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

Moore's Law for Everything

moores.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 554 posts

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#201

Post by goesnowhere »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #73
xrd wrote: post #59

There are some really smart ideas in here, and some really smart assessments of existing policies. The thing I was most taken aback by was Sam's suggestion to tax privately held land, and capital (as opposed to labor tax). I would love to have Sam and PG go toe to toe and discuss how Sam's proposal is different from the wealth tax post PG made. I don't immediately see how Sam's idea avoids the "wealth tax compounds"…

As far as I can tell, it's not different. Unless you could consistently generate the 2.5% property value to pay the tax each year (in a world where AI has sent incomes to zero!), then you'll eventually lose your property.

But if everyone is poor then prices drop...

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#202

Post by imtringued »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #114
Aunche wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property values generally rise because an area has a very attractive jobs market. Overall, it's a benefit to society to incentivize people with no income to move out an area with a lower cost of living. This incentivizes more people move there and do productive work, which can be taxed and distributed.

I just find something very cold and socially undesirable in the idea that somebody can spend a lifetime putting in the work to get the home they want, only to be forced out because "society" decides they are no longer productive. I'm no NIMBY—those people shouldn't have the right to stop others from developing their own properties—but I'm not sure I like the idea of economic incentives kicking the least productive to…

> because "society" decides they are no longer productive.

You have to consider the benchmark. Do people deserve to live in a castle if they aren't productive enough?

Living in a single family home in the middle of NYC requires a whole lot of productivity because you are literally displacing dozens of other people. You have to be as productive as all those people combined to be worthy of replacing them.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#203

Post by rmah »

nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

Yes, some people will get screwed end up like those out-of-work horses because of AI or automation. Other people will benefit greatly. On average, most people will benefit a little bit. This is how every technological advance has worked for the last few hundred years. The promise of higher efficiency == higher standard of living is a general promise for society as a whole, not for any particular individual.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#204

Post by savant_penguin »

"Even more power will shift from labor to capital."

You can say the same thing for machines replacing workers at farms, but hardly anyone would rather ban tractors for taking people's jobs

You can say the exact same thing for bank tellers replaced by ATM's but no one wants to wait in long lines to withdraw money and pay expensive service fees

The list goes on and on

Google maps (how often people need physical maps anymore?)

Gmail (goodbye to a lot of physical mailing service)

Excel (1 accountant can do the work of tens of more accountants of the past)

Forklifts take away many body breaking jobs

Jobs do disappear, but very few people would rather go back

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#205

Post by m___ »

gnramires wrote: post #55
ravi-delia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent what is likely way too much mental energy wondering about this, and I'm no closer to an answer. Is there any limit to lifestyle inflation? Is it possible to have growth that simply outpaces what a human could possibly consume? Intuitively it seems obvious that there should be something like that, but in the 1800s our growth today would seem like it should be enough.

I've also spent mental energy on this, about 4-5 years, and recently I've been reaching a conclusion (in a great walkabout about AI, ethics, and the meaning of everything). My conclusion: individual satisfaction is bounded, as long as we have bounded brains. First I should mention that the best principle I've found to underlie life is that we should maximize or optimize some kind of experience of consciousness, for e…

This way of thinking, as you draw the lines into the future, correspond to rational analysis. Could be called quality of goal-sets, as opposite to "crowing on a pile of dung" as is now the ongoing mindset of our elites. ...fascinating and not depressing the observance of reality, your way would be beyond and far of what is now passing for science, politics, societal engineering, technology layers without a grand design. It is not going to happen, goes against the history of mankind pointers. You Sir, must be one of the few, your status thus would reside in other then wealth and ego, you posess the suicidal gene!

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#206

Post by qeternity »

legulere wrote: post #85
ksdale wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDP per capita of the world is only about $12,000. That's technically "what we need," food, clothes, and shelter for a family of 4, but on a per person basis, it's below the federal poverty line in the US. I don't think it's correct to say that we had enough wealth a long time ago. There are a lot of places in the world that are still desperately poor by any measure, not just by the standards of the wealthy. And…

GDP per capita also counts children. $48,000 for a family of four sounds perfectly fine to me.

