Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even a 30th percentile US household would be above average globally…?
If only they also had access to goods and services at globally average prices...
How does that relate to the phenomena of regression to the mean?
The world of tomorrow
21–30 of 141 posts
Re: The world of tomorrow
#22That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen, or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for technology. The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
For cars the US does have Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian. The first two are vertically integrated, making as many of their own components as possible. We also have Intel, and a pretty great rocket company.
> For cars the US does have Tesla (...) We also have (...) a pretty great rocket company
And yet you all wish you didn't. Well, maybe not everyone, but it's the dominant view.
This brings back a memory of a HN comment from a little over a decade ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128
I'll just quote it in full:
If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you enforce this guarantee?" Etc.
These are reasonable questions, but as Shaw said, all progress comes from unreasonable men. I cannot help but be fundamentally depressed as I read these comments. In my view, Elon Musk has, moreso than any other human except maybe Bill Gates, given every absolute inch of human effort and genius to fight to solve the world's biggest problems. And all we have for him, after benefiting freely from the fruit of his labor, is skepticism. We want more. It's not enough. It's never enough.
Yes, Tesla Motors is a company operating in a media-hyped 2014 America. I know some of you are butthurt that he engages in the same "dishonest" PR tactics that other companies do. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. The end product he's producing will save humanity. That all of America has not rallied behind Musk and Tesla as the most important movement and achievement in the last 100 years of human history absolutely blows my mind.
Not only do we not recognize his goals or his achievements, we actively try and bring him down and shit on his accomplishments. "Well, they invented a pretty cool electric motor, sure, but they were kind of dishonest in that one press release that one time."
Go fuck yourself.
I want to say "I'm done with Hacker News", but we know that's not true. I'm supremely disappointed in all of you. Godspeed, Musk. I thought this was a great announcement, and I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith.
Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then, but nowhere near as much and as fast as our "shitty, myopic, destructive society", and in particular the Internet commentariat.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#23Re: The world of tomorrow
#24The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers. To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet…
We're all so pessimistic about the future not because we think it's going to be captured by the plutocrats and oligarchs, but because we know the future has already been preemptively captured by them. They're all doing the work now to cement their positions in the future, and there's nothing the rest of us can do about it. I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps we are going to see in 2030, 2040, o…
That’s what they want us to believe. But at the end of the day, we can always fight. There’s little they can do to stop a massive violent uprising.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#25The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers. To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet…
without the so called "corporate class" or capitalists and their relentless effort to pursue wealth, everyone would be worse off today. Billons died from communist wet stream in the 20 century but the lessons are still not learned. Yes, government regulation is important but capitalism is the reason why millions of people are not starving today unlike any other periods in time.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#26The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers. To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet…
It's so easy to blame it all on the feet of oligarchs, but it is ultimately our collective responsibility. The democrats lost the popular vote. Think about that.
Progress, or even the status quo as it is today is rejected by half of the population.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does that relate to the phenomena of regression to the mean?
In that it's tricky to identify the right mean to measure the regression against.
It doesn’t matter which one you pick, there are no known exceptions to the general phenomena.
That’s why I said by definition.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#28The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers. To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet…
> This has been at the cost of concentration and increases in pollution and poverty in the poorest nations.
Poverty is way down globally. Poor nations are far from where they need to be, but we've lifted a billion or so people out of abject poverty in my lifetime.
Don't let a determination to believe everything is bad force you to ignore when things get better.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#29The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers. To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet…
This attitude is so common. It's obviously wrong. Humanity is richer and freer than ever. Here's a theory of why people spend so much time railing against modernity, capitalism, and "the corporate class":
Humans used to have to labor all to avoid starvation. There were few choices and most of us we died in the town where we were born. Compare to today -- now, we have incredible freedom, cheap and delicious food, cheap ubiquitous entertainment, are more or less immune to the elements, and have tons of free time. But all of this freedom and plenty has forced us to make choices, and it turns out people aren't good at making choices. We struggle to not gorge ourselves on food or waste years of our lives on insipid entertainment. We would like to exercise, eat right, read books, learn things, contribute meaningfully to our areas of interest -- but most of us don't. Worse, we have no excuse for our choices because we are almost completely free.
This dynamic leads to a situation where people hate modernity. Partly because making choices is hard and partly because our freedom makes it clear that our bad choices are our own fault. And so people long for a return to un-freedom. Many of us would rather be poor and starving than to have to make choices and face our own inadequacies.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
For cars the US does have Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian. The first two are vertically integrated, making as many of their own components as possible. We also have Intel, and a pretty great rocket company.
> For cars the US does have Tesla (...) We also have (...) a pretty great rocket company And yet you all wish you didn't. Well, maybe not everyone, but it's the dominant view. This brings back a memory of a HN comment from a little over a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885128 I'll just quote it in full: If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some…
Definitely not me. I was a huge Musk fan back in 2014. These days I'm less thrilled with his new focus on politics, but Tesla and SpaceX are more than just Musk and we're far better off having them. If not for these companies, we'd probably still be convinced by legacy auto that EVs weren't practical and nobody wanted them, and by legacy aerospace that reusable rockets were a bad idea and only large government-run projects could get to orbit.
And that's just the beginning. Between Starship and FSD, the impact of these two companies could end up far greater than what we've seen so far. It'd be a shame to miss out on the sci-fi wonder of it all just due to the CEO's personality and politics.