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Life Improvements Since the 1990s

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Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#121

Post by sodafountan »

hncurious wrote: post #89
light_hue_1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, now white men are discriminated against in a lot of Tech companies under the guise of fighting "white privilege" and promoting diversity Tech is 2% black, but white people are being discriminated against? You mean by being promoted, having huge salaries, and getting all of jobs? oh my! The historically disadvantaged white american community should really organize together. Maybe under a white flag. I know.…

You're clearly not familiar with hiring in tech. It's 2% because the available pool is tiny. It's not for lack of trying to hire non-white, non-asians in tech. Tech minorities are in fact prioritized in hiring AND there are countless programs to increase the pool. Aimed at girls and tech minorities, not white and asian boys.

It's almost like biology and aptitude play a big part in what you end up doing in life.

Here's a definition of aptitude from Google:

What is an example of an aptitude? Aptitudes are natural talents, special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things easily and quickly. They have little to do with knowledge or culture, or education, or even interests. They have to do with heredity. Musical talent and artistic talent are examples of such aptitudes.

Our industry has things backwards, rather than trying to cattle chute "Women and Minorities" into tech, which is bad for the industry and bad for people who land roles they won't be happy in, we should simply not discriminate against those who show aptitude towards the roles they're applying for - which in all of my experience has been the way things are.

As an aside, wouldn't it be weird if we were all required to be artists to make a living?

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#122

Post by BurningFrog »

minikites wrote: post #108
Filligree wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are benefits. It’s still true that it compromises the main goal of the glue—compromise is the point .

That's not the typical framing I see, it's usually "government regulations strangling private sector innovation" with the implication that there are no benefits.

I'd say the costs outweigh the benefits, and the benefits often go to the politically connected who can influence the regulations.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#123

Post by xyzelement »

marricks wrote: post #105
tarr11 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the most basic level, life expectancy has increased everywhere [0] and so quality of life has increased for a large number of people who would otherwise be dead. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Life expectancy has already lowered quite a bit from the pandemic we can't put a lid on, and when (if) that settles down cataclysmic climate change will continue its work. Sorry but the future seems quite bleak.

At any point of human history, one could convince themselves that the future is bleak. There had been pandemics and plagues, cold and hot wars, revolutions and dangerous technologies and -isms.

And yet in retrospect humanity's trend has been of greater ingenuity, connectives, safety and well-being. Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right.

But I see no reason to think like that. For example, sure the pandemic sucks but relative to what it could have been, especially in such a connected world, humanity is handling it pretty well. There seems to be resilience in our economies, supply chains, and people - that when they are tested they have bent and strained but not broken. Like a ship that gets rocked but doesn't sink in a storm that's actually a GREAT sign.

I can related to your emotional state though. I remember walking in NYC a few days after 9/11, and seeing a half-completed building on 42nd street and thinking: this will never get finished. Nobody will ever dare come or invest or live in NYC - we're doomed and dead.

That building is worth a billion dollars now and that neighborhood is thriving. It's important to remember that feeling of gloom and realizing that it doesn't always (in fact, most of the time) pan out as we feared the worst.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#124

Post by dougmwne »

We can add camera drones to this list. They would have been a sci-fi fantasy in 1990. Now you can get incredibly stable and clear aerial footage for a few hundred dollars that would have required a film crew, a helicopter a pilot and a flight plan a few decades ago.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#126

Post by rufus_foreman »

iambateman wrote: post #14

I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.

I'm trying to imagine being back in the late 80's living in the squat or in the animal house I lived in during the early 90's and having this guy time travel back to tell us about the future.

"You mean we don't all die in a nuclear war or from AIDS or global warming?"

"No, the future is much better! Riding lawn mowers are cheaper, teddy bears are much more cuddly and silky, board games have been revolutionized and you can get goat cheese at Walmart!"

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#127

Post by JackPoach »

rthomas6 wrote: post #68

But are people happier and more fulfilled? Are they more able to have a meaning-filled life surrounded by people with whom they have close and lasting relationships? What should we be measuring when we measure improvement?

Should we be measuring at all? Claiming that people have to be more happy over time is a weird proposition for a biologist like me. Not only happiness does not exist (see reification), the idea that it can be 'measured and improved' is silly. Should the next generation of birds be more happy and fulfilled than the previous one? Should the next generation of chimps have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even makes sense? To me it doesn't. We are biological creatures and each one of us chooses to construct meaning of life (or lack thereof) individually.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#128

Post by wolverine876 »

Filligree wrote: post #78
minikites wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(barring regulation that forces compromises to product efficacy) Can you really not think of any benefits of regulation to correct for pervasive market failures?

Of course there are benefits. It’s still true that it compromises the main goal of the glue—compromise is the point .

> It’s still true that it compromises the main goal of the glue—compromise is the point.

That may happen, but it's not generally true. Regulation can, for example, increase competition which increases innovation. It can standardize safety rules, which reduces the risk for manufacturers clearly defining what they do and don't have to do. Etc.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#130

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ghaff wrote: post #98
namdnay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I could understand this as a blue collar worker, but you’re saying you’d prefer to be a software engineer in 91 than 2021? Come on, of pretty much all the professions were the ones who have reaped the most benefits of the past 30 years

Arguably in 1991, you're getting in on the ground floor but it's a mixed bag. Your new grad salary is probably going to be around $40K or so in the US. And dot-bomb is 10 years in the future. And that list of companies is sort of a mixed bag. Adobe has mostly done pretty well through the years. Sun Microsystems did have a very good decade through the dot-com years but then didn't. Apple was really struggling at that…

Indeed it predates my entrance to the industry by a half-decade but one thing that's notable about this period is the technology stacks being built during it would in large part be heavily de-emphasized later when the web exploded.

If you were at Apple, you'd be working on a platform (Mac OS classic, or Copland, or Newton) that would be thrown away by the end of the decade.

If you were working at DEC, likewise. (VMS, VAX, even Alpha)

Sun is more complicated, as they pivoted better and took longer to die. That would be a good place to be maybe.

1991 is an awkward year since it's about 2-3 years before the HTTP/browser revolution.

One thing though is that to my eye when I look at what these companies were working on then, it all seems more interesting to me now. The actual employment of a programmer (who wasn't stuck in finance or insurance etc. doing COBOL) had the potential to do some stuff that we at least thought Was going to be groundbreaking back then. NewtonOS and Alpha and Copland, CORBA, PowerPC/PREP, OS/2, research projects like Sun's "Self", etc. it was all exciting stuff. Just very little of it went on to be used later.

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