71–80 of 98 posts
The growth will be in stocks and capital gains, in the consolidation of wealth by a few individuals. If GDP increases, that’s just money left on the table by the ultra wealthy.
I wonder if I will witness the real revolution in my lifetime.
The industrial revolution was a mini-quake compared to automated cognition. But we can learn some things from it. I see the industrial revolution as the invention of the cart. It made horses more productive. Then the car replaced horses. It is taking people longer to wrap their heads around the reality than I thought it would. If there was a competitive human species on the planet getting smarter by the day, people w…
The fundamental flaw of the constitution is that it had no ethics built in, it’s up to the voters to pick better, our press to report truthfully without bias and those have failed as well.
No - the growth today is capital expenditures, not productivity. To be fair, the industrial revolution was a 100 year period or so, computers, web, cloud, mobile and AI will likely be perceived in the same historical framework. AI will take some time to pan out in terms of productivity, but it will. A better comparison might be railroads.
Why is railroad a better comparison?
The industrial revolution was a mini-quake compared to automated cognition. But we can learn some things from it. I see the industrial revolution as the invention of the cart. It made horses more productive. Then the car replaced horses. It is taking people longer to wrap their heads around the reality than I thought it would. If there was a competitive human species on the planet getting smarter by the day, people w…
The ones that can change it won’t because they benefit from the system being how it is. Being a politician is a gateway to money and power. The fundamental flaw of the constitution is that it had no ethics built in, it’s up to the voters to pick better, our press to report truthfully without bias and those have failed as well.
Yes, that would have been a really good intent to make explicit, to guide the courts.
I think of that when the Supreme Court or a state court rules process is more important than a convicts demonstrable (with new evidence that has come to light) innocence. Really horrific given that one out of eight death row inmates are exonerated. That level of bad convictions being overturned despite all the difficulties doing that, strongly suggests that a great many innocent people are still executed.
Another thing I wish the constitution did: Explicitly and universally enshrine decentralization. Not just the implicit decentralization of checks and balances only within the government.
I.e. party seat limits, independent federal and state parties, etc. For any kind of political group or coordination.
Where enough decentralization is enforced, a stable majority interest is maintained (even as who is the majority may change) for no minority to be able to break those requirements.
But where centralization is allowed, it is an eternal fight to hold it back.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sorry i was really asking, i'm quite jaded about internet and i don't see what's so valuable (of course all i see is reddit youtube ..)
All of Amazon, Apple, all the AI stuff, Google, including YouTube, yes. They make tons of money for the US. Value is somewhat more subjective, but Amazon for instance certainly creates an enormous amount of value, as do Google's search and maps products. I would argue that the democratisation of knowledge that YouTube has enabled is also very valuable.
they're all very mild and are not a clear improvement over previous ways, amazon is full of confusing product reviews and false advertising (they did mutualize ~free home deliveries though), youtube is also loaded with bs, the good content is not that much better than a book the rare time it can claim it is (and I'd argue most of the time it's universities uploading videos they had already made before)
I did love google maps but a bit less since they've made it a store locator more than a map.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of Amazon, Apple, all the AI stuff, Google, including YouTube, yes. They make tons of money for the US. Value is somewhat more subjective, but Amazon for instance certainly creates an enormous amount of value, as do Google's search and maps products. I would argue that the democratisation of knowledge that YouTube has enabled is also very valuable.
it's funny how I don't share the appreciation they're all very mild and are not a clear improvement over previous ways, amazon is full of confusing product reviews and false advertising (they did mutualize ~free home deliveries though), youtube is also loaded with bs, the good content is not that much better than a book the rare time it can claim it is (and I'd argue most of the time it's universities uploading video…
I remember not being able to get books, I remember walking for hours in the weather just to find a library that had what I needed, or a shop that sold some flange for the kitchen sink or a crappy 800mAh rechargeable battery for my Walkman despite 1200mAh existing.
I remember trying to figure out where the heck we are/going using rotted out of date map books.
I remember submitting CVs on foot until my legs stopped working.
I remember knowing 0 people I could nerd out with about hacking. I suppose the bright side was that hacking wasn't illegal yet.
And while I'm at it I also remember when MIT OCW came out. It was awesome, but it still sucked. YouTube is a marvel in comparison.
Has Coursera done it better since? Sure. But there's room for more than one player.
All of these digital tools have been dramatic quality of life improvements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I believe that growth caused by the rise of IT, be it Internet or LLM, will be marginal, because the benefits for humanity are very marginal compared to that caused by steam engine, wing, antibiotics or telegraph. Everything IT does is slightly simplifying things we already could do. We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup…
I think the speedups and conveniences of modern IT and the Internet have been massive: I can bank from my pocket, review the best photos out of 100k+ just when riding a tram, get virtually any good produced anywhere delivered to my doorstep in 1-3 business days (and it will be the exact kind and make I chose, not something that happened to be available), read virtually any book ever published while my appointment is…
The Industrial Revolution was basically the height of western civilization, and the modern revolution is the beginning of something else. It’s not surprising that the metrics we developed in the previous civilization can’t really account for the gains we’re seeing now.
Early capitalism didn’t have steady growth because of technical advances. It had steady growth because it was early capitalism. When capitalism expands (be it by replacing older modes of production, or through rebuilding after a world war), it always has steady growth. When there’s nowhere left to expand to, the machine always grips. Technical progress doesn’t prevent this outcome, it accelerates it. More productivit…
Rising productivity either means more stuff or lower prices.