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The dictatorship of the articulate

florentcrivello.com

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#31

Post by coreyisthename »

obblekk wrote: post #26

After playing around with GPT-3 a bit, I've started to suspect a lot of humans are actually very good at manipulating semantic sentences, without necessarily understanding their content. It would explain why so many "smart" people will often speak long sentences that sound right, but have zero information content in them. Maybe it's just not that hard to construct grammatically and semantically correct, but zero info…

As a former technical writer for a major health insurance company, I can attest to this. After writing hundreds of massive documents, guides, tutorials, call scripts, policies and the like, I still had only a tenuous understanding of all the complex bullshit I was writing about.

For that specific industry, the convoluted and needlessly complex garbage is absolutely by design, but it’s a similar concept, I think.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#32

Post by dralley »

superchroma wrote: post #28
plaguepilled wrote: post #6

There is a deep irony in writing an over-worded essay that effectively says 'I don't like it when people outside my profession regulate my actions'. Keep It Simple, Stooge.

I definitely think that the wake left by crypto steaming by and then striking multiple successive icebergs demonstrates that regulation is crucial and that unregulated fields with potential profits very quickly become a hell dominated by huge corporations who start to dictate the terms of the field.

And Uber, and delivery services screwing over businesses, and scooter startups.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#33

Post by jameshart »

quadcore wrote: post #12

The world is complex now, it was simple back then, let me explain. I was thinking the other day, in 1950, you could drop a kid randomly anywhere on the map (say the U.S. but not necessarily), he would easily find its way: to the farm, to the factory, to the military or to the church. Everything would be ok for the 1950 kid youd drop anywhere. He would be fine and happy. Drop a kid nowdays and youd be dropping a body,…

> Everything would be ok for the 1950 kid youd drop anywhere. He would be fine and happy.

Sure. It was a happy and golden time for everyone.

So, one of the amazing things about the modern world is that actual information is at everyone's fingertips, which I find is better than anecdotal conjecture. A quick google away, I can find this document: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380550/pdf/amj...

From this we can learn that since 1950 the mortality rate among 5-14 year olds has declined at an average rate of 2% per year, largely due to reductions in accident rates (particularly motor vehicle accidents) and deaths due to disease. Of any group of random kids of that age in the US, in 1950 pretty much twice as many of them would be dead by 14 than in the present day. If they were black and male, in 1950 their mortality rate from 5-14 was one in a thousand. That it's only half that today is... still pretty shocking.

And that's just the changing rate for kids encountering the worst possible outcome, during their childhood. What other outcomes have changed? Well, drop a boy randomly in the US in 1950, and from 1964 onwards there's about a 10% chance he gets drafted and sent to Vietnam. Or we could look at the other end of the outcome scale: If your hypothetical kid was a 5 year old girl dropped in 1950 America, she'd have very different opportunities compared to a modern child - she'd be 24 before the first women were admitted to Princeton or Yale, for example. If your 1950 experiment dropped a gay kid into America, well... if they're lucky, they're in Illinois where homosexuality becomes legal in 1962. If they're in Texas, they have to wait until 2003.

About a third of kids in 1950 lived in poverty in the US. That improved a lot over the 60s and 70s. Nowadays it's... around a fifth. Still shocking, but again, your odds look better today than 70 years ago.

And let's not get into the ethical issues of your 'drop a random kid somewhere in the US' plan where that might result in dropping a black child in Mississippi before the Civil Rights act of 1964, where they would grow up under Jim Crow. This kid would spend 4 years in segregated schooling before Brown v Board (and probably years after that waiting for desegregation to actually happen), and our hypothetical 1950 5 year old would turn 18 two years before the Voting Rights act.

Yeah. They'd be fine and happy.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#34

Post by briandon »

hackerlight wrote: post #23
superchroma wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a discussion about housing availability. You should make a new submission about that if you want to go into that topic in depth. There are facets to this discussion that your post is glossing over; it's not a binary choice between HK style apartments or suburban sprawl.

