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Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

mattsclancy.github.io

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Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#91

Post by _DeadFred_ »

literalAardvark wrote: post #78
agumonkey wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 attribute this to a hazy memory of "previous ways". Either that or you're in some very well supplied area. 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…

I remember the shared energy/crowds/community feeling of shopping during the holiday season.

I remember everyone singing along to songs.

I remember when products where safe. Amazon sell fuses that don't work. Food that is doctored. Fake versions of everything. AI generated books.

I remember when businesses were small enough we could and would boycott one that forced them employees to piss in bottles because 'efficiency'.

I remember a ton of times Google maps just fed me straight bullshit.

I remember when CVs weren't automatically rejected based on bullshit criteria/AI decisions without ever being looked at by a human being.

I remember a thousand percent different/more authentic nerding out/hacking community than todays 'embraced' nerd/geek culture.

All of these tools have a horrible side, and because of scale there's not much we can do about it (how do you verify what Google tells you isn't going to get you killed? https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/google-map-res...

and the horrible side keeps growing, while the improvement seems to have mostly happened over a decade ago at this point, with techno optimism beaten out of most of us since then by the very companies that improved our lives a decade ago.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#92

Post by darkerside »

sususuuss wrote: post #57
darkerside wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly written by someone who's never lived without steam power (semi tongue in cheek). But seriously, your ability to expediently research just doesn't compare to the ability to ship a metric ton of freight across the country without marshalling an army of people for months on end. As one example.

There is more to pushing freight than just turning the ignition key. The complexity of supply-chains is overwhelming. Your fancy boat or train needs a boatload (!) of grease, oils, spare parts, maintenance, logs, not to mention fuel, accounting, insurance, the list is endless and it’s all either fully enabled by or extraordinarily simplified by digital networks.

You realize it wasn't always that way, right? And that whole we continue to optimize this complex supply chain, there are diminishing returns. If you roll back recent computing technology, many people die, but if you roll back the industrial revolution, modern civilization collapses.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#93

Post by agumonkey »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #91
literalAardvark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attribute this to a hazy memory of "previous ways". Either that or you're in some very well supplied area. 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…

I remember the shared energy/crowds/community feeling of shopping during the holiday season. I remember everyone singing along to songs. I remember when products where safe. Amazon sell fuses that don't work. Food that is doctored. Fake versions of everything. AI generated books. I remember when businesses were small enough we could and would boycott one that forced them employees to piss in bottles because 'efficien…

I didn't want to answer out of fear of being an over nostalgic person, but these points were exactly what i wanted to write.

Funny

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#94

Post by JimmyBuckets »

azan_ wrote: post #87
LeBit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if I will witness the real revolution in my lifetime.

If revolution happens, lives of almost everyone would become much worse. And for sure lives of IT workers which would be in kulaks category. (disclaimer: it's first world i.e. USA/EU perspective, I know there are other places where revolution could potentially be good).

Revolution can mean many things. We are heading into having a parallel post-growth economy in the coming decades. I see this transition being accelerated by several forces (AI, climate change, digitzation of law and property rights, etc.). This revolution will allow us individually to exit the majority of our time to an economic frame that works for us rather than for the ultra-wealthy and powerful. It's the first moment in history that this feels possible.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#95

Post by literalAardvark »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #91
literalAardvark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attribute this to a hazy memory of "previous ways". Either that or you're in some very well supplied area. 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…

I remember the shared energy/crowds/community feeling of shopping during the holiday season. I remember everyone singing along to songs. I remember when products where safe. Amazon sell fuses that don't work. Food that is doctored. Fake versions of everything. AI generated books. I remember when businesses were small enough we could and would boycott one that forced them employees to piss in bottles because 'efficien…

I agree with most of your points too. But some of them are kinda bullshit.

For instance, why would you blame Google for unattended kids dumb enough to go on a "5h" wilderness trip with 0.5L of water?

I've always hated holiday consumerism.

Products have never been safe, and we're also better at finding out when they're unsafe. I agree that commingling, which has stopped, was bad.

People reject CVs with even less scrutiny than AI.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#96

Post by throw0101a »

blfr wrote: post #7
ernst_klim wrote: post #3

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…

> I think the speedups and conveniences of modern IT and the Internet have been massive

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." — Robert Solow (1987), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

A revisit in 1999:

* https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#97

Post by tim333 »

I figure we're not far off explosive growth but it'll be very different from the industrial revolution. At the moment AI is handy but less capable than humans in many ways so you can't just swap it in for human workers. Before long that'll change so robots can build better robots and on to infinity kinda, subject to resource and energy constraints like Kardashev II. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale). Also planning permission - I could see thing go a bit national park like.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#98

Post by inigyou »

lukan wrote: post #77
inigyou wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will South Africans control traffic then?

What?

South Africans use robots to control traffic. They're mounted to poles and have three different colored lights which tell the cars when to go. You're saying they're actually drones?
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