The dictatorship of the articulate • Hacker News Board

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#71

Post by creakingstairs » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

1dry wrote: post #63

Unspoken and underlying the author's entire worldview seems to be, "the more new things, the better," a not uncommon tunnel view in the engineering world. The purpose of regulation, ideally, is to ensure that whatever activity/process is being regulated is worth the cost(s) for the majority of people. Defining those terms and making that decision is precisely the job of regulators, who are ideally accountable to a de…

Not to mention that giving healthcare, clean water and clean air to people who don’t have it will increase “growth” in long term, probably more than anything new.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#72

Post by systemvoltage » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

michaelwww wrote: post #62

I think we can all agree that we would like less regulation on us when we are trying to do something, but I wonder how much less regulation we would accept on others who are trying to do something we don't like? I don't think many want to live in a world with no regulation, because some idiot would dumping old cars in the river by our house. I don't know if we're over-regulated or that the world has become more compl…

Those regulations can stay. If you ever worked on a complex highly regulated space such as architecture/construction; there are lot of things that get piled up that make no sense whatsoever even diving into the history and context of why it was written.

For example, Oregon's gas pump law (you cannot fill your own gas), I remember diving into the actual law and reasons behind it said something along the lines of "Because it is dangerous to walk outside in rainy weather and fill your own gas". It was a while ago and I can't find the text, but it was something absurd like this, I'll edit the comment with the factual info. Anyhow, legislators write laws to fulfill their campaign promises and they may not be in the interest of the benefit of the society, especially in the long term.

Edit, I found it:

ORS 480.315(4)

The dangers of crime and slick surfaces described in subsection (3) of this section are enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility;

ORS 480.315(15)

Self-service dispensing at retail presents a health hazard and unreasonable discomfort to persons with disabilities, elderly persons, small children and those susceptible to respiratory diseases;

https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_480.315

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#73

Post by StanislavPetrov » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

michaelwww wrote: post #62

I think we can all agree that we would like less regulation on us when we are trying to do something, but I wonder how much less regulation we would accept on others who are trying to do something we don't like? I don't think many want to live in a world with no regulation, because some idiot would dumping old cars in the river by our house. I don't know if we're over-regulated or that the world has become more compl…

The need for regulation is directly relation to population size, which is ironic because many of those who are in favor of deregulation are also in favor of unlimited "growth". If you are the only person on the planet, you don't need laws and you don't need regulations - they are moot by definition. If there are 10 people on the planet, they could each have a coal burning power plant that is 1% efficient and still have no measurable impact on the environment. The number of people you jam onto the lifeboat is directly proportional to the number of rules and regulations you need to manage the interpersonal relationships, scarcity of resources and the consequences of behavior on the finite environment.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#74

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

BMc2020 wrote: post #18

It’s a funny coincidence that the field where we’re seeing the most innovation happens to be the one we regulated least, and that the fields that got worse are the most regulated ones. --------- As Marc Andreessen remarks, in every case, the culprit is regulation. Ho hum. And the 5 year old AEI chart that's been bumping around awhile. IIRC TVs are so low because they use a trick called 'hedonic averaging' where a 27…

Marc Andreessen actually demonstrated this himself by ensuring that housing wouldn't be built in his city. I liked that.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#75

Post by wzwy » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC

What the author meant by innovation seems to be limited to world-changing innovation like the telephone or internet. Following that, I’m unsure if world-changing innovation is slowing down primarily because of the talkocracy. The issue is not exactly about innovation slowing down because of X or Y, but as more and more innovations are made, the time needed to get to the next innovation will potentially increase. Each innovation introduces yet another complexity we need to handle, and unless we can keep up with the new complexity on top of the current set of complexities, we’ll just have to contend with the slowness.

It’s possible at some point that the complexity is too big, no amount of talkocracy purge can allow us to replicate the innovation speed of the past.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#76

Post by zol » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

plaguepilled wrote: post #68

closeparen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the more stringent the local housing regulators are, the more I should be able to find safe, decent, affordable places to live. Whereas in a place where the average project goes through fewer hearings, where the words "affordability" and "equity" rarely cross planners' lips, the housing should be poor quality, unsafe, way too expensive, only the rich living there. And if I go to a neighborhood that violates every…

Well, yes, that supports my point. Go look at Sydney's property market and the related alleged corruption.

Source? I’d like to go look.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#77

Post by briandon » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

hackerlight wrote: post #44

briandon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saying it's copy-pasted is a criticism of the aesthetic, not the build quality. Copy-pasting designs is just economies of scale and should lead to cheaper construction and design costs, all else held equal. I have no problem with regulations of apartment quality. Those are usually too lax. This is a point made elsewhere in the thread. We need more good regulations and less bad regulations. More regulations of build q…

There's technically no reason that copy-pasted skyscraper apartment buildings can't be built to a high standard, quality-wise, and it certainly may yield savings to the entity commissioning the project.

But there's no reason they can't be built to a low standard (and this subthread is about Hong Kong, where that is certainly the case) and there's nothing preventing cheaply-built, shabby, cookie cutter housing from being sold at exorbitant prices (ditto).

Your statement, in taking issue with someone else's completely accurate description of HK buildings as copy-paste jobs, that you "don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing" in tandem with an invocation of "ability to have shelter" signaled a deep lack of understanding about HK's housing situation.

I'm telling you that HKers aren't seeing any of the "ability to have shelter" benefit you seem to be imputing to ugly, identical tower blocks. The wait list for copy-paste public housing is years long and it's a byzantine process to get into an apartment even then. Private copy-paste housing costs an arm and a leg for cubby-hole sized micro-apartments, so much so that 100-200 thousand people at any given moment are living in desperate conditions under spalling concrete, with rats and bedbugs, and shared toilets and "kitchens" that I suspect would give you the dry heaves if you were to take a tour of such places.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#78

Post by makeitdouble » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #72

michaelwww wrote: post #62

I think we can all agree that we would like less regulation on us when we are trying to do something, but I wonder how much less regulation we would accept on others who are trying to do something we don't like? I don't think many want to live in a world with no regulation, because some idiot would dumping old cars in the river by our house. I don't know if we're over-regulated or that the world has become more compl…

Those regulations can stay. If you ever worked on a complex highly regulated space such as architecture/construction; there are lot of things that get piled up that make no sense whatsoever even diving into the history and context of why it was written. For example, Oregon's gas pump law (you cannot fill your own gas), I remember diving into the actual law and reasons behind it said something along the lines of "Beca…

Caveat that the text of the laws is often disconnected from what they are there for.

For instance I've seen many local laws explained as "preserving local heritage and historic places" when their actual intended effect is to block affordable housing.

I assume you also see specific building rules that increase the building cost for seemingly no reason, when in practice it helps ruling out low income people moving in. That's from the top of my head, but I'd expect most laws going further that "don't kill people" to be at least half motivated by something else that the stated intent.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#79

Post by plankers » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

right, it's the fault of regulators that every major industry has come do be dominated by a small handful of conglomerates that survive by mimicking each other and consuming every smaller challenger that might one day, through the power of innovation, grow and compete with the existing monoliths.

oh wait, that's the opposite of regulation that caused that. my bad.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#80

Post by taneq » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 5:35 AM UTC

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…

It’s not just easier than constructing novel thoughts - it’s safer, too. You get to leave the impression of being an eloquent, persuasive intellectual without any of the risk that comes with actually expressing something that people might then dislike.