I don't buy this whole idea of technological progress being exponential, let alone monotonic. The average piece of software made in 2021 does less, runs slower and is more difficult to maintain than the average piece of software from 2001. Consumer-grade CPUs haven't seen a drastic increase in performance for around a decade too. I'm still running an i7-2600k that was released in 2010. A current-tech Ryzen 7 has mayb…
Moore's Law for Everything
491–500 of 554 posts
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#492I don't buy this whole idea of technological progress being exponential, let alone monotonic. The average piece of software made in 2021 does less, runs slower and is more difficult to maintain than the average piece of software from 2001. Consumer-grade CPUs haven't seen a drastic increase in performance for around a decade too. I'm still running an i7-2600k that was released in 2010. A current-tech Ryzen 7 has mayb…
Back in 2001, I was sitting on a computer even a laptop! I was reading conversations on the internet, watching videos, and listening to music. Not much has changed in 20 years. I have a better pocket computer. I had a smartphone back in 2003. Yeah the iPhone > than blackberry, but not by that much.
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare voice recognition in 2001 to 2021.
To be honest with you, if you look at the technology as a whole, I prefer what we had in 2001. Back then it was completely unusable (as opposed to now, where it's only borderline unusable), but at least it wasn't shoved down your throat by smartphone manufacturers and Google.
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
GDP per capita also counts children. $48,000 for a family of four sounds perfectly fine to me.
The assumes nothing ever goes wrong. One serious illness or injury and you’re bankrupt.
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq... World Gini coefficient for wealth has increased from 0.804 to 0.904 between 2008 and 2018, where 1 means that a single person holds all the wealth .
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.
In western economies, Piketty showed that equality peaked approximately in the 1950's, and has been dropping since. (Almost) no one recommends we have another world war to decrease the assets owned by the rich, but Piketty, like the original article, also recommends a wealth tax (this article includes the significant refinement that the tax be on corporations and not individuals; Piketty does not go into details for…
Citation: World Bank. "Poverty and Prosperity 2016 / Taking on Inequality"[1].
1. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2...
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#497Earlier 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…
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
The brilliant people that stayed in the USSR had no choice - they were kept there by force either directly (not allowed to leave) or indirectly (leave but your family will pay the price). But they all wanted to leave. The more you knew how much better your life could be in the west, the more you hated staying.
See, I don't know if that's true. The main counter evidence to your hypothesis were the defections of scientists and engineers to the USSR, the amount of brilliant people that regretted the fall of the USSR, and so on. For example, one of my brilliant math teachers was from a Soviet state, and had the opportunity to leave all along - he only did so as the USSR fell and he did not see any prospect in the East anymore.…
You can't really understand how it was unless you lived it. First of all, patriotism ceased to exist, except for propaganda. Struggle and fear - abject fear - replaced patriotism as the driving emotion. We ended up hating our country - we're still trying to re-learn how to love it 30 years later.
The ones in elevated status were collaborating with the authorities and the secret police. They ratted out on their friends and family. Everybody hated and feared them because of that.
The freedom was, of course, gone, and we got used to that. Freedom is just not that important when you're hungry. But the feeling that best described our state of mind then was: hopelessness. We did not, could not hope for a better future, for better times for us or our children. We could not see any escape, any chance at change. Because as individuals, there was nothing we could do. We were completely robbed of our agency, of our power, of our rights. The past, present and future was a single color: gray.
People who somehow went to the West came back changed. They just could not believe one could live with so much freedom, choices and wealth. Their stories inspired others. I was maybe 12 and I remember clearly dreaming up ways of running out of the country, to my father's absolute horror. I would cry rivers if my own children would have to go to through that.
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
> " We’ve tried socialism. " I don't remember from school the bit where Mr Socialism said "let the workers sieze the means of production so they can shutdown the means of production, because they are lazy and stupid". "define:Socialism"[1] - "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively". NB. that it involves production , and is…
> Have you never seen or heard of volunteers? Yes, they are obviously doing the work for other reasons. > There are countries where the unemployed get money, e.g. the UK, and yet most people still work. How does this fit into your claim? You aren’t getting it. Those people still work because they can earn more than what the unemployment is. If all of a sudden you said even if you work, you’ll only earn the unemployme…
Yes, and that disproves your claim that people only work for money, and without more money people won't do more work.
> "You aren’t getting it. Those people still work because they can earn more than what the unemployment is." If all of a sudden you said even if you work, you’ll only earn the unemployment benefit, then nobody would work.*"
Volunteers earn no extra money for their work, and yet still work. Many people work unpaid overtime out of loyalty for their employer / coworkers / customers / patients, many people work out of passion and interest and hobbying ("starving artist" trope).
And, again, you're propagandising "Socialism" changing from "people get money without working" to "people can't get more than a fixed limited return on their work", which again it isn't. But let's go with that definition - if everything collectively owned, the more stuff there is the more stuff is collectively owned, so the more benefit everyone gets. When the Federal Government builds more roads, you personally get more roads you can drive on as a benefit. So even if Socialism was "you can't earn more than the minimum wage {because the collective takes it from you!}", you are part of the collective, so it still wouldn't be the case that people got no more benefit for producing more, as you claim.
Re: Moore's Law for Everything
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
The assumes nothing ever goes wrong. One serious illness or injury and you’re bankrupt.
That’s what (mandatory) insurances are for. Not insuring against events you cannot deal with alone is gambling.