The Gentle Singularity • Hacker News Board

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#541

Post by grafmax » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

atleastoptimal wrote: post #540

grafmax wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that facto…

Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which i…

If you look at the decline in poverty since 1980 most of that is due to China’s policies [1] which have combined social programs, central planning, with, yes, a portion of the economy running in market economics. And note that this occurred after private property was widely expropriated in a communist revolution. Free markets centralize wealth and power; the capitalist class always uses its wealth to control the political process as best it can. What we attribute to “common sense regulation” in the global north is actually the result of historical compromises made by the ruling class due to pressure from below. Left to itself the capitalist class will pursue profits at the expense of everything else. Failing to do so, capitalists will be outcompeted by those that do. (We see the effect of such structural incentives today with the climate crisis.)

Can markets be useful? Yes, as part of a broader policy that checks capitalist power either through labor or government. In the US I believe the government is captured by the capitalist class; thus it seems to me that organized labor is the only avenue for real progress in the US.

[1] https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#542

Post by atleastoptimal » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

grafmax wrote: post #541

atleastoptimal wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which i…

If you look at the decline in poverty since 1980 most of that is due to China’s policies [1] which have combined social programs, central planning, with, yes, a portion of the economy running in market economics. And note that this occurred after private property was widely expropriated in a communist revolution. Free markets centralize wealth and power; the capitalist class always uses its wealth to control the poli…

The China thing people always bring up, but it's notable that the complete expropriation of private property and radical communist central planning preceded the massive periods of famine in China from 1950-1970, and only after free market reforms, creation of the special economic zones and integration into the world market did China see massive growth in general welfare.

Notably, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan had much faster improvements in GDP per capita and general welfare compared to mainland China, and today enjoy a higher standard of living, despite starting from a similar point in the 1950s.

Still, I agree with you, social programs are necessary, and China's top-down programs have perhaps given it distinct advantages it otherwise would not have now, but fundamentally free market capitalism as a foundation has routinely been the biggest driver of wealth over the 20th century. My examples (the "Asian tigers") do have strong social welfare programs, workers rights, etc, but they all fundamentally are capitalist countries whose wealth came largely from the benefits of commerce, free market incentives for technological innovation, and free enterprise.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#543

Post by LtWorf » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #531

LtWorf wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it will not soon be biased as search is?

I think AI gives us the opportunity to write our own ranking algorithms. Of course most people will pick an off-the-shelf editorial perspective but I expect these to be much more configurable than the current state with a tiny number of algorithmic gatekeepers.

The cost of AI is training it. If you can't do it yourself (and you can't), you don't decide what the weights are.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#544

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #440

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a few designs in mind for an alternative to scarcity based economics. I don't presume to have it right, but its worth a shot and its a bit more concrete than blind trust in one technology or another. I thought it would take my whole life to just lay the foundation, but with some AI help, maybe not. The trouble with you naysayers is you always take as immutable things that we can change.

We could have had meaningful post-scarcity economics in 1968 (read Murray Bookchin). It is not a technological problem. It is a social problem.

That's a false dichotomy, technological advancement has been solving and causing social problems for as long as there has been technology.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#545

Post by hdjdbdirbrbtv » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 5:37 AM UTC

thegeomaster wrote: post #494

hdjdbdirbrbtv wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about teaching in the context window or fine tuning? If it is the context window, then you are limited to the size of said window and everything is lost on the next run. Learning is memory, what you are describing is an llm being the main character in the movie Momento, I.e. no longterm memories past what was trained in the last training run.

There's really no defensible way to call one "learning" and the other not. You can carry a half-full context window (aka prompt) with you at all times. Maybe you can't learn many things at once this way (though you might be surprised what knowledge can be densely stored in 1m tokens), but it definitely fits the GP's definition of (1) real-time and (2) based on a few examples.

Yes, one is committing knowledge to neurons, the other is commuting knowledge to short term memory.

Put another way, if you took a llm with random weights. Do you expect you could rely on context alone?

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#546

Post by ConspiracyFact » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

atleastoptimal wrote: post #540

grafmax wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that facto…

Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which i…

>Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo.

