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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

cjohnson.io

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Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#21

Post by AnthonyMouse »

houseofshards wrote: post #18
nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

As a consequence, nuclear scientists/physicists of the Cold War era are analogous to patent lawyers today. Kind of sad don't you think ? :)

That's the point where the analogy breaks down though, because the actors in the patent case are private actors rather than sovereigns. So if you e.g. abolish software patents the whole problem disappears, but nobody can "abolish" nuclear weapons because they're a consequence of the laws of physics rather than the laws of the United States.

If humans had the power to amend the laws of physics to make nuclear weapons impossible and yet nuclear physicists lobbied against it, then they would be in the same position as patent lawyers.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#22

Post by noonespecial »

nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

That and even if the states that developed them in the first place never intended to use them, they remain in the environment for many years after, poisoning entire regions of the landscape. Sometimes to the point of making those regions uninhabitable.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#23

Post by absherwin »

Reputation should solve this problem given that life is a repeated game as long as we also are able to be long-sighted. A more formal argument can be found here: http://economics.mit.edu/files/4754

That suggests the cultural problem is decline in longer-term thinking or more likely a decline in arbitrary codes of behavior without a concomitant increase in longer-term thinking that would recreate many of those same norms.

American business used to place a high value on trust: "A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom. I think that is the fundamental basis of business." -J. Pierpont Morgan

As another example, Warren Buffet seldom does diligence to determine an offer; he trusts those from who he buys to deal and report honestly.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#26

Post by araftery »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9
greatzebu wrote: post #3

> A "Pareto optimal" solution is one which, given all the possibilities of action, produces the best outcome for both parties (with some negotiable surplus). This isn't quite right. In a Pareto optimal solution, there's no way to improve things for one party without making them worse for another party, but there's no guarantee that the outcome is good for everyone. "I get everything, you get nothing" is a Pareto-opti…

That still isn't quite right. Pareto optimal better describes transitions than states. A state can be described as Pareto optimal only in the sense that there are no Pareto optimal transitions out of it. So for example, in prisoner's dilemma, all of the states are Pareto optimal because none of the moves are. No matter what anyone does, somebody will be worse off than the alternative. As another example, "I get every…

Agreed. Seems like the author is looking for something more along the lines of "socially optimal." Also seems like he mixed up which outcome is Nash and which is socially optimal. (Deny, Deny) = (Defect, Defect) = Nash Eq. (Confess, Confess) = (Cooperate, Cooperate) = socially optimal.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#27

Post by natural219 »

viraptor wrote: post #17
natural219 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. It's static. I've never actually written anything that anybody's read before, so I have no idea what point I need to start looking into a cache.

If it's already static (ie. served from a generated static file), cache won't help you much (if at all). All reads will already come from the memory. Unless you have some crazy routing rules in the webserver, varnish is unlikely to be faster than direct serving. some old comparison for static files: http://nbonvin.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/apache-vs-nginx-vs-v...

Thanks, this is a great read. I feared since my nginx configuration looks like this[1], something isn't being cached properly in memory, but it looks like I'm being overly paranoid.

[1]https://www.dropbox.com/s/x2k7ms057xh7zkm/Screenshot%202014-...

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#28

Post by CamperBob2 »

nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

Personally, I see nukes as more ethical than patents. You can make the argument that MAD-based nuclear deterrence has saved us (at least so far) from a third world war. Not everyone will agree, of course, but a strong case can be made.

On the other hand, to defend patents, you have to show that there are things on the market that we can buy that would not have been made available to us if not for patent rights. Nobody can claim that patents have saved us from a catastrophic world war by forcing our leaders to find less destructive ways to disagree. About the most you can say is that without patents, some lifesaving medications for some relatively uncommon conditions wouldn't have been economically feasible to develop.

Musk's comparison of patents to land mines is much more apt than comparing them to nukes. Only a psychopath (or a land mine manufacturer) would argue that humanity is better off because land mines exist. Nuclear weapons are a genuine gray area in comparison.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#29

Post by brongondwana »

babenzele wrote: post #24

Any company would be stupid to develop car manufacturing based on another company's held patents. But just ask your lawyer to talk to Tesla's lawyers to buy a very cheap, almost free license. Then we'll see if they're serious about this or not.

Obviously you would do more than just trust a web page as a licence to the patents, but I imagine it would be hard for Tesla to win an infringement case after publishing this. This is no "Sun CEO blogs congratulating Google on android" level of plausible ambiguity.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#30

Post by reitzensteinm »

chollida1 wrote: post #16
[deleted] wrote: post #4

[deleted]

> OP here. I'm working with a 1GB DigitalOcean box. Didn't expect hacker news haha. Umm, you posted this article yourself to hn. You also plastered links to hn on the article. It's very hard to believe you in this instance:) Having said that, great article, keep them coming!

It would be awkwardly phrased, but he probably meant by that the effect of his submission doing well.

It's best to read charitably when someone is under stress. When my site is down due to load, which has happened maybe a half dozen times in my career, you're lucky to get complete sentences out of me.

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