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Moore's Law for Everything

moores.samaltman.com

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Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#291

Post by Barrin92 »

themacguffinman wrote: post #272
Barrin92 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy Neither was making things better for humans. The point of the economy is for capital to reproduce itself, humans being taken care of is an accidental side effect because capital doesn't like a torch mob very much.

Things only have economic value because humans want those things. Capital doesn't have any desires or drives on its own, owners of capital do. Capital owners are humans. Whatever you might say about capitalism, the idea that it doesn't serve humans or can somehow function without humans is just totally wrong. Capitalist economies aren't just human-centric, they are literally collections of human wants and needs.

>they are literally collections of human wants and needs.

And humans are literally just collections of cells, does that mean you have no wants and that your pancreas is running the show?

It's very arrogant to think that only humans have desires. Nations have desires, institutions have desires, and capital itself has a lot of desires. Lots of scary entities out there that have desires.

When capital is unhappy with capital owners it's prone to fire all of them, reconfigure entire industries, eliminate entire sectors of human activity, redraw nation-states and in the not so distant future probably reconfigure human bodies.

Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen? Capital keeps tagging along, individual actors, not so much. Give it another few decades and you may interact with a lot of firms that have no human working for it at all, and possibly not even one owning it.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#292

Post by lmarcos »

sour-taste wrote: post #169

I think that this essay assumes the possibility of infinite growth. That runs into the reality that we are actively running into the limitations of our interactions with the natural world. What else is climate change but an indication that we've reached the limit of what we can produce using our current technology. Now, it is possible that we can find a way to reduce our impact on the earth while continuing to grow,…

Go tell all those startup founders that they shouldn't grow!

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#293

Post by musingsole »

adwf wrote: post #289
musingsole wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horse population peaked? So what? That assumes the population number is an indicator on their quality of life. However, as the allegory indicates, a horse's quality of life today is leagues better than what it once was. Better feed, better health care. A good barn is a harder to come by, but what "good barn" means is a raising bar by the day. Pretty good odds of making it into your late 20's. There's fewer horses now…

That logic only works because we have no issue with slaughtering horses en masse. It'll take 100+ years of economic deprivation for the human population to balance out.

Some humans have issue slaughtering horses en masse. But still, I don't follow your point. Horses WERE NOT slaughtered. They were just bred at a point lower than replacement.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#294

Post by shmageggy »

elmomle wrote: post #54
tvanantwerp wrote: post #26

Imagine: 1) I'm the owner of a single family home 2) My income drops to roughly zero because of AI 3) My property values go through the roof 4) I now owe 2.5% of these sky-rocketing property values every year, to be paid from my non-existent income Doesn't this scenario lead to me either selling my "gifted" shares to pay property taxes, or ending up a renter at best and homeless at worst? I can imagine this proposal…

A variant of this is responsible for the rise of oligarchy during de-Sovietization in Russia. Citizens were given shares of state companies, but people's basic needs weren't met. This resulted in most shares being sold to whomever would buy them for any amount of money or basic resources. This, along with the general power vacuum, led to the rapid consolidation of massive amounts of power in the hands of whoever mana…

Shocking that an article with no references or citations might miss some important history!

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#295

Post by UncleOxidant »

joe_the_user wrote: post #78

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. Aside from the other points, taking "AI" as it exists in it's present form (deep neural networks and related) as specifically the bringer of unlimited wealth certainly puffs up the various "AI companies" notably OpenAI (It should be noted that OpenAI's most famous product, GPT-3, can generate strings that sound…

At least a couple of times in the article the author talks about software "that can think". Deep neural nets can't "think" at least not in the sense that humans can think. I don't think we have any software yet that's close to "thinking".

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#296

Post by bnralt »

darawk wrote: post #284
bnralt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's slight of hand here on CGP Grays part (and sleight of hand in other parts of the video as well), since horses are not doing work out of their own volition and to meet their own needs. Correct for that, and the same will be true for horses - they're not going to run out of work to do until they've fulfilled their desires. Now, I'm talking about typical desires as they stand now. Obviously you can have pe…

> Consider a case where person A builds widget X, and person B builds widget Y, and they trade with each other. Automation takes over, they lose their jobs. If they continue getting the widgets they used to trade for (which are now created automatically), they simply have the same wealth as before but more time. If they don't have the widgets, they're now detached from the new automated widgets both in production and…

Well, that's the point. If they're getting their goods from a robot, their needs are being met. If they're not, they could trade with person B.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#297

Post by musingsole »

rmah wrote: post #203
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.

> end up like those out-of-work horses

As long as this is like a retired horse given support to last out its years in a nice pasture (i.e. UBI) and not the dog food route, we'll be ok. If the change comes too fast leaving too many without too much while too few have it all, then we'll have problems.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#298

Post by wffurr »

qeternity wrote: post #246
maxsilver wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell people they will get $12k no matter how hard they work, they won’t work. This is obviously not true, since in every capitalist society, the hardest working people already make the least amount of money, and the laziest people employed already get given the most amount of money. Capitalism has already proven that financial incentive has no correlation to how hard someone works.

What?? It’s the exact opposite. Those people HAVE to work that hard precisely for the reason I mentioned: they won’t be paid otherwise. This is precisely the issue. If you paid people irrespective of how much they work, they won’t work. Your example is evidence of my statement, not refutation.

Do I really work harder as a software engineer than the garbagemen who bust their asses doing a dangerous smelly job? Or teachers wrangling a room full of kids?

I don't think so.

And yet I am paid 5-10X what they are.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#299

Post by sudosysgen »

xrd wrote: post #154
adambaybutt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam's proposal doesn't avoid the wealth tax compounds simple arithmetic that PG notes. And yes many important questions for society to answer on this, e.g. how much does is disincentivize entrepreneurs if they have half of their wealth taxed away over the decades compared to current taxation system?

Just a thought experiment: let's say we take Sam's ideas alongside something like UBI, where everyone has a baseline of income provided by the society they live in. You succeed wildly, and get rich as an entrepreneur. Sadly, in a generation or two, your grandchildren will be back with the rest of the plebeians, despite grandpops launching YC, writing books on art and coding and creating an bunch of amazing companies.…

Is this actually realistic?

In the Soviet Union, there was no such problem - brilliant people by and large were happy to become scientists and engineers, and scientists and engineers got into the planning agencies and into the government too, in droves. Same in pre 1989 China.

I don't see why the USSR and Mao's China were able to retain (and sometimes even attract) these people, but the society you're describing wouldn't be able to.

Actually, after some digging, I found something Lenin wrote about what to do with the entreprising kind of people - he wanted them to be put to use in organising projects and production, whereas the Kozlowski type were to be ignored (or worse).

So I guess the solution he found was to allow them to create big organizations and projects, but instead of paying them in money, they were paid in social status and achievement. If that worked to retain people like Kolmogorov, Ilyushin, Kalashnikov, Korolev, etc..., couldn't simply socially different positions for people that are enterprising be sufficient?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#300

Post by scatters »

statstutor wrote: post #269
bnralt wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. If wealth continues to become increasingly centralised, the wealthy might be able to have all their desires fully satisfied, while the poor won't have enough power to demand that - which potentially creates a vicious cycle. Then the existence of suf…

Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.
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