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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

cjohnson.io

11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#13
post #7
post #4

[deleted]

If you want to just serve this one page quickly, you can take the result and save it as static page. Add a specific routing rule just for the url you submitted. (the page looks completely static anyway) You can play with varnish once you don't have thousands of people who will actually want to read the contents you posted :) (a.k.a don't upgrade anything the day of the release)

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.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#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 either party to act offensively. However, the implied power behind the arsenals gave them a lot of power when dealing with smaller actors. The superpowers benefit greatly from acquiring these arsenals. Even without using them publicly, the threat can always be used behind closed doors (as Jobs has been shown to do).

But there's a third actor; the most universally feared actor: terrorists/patent trolls. These actors behave only offensively because they have nothing to defend. These actors are best poised to benefit from nukes and patents and can send an otherwise orderly system into chaos.

Anyway, just a fun but flawed analogy to play with in your noodle. :)

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#15

The only hope is cultural change. The only hope is cultural trust , and the only way to achieve that is to allow like-minded individuals to separate themselves into autonomous political units. This is dangerous thinking Chris, if you start following these thoughts through to the end, rather than spinning off into happy-clappy "change the world's heart" wishing...

Did you not see the link at the end of the article to Balaji's talk on exit?

(Genuine question. If you haven't checked out that talk, its about opting out as an option for pursuing change and it sounds like what you're alluding to!)

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#16
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!

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to just serve this one page quickly, you can take the result and save it as static page. Add a specific routing rule just for the url you submitted. (the page looks completely static anyway) You can play with varnish once you don't have thousands of people who will actually want to read the contents you posted :) (a.k.a don't upgrade anything the day of the release)

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...

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#18

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 ? :)

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#19
This explains, at the very least, why rampant partisanship is an inevitability in a large Democracy, despite it being worse off for everybody (including politicians themselves).

Instead of saying "in a large Democracy" it should say "in a large Democracy which uses plurality voting." Some voting systems (for instance Condorcet compatible ones) do not encourage partisanship in the same way as plurality does. In fact other systems actually encourage cooperation and favor candidates that are more in the center.

And I think that points to a flaw in the conclusion of the article: attempting to directly change human nature (or culture, as the OP suggests) is a fool's errand.

Instead, changing the rules of a system, such that the Pareto optimal result and the Nash Equilibrium align more closely, is a much more realistic approach. And I believe that when you do set up good systems where people are rewarded for cooperating, the culture changes with it.

(Regardless I think it is an excellent article and the more people who understand the Game Theory stuff he explains, the better. And I absolutely agree with his sentiment than Musk should be lauded for what he is doing rather than being met with cynicism.)

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