They're far from facts, but have an important advantage over most other sources: the bettors are motivated to predict truth.

News sources are motivated to get clicks, to appeal to certain audiences, and to retain tribal customers. None of these create incentives for truth. You can seek out smart, well-informed and principled journalists who will prioritize truth-seeking over money-making. There are some. But the fact remains you are relying on character to override incentives. With prediction markets, incentives and truth are naturally aligned. This makes them a powerful and valuable resource imo, even if there is a lot of scumminess that comes along for the ride. The insiders, more than anyone, are contributing to the truth signal.

They are motivated to pick what they believe is most likely to happen. The develope their idea of what is most likely to happen for the news. The reporters use their bets to wrote stories predicting what will happen.

See the loop?

> There is a subset of people that spend time developing complex setups as a hobby. It's the adult equivalent of the student who had school notes in perfect handwriting with 7 different colors and underlines.

This is a perfect analogy.

This is the key point. It threatens nearly everything in the limit, not one particular industry. There will be no "leveling up" into higher-order jobs, because the machines will be better at those too.

They thought that too in the industrial revolution. You can look back and see the jobs that came out of it. But at the time, it wasn't obvious to the people effected that there would be jobs again.

We may have hindsight bias in evaluating something that happened, but to the people that it happened to it was terrifying.

MIT's motto is mens et manus: mind and hand. These are, basically, the two primary attributes of human labor. They're the reason almost anyone gets hired to do anything. Our brains and our opposable thumbs are what set us ahead of the animal kingdom.

The industrial revolution first attempted to replace our hands. But the labor that was displaced had places to go: into smaller-scale manual work, where mass-production machinery was too expensive, and into knowledge work.

Now the AI is coming for knowledge work, and robots are getting better at small-scale work. We're not at that point yet, but looking down the road I'm not sure there will really be anything competitive left flesh-and-blood humans can offer to an employer.

The only exceptions I can think of are, maybe, athletics, live music performances, and escort services. But with only a few wealthy people as customers, I don't think there will be many job opportunities even in those fields. And I'm not sure that robots won't come for those too.

Again, this betrays a strong hindsight bias.

Nobody had any idea what was coming with the industrial revolution. There wasn't obviously other work for people. And for long periods of time nobody had an answer to that question for large percentage of the population.

In hindsight, we know the answers NOW, but then they did not know what was going to happen. We also don't know what's going to happen, it could go as you hypothesize. Or the Jevon's paradox people might be right and there's way more work to do.

The uncertainty is the historical lesson, not that "it'll all work out"

Your comment betrays a lazy survivorship bias.

Why do you need a job in the scenario where machines have replaced all human labor?

You're forgetting that work is a means, not an end, for humanity.

You don't need a job, if you can maintain purchasing power without selling your labor. I didn't forget that, I just didn't take such an outcome for granted.

In other comments I have expressed support for UBI, as well as for paying parents to stay home and spend time with their children. I think the more automated our society gets, the less people should need to work to earn a living. But I look around and I just don't see anyone implementing such policies.

> But I look around and I just don't see anyone implementing such policies.

Because we have low unemployment. As long as we have jobs for people, you shouldn't expect UBI.

I guess the people in Wall-E didn't really seem unhappy so perhaps you're right. My gut instinct though, is that there is a qualitative difference in the level of abundance and concentration of wealth, power, and influence we have today that needs to be taken seriously on its merits and not hand-waved away with tenuous historical analogies.

Yes, two hundred years ago, many people thought reading was a dangerous distraction for young people, just as film, radio, TV and the internet became later. But there is a qualitative difference to having social media in your pocket with vibrating notifications. Pretending its just more of the same honestly feels like slightly willful blindness at this point.

This is a good point, but there's usually a long tail on transitions like this.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, but I watched the recommended video in a single riveted sitting. Absolutely amazing.

I am!

Im sure _you're_ fun to work with. Get a sense of humor.

> So?

The point of the OP is that the companies would willing cooperate and replace their websites with LLM consumable APIs.

It's a different question whether this will happen despite their objections, as a kind of logical conclusion of the greasemonkey plugin.

LLMs don't need consumable APIs. It's a barrier from an older era (aka 2 years ago). If a person can read it, a LLM can read it.

To add to this, the OP's vision benefits the user -- reducing a business's value to its actual raw value as a service rather than a brand. For me, it sounds great.

But the business's incentives are in the exact opposite direction. That opposite direction is the whole point of branding. They want their service to have a vibe, a personality, something you irrationally value beyond its raw value as a service.

> something you irrationally value beyond its raw value as a service

Sometimes that feeling is the value. Sure my plants don’t care if they live in a cheap plastic pot off Amazon or a nice pot from the overpriced gardening store selling at a 200% markup, but I care. Sitting in my balcony surrounded by cheap disposable clutter feels different than enjoying the outdoors amidst quality vibes.

That's not irrational at all!

Some things are commodities, some are not. The point is only that it's in the interest of commodity businesses to convince you they are not selling commodities. That sleight of hand doesn't prevent genuine quality and artistry from mattering in many cases, including, in your case, pots.

Presentation of data and a story is a very important part of the service. That's why we have a mix of pictures, tables, paragraphs, etc. It's why UX is so important in general.

Fwiw, I think making such non-disparagement clauses illegal is an interesting idea, and could be a net positive. That said, I think the slavery comparison is a stretch. The situation up for debate is: Should you be able to voluntarily accept money in exchange for promising not to say bad things about someone or some company? I don't see a good faith interpretation of that as "signing yourself into slavery".

Nobody was trying to equate non-disparagement clauses with slavery. The relevance of slavery here is as an example of the kind of contract terms that everyone should be able to agree are rightly invalid and unenforceable. Any argument in favor of contract enforceability that would apply to a slavery contract just as easily as it applies to a non-disparagement contract is a bad argument, or at least woefully incomplete. Bringing up slavery serves as a necessary reminder that the details and nuance of the contract terms and their effects need to be discussed and argued, and that an unqualified "contracts should be valid" position is untenable and oversimplified.

The general principle is that you shouldn't be able to "sign away" something that's a constitutional or human right. Like the right to freely speak, the right to practice a religion, the right to be paid for work, and so on. Imagine if the severance contract specified that she had to convert to Islam in order to get her severance, or that she had to sacrifice a child. No court in the country would consider those clauses conscionable. Yet, somehow companies are allowed to gag your free speech as a condition in a contract? It makes no sense why this is allowed.

Everyone who has a job that requires them to speak for their employer signs away their “free speech” right to an extent. Your proposal would not lead to a tenable system.

This is legalized buying people off, yes these contracts ought to be illegal and the comparison to slavery (a worse, but same category of morally reprehensible power dynamic) is completely valid

> Fwiw, I think making such non-disparagement clauses illegal is an interesting idea, and could be a net positive. That said, I think the slavery comparison is a stretch.

Arguably, its more like non-compete agreements but with the added fact that state enforcement of the agreements is in tension with freedom of speech.

But, you know, lots of jurisdictions sharply restrict enforceability of non-competes, too.

gorgeous!