100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#281

Post by guntars » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #240

nouveaux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from shooting nuclear missiles at San Francisco. Yet I doubt that when you insist on this narrative, you would think of yourself as being tyrannical. Extreme examples work, because you can actually count on the people reading your comment to agree with you. But you can't extrapolate towards less universally held examples…

> Rather, it has seemed to me that rural folks live closer to nature than urban folks, and have often had firsthand experience that mother nature tends to be nasty and brutish.

That's an interesting interpretation. To me, what's more nasty and brutish than a fellow man? I always thought the divide was explained by how in the country everyone knows everyone and have repeated interactions with the same people. It's prisoners dilemma, but the game doesn't end. Who needs rules when you can all punish somebody for an offense (like being gay)?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#282

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #223

dmitriid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom Three years ago I bought an apartment. I got a loan from a bank over internet and phone. The contract was three pages of clear Swedish that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of i, could understand. The contract signing was intermediated by a person whose job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. In the end, all of the following was guaranteed : -…

It improves that process in a disintegrating third world country, which many of us may find ourselves in within our lifetimes.

> It improves that process in a disintegrating third world country,

A disintegrating third world country will not be able to enforce anything. So, you've transferred your money and got a key to a non-existent place.

Good luck with your "improved process".

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#283

Post by pitaj » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #243

pitaj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central panning doesn't scale because of limits to economic knowledge and calculation. You can't possibly know enough about what everyone needs or wants in an economy. Even if you did, calculating resource allocation based on that is NP.

People constantly forget that large multinationals like Amazon are bigger that many countries, are purely authoritarian structures and work as 100% centralized economies. > Central panning doesn't scale On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability. The problem is that dictatorships (both co…

> large multinationals like Amazon

I don't know about the internal workings of Amazon specifically, but many corporations are set up as hierarchical "business units" that each operate as separate companies within: selling their products and services within the company. There's still a market, not everything is determined centrally.

> On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability.

China grew much faster after it instituted market reforms. I'm not as familiar with Soviet Russia, but I'd be surprised if it grew faster than similar market-based countries during the same time period.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#284

Post by leafmeal » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

syndacks wrote: post #270

zackmorris wrote: post #218

I've been thinking a lot lately about first principles. For example, the Golden Rule is great, but the concept of reincarnation transcends it, making it self-evident. The Book of Genesis probably started "in a beginning", not "in the beginning". And so on. When I look around at the state of the world today, it just makes me so tired. Everyone's running around on autopilot and not questioning the basic assumptions. It…

You had me except for the reincarnation/another life bit. Bedsides scripture, is there any evidence of this in science? I'm asking genuinely here.

No, there's no evidence in science of reincarnation or an afterlife.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#285

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

jonstaab wrote: post #189

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

Broaden your historical context, and Keynes becomes the junior developer who thinks he can elegantly fix everything.

Thinking deeply about the system and finding the changes you can apply with minimal disruption and maximal impact is the opposite of what the GP is talking about.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#286

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

Of course. And it's often the same people. Or at least the same kinds of people.

None of which tackles the real problem, which is that corporations, top-down oligarchies, monopolies, unregulated market economies, bureaucracies, and so on are all examples of the same problem - which is that hierarchies with wide power inequalities are mental illness factories. They enable and cultivate personality disorders.

As the power inequalities increase, everything turns to shit, because the people who have real power get more and more aggressively psychopathic, extractive, demanding, irrational, and dangerous.

If you add some negative feedback/oversight and apply some filtering to keep the crazies out - difficult, but possible - I strongly suspect you can eventually push any system back to stability and incline it towards producing whatever form of growth you're interested in.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#287

Post by padobson » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

nouveaux wrote: post #80

pjkundert wrote: post #39

This article is profoundly insightful. I have been searching for patterns and insights in this field for 25 years. What apenwarr concludes is true: All we need is to build distributed systems that work. That means decentralized bulk activity, hierarchical regulation. The problem is, everyone wants distributed systems that require everyone else to agree (global consensus), which is literally impossible (see: CAP theor…

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from shooting nuclear missiles at San Francisco. Yet I doubt that when you insist on this narrative, you would think of yourself as being tyrannical.

I disagree with the premise here. China doesn't need to agree that shooting nukes at San Fran is bad, they just need to agree that shooting nukes at San Fran is going to cost them Shanghai. That's more like markets and prices than it is appealing to a centralized hierarchy.

One of the best observations about why people in urban areas are more liberal, and rural areas are more conservative, has to do with the idea that when you are around more people, you need more rules to guide how to interact with one another.

This might be true, but if you look at the state of LA, San Fran, Chicago's South Side, Detroit and Baltimore, it's tough to say all those extra rules have kept them stable and prosperous. I'm not saying the answer is necessarily "tear it all down and go DeFi", but it's pretty clear that on a long enough timeline, the regulation fails to punish the bad actors and actually restricts the good actors from fixing problems independently.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#288

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #256

delusional wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the argument is that transferrable. As a developer you don't really live within the legacy systems. At most you're a politician negotiating between the different component parts. Society is different. I don't like DeFi, but I get what they're feeling. It feels like society has left us behind. Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. You…

> Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. Gay marriage, the fall of communism, civil rights, universal health care (in every rich country but one), women's rights. Don't forget about the very important real progress being made.

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all, and thusly would include "gay" marriage (all marriage is marriage if it's undefined)...

We don't have a government definition of prayer or baptism, but for some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also why do they get varyingly get tax incentives or disincentives?

Maybe its the armchair libertarian in me, but it seems like we should just remove any formal definition of marriage from the government and instead normalize more power of attorney style actions.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#289

Post by jjtheblunt » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

I think your point is stronger than you worded it, by saying junior developers, as the observation holds for developers period, when faced with a mess.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#290

Post by ErrantX » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

Working in finance myself, I totally agree with you on the regulators lint. Everyone arguing regulators are evil is genuinely tech and finance savvy. The regulator is not there to protect them. They are there to protect the vast majority - not only from the outright criminals but also the slightly evil financial services companies (see the Wonga and payday loans debacle in the UK).

Say what you like about regulators - and they regularly mess up big - but they ensure that 99% of consumer finance companies have the cash to back up deposits because they are forced to!

We don't necessarily need more regulation, but more of the right regulation would be good.