281–290 of 480 posts
EZ Pass type devices has made long distance traveling so much easier and more efficient. Anyone travel the Mass Pike in the 90s? It would be stopped for a quarter mile for the privilege to pay 75 cents in a line.
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?
I can't speak for "people" at broad, but improvements have certainly made a difference for my household. Gwern mentions hearing aids. They haven't just gotten smaller, but more capable. My wife couldn't have conversations with people at all in 1991. She can now. Universal subtitling opens up the full catalog of film and television that she couldn't experience. Spinal interbody fusion existed before 1991, but it wasn'…
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"From farming to high finance products and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy is how lawnmowers and A/C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still make a profit. " You can find examples of this, but overall, I dispute the generalization. I think quality/price improvement…
> Education... we have more and arguably better, but more expensive. There are many thousands of people on this forum that have gotten a free education and in turn, one of the best careers in history from that free education that would never have been possible until recently. I'm seeing more and more people (that aren't designers and engineers) are forgoing classical education and making a great living for themselves…
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>I do think living with such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other things) but like I said, living with certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your life. I think it only seems overly negative -because- so many people are blindly optimistic and assume things just get better naturally w…
You're talking about human nature. You're seeing the problems only. But humans were "like this" forever. EG: you're dismal about covid because some people won't get the shot. But in the 80s/90s you'd be dismal because people weren't practicing safe sex despite AIDS, and you'd draw that line to a depressing conclusion. And yet in reality, somehow the world moved towards a much better place despite those things. Same w…
Conspiracy theorists used to be everywhere, but in small numbers and not very homogeneous; now they are plentiful and coordinated enough to lead to outcomes like the Jan 6 insurrection or the vaccine denialism gripping something like 30% of Americans.
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Software dev wages are through the roof as a counterargument.
Most aren't - most are quite comfortable but 100k is still above the median for developers.
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"From farming to high finance products and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy is how lawnmowers and A/C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still make a profit. " You can find examples of this, but overall, I dispute the generalization. I think quality/price improvement…
> Even that isn't the norm though. More for less, even less for less, are uncommon. At least in the embedded space, this is definitely not true. The norm is approaching more and more features for less.
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That doesn't make sense to me, why would a larger space allow for more CO2 buildup, if there is a connection to the outside?
I started to write this out but realized a more polished explanation might be more useful: "Snorkels constitute respiratory dead space. When the user takes in a fresh breath, some of the previously exhaled air which remains in the snorkel is inhaled again, reducing the amount of fresh air in the inhaled volume, and increasing the risk of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood, which can result in hypercapnia. The g…
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>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. It's not about present society being a global maximum, it's about present society being a local maximum. The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again…
>The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. The example I like to think about for this is imagine being born in the eastern European bloodlands - Eastern Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Byelorussia or Ukraine around 1895-1900. Things are pretty good up until the Great War starts, which back then you would be old enough to be considered a…
That Belarus recovered is not obvious.
This reminds me of a golden age blog post, when lists turned out to be an understudied literary device. I'm a fan of "dumps." Some interestingly debatable ones here: " Intellectual Property Maximalism rollback: copyright terms have not and probably will not be indefinitely extended again to eternity to protect Mickey Mouse, and in 2019, for the first time since 1998, works entered the public domain " I think the easy…
You're only arguing against the claim about copyright terms by equating two separate definitions of "public domain." public domain is being enriched by that stuff from the early 20th century. The "public feeling" stuff of the 1999 internet wasn't actually in the public domain then either. The public domain has gotten larger as has the private domain . But all that private stuff is now on track to expire one day, whil…