-age.
I wonder how much these startups like 222 might morph into guided seminar evenings, where attendees go to e.g. a museum with a high quality lecturer (not just a random docent) to talk about the various pieces, then have dinner and open discussion of the topic. It would be more interesting that way, and people could demonstrate their character in discussion. Additionally it would be a very good sorting mechanism for "people who are interested in the same things I am".
John mentions "elite" and you mention a museum. If that's the limits of the audience for 222, I don't like it's chances.
More go to movies or sporting events. Most probably rarely do any of the above.
That’s the filter. If you want to meet smart people who are interested in things and learning, you meet up for a certain set of activities. If you want to meet common people, you do whatever. The problem with college is that they stopped being a filter via letting everyone in and dumbing down the content such that most everyone can get through.
ok. but if you want to build a business, that sounds rather narrow to me. it would seem 222 agrees. The list on their homepage sounds more diverse.
https://222.place/?from=AppAgg.com
Besides that, I see two problems with what you say.
Being elite or smart doesn't come close to meaning one is going to like high-brow activities rather than what common people like. (I intend high-brow and common people to be descriptive, not judgmental or negative.)
I don't at all agree with your problem with college. Most or all two-year colleges and a sizable minority of 4-year schools have almost no admittance selectivity. At the other extreme, some are incredibly selective, with most being somewhere in between. There has been some dumbing down and plenty of grade inflation but this seems entirely separate from selectivity. Many schools have become more selective and still make it easier to get through.
Your ability to avoid thinking about what other people are saying while continuing to talk at them is, as usual, impressive. It is as though you actively try to avoid understanding in order to have someone to argue against.
Sorry I tried to engage.
Lol.
I commented on something that seemed common to both John's and you first comment. Your response back COMPLETELY ignored my main point - it's a tiny group to get a customer base. Then you went in a new direction, voicing opinions about college I found weak, at best. And I'm the one avoiding what other are saying. Ok.
SOME number of robots CAN do it, but will they? And if the robot that can do 80% of physical labor humans can do is 2.5 million dollars, it really takes the wind out of the sails of widespread robot implementation and human unemployment.
"By 2030, a robot will be able to cook various meals in an arbitrary kitchen. (70%)
By 2035, robots can do 80% of all physical work at a human level. (70%)"
"various" and "can .. human level" pulling a lot of weight there. It's 2026 and robots can't even sweep, vacuum, or mop but we expect in four years it will be able to make steak au poivre. Oh wait he means an AI powered microwave hooked up to a coffee and cigarette dispenser for that French breakfast+cup-o-ramem dinner. And sure I have no problem believing robots too can sit around doing nothing but looking busy at a road construction site just like their counterparts but once again, given they can't even sweep or mop, I'm just not buying it. 80% of human physical labor is mostly household choirs, cooking, and childcare, I'm just not seeing affordable robots in nine years cleaning my fish tank, much less washing my car, polishing my shoes, nor even digging a ditch. "Could" they ("can"), sure with infinite budget I'm sure someone could design infinite task specific individualized robots that do task specific jobs as poor as most people but I just don't think thar was what the author meant.
AI and dating (222) I don't think is going to change anything as the incentives are to strong to game that with counter AIs, signalling, lying, revenue generation, etc. Also I highly disagree on the friendship thing here, you don't date or marry your friends; it's why marriages and relationships fail, because they aren't internalized as "not a long term friend with benefits". Relationships are a joining of two people, friends come and go with the wind and attributes which make good friendships aren't shared with those that make good relationships. Also their friends are irrelevant, as guys know, you have no friends after you get married, they have friends, you have a wife lol (tongue in cheek but also mostly true in modern Western marriage).
It's common to consider your spouse or partner your best friend. That was my opinion of my most serious partner back in the day. Of course we'd gotten to know each other in high school first, and the romantic aspect was sort of grandfathered in. The cold approach of someone in adulthood probably doesn't work like this, unless it's a coworker, but that's frowned upon.
I don't think it is, I think that is a recent (post Cold War) widely held trope held by a small subset of Americans, i.e. upper middle class white, and maybe Jews too, Americans. The problem (among others) with "my spouse is my friend" is that work/life balance problem the same as people who don't have friends outside work. You often overinvest and that is the death of all friendships long term, friends are something you have in moderation, unlike families; clingy friends grate on most people over a long enough time period. Marrying your friend is settling, accepting you just aren't going to get anything better and while that might be OK, it's not really something we should encourage. Also it's just creepy to creep on your friends IMHO, always hated it myself as do most people I know; that whole false pretense thing and disingenuity. Also don't confuse crypto passive aggressive dating with friendship, I see that a lot nowadays "We aren't dating, we are just hanging out", i.e. it's a fear of labels thing. Likewise to quote a friend of mine "Would person in their right mind would want to fuck up a good friendship by marrying them?"
