To your point...

1. "The Tobacco Institute was founded in 1958 as a trade association by cigarette manufacturers, who funded it proportionally to each company's sales. It was initially to supplement the work of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), which later became the Council for Tobacco Research. The TIRC work had been limited to attacking scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, and the Tobacco Institute had a broader mission to put out good news about tobacco, especially economic news." [0]

2. "[Lewis Powell] worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.

We were in our 20's when my friend said 'A day in your 20's is worth a year in your 30's, a day in your 30's is worth a year in your 40's, etc...' Now in our 60's we're a little less adamant - every day is worth something.- but it has been a useful perspective.

I’ve just started my 60s.

Physically, I don’t feel a lot different than in my 40s. ( I’m pretty firm in my exercise schedule. ) But looking over almost anyone in their 80s, I’m reminded that the 60s likely kicks off ‘the fourth quarter’, to use sports parlance.

Time to let it all hang out, leave nothing on the table.

A day in my 20s was worth nothing. I went and flipped burgers for $4/hr, then probably went out for beers at a dive bar that night. Just living day to day.

I imagine your 70 or 80 year-old self would think that a day like that in your 20s is worth the moon.

I’m ten years away from that age. I’d never go back, unless I could take what I’ve learned since then with me.

Think about how often you got to a museum, library, or park compared to how often you eat and pay the monthly bills. The more expensive the area, the higher the routine bills and wages don't always track that, especially at the low end.

Both have significant advantages, shared walls reducing energy costs and the ability to live without a car can make a huge difference at the bottom.

It’s really suburbs that end up the most expensive. You combine higher housing and labor costs vs rural areas without any of the cost savings of cities.

I've posted this before, but I think it will be a perennial comment and concern:

Excerpted from Tony Hoare's 1980 Turing Award speech, 'The Emperor's Old Clothes'... "At last, there breezed into my office the most senior manager of all, a general manager of our parent company, Andrew St. Johnston. I was surprised that he had even heard of me. "You know what went wrong?" he shouted--he always shouted-- "You let your programmers do things which you yourself do not understand." I stared in astonishment. He was obviously out of touch with present day realities. How could one person ever understand the whole of a modern software product like the Elliott 503 Mark II software system? I realized later that he was absolutely right; he had diagnosed the true cause of the problem and he had planted the seed of its later solution."

My interpretation is that whether shifting from delegation to programmers, or to compilers, or to LLMs, the invariant is that we will always have to understand the consequences of our choices, or suffer the consequences.

Applied to your specific example, yes, LLMs can be a good assistants for learning. I would add that triangulation against other sources and against empirical evidence is always necessary before one can trust that learning.

I recently read 'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland', Christopher Browning.

My takeaway was the same as yours; the Germans (and everybody else) were (are) just like us.

My guess is that you get practice in habit-building that can be applied to useful habits. Sort of like having students do exercises that have solutions in the back of the textbook. It's not the solution that's needed, it's the practice.

I love this quote. But, then again, I read LotR multiple times as a teenager and remain suspicious of Rand.

Generally attributed to George Box

What's funny to me is that, not only is this also how the financial industry is structured, but that a) this is the currently fashionable means of reducing risk and b) it is seen as a feature not a bug.

Citation: Any book about the 2008 financial crisis, or the 1998 crisis, or the 1987 crisis, e.g.

[0] 'The Quants', Scott Patterson

[1] 'When Genius Failed', Lowenstein.

[2] 'Demon of Our Own Design', Richard Bookstaber.

I wonder how this change affects what the agents remember about the calls, and how that affects their performance on future calls. And I wonder whether agent performance, as measured by customer satisfaction, will decline over time, and whether that will affect the bottom line.