All Forum Posts by: Joseph Hennis

@Chris Martin You've got it right. +1 from me. The repeal of the glass-steagal act in the 90's is what lead to the financial crisis of 2008. The dodd-frank bill put some of those regulations in the glass-steagal act back in place (in different ways, since the genie was already out of the bottle and couldn't be totally put back in).

If we get rid of the dodd-frank bill, expect a return to 2008. The current over-heated market would heat up even more and shine brightly, then burn out.

Honestly, there is a greedy part of me that would welcome a return to 2008... I made a lot of money buying those cheap homes... But the harm it caused isnt worth it. Also, it was a very dangerous time... Things could have gotten worse... Much worse...

That the house even passed a repeal of D-F just shows how crazy, and/or greedy, the house of representatives really are.

Sorry for all the posts... But this one is to seal the deal here... What about super intelligent AI who aren't conscious, yet decide the best way forward is to kill all humans, like a writing machine that has gone off it's rocker?

Well, for them to take over and kill all humans, they've somehow got to become super intelligent and solve scientific problems and develop new technology like nanobots, etc.... Except that that isn't at all how science, and knowledge progress. Even with extremely high intelligence, that doesn't equate knowledge. Knowledge is earned through experimentation. Yes, we have occasionally stumbled upon a theory, and then did an experiment to confirm that it is true, but more often have discovered our theories to be false. And even Einstein, who discovered special relativity and general relativity on paper first, as a theory, before it ever was confirmed by experimentation, only decided to investigate on paper BECAUSE OF what was found in experiment (constant speed of light, Maxwell's experiments).

Experiments, where we make predictions and then test our predictions, not super intelligence, drives scientific discovery and engineering progress. And experiment is at the heart of what makes us human. We perceive the world, make predictions, and test our predictions, every time we get out of bed.

Here is a TED talk that talks about the mind-body problem from a cognitive science point of view, and why we are not just some super intelligent AI. Our consciousness, and real intelligence, depends on us being a body as well as a mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1syDjtlMGbo

For an AI to lose the A (artificial) part of that statement and actually become intelligent, it would need to become like a human mind. This is fundamentally a hardware problem and can't be solved in software. There is also the problem of irreducible complexity (not proven, but likely the case with the human brain).

We need to do one thing here, separate this silly idea that a computer or AI is even remotely similar to the human brain. They are not even close (except in the minds of people, engineers included, who have never studied the human brain). There are fundamental architectural differences between human brains and computers.

Computers are not intelligent. They compute. AI is just clever programming by humans.

Look, I get the emotional appeal of this story... I won a race for a self driving car (RC car size). It was hard to not see the car as intelligent. We would name our little robot. Sometimes it did cute things. Sometimes it did unexpected things. It sometimes was uncanny fast and could react at speeds no human could (like when it would run full speed at a wall then turn at the very last moment possible). But all of this is just MY human side attaching human feelings to something that was nothing more than a machine. Again, just clever programming.

@Eddie V. Haha luv it. My favorite answer so far.

@Account Closed So I watched your video. In it, it mentions that at the AI conferences of experts in AI, 41% of experts didn't believe AI would ever take over. I'm in that 41%. I am a computer engineer (electrical engineering side and software side) with experience in AI. I can tell you for a fact, it won't happen, not unless said AI was INTENTIONALLY programmed to kill all humans. It couldn't happen by accident at all. AI doesn't work that way. The other 50% of the AI conference who give it a 50% chance of happening by 2050 are just flat wrong and really don't understand their field (actually they probably understand the technical details quite well, without having a clue of how to extrapolate those details to the larger world).

AI is not smart. AI is not intelligent.  AI is not emotional (most murders and blood lust fall into this category). AI is not conscious. AI is Artificial Intelligence. Key word: artificial.

@Jay Hinrichs so your take on this is the new tariffs wont have much impact on the overall housing market?

As i think about this more, i am tending to agree with you on this. Housing inventory is low, and values have gone up. Its a profitable time to be a builder and a small change in timber prices wont have a big enough impact on profit to cause builders to slow down construction.

@Jay Hinrichs it has not changed dramatically this season, but will due to these tariffs?

You can narrow down the agents by phone first... I would recommend though you contact property managers. Property managers usually hold a RE license too and can help facilitate a purchase. They can steer you clear of bad properties and have a vested interest in you (they will be managing it). Ask them for pocket listings, and better yet, ask them if they can forward an email from you to their clients telling their clients you are interested in buying their properties. This is how you can find off market deals. Usually they have a list of owners who are looking to sell in the upcoming summer.

@Patrick Liska Thank you for the article. Great information!

So my guess is, the lumber tariff will raise lumber prices, reducing new home construction activity, further tightening an already tight housing supply. Long term, this means RE values will go up. This is just my surface impact analysis of this move by the Trump administration.

What are your thoughts BP?