Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Speed Limit for Computers

caolan.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 31 posts

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#11

Post by metalcrow »

wyrdcurt wrote: post #6
hnuser123456 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to start with, If you drive your car too fast, you might kill people. If you drive your computer too fast, it might get data corruption and/or reboot unexpectedly.

Or you might build a data center that poisons a community's water and drives up the cost of energy for your neighbors. We can't pretend there are zero negative externalities that accompany unconstrained compute. To be clear I'm not necessarily agreeing with the idea, but to be fair, there's more to it than you're suggesting.

How does a person running a computer too fast cause them to build a building? Maybe make that part illegal, not the indirect cause. Otherwise we may wanna outlaw breathing, it may cause people to murder.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#12

Post by vivid242 »

I like the idea, and it reminded me that the „Vim book“ had the subtitle: „Edit text at the speed of thought“.

How much faster should an ‚automated thinking‘ than a ‚manual thinking‘ be (allowed to be)?

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#13

Post by alex0015 »

wyrdcurt wrote: post #6
hnuser123456 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to start with, If you drive your car too fast, you might kill people. If you drive your computer too fast, it might get data corruption and/or reboot unexpectedly.

Or you might build a data center that poisons a community's water and drives up the cost of energy for your neighbors. We can't pretend there are zero negative externalities that accompany unconstrained compute. To be clear I'm not necessarily agreeing with the idea, but to be fair, there's more to it than you're suggesting.

There's a great deal of demand for compute. Data centers are a very efficient way of providing that compute in a single place with limited resources. If computers were restricted to being slower and less efficient than they are now, people would build even more, and larger, data centers.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#14

Post by wyrdcurt »

metalcrow wrote: post #11
wyrdcurt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you might build a data center that poisons a community's water and drives up the cost of energy for your neighbors. We can't pretend there are zero negative externalities that accompany unconstrained compute. To be clear I'm not necessarily agreeing with the idea, but to be fair, there's more to it than you're suggesting.

How does a person running a computer too fast cause them to build a building? Maybe make that part illegal, not the indirect cause. Otherwise we may wanna outlaw breathing, it may cause people to murder.

Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with the idea and I don't feel strongly enough about it to really argue in its favor, but to answer the question: the same reason why OpenAI doesn't operate out of Sam Altman's garage.

At a certain level of compute you need specialized infrastructure -- such as a purpose-built datacenter -- for the energy needs (and really, I think the stronger argument to be made here is about energy, not raw speed, and where the argument might fall apart is the historical fact that compute tends to become more energy-efficient over time).

Not sure whether the breathing/murder analogy is apt, but I get where you're coming from and I would probably agree that a blanket restriction on computer speed wouldn't be appropriate.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#16

Post by alex0015 »

The article seems to be saying that lack of equity is worse than lack of innovation. Obviously we can strive for having both equity and innovation, but it really seems like the points made in the article are arguing that, for example, if there exists a discrepancy in what speeds are available to different people, this is worse than only the lowest speed being available to everyone.

The linked article from 1973 is very strange to read in 2026 and honestly it's hard to take seriously. It seems to actually argue that China and India should stop developing because development encourages dependence on energy. It says that machines are slaves that modern people are required to master?

The speed equity discussed in the linked paper has actually increased significantly as well. More people have cars, and more people can afford plane trips, and bicycle infrastructure is better all over the nation (the world, probably) compared to 1973. I agree with the general principle that cities should encourage diverse development so more people can choose not to use cars if they want, or if they don't have access to a car. In the paper, this would be achieved by somehow state limiting the amount of energy people would be able to consume per capita. I'm glad that world didn't come to pass.

Basically it sounds like the point of view of the article is that at some point the state should tell people they're not allowed to try to make a certain process more efficient in terms of time or resources, because that might drive demand for better productivity, which would be bad because it drives us further from nature and community. Some of the points intersect with beliefs I hold, but I strongly oppose this way of going about it.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#17

Post by danwills »

nvch wrote: post #7

We have speed limits for vehicles because speed kills. In computing, waiting kills (indirectly, by wasting time). Speed is life. Some roads have minimum speed limits. If we're talking about limits, that's the kind of limit we want.

I am partial to this speed-is-life sentiment, and it made me think of this beautiful and wonderfully poignant demoscene production by Farbrausch and Haujobb: "Time Index". It is made in the memory of a friend of theirs that died.

The softsynth soundtrack includes lyrics and one of them is "we slow down" which I always interpreted as a kind of demoscener's lament since making things go fast is sorta the whole point!

https://youtu.be/fngv1dCFrdo?si=tR-1uQ4vKIPLHZu3

I am not arguing for either side of the fastness debate, while I certainly adore fast computers I don't like the mental image of our computers all blazing away doing stuff mainly humans care about, while the the world 'outside' is steadily getting hotter and more polluted.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#18

Post by cadamsdotcom »

People are too hooked on their feeds to accept an imposition that doesn't decrease their risk of physical harm.

Self-imposable speed limits like screen time limits and blocking services and proxies do exist already and certainly could reduce overall non-physical harm if imposed on everyone - but we struggle as a species to agree on the impact of non-bodily harms.

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#19

Post by RunSet »

zdragnar wrote: post #10
Nevermark wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though no one cares, I feel compelled to put down my 2 cents. I am not sure if you are insulting everyone who reads your point, or your own ability to communicate. But maybe interpret the ideas less as a dichotomy you can't untangle and so must reject, which is a fragile place to reason from, and instead identify what are good points, what are not, and improve upon either. Because there is certainly a great deal of…

What truth? The whole article is absurd. Speed limits exist to reduce fatalities, not reduce inequality. Road speed limits in my area have been increasing, not decreasing, as road designs have improved. Distance didn't scale with speed either - the West was settled well before the automobile.

> Speed limits exist to reduce fatalities

In the USA the national speed limit was implemented by Richard Nixon in response to the oil crisis of 1973. The motive was to reduce energy consumption, not to reduce fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

Re: A Speed Limit for Computers

#20

Post by JuniperMesos »

wyrdcurt wrote: post #6
hnuser123456 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to start with, If you drive your car too fast, you might kill people. If you drive your computer too fast, it might get data corruption and/or reboot unexpectedly.

Or you might build a data center that poisons a community's water and drives up the cost of energy for your neighbors. We can't pretend there are zero negative externalities that accompany unconstrained compute. To be clear I'm not necessarily agreeing with the idea, but to be fair, there's more to it than you're suggesting.

Data centers don't poison a community's water and the people claiming that they do are lying because they dislike generative AI and want to weaponize populist environmentalist sentiment and state regulations against the institutions doing AI inference and training.

They also don't particularly drive up the cost of energy any more than any other phenomenon in human society that uses energy, and the right solution to this is to build more power generation capacity, which is something we should be doing anyway because abundant energy is the foundation of all human prosperity.

Post reply on HN