This is true for the first generation of factory workers. After that the proletariat emerges, an urban underclass that can’t use the threat of going back to the farm as negotiating leverage, because they don’t know how to farm. I don’t think that the way that leftist governments went after farmers was fair or even humane, but the motivation for it was basically terror at being trapped under the thumb of the owner class.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#547

Post by grafmax » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

ConspiracyFact wrote: post #546

atleastoptimal wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which i…

>Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo. This is true for the first generation of factory workers. After that the proletariat emerges, an urban underclass that can’t use the threat of going back to the farm as negotiating leverage, because they…

If you were a handicraft worker and a factory opened, your old livelihood was destroyed. You may be making optimal choices for yourself by shifting to factory work, but to claim that factory life was better because people chose it obscures the fact that the old choices were made defunct by the factory opening.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#548

Post by grafmax » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

atleastoptimal wrote: post #542

grafmax wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the decline in poverty since 1980 most of that is due to China’s policies [1] which have combined social programs, central planning, with, yes, a portion of the economy running in market economics. And note that this occurred after private property was widely expropriated in a communist revolution. Free markets centralize wealth and power; the capitalist class always uses its wealth to control the poli…

The China thing people always bring up, but it's notable that the complete expropriation of private property and radical communist central planning preceded the massive periods of famine in China from 1950-1970, and only after free market reforms, creation of the special economic zones and integration into the world market did China see massive growth in general welfare. Notably, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Tai…

I guess my concern is about the living standards of workers not creation of wealth. I think your argument is that growing wealth helps the working class as it creates more wealth, and thus a bigger pie. My argument is that a bigger pie does not benefit the working class without external forces pressuring the capitalist class.

I agree markets can be beneficial in some ways but they also have pathological behaviors left on their own. In capitalist countries the capitalist class more or less runs the government, even in so-called democracies. This is because wealth and thus power sits with the capitalist class. In our society market effects over time have produced a wealth disparity so great that the capitalist class is pushing austerity measures that will likely succeed in further enriching itself at the expense of the working class - lowering living standards while increasing profits. In the meantime existential risks to the human race like climate change or nuclear war are not only neglected but actively stoked.

I also would caution against the use of the term “free” market; China directs its markets; even the “Asian tigers” story was the outcome of state policies deliberately building a manufacturing base including measures such as education and land reform - admittedly a much freer hand given was given to markets compared to China; yet in neither case would I characterize these gains as the result of markets operating truly independently or freely; in both cases market effects were guided and channeled toward specific desired outcomes.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#549

Post by _DeadFred_ » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #490

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing prices in so many places are high because Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property in tech spheres (or able to sell their property for crazy high prices because of the tech spheres) moved to other locations and caused property values in those areas to go up. Why is Hacker News trying to rewrite this?

No one's trying to rewrite anything. "Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property" Please dig into why that statement is true and re-read your parent statement. Your analysis can't just abruptly stop there. It all goes back to housing supply.

It all goes back to tech. Tech jobs grow in the area and pay significantly higher than previous jobs. Those jobs increase people moving to the area by dramatic, non-traditional numbers outpacing how the area previously approached housing, and give the people much more buying power than the current residents, pushing those people (including me) out. The housing supply problem goes back to... tech. No community is prepared for a gold rush to happen, nor has housing plans in place to accommodate it. Nor do they normally want to accommodate it. So it turns into a big of a mess.

Please dig into why my analysis is correct. I lived through it. I had to leave friends and family. It negatively impacted mine and almost every friends life negatively (as in had to more away and start a new life).

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#550

Post by theptip » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

LtWorf wrote: post #543

theptip wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI gives us the opportunity to write our own ranking algorithms. Of course most people will pick an off-the-shelf editorial perspective but I expect these to be much more configurable than the current state with a tiny number of algorithmic gatekeepers.

The cost of AI is training it. If you can't do it yourself (and you can't), you don't decide what the weights are.

You can steer an AI without training it. It’s called Prompt Engineering.

It doesn’t give you full control, but I believe it gives you enough control to do what I proposed for most consumers.