100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#121

Post by chubot » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #23

indymike wrote: post #7

The first step in solving a problem is realizing there actually is a problem. If you think about it, humanity really is getting better and better over time. That thought really doesn't help much when you are fighting with a big bank about $261 in random fees, though.

>If you think about it, humanity really is getting better and better over time. That is such a vague statement it is essentially meaningless. Better how? How is it not better? What do you mean by humanity? How is your life better? How is it worse?

Good list:

https://www.gwern.net/Improvements

I feel food is immeasurably better than in the 1990's when I grew up. I'd partially attribute that to faster and better communication -- i.e. if you take the Internet away from a chef or farmer, I think their universe of ideas and ingredients would be dramatically smaller.

Speakers you can get for just $500 have made a big jump since even 2015 (though this is a tiny niche; in general audio quality is worse than in the 1970's.)

Combat sports are also having a renaissance and many people attribute that to YouTube!

That said, I totally agree with this article, and with the premise. There is rising economic inequality, and regulation has a place in imposing values on the market. Markets where nobody trusts each other aren't efficient or useful.

I think the area where that really hits home and is made tangible is architecture. If you just let the market run wild with architecture, you're going to get really ugly boxy buildings that make everyone miserable. We live in a shared space, so you need cooperation to make good architecture. Unfortunately it does seem like that's been on the decline. Architecture is worse than it was in the past.

I'd also agree that computing is worse than it was 20 years ago in many important ways. I wouldn't say it's worse overall, e.g. being able to handle video is a big improvement. Wireless is pretty good although there are many flaky incarnations of it. But I'd say both user interfaces and latency are worse, products are more user hostile, and the web is filled with ads and low quality information. Hardware is now proprietary software, so a Linux system is less open than it used to be.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#122

Post by GavinMcG » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #103

This essay seems deep and profoundly insightful but I don't think it actually is. Its ultimate call for "better designed regulation" is the no-true-scotsman fallacy in sheep's clothing. How do you know if your regulations are "properly designed?" If they produce good outcomes. But the problem is that there is no consensus about what a good outcome is. Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite lit…

It might not be deep and profoundly insightful, but if it sets things up in such a way that it can credibly utter the phrase "properly designed regulation" then it's moving in the right direction.

In other words, properly designed regulation might not be a deep and profoundly insightful solution, but it might seem that way at first glance because our political discourse is so screwed up these days.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#123

Post by colinmhayes » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #110

The article lost me here: "The job of market regulation - fundamentally a restriction on your freedom - is to prevent all that bad stuff." Here's the problem: a "market" that is regulated this way is no longer a market . In order to have a market that works at all as a market, it has to be free in the sense that all transactions are voluntary. If you restrict people's freedom to engage in the transactions of their ch…

Market failures are too common for unregulated markets to be free.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#124

Post by thegrimmest » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Falling somewhat into the category of a libertarian, I fundamentally disagree that "all useful discourse terminates forevermore". My issue is with the presupposition that it's OK to force people to cooperate effectively. All of the named problems are there basically because people aren't interested in solving them voluntarily. It absolutely does not follow that therefore it's okay to use force.

The hubris required to decide that you know better than others how they should live their lives, and your ends justify the means, always astounds me. Treating people as components in a system, to be regulated and managed, is in opposition to treating them as beings with agency, entitled to choose how and when to engage with others.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#125

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

I dunno, sorta seems like trying to solve rentier capitalism from the tech side isn't really going to work.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#126

Post by _9omd » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #2

I think most sensible people had figured this out already. The people that don't and honestly believe everything will be fixed by a DAO or whatever... they're beyond reason.

I think part of the problem is that DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) is simply a poor way to describe what these new orgs are. Yes they're decentralized, but they are not fully autonomous, as they still require people writing code, making proposals, voting, etc. I think a much better term is "decentralized open organization" DOO. This captures better the fact that this revolution is about a new type of human coordination, not automation, even if a lot is automated. I think it helps to frame this as a social revolution to understand the full power of it.

Advances in the ability to coordinate humans often leads to great advances in society and technology. Now where crypto is immensely useful, is that in the past a decentralized group of people would have still had to be tied to a specific nation for banking. Now with crypto, a group of people from all over the world can run a company that's fully internet native that relies on no single nation for it's banking needs. You may not see it, but to me that is a ridiculously powerful concept.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#127

Post by what_is_orcas » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #103

This essay seems deep and profoundly insightful but I don't think it actually is. Its ultimate call for "better designed regulation" is the no-true-scotsman fallacy in sheep's clothing. How do you know if your regulations are "properly designed?" If they produce good outcomes. But the problem is that there is no consensus about what a good outcome is. Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite lit…

> And BTW, the person making that argument before the Supreme Court yesterday was a woman, and one of the justices who is going to vote to eviscerate Roe is a woman, so this is not just the patriarchy at work.

That conclusion doesn't necessarily follow the supporting statements, though I agree with your overall sentiment.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#128

Post by randallsquared » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

This whole essay boils down to "This time, for sure!"

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#129

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #99

To put it in more clear terms, the problem right now we have with society is not centralization vs decentralization, global vs local, or even authority vs freedom. Rather, the configuration between the two opposites constitutes the totality of the whole system, and not just one side is either the poison or the cure. We need to change the whole system, both in terms of centralization and decentralization. Our current…

“ The whole liberal framework of how we think about freedom has to be questioned and challenged”

What do you envision as the alternative?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#130

Post by colinmhayes » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #47

Clubber wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you think about it, humanity really is getting better and better over time. That is such a vague statement it is essentially meaningless. Better how? How is it not better? What do you mean by humanity? How is your life better? How is it worse?

When people say that on HN I read it as: "as a young, healthy and well paid tech worker living in _tech hub of a western country_ life is really good and getting better". We have it really easy indeed, but you can't project that on "humanity"

Global poverty has never been lower, things are not just improving for white collar workers.