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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#11

Post by jebarker »

investguy1 wrote: post #6
unsui wrote: post #4

This is what frustrates me to no end, re what's going on with DOGE and the indistriminant shutting off of legacy systems. As Joel Spolsky once commented, , all non-trivial abstractions are, to some degree, leaky. This is because reality itself is leaky. Or another way to put it, reality itself is non-trivially complex. And any sufficiently long-lived production system that works at scale necessarily has to accommodat…

In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…

> It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government

I don't think anyone has a problem with the question being asked. It's the non-scientific method of experimentation that is troubling people.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#13

Post by zht »

investguy1 wrote: post #6
unsui wrote: post #4

This is what frustrates me to no end, re what's going on with DOGE and the indistriminant shutting off of legacy systems. As Joel Spolsky once commented, , all non-trivial abstractions are, to some degree, leaky. This is because reality itself is leaky. Or another way to put it, reality itself is non-trivially complex. And any sufficiently long-lived production system that works at scale necessarily has to accommodat…

In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…

yes? is this a serious question?

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#14

Post by bluGill »

radiospiel wrote: post #9
investguy1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…

> Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? oh but certainly. Healthcare, social security, education, … just to name a few

The question was 28x though. Not just are you getting more value, but is the value 28 times more. This is not clear, and probably answerable. Health care is very different between now and 1800 (in 1800 your lifespan was measurably better if you didn't go to a doctor ever - this was before handwashing and antibiotics). Even if you compare today, France and the US have many differences in the current system and so you can argue things either way and we learn more about your bias than any truth (there are pros and cons of both systems so all conclusions). Both todays are very different from either in 1800, and we have no way of knowing how either would be different.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#15

Post by BoiledCabbage »

investguy1 wrote: post #6
unsui wrote: post #4

This is what frustrates me to no end, re what's going on with DOGE and the indistriminant shutting off of legacy systems. As Joel Spolsky once commented, , all non-trivial abstractions are, to some degree, leaky. This is because reality itself is leaky. Or another way to put it, reality itself is non-trivially complex. And any sufficiently long-lived production system that works at scale necessarily has to accommodat…

In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…

> In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP.

Interesting that you specifically chose a covid year. In 2024 spending was 23%. The 50 year average of spending a percentage of GDP is 21%.[1]

Yet again, anyone who believes that we have some crazy out of line spending right now is in a media/propaganda echo chamber.

And if anyone believes that hacking apart our country under the guise of "cutting spending" again is falling for the same playbook. What is being done is not at all driven by cutting spending, that's just the justification bring put forward - any amount of looking into what's being done, vs what's is claimed is being done makes that obvious.

The echo chamber that had been created is out of control at this pointas somehow a significant number of people believe what is being said.

[1]https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60843/html#:~:text=In%20tota...

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#16

Post by gerardvivancos »

bluGill wrote: post #14
radiospiel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? oh but certainly. Healthcare, social security, education, … just to name a few

The question was 28x though. Not just are you getting more value, but is the value 28 times more. This is not clear, and probably answerable. Health care is very different between now and 1800 (in 1800 your lifespan was measurably better if you didn't go to a doctor ever - this was before handwashing and antibiotics). Even if you compare today, France and the US have many differences in the current system and so you…

Asking the question with the provided data is too simplistic to even argue about.

"Here's the non contextualized percentages, what do you think of the difference between this two percentages which are more than two centuries apart, and from different countries?"

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#18

Post by metalman »

Trasmatta wrote: post #7
coliveira wrote: post #3

The universe seems to have a fractal structure. At every scale we can look there is a huge amount of detail.

One thing I find interesting is the apparent "End of Greatness". It seems like the fractal nature of reality has both an upper and lower bound? > The End of Greatness is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million light-years) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized in accordance with the cosmological principle. At this scale,…

Its not just the(possible) fractal nature of the universes structure,it is that the composition of idividual portions varries, and those portions react differently to the forces bieng exerted on them. And then at the fine level, is it the same to accelerated by a gravitational force, as it is to be accelerated by a magnetic one, of course not. We have layers of complexity, and it is quite beyond any imagining or quantifying. Luckily our aproximations will get a sandwich made or soup,it might be better for pondering the universe, as it can be stired to make little swirly fractals.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#19

Post by daedrdev »

investguy1 wrote: post #6
unsui wrote: post #4

This is what frustrates me to no end, re what's going on with DOGE and the indistriminant shutting off of legacy systems. As Joel Spolsky once commented, , all non-trivial abstractions are, to some degree, leaky. This is because reality itself is leaky. Or another way to put it, reality itself is non-trivially complex. And any sufficiently long-lived production system that works at scale necessarily has to accommodat…

In 1800, the government of the USA spent 2% of GDP. In 2020, the government of the USA spent 30% of GDP. In 2024, the government of France spent 57% of GDP. Are the people of 2024 France really getting 28x the value from their government as 1800 USA? It is not evil to ask these questions or to experiment with government, And more people should consider backing off from political-media consumption as it is clearly tox…

France has a massive welfare state and pension system (which is causing a crisis as they cant afford it in the long run). People probably are getting 28x more from the government than before those existed.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#20

Post by saxenauts »

go_elmo wrote: post #17
coliveira wrote: post #3

The universe seems to have a fractal structure. At every scale we can look there is a huge amount of detail.

Maybe its not due to the universe but our perception of it?

why is our perception and the way it works different from the universe?

with enough agency, and ignoring everything else in the world you realize that your perception is all there is, that you can ever be sure of.

There is no universe, there is no quantum physics. Those are just models, your perception models them.

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