Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

conversationswithtyler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 141 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#131

Post by adenverd »

Tyler makes a compelling case in his book[1] that economic growth is responsible for most of the biggest improvements in human flourishing over the past century. He concludes that economic growth is a moral imperative.

All three participants in this interview discuss the "exponential inputs, linear outputs" problem/slow-down that industries face as they scale and mature.

Question: how far does ROI have to fall for the growth of an industry to cost more than its returns to society are morally worth? Is this even possible? Or is there an assumption that the market would somehow fix/prevent this scenario?]

[1] Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments, 2018

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#132

Post by mikorym »

scarejunba wrote: post #114
mikorym wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like I am trolling or something. However, I find it hard to take anything Mark Zuckerberg does seriously. For that matter, I am so biased that I have no interest in these interviews at all (maybe to your detriment). How do you see this? You say that you are an admirer of CZI. In my experience with obnoxious CEO types, they are happy to be philantrophic or "build" things when it suits them, and o…

Mark my words: Zuckerberg will be remembered not for Facebook but for the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. Thirty years from now, people will talk about how he gave $100 million to the government to try out education policies and they zeroed it out and how US education needed the CZI to fix it. We'll be talking about how Zuckerberg SF General has premier care because of Mark Zuckerberg's kindness. Bill Gates's transformat…

And maybe this is the problem—that we live under the pretense of these people "contributing to society", rather than the ordinary Joe.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#133

Post by exolymph »

dv_dt wrote: post #100
nostromo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kochs have also funded stem-cell research and gay rights initiatives -- are you similarly cautious about those things?

They also fund widespread climate denial, federal court stacking, and the tea party (probably not this anymore), likely at many times the magnitude. So yes I am cautious.

To be clear: You are also cautious about stem-cell research and gay rights initiatives, because those have been Koch-funded?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#135

Post by dv_dt »

exolymph wrote: post #133
dv_dt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also fund widespread climate denial, federal court stacking, and the tea party (probably not this anymore), likely at many times the magnitude. So yes I am cautious.

To be clear: You are also cautious about stem-cell research and gay rights initiatives, because those have been Koch-funded?

No I've never encountered those efforts and have had no reason to evaluate them one way or another. Maybe they are too small to have reached any appreciable public notice? (or at least my notice).

To be honest though, I feel the opinions and speech of billionaires are amplified in our media so one should always be more critical and cautious of any of their projects, because money gives the ability to shortcut a more critical vetting of the effort.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#136

Post by n4r9 »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #122
n4r9 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a prime example of correlation, not causation?

Given that GDP/capita is not only correlated but causually related to many wellness factors in society, it much more likely not simply a correlation. These connections are well studied - check through google scholar is you really want to dig into it. More GDP/capita means more resources to fight things like homelessness.

Obviously more GDP means more resources, the question is whether it solves issues like homelessness "by default" as suggested by the OP I responded to. My opinion is that it greatly depends on the dominant cultural narratives of the general public and of the ruling party.

In the UK we've seen fairly reasonable GDP growth in the last decade but have also seen a large overall increase in statutory homelessness acceptances over the same period [0]. That's just the official records: the Crisis charity estimates that the number of "hidden homeless" single adults has according to government estimates increased by a third over roughly the same period [1]. The reasons for this are generally given to be the lack of affordable housing being built, and welfare reforms such as capping the housing allowance.

The cultural narratives in play here are that a prolonged austerity was required in order to salvage the economy, and that our welfare is subject to significant levels of stress from deliberate "benefit cheats" or "welfare mummies". Both of these are contentious, as far as I've been able to gather.

[0] https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...

[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/london_assembl...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#137

Post by cf »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #124
cf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homelessness has been increasing rapidly in recent years across North America even while GDP growth has been adequate. You actually need to devote resources to fight homelessness.

>Homelessness has been increasing rapidly in recent years across North America even while GDP growth has been adequate I don't think that's true. For example, in the US, dept of urban housing has this [1], which shows total number of homeless decreasing despite total underlying population increasing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

As you can see the number is going up. I would also be careful with the HUD data as it is based on a yearly count conducted of shelters in January [1]. Counting homeless people is tricky as only 10% are on the street and the methods used to estimate populations are fairly unsophisticated.

From the same surveys it's fairly clear in recent years homeless populations are rising if you look at exhibit 2.5 on page 25. [2]. Worse transitional housing is being replaced with shelter beds meaning those who are homeless are more likely to stay so.

I also should be clear looking big picture like this misses details. Things like Los Angeles's homeless population increasing by 16% [3] and a 5% rise in Seattle [4] and similarly Vancouver [5]. All of these cities have great GDP growth. Experts across the political spectrum are fairly consistent that the cause is related to affordable housing.

Now I can't make you change your mind about something you want to believe, but when you really engage with what's going on suggesting causality between GDP and homelessness is a very shallow superficial analysis. I think the data makes a pretty clear of what's going on. I'd encourage you no matter what position you choose to take to really engage with the details.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/18/surprisin...

2. https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2018-AHAR...

3. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-...

4. https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness

5. https://www.vancourier.com/news/vancouver-s-record-breaking-...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#138

Post by eloff »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #98
eloff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a temporary setback only. It's a one time thing to replace your resource intensive good with a more efficient one. But that doesn't give you growth forever, because any level of exponential growth with any level of resource consumption can't be reconciled with a finite universe. Sooner or later all exponential growth must end. That includes all forms of compound growth, such as GDP increasing at any pe…

>because any level of exponential growth with any level of resource consumption can't be reconciled with a finite universe. I think you misread my post. Real world growth with negative or zero resource consumption can be reconciled with a finite universe. On a mathematical level, there is no reason that GDP can not go infinite in a finite universe as GDP does not need material inputs.

Maybe I was being too generous to your post. There is no way to decouple GDP from material inputs, even if, as with digital good and services the inputs are quite small. They're still there, which means they're still finite, which means GDP is finite.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#139

Post by uoaei »

adenverd wrote: post #129
uoaei wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fully Automated Gay Space Luxury Communism For those having trouble parsing that acronym.

I'm afraid to ask, but, in what community is this phrase spoken frequently enough to warrant an acronym?

Satirical-edgy leftist meme pages

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#140

Post by s1artibartfast »

eloff wrote: post #138
s1artibartfast wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because any level of exponential growth with any level of resource consumption can't be reconciled with a finite universe. I think you misread my post. Real world growth with negative or zero resource consumption can be reconciled with a finite universe. On a mathematical level, there is no reason that GDP can not go infinite in a finite universe as GDP does not need material inputs.

Maybe I was being too generous to your post. There is no way to decouple GDP from material inputs, even if, as with digital good and services the inputs are quite small. They're still there, which means they're still finite, which means GDP is finite.

So perhaps the issue is that there are two cases being conflated.

In the practical sense, there is ample room for GDP growth on Earth in the immediate future. A huge portion of the population is underdeveloped while only a fraction of the world's natural resources have been extracted. Data also suggests GDP in developed economies can be increased while total resource consumption decreases once areas reach.

If someone is going to make a hypothetical mathematical/universal scale argument, I think it worth pointing out that GDP is accounting construct, with no inherent tie to material reality. For example two people could sell each other arbitrary services, (eg silence), and charge arbitrary sums.

Post reply on HN