I don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing. It's always used as a political weapon against housing. Someone's ability to have shelter always beats out the other person's subjective aesthetic tastes that they have no right to impose on anyone.

Hi. Longtime Hong Kong resident here. Public housing and private housing in HK could both be described, in terms of appearance, as copy-pasted. Quality of construction is exceedingly poor (to get the flavor, you could watch this new-build home inspection video from local TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJtbmkjKG8) and backwards (e.g. single-pane windows are the norm, walls have zero insulation, etc.).

The wait list for public housing is many years long. Depending on whose numbers you believe, between 100k and 200k people are living in subdivided apartments (which, in some cases, translates to a bed inside a literal metal cage -- hence the term "cage apartments"). Private housing costs have gone down very slightly thanks to political developments and purported pandemic control policies, but prices for badly-built, tiny, puzzle-piece-shaped apartments in huge copy-pasted high-rises are eye-wateringly high.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#35

Post by plaguepilled »

superchroma wrote: post #28
plaguepilled wrote: post #6

There is a deep irony in writing an over-worded essay that effectively says 'I don't like it when people outside my profession regulate my actions'. Keep It Simple, Stooge.

I definitely think that the wake left by crypto steaming by and then striking multiple successive icebergs demonstrates that regulation is crucial and that unregulated fields with potential profits very quickly become a hell dominated by huge corporations who start to dictate the terms of the field.

True. Almost as if the regulations... Protect? The... Consumers?

No no, its the 'talkers' ruining it for the 'builders', surely. Not like people in a given industry ever want regulations. Please don't look up Louis Rossma-

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#36

Post by [deleted] »

quadcore wrote: post #12

The world is complex now, it was simple back then, let me explain. I was thinking the other day, in 1950, you could drop a kid randomly anywhere on the map (say the U.S. but not necessarily), he would easily find its way: to the farm, to the factory, to the military or to the church. Everything would be ok for the 1950 kid youd drop anywhere. He would be fine and happy. Drop a kid nowdays and youd be dropping a body,…

[deleted]

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#37

Post by [deleted] »

ethanbond wrote: post #14
earleybird wrote: post #3

"As Marc Andreessen remarks, in every case, the culprit is regulation." - a particularly enjoyable quote.

I wonder who Andreessen thinks is responsible for all the ridiculous zoning laws… wonder what sort of means he may consider if his letter asking not to build near him isn’t successful…

[deleted]

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#38

Post by [deleted] »

caseyross wrote: post #11

If we want progress, it's important to draw a distinction between the different effects of regulation. Some regulation enforces the status quo, by helping entrenched interests use their power to crush potential innovators. Other regulation restricts big players from abusing their dominance, and helps create a level playing field where innovation can succeed on its merits, no matter who's behind it. It's not helpful t…

[deleted]

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#39

Post by [deleted] »

jonahbenton wrote: post #7

"Dictatorship of the Articulate" is a quality phrase. The actual piece is a waste of time. Andreesson capitalism build worship supplemented by for instance American Enterprise Institute propaganda that does not reflect reality. Would downvote if I could.

[deleted]

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#40

Post by charles_kaw »

superchroma wrote: post #20
hackerlight wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"an ocean of copy-pasted apartment buildings like Hong Kong" That's an incredible way to frame place for people to live . You may find that aesthetically disgusting, that's your right, but I find the legally mandated suburbs of an expensive city to be morally disgusting given the impacts on the environment and poor people.

This isn't a discussion about housing availability. You should make a new submission about that if you want to go into that topic in depth. There are facets to this discussion that your post is glossing over; it's not a binary choice between HK style apartments or suburban sprawl.

>This isn't a discussion about housing availability

Down-talking dense, quickly built housing because you don't like how it looks IS making it about housing availability. Those buildings were built to quickly get people housing in a reliable way. Every month they waited was a worse housing situation.

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