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Where has all the productivity gone?

johndcook.com

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Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#31

Post by failuser »

fhssn1 wrote: post #19

'Why aren't we far more productive?' sounds not too different from 'Why don't we have infinite growth on a finite planet?' - There is not enough meaningful democratizable work. Most work is either menial, or challenging. And I'm not even talking about the third kind of work [1]. - Menial work is getting more and more automated. - Challenging work doesn't necessarily scale with human resources beyond a certain point (…

Why do you think that 10x increase in cancer researchers would not help find the cure faster? Do you think there is one supergenius destined to find the solution and he is already working on it? 10x researches can try out 10x approaches or concentrate of specific types of cancer. From what I understand, most of actual research is done by hungry grad students and the higher your position get the more time you spend of trying to keep or expand the funding. I know that keeping the grad students overworked and hungry keeps many grifters out of science, but at what cost?

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#32

Post by User23 »

failuser wrote: post #31
fhssn1 wrote: post #19

'Why aren't we far more productive?' sounds not too different from 'Why don't we have infinite growth on a finite planet?' - There is not enough meaningful democratizable work. Most work is either menial, or challenging. And I'm not even talking about the third kind of work [1]. - Menial work is getting more and more automated. - Challenging work doesn't necessarily scale with human resources beyond a certain point (…

Why do you think that 10x increase in cancer researchers would not help find the cure faster? Do you think there is one supergenius destined to find the solution and he is already working on it? 10x researches can try out 10x approaches or concentrate of specific types of cancer. From what I understand, most of actual research is done by hungry grad students and the higher your position get the more time you spend of…

Cancer really isn’t one disease. It’s thousands if not millions or maybe even billions of diseases that share some similarities. The odds of a silver bullet cure are effectively zero, but there’s plenty of opportunity to help sufferers die with rather than of. It’s a game of incremental improvement so it’s likely that greater investment would produce reasonable returns.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#33

Post by [deleted] »

failuser wrote: post #31
fhssn1 wrote: post #19

'Why aren't we far more productive?' sounds not too different from 'Why don't we have infinite growth on a finite planet?' - There is not enough meaningful democratizable work. Most work is either menial, or challenging. And I'm not even talking about the third kind of work [1]. - Menial work is getting more and more automated. - Challenging work doesn't necessarily scale with human resources beyond a certain point (…

Why do you think that 10x increase in cancer researchers would not help find the cure faster? Do you think there is one supergenius destined to find the solution and he is already working on it? 10x researches can try out 10x approaches or concentrate of specific types of cancer. From what I understand, most of actual research is done by hungry grad students and the higher your position get the more time you spend of…

[deleted]

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#34

Post by frankbreetz »

failuser wrote: post #31
fhssn1 wrote: post #19

'Why aren't we far more productive?' sounds not too different from 'Why don't we have infinite growth on a finite planet?' - There is not enough meaningful democratizable work. Most work is either menial, or challenging. And I'm not even talking about the third kind of work [1]. - Menial work is getting more and more automated. - Challenging work doesn't necessarily scale with human resources beyond a certain point (…

Why do you think that 10x increase in cancer researchers would not help find the cure faster? Do you think there is one supergenius destined to find the solution and he is already working on it? 10x researches can try out 10x approaches or concentrate of specific types of cancer. From what I understand, most of actual research is done by hungry grad students and the higher your position get the more time you spend of…

I think there are so only so many possible solutions, the first researcher will choose to researcher the possible solution with the highest probability or working. As you add more researchers they will research less probabil solutions. It is the law of diminishing returns.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#35

Post by boomka »

wussboy wrote: post #20
boomka wrote: post #18

the article is a bit weird, I think it refers to productivity paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox But it is a well studied topic, with much more than 5 possible explanations offered for it. I personally think the whole thing is a bit of a nothingburger that comes about as a simple consequence of how we measure productivity, which is via measuring how much money is paid to people. And since mon…

Do you have links or suggestions for stats about “hours worked per bushel of grain etc.”? I’m interested in this area.

something like this: https://sdgdata.gov.uk/2-3-1/

look at the table of labour productivity, it has been growing consistently and has almost tripled between 1973 and today

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#36

Post by failuser »

Does the author really expect for computers to make writing novels by hand way more productive? This is such an edge case and the productivity increase is there (spelling, navigation, version control, there is dedicate software that helps you to make sure your lore and timelines are consistent), but until GPT can make consistent books no technology will help him with the core task: engaging story. In most other areas of human endeavor technology does increase productivity, no bluff there.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#38

Post by paulpauper »

The whole falling productivity meme is more of a myth and or overstated.

It doesn't mean anything. Look how well the stock market has done over the past decade. No one losing sleep over a .1% reduction in total factor productivity or whatever.

What matters more is if technology is advancing, are living standards rising,is the economy growing. The answer seems to be yes for all of those.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#39

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

robjan wrote: post #2

There is a huge assumption here that productivity isn't increasing, which is false. Economic output per hour worked has been steadily increasing in every country since their respective industrial revolutions. When you go to the source tweet, it turns out that it's comparing the developed world to the developing world. Developing economies will always grow faster, but not necessarily efficiently, because there's more…

GDP doesn't take into consideration public debt.

If public debt is up 100% and GDP has barely changed - I don't think that's cause for celebration that GDP / hours worked = we are more productive.

I'm not saying this is the case. But people use GDP a lot to make points like this - and it's important to talk about how much public debt is increasing GDP.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#40

Post by sys_64738 »

I am constantly distracted by others, by technology interruption products, and by life as I WFH.

I have to attend too many zero value meetings which I generally ignore.

I have to field questions constantly from people doing busy work then others wonder why I am not more productive.

Technology might make process more efficient but the gains are filled with more distractions which prevent progress to providing real value to the widget I'm working on.

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