These arguments always ignore the fact that the only reason $X GDP is generated is because people are incentivized. Children don’t produce, so someone else is producing for them. If you tell people they will get $12k no matter how hard they work, they won’t work. We’ve tried socialism.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#207

Post by bnralt »

sudosysgen wrote: post #175
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horses aren't the center of the economy, though. It's fundamentally different. Horses might always want more and more things no matter how much they get. But they don't create demand in our economy, so we'll never know. No matter how much humans get, they'll always want more. And other humans will have to come up with ways to meet that demand. Sure - if we ever reach a time where the entire human race says "this is e…

I can't get myself to agree with this. Indeed, it's true, horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans. Our economy isn't centred around humans, it's centred around capital. Unemployable humans are as useless to it as horses, as they can't exchange their labour with capital owners (or become capital owners themselves). Unemployable people might want more, but will they get more? No, they won't.

I think there's two distinct ideas being discussed. Can people be unemployed because of structural, societal, or political reasons? Sure, and I think most people would agree. We have plenty of example of that happening - depressions, recessions, mass refugees, etc.

But can people be unemployed because we run out of things for humans to do? That's what the video is arguing, but it won't be the case unless we've fully satisfied all of our desires. If we haven't, there are, by definition, still things to do.

This idea was particularly popular during the recession (the video was made on the tale end of it). It was common to hear that the high level of unemployment was because automation had taken our jobs or because Americans didn't have the skills for the jobs that were needed. But much of this was nonsense, and we saw employment gradually rebound as we moved out of the recession. Not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense, since it leads people to entirely misunderstand a solvable problem.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#208

Post by colinmhayes »

Judgmentality wrote: post #159
Dylan16807 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment directly says it's not a good analogy. Complaining that they didn't specifically say "allegory" is really nitpicky. The terms are very close and overlap.

If someone says Animal Farm is a good story, but it wouldn't work if the animals were humans, I would say they didn't get the message.

Animal farm is a fictional story about humans disguised as animals. The horse allegory is a non-fictional story about the downfall of horses which are very much not human-like.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#209

Post by ls65536 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #175
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horses aren't the center of the economy, though. It's fundamentally different. Horses might always want more and more things no matter how much they get. But they don't create demand in our economy, so we'll never know. No matter how much humans get, they'll always want more. And other humans will have to come up with ways to meet that demand. Sure - if we ever reach a time where the entire human race says "this is e…

I can't get myself to agree with this. Indeed, it's true, horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans. Our economy isn't centred around humans, it's centred around capital. Unemployable humans are as useless to it as horses, as they can't exchange their labour with capital owners (or become capital owners themselves). Unemployable people might want more, but will they get more? No, they won't.

> horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans.

Sure they do, although almost certainly nowhere near enough to sustain our current situation and the system it's built atop of (from which the holders of capital seem to have benefited immensely), although perhaps this is exactly the point you were making.

It might not be recognizable to most people living in modernity today, but in general humans will always trade (by some means, not necessarily with "money") with other humans whenever relative specializations occur between them, which even in small groups is likely to happen naturally.

After all, it's not the exchange of paper bills or service to capital in particular that makes an economy, and there is always going to be demand of something and some supply of some of those things as long as humans are around and interacting, regardless of how miserable the existence is, or how "inefficient" such a system might be.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#210

Post by AndrewBissell »

wmf wrote: post #151
AndrewBissell wrote: post #68

As with so much Silicon Valley stuff, I think the latest evangelizing for AI is probably just laundering military and counterinsurgency tech as some kind of utopian consumer godsend. Obviously AGI will remain a pipe dream, but what we will get is autonomous robotic soldiers with no conscience (that can be counted on to put down unrest without questioning their orders), or listening software that can monitor everyone'…

My main thought after seeing Elysium was "if the robots are so advanced, why not use them to help people?" Healthcare is just a big as the military, so why would the robot makers turn down that opportunity?

Who owns the robots, and what are their motivations?
Post reply on HN