Also I'd suggest it's more of a male thing too and a result of modern feminism forcing them into male apologetics, I don't think I've ever met a women who genuinely considered their husband their best friend. In my experience, no woman would treat an actual friend like she treats her husband regardless what she says, though the inverse is not true.
Regardless I'd going to snark a little here with "how's that working out for society; that date and marry your friends thing". I'm going to suggest not so well as it leads to social isolation, fear of commitment, and a mentality that is generally anti-long term relationship coupled with a fear of others. Many women nowadays are terrified of going on a date with a stranger and it's leading to social problems as their friend pool gets smaller and smaller until they are settling with "my best friend from high school whom I've friend zoned for years as a hedge". When I look around at successful marriages that do their job (i.e. have kids), the traditional ones tend to last the test of time, i.e. economic necessity, arranged or effectively so with strong cultural prohibitions on divorce, effective cousin marriage, or people with their own lives who have settled in and invested highly in the relationship, not friendship, after being around the block a couple dozen or hundred times.
We all love the story of two high school sweethearts that elope at seventeen and stay married for seventy years but I'm going to suggest even in that case, they still probably weren't friends first because that culture didn't really exist until recently (i.e. the kids that initially grew up on it are the middle age and younger adults now) and what we have out of it is an epidemic of divorce, loneliness, and fear. Treating marriage as a long term cohabitating friendship with benefits which exists purely to help you self actualized and "complete yourself" has not been good for the world. Trauma bonds are some of the strongest and most consistent long term bonds in the world and that includes minor variations of them such as "need", "status", and "peer pressure".
I recall an interview on this substack where the guest just visited an AI conference and one takeaway was the robotics industry is not benefitting in the same way from LLM. Complexity of the physical world will be more difficult if I had to bet.
I would place money that a robot would not be able to load a dishwasher by 2030.
No multi-million$ robot able to do x, or load a post-Christmas feast dishwasher?
I’m pretty sure some super expensive robot built for that purpose will do so.
But at a $1000 or even $10,000? (Two months median wage) Probably not.
My guess is it is entirely possible today but nobody will look to have a robot do that task any time soon.
Great links and I'm being inspired, as a non-programmer, to start learning vibe-coding. Surely this will be an uphill climb for me, but am beginning to believe evangelists such as you, Mowshowitz, and others, that this skill may be useful for even an retired dude like me.
I think that the advantage that a programmer has in working with an AI is that sometimes the AI gets stuck in a way that a programmer can say how to fix it. But they are getting stuck less and less with each new release.
In my experience, starting to code without academic/computer science training is less about figuring out *how* to do the stuff and more about *what* to build. Like cool, now I have a “Hello World” app or whatever, but so what? So much of the evangelization focuses on the models’ ability to make some parts of programming easier (like IDEs do/did) but completely ignores the problem of what the software you’re building is supposed to be useful for.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-an-age-of-ai-this-startup-is-betting-on-irl-69608cd4?st=633zxa&reflink=article_email_share
WSJ ARTICLE
I'd like to see a post analyzing the 'business model' behind the use of AI to generate fake videos of selected analysts on youtube. Victor Davis Hanson and Yanis Varoufakis (interviewed on Unherd) are the latest victims of this scam. Yanis says it took him considerable time and effort to get Google to remove the offending fake youtube channels, but almost as soon as one channel went dark, another one popped up in its place. He agreed with the interviewer (Sayers) that Google could use AI to prevent these fakes from airing in the first place, but he argued that the fakes are part of youtube's ad-based business model. That makes sense to me. He further noted that he doesn't have the deep pockets that would be needed to sue Google to stop the practice. Perhaps I am mistaken, but the other youtubers I'm aware of that have been targeted by this problem tend to be 'small potatoes,' as opposed to those with the largest subscriber bases and viewership, like Rogan. Do the scam artists behind these fake channels selectively target only the small potatoes because they know they can get away with it, or does Google selectively use AI to weed out the fakes for the largest and most famous podcasters to avoid getting sued?