Live data from Hacker News

Moore's Law for Everything

moores.samaltman.com

341–350 of 554 posts

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#341
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Obviously true, but that doesn't mean the things still left to do can be done by anyone. In a world where there's not enough food or housing, everyone can be gainfully employed, since just about everyone can learn to plant seeds or cut wood. In a wo…

> But what are the people who aren't programmers or artists supposed to do? Keep the programmers and artists happy. You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores.

> You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores.

That's what the robots are for! And they never complain, never need to sleep, and are always one software upgrade away from amazing new capabilities.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In high-demand cities, the land is the expensive part—not the house on top of it.

Right you are, and the land tax is specifically designed to destroy the speculative activity that causes it to increase forever.

How are we determining that the land value increased because of speculation, and not because the land continues to become exponentially more valuable do to its location in a popular area?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So by your accounting, if I purchase a home in Stockton, CA right now, then in 40 years when I'm old and can't afford the taxes on my lifelong home because Stockton is huge then, I'm to be kicked out for a more productive use?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way you could be beguiled by this framing is if you don't understand just how inept most doctors and lawyers really are. A future configuration will probably look something like: far fewer highly talented doctors and lawyers remain employable while the rest are replaced by AI that's shown to be vastly more capable, and that is continually enhanced by the encoded expertise of said highly talented remaining sp…

You don't understand just how inept most doctors and lawyers really are. It doesn't matter how competent or incompetent whatever professional might be. The only thing a deep learning application is going to do is duplicate their behavior. Deep learning involves no "thinking" at all. Just a very elaborate, brute force curve fitting. If the doctors are on average "incompetent" so will be the deep learning app (ie, you…

> Oddly enough, your scenario of high expert adding their expertise to the system is much more like the original Gofai model where a few experts would hypothetically program in their expertise. That scenario fell with difficulty of expertise programming. The present systems can't work that way.

Taking a generalized approach will fail. Taking a tailored, domain-specific one that incrementally carves out use cases will be the basis of future success in these spaces.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to think of this: imagine two equally-sized countries A and B. A implements Sam’s suggestion, taxing everything at 2.5% pa, B doesn’t. In A, people are happy, we’ll fed, Pursuing their interests, living meaningful lives. In B they are not. however, in A, companies and the economy are not growing so fast: resources are funnelled into a populace that takes but doesn’t give back. Over a long period of time,…

The 2.5% tax doesn't mean country B is growing 2.5% faster. The 2.5% in country B could be sitting in a vault doing nothing or being spent on yachts. Conversely the 2.5% in country A is being invested in making the workforce more productive.

In general it is right to assume that free capital will be used as productively as possible.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When did we try socialism?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#348
TLDR - Implement a wealth tax and use it to pay a UBI.

Fine, but he should address why he thinks a wealth tax will work this time when it didn't work when it was tried in Europe (due to international competitiveness reasons).

Moreover, what's the rationale for excluding small business ownership from the tax? Why should a middle-class pensioner invested in public equities with $500k have to sacrifice 2.5 percent of their wealth each year, but a rich person that owns a small business worth $50m has no such burden?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#349
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans. What Sam is proposing is massive wealth redistribution by taxing land and capital. Seen any memes referencing $1400 lately? Unemployed humans who are given cash absolutely create demand.

>Unemployed humans who are given cash absolutely create demand. That's artificial demand which creates inflation.

I will admit up front that my understanding of what causes inflation is, extremely limited, but it is not clear to me why.

Isn't one story of how some currencies get their start, that some monarch or someone wants their troops fed, and so they require (on threat of force) that their subjects pay a tax in coins that the monarch has printed, and distributes to their troops? If they did this continuously over time, say distributing only the same coins to their troops that they received as taxes, (or, keeping the amount in circulation constant, by some means), why would the amount of bread that each coin would tend to buy, decrease over the years?

(Of course, the monarch or whatever would also use some of the same coins for their own use, but they aren't being paid to do anything.)

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#350

> 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…

This is a very misleading metaphor.

Horses were not workers. The were tools workers used.

Farmers used horses to plow the fields. Transport workers used them to transport goods and people. As those workers got better tools to plow and transport, productivity increased, society got richer.

There are also millions of old telegraphs, slide rules, and rotary phones "unemployed" across the world. The fate of these no longer needed tools tells us nothing about the conditions for human workers.

Also, the fact that you can't find a human example to make this argument, but have to use a loyal, brave, and majestic animal instead, should be enough to hint that this is maybe a bit of emotional manipulation rather than a rational argument.

Post reply on HN