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Perrin Walker
@perrinjwalker
Narrator/Producer at TYPE III AUDIO (views my own)
Adelaide, South AustraliaJoined December 2015

Perrin Walker’s Tweets

Funds recipients “were selected by government without assessment or guidance, and at such speed the "department was forced to monitor the media to know which projects had been selected". What a disgrace.
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#BREAKING A scathing audit report has found the administration of the Morrison government's $2 billion Community Health and Hospitals program was ethically unsound and deliberately breached finance law. canberratimes.com.au/story/8222545/ v @canberratimes #auspl
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"AI can't be truly intelligent if it can't play chess/drive/make coffee/do whatever the latest arbitrary goal post is" Remember: we don't know what's needed to make something smarter than us. Being able to make coffee might be like having a strong beak. A thing we think is… Show more
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This is serious analysis from respected institutions - their conclusion? “The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.” Objectors were harassed and abused - they were right.
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Can’t wait to spend the whole day distracted by people gossiping and talking office politics and then everyone stays back for an hour or two to get some work done, making snarky remarks when I leave on time.
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a) for many, headphones are the only thing that makes open plan tolerable or even vaguely productive and b) nobody wants to hear your opinions about the Great British Bakeoff or how foreigners are ruining the country. OK? Thanks.
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Ask 5,000 guys to flip 7 coins each. Find a guy who flips 7 tails. Ask him about the key to his success, whether it was his habits, work ethic, religious devotion. He will have plenty to say. Maybe he will write a book or start a podcast.
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Yep. And the risk of accidentally speeding will make consumers demand speed limiters for their cars, which I’m absolutely shocked are not as standard as seatbelts by now.
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There are no where near enough speed cameras. They should be on every stretch of every significant road. Getting caught should not be bad luck, but the expectation.
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My ideal gf: -The kind of gf a high-status man would have. -Makes me look high-status. -Makes me look like the kind of man who has a high-status gf. -Has a list of hypothetical qualities that if shared publicly make me seem high-status by virtue of desiring them.
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Apparently this is only true of PAYG repayments.
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God it gets worse. If I understand correctly, people who paid down their HECS debt to avoid this round of indexation didn’t actually gain ANYTHING from this since the payments aren’t applied until July 1 but the indexation is applied now. twitter.com/perrinjwalker/…
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So many people were talking on social media about taking their savings and paying off their HECS. To the extent that people did this without considering opportunity cost or knowing it wouldn’t avoid indexation anyway… god, what a colossal waste of value.
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God it gets worse. If I understand correctly, people who paid down their HECS debt to avoid this round of indexation didn’t actually gain ANYTHING from this since the payments aren’t applied until July 1 but the indexation is applied now.
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I’m not a financial advisor, but I do not understand the argument for paying your #HECS debt before indexation this year. Someone said it’s an ‘immediate 7% return’, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Say you have a HECS debt of $30,000, and you have 30,000 in savings. 1/
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You actually can tell someone’s IQ by asking them how they’d feel if they hadn’t eaten breakfast. If they say something like “I’d be hungry,” they’re 105 at best. If they say “I did eat breakfast though,” they’re a philosophical genius who recognizes thinking & being are the same
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It's important to make this clear and explicit: advanced AI might cause human extinction. This is the magnitude of the threat we face. For too long, this was a widespread view in the field but too few dared to publicly commit to it. Great to see heads of all AGI labs sign this
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We just put out a statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Signatories include Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Hassabis, Song, etc. safe.ai/statement-on-a 🧵 (1/6)
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We're like a plane company CEO; we don't know how to build jets, we know how to hire engineers. Being good at paying engineers doesn't cause you to understand how jets actually work, at all. Especially since these 'engineers' never speak a word or document anything
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I think most people (quite reasonably) think "We built ChatGPT, so we must basically understand how it works" This is not true at all. Humans did not build ChatGPT. In a way it would be closer to say we 'grew' it. We have basically no idea how it does what it does.
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We just put out a statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Signatories include Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Hassabis, Song, etc. safe.ai/statement-on-a 🧵 (1/6)
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Heads of all major AI labs signed this letter explicitly acknowledging the risk of extinction from AGI. An incredible step forward, congratulations to Dan for his incredible work putting this together and thank you to every signatory for doing their part for a better future!
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We just put out a statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Signatories include Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Hassabis, Song, etc. safe.ai/statement-on-a 🧵 (1/6)
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I saw the best minds of my generation… panic about indexation and empty their savings voluntarily to repay an interest-free loan indexed to CPI whose mandatory repayments scale with income and stop when you’re not earning.
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(Musings, not advice): if we don’t consider opportunity cost when asking whether to repay a HECS debt to avoid this year’s indexation, we’re not seeing the full picture. Money in pocket now is valuable. /thread
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As a concrete example - in 2015 I got a full time job and spent a lot of the disposable income buying sound recording equipment and software. As a direct result of doing that, I have my current job today, which I love. The cost is a bigger debt today. But I earn more, too! /10
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When I look at what my HECS debt is costing me now, and weigh that up against the experiences I had and investments I made since I finished uni, and how much those have boosted my financial (and life!) situation today, I would have been crazy to pay more than my obligations. /9
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It’s right to be wary of debt, because people get in trouble with it a lot (again, this is random musing, not financial advice.) But HECS is a pretty benign debt as they go. Repayment obligations scale with income. No interest except CPI indexation. /8
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So even if there isn’t a slam dunk investment available, and it’s a loss overall to net worth not to pay down the debt now, is that loss maybe paying for something? Yes! The opportunity to have all that money to use, now, for something productive. /7
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It’s very conceivable they could do better than average CPI over several years. Hell, even passive investing in an index fund probably makes up some of the loss from indexation of the HECS debt and inflation of your returns. /6
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And what if (a hypothetical person not receiving financial advice from me) decided to buy a house in a few years using the 30k as part of the deposit? What if they want to start a business, or invest in their business? Invest in a promising company’s shares? /5
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(Again, this is personal, hypothetical and not advice.) So say next year you face a crisis, can’t work, and need your savings. Having paid down your HECS doesn’t help you at all! That 30k would sure help now. And since you’re not earning, you don’t have to repay HECS either. /4
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