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We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

erikmcclure.com

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Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#131

Post by gwbrooks »

thelastgallon wrote: post #66
oatmeal1 wrote: post #4

It's ironic for him to suggest government-run healthcare when it doesn't benefit from the #1 best coordinator of resources on the planet - price. He accidentally highlights the reason we have so many coordination failures - smart people with little wisdom think they can solve every problem, using other people's money, with no consequences for their failure. Not everyone should get free college, and not every house sh…

Can we do this with defense budget instead of healthcare? I don’t mind paying taxes for universal healthcare.

Defense spending is roughly half of what the federal government already spends on healthcare.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#132

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

Fripplebubby wrote: post #107

I agree, factually, with almost all the content of this article, although I find its tone a little grating. There's a joke online - "nobody speaks more confidently than a 15 year old who has smoked weed twice explaining how to smoke weed to a 15 year old who hasn't smoked weed before" - nobody writes an angrier blog post than someone who has watched two YouTube videos about a subject. Doing the work to improve societ…

There's a default assumption that progress is inevitably slow, but I don't think it's obvious that it has to remain that way. I think it's worth challenging our assumptions and really trying to dig in and figure out why certain processes are slow, and if it's possible to do anything to improve upon them.

Lately I've been asking researchers why progress in their field seems so slow from the outside, and if they could explain what kinds of barriers prevent them for going faster. From what I've learned so far, the barriers are usually institutional and political, they're rarely slowed down by technical reasons.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#133

Post by manx »

The solution to the collaboration problem is achieving collective intelligence, e.g. making a crowd smarter than the sum of their parts.

I'm part of a small group who are working on algorithms for achieving that. We're applying system's thinking, game theory, bayesian statistics, computer science to find an algorithm that creates collective intelligence.

Latest creations: https://social-protocols.org/global-brain/ https://social-protocols.org/social-network/

Contributions welcome

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#134

Post by tempestn »

acyou wrote: post #111

Does the person who wrote this article think that a custom disk image == a custom logo? A mistake only possible from someone with extremely poor subject matter expertise, or by text predictive AI? Or, am I totally out of whack and have no idea what the author is writing about?

See recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38515571

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#135

Post by maxbond »

throwaway290 wrote: post #129
maxbond wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the strategy of terrorists. They are looking to provoke a violent overreaction in order to radicalize the populace. It is a response to our ability to blow them up, and not one we have developed an antidote for.

Sure, but those rich elites themselves like to live well and somehow it turns out they when it comes to their own they really don't like to die or see their big prosperous families die. You can't rule radicalized impoverished populations if you yourself are dead. Letting them see that their target can retaliate in this way is not cheap.

Given current events, I don't understand how you can hold this view? We've recently seen a truly horrifying terrorist attack, and the response was as brutal as you would expect. Surely the people who planned and executed it knew that better than we do, since presumably it's their business to know such things.

Surely that's a constructive proof that this notion is mistaken?

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#136

Post by rileymat2 »

acyou wrote: post #111

Does the person who wrote this article think that a custom disk image == a custom logo? A mistake only possible from someone with extremely poor subject matter expertise, or by text predictive AI? Or, am I totally out of whack and have no idea what the author is writing about?

https://www.securityweek.com/many-consumer-enterprise-device...

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#137

Post by Towaway69 »

rileymat2 wrote: post #62

I have some problems with the way modern software is changing, but I don’t think it is QA related, more a race to the bottom with perpetual beginner focused UX. But as far as the author is referencing QA is there a good measure of quality over time? My recollection of consumer software started 30 years ago, and it was incredibly unstable. BSOD frequently, my uptime is far far better now. Save frequently, because you…

Have ransomware attacks increased in that time?

Isn't the increase in attack surfaces for ransomware actors an indication of decline in software quality?

Software has become incredibly complex and interdepended.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#138

Post by throwaway290 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #116
throwaway290 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorist attacks are defendable against. But anyway, you don't need to defend against terrorist attacks as much if you convincingly show terrorists you can come to their home and blow it up if they try.

> Terrorist attacks are defendable against. The next time you’re in line at TSA, at a public event (sporting, concerts), at a major transportation hub, any large gathering of people, think about this position you’ve taken. There is a multiple victim shooting event almost every day in the US, and your argument is terrorist attacks can be defended against? We can’t even protect the country from ourselves. These outcome…

> There is a multiple victim shooting event almost every day in the US, and your argument is terrorist attacks can be defended against? We can’t even protect the country from ourselves

The reason for shooting is related to civilian population carrying weapons. It's tragic but it is also a thing that would make attacking US super impractical.

Remember that Russia is super close to US geographically. It's not such a massive project to throw enough troops east and start with Alaska. So why not? Well, US (thanks its insane military budget that you so denounce) would see it coming years in advance and but even with zero warning every other house they encounter on the way will have well prepared people stoked with assault rifles.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#139

Post by throwup238 »

abroadwin wrote: post #90
arp242 wrote: post #58

For a lot of things the problem is essentially a problem of scale. Those "ancient human tribes" who did so much better were tribes of 100-200 people, and it's actually not that hard to "do the right thing" with a relatively small group of people. Blaming it on the two-party system is such a short-sighted US-centric point of view. There are plenty of countries with other types of democracies, and they have roughly sim…

100-200, you say? Sounds familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Well yeah, Dunbar was an anthropologist studying social structures of tribes and primates…

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#140

Post by Aunche »

arp242 wrote: post #58

For a lot of things the problem is essentially a problem of scale. Those "ancient human tribes" who did so much better were tribes of 100-200 people, and it's actually not that hard to "do the right thing" with a relatively small group of people. Blaming it on the two-party system is such a short-sighted US-centric point of view. There are plenty of countries with other types of democracies, and they have roughly sim…

He doesn't even give an example of "ancient human tribes," but modern day nomads whose traditions have also developed over thousands of years. If ancient human tribes were so great at avoiding tragedy of the commons, I would be eating a mammoth steak right now.
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