Other folks may have more apt examples to share, but I would examine the history of Dacia and also the Sasanian fortification lines both east and west (but especially east) of the Caspian Sea -- both of which separated the empire from nomadic tribes of the steppe.
I believe these involved depopulated regions both north and south of the main defensive structures to allow harrying of invading forces while denying access to plundered resources.
Eventually, they were overcome by the Hephthalites (aka White Huns) following heavy Sasanian losses north of the limes in the AD 484 Battle of Herat, but it's interesting to note that the defensive structures separating southern 'civilization' from the steppe were considered a joint responsibility of the predominant (Roman/Sasanian) empires in spite of their generally being at war with each other, as the nomads were a shared threat.
Edit: Another great example is drawn from Caesar's description of Helvetian practices in his Gallic Wars; the Helvetians, a Germanic tribe located in modern Switzerland, had deliberately depopulated a wide area around their territory for defensive purposes.
The guy who invented psychedelic light painting is still living in SF and giving occasional shows -- have known him for a few years as a neighbor, ran with a pretty interesting crowd in the 60's and 70's.
I think this perspective is belied by the vast over-subscription of free public education in places where it has previously been paid only[1] (at this point, mainly in Africa). It does seem like there is strong evidence that most children and parents recognize the value of education and are self-motivated to pursue it where it is accessible to them. I believe it follows that lowering cost and barriers to quality education will improve outcomes without a need to otherwise coerce participation.
Not really. In my experience it is mostly effect of socio-legal pressure that kids can't be anywhere but school. In primary schools most kids are bored or miserable as hell while in school. And further parents keep pushing it because apparently education is key to future success / great career.
For higher education there is charade of education to get jobs. So for office manager job where grade 8 would be enough, we have MBAs now because we all need advanced education to survive in global economy blah..blah.
> For higher education there is charade of education to get jobs. So for office manager job where grade 8 would be enough, we have MBAs now because we all need advanced education to survive in global economy blah..blah.
This would actually be a good business opportunity: hire such "grade 8 educated" people as office managers, but pay them much less than MBAs. If they are nearly as good as MBAs, you save a lot of money on this group of employees, and thus your company has a strong economic advantage.
> hire such "grade 8 educated" people as office managers, but pay them much less than MBAs.
The trouble is it's performance all the way up and down. In the first place you're only going to get the weirdos / extreme gamblers, and then you'll struggle to attract investors, your clients/suppliers will wonder why your business development folks missed their classical references...
> In the first place you're only going to get the weirdos
You will (hopefully) nevertheless check whether an applicant has the necessary traits to be a decent office manager. On the other hand, I wouldn't claim that weirdos are necessarily bad office managers.
Similarly, it bears striking resemblance to the Swedish 'pojke', which can be colloquially shortened to 'pojk' and also means boy. It's apparently been derived from Finnish within the last millenium, though, so could be a false cognate.
The LOCKSS [1] digital preservation threat model (I've been told, there's a whitepaper if curious) considers nuclear first strikes and large solar storms -- they maintain a global network of servers for archiving and preserving academic research.
No-fee PO Boxes also cover situations in which USPS doesn't deliver to a house in a rural area (no carrier service, as noted in your source [2]). It's very common in many small towns.
Thanks for sharing this -- I read the book maybe a decade ago and largely discounted it as non-replicable pop-sci; this changed my opinion of Kahneman's perspective and rigor (for the better!)
It would have gone much better for Google if the Brain team had been permitted to apply their work, but they were repeatedly blocked on stated grounds of AI safety and worries about impacting existing business lines through negative PR. I think this is probably the biggest missed business opportunity of the past decade, and much of the blame for losing key talent and Google's head start in LLMs ultimately resides with Sundar, although there are managers in between with their own share of the blame.
They should have been spun out with a few billion dollars budget, no oversight, and Google having 90% (or some other very high %) ownership and rights of first purchase to buy them back.
It is a successful model that has worked again and again to escape the problem of corporate bureaucracy.
Interestingly Google itself has followed this model with Waymo. Employees got Waymo stock not Google, and there was even speculation that Google took on outside investors. It's weird to me that they didn't consider generative AI would be as game changing as self driving cars, especially considering the tech was right in front of them.
Funnily enough, the same AI safety teams that held Google back from using large transformers in products are also largely responsible for the Gemini image generation debacle.
It is tough to find the right balance though, because AI safety is not something you want to brush off.
> AI safety is not something you want to brush off
It really depends on what exactly is meant by "safety", because this word is used in several different (and largely unrelated) meanings in this context.
The actual value of the kind of "safety" that led to the Gemini debacle is very unclear to me.
Yes, this is one of the top outlets focused on the valley tech scene. It's subscription based, and they are more expensive than most others, which is probably why you haven't seen it posted much.
I believe these involved depopulated regions both north and south of the main defensive structures to allow harrying of invading forces while denying access to plundered resources.
Eventually, they were overcome by the Hephthalites (aka White Huns) following heavy Sasanian losses north of the limes in the AD 484 Battle of Herat, but it's interesting to note that the defensive structures separating southern 'civilization' from the steppe were considered a joint responsibility of the predominant (Roman/Sasanian) empires in spite of their generally being at war with each other, as the nomads were a shared threat.
Edit: Another great example is drawn from Caesar's description of Helvetian practices in his Gallic Wars; the Helvetians, a Germanic tribe located in modern Switzerland, had deliberately depopulated a wide area around their territory for defensive purposes.
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