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Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

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Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#111

Post by thewebguyd »

ghaff wrote: post #65
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can still accomplish big innovations without those innovations coming from, or being controlled, by nation-state private companies. We've ran high-risk R&D projects successfully before as public projects - Manhattan project, the space race & moon landing, ARPANET, etc. So you prefer nation-state nations over nation-state private companies. :-)

Though two of your examples (not really Manhattan Project) had very significant private sector participants.

I think that's unavoidable, but also not a bad thing. If we were to undertake any similar large scale public projects today, it would also have significant private sector participation. But, that drives job creation and positive effects on the economy (i.e., new deal).

The main difference is, ideally, the project was voted on by the public, and is being steered as such. A public-private collaboration, with the public driving it rather than it being entirely the domain of a single private entity for their own profit.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#112

Post by ooopakaj »

UncleMeat wrote: post #5

I dunno. Tao is a very smart person but it seems like a bad idea for a mathematician to be making claims like these without sources. His vibes are no more meaningful than anybody else's vibes. I'm not familiar with all of these subfields, but I know that the scholarship on the history of communication networks is extremely deep . Why would there be so much work if things were actually explained so easily? If you are…

[dead]

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#113

Post by Ar-Curunir »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #88
tavavex wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a bad thing? Democracies, even if flawed, are accountable to their citizens at least to an extent. Their power structures aren't dictatorial, like in a company, and can be steered and course-corrected. Private companies are accountable to no one, their only motivator and reason for existence is profit. If they're allowed to run our society, the outcome that we're seemingly inching towards, there will be nothi…

> Democracies, even if flawed, are accountable to their citizens at least to an extent. Stock corporation, even if flawed, are accountable to their stock holders at least to an extent; thus your point > Private companies are accountable to no one clearly does not hold. Corporations, of course, can also be steered and course-corrected (shareholders meetings).

The unit of power in stock corporations is dollars, while in democracies it is personhood. In the former, one person can acquire multiple units, while in the latter they cannot. There is an obvious difference.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#114

Post by radlad »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #84
radlad wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that you are proposing a false dichotomy: that if they do not want one consequence of the current system, they should eschew the entire system. But in actuality, I like some parts of how society is organized, and dislike some other parts. I don't want to leave society - I want society to be better.

Except this is impossible: >They want a job market where one single breadwinner can support their house, spouse and kids If society also wants women to be able to have the same income earning opportunities as men and hence have financial freedom. Animals compete and compare themselves to others, and so everywhere, dual earning households will outcompete single earning households, and so most market participants will…

First of all, I don't know where this specific example is coming from or how it relates to what I said exactly.

Secondly, when you look at the distribution of wealth in the US, and realize that the top 50% of Americans own 97.5% of the wealth, or that the top 1% owns over 30% of the country's wealth, or read a headline about Elon Musk's $1T pay package, conversations about "dual-earning families" versus "single-earning families" look kind of inconsequential.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#115

Post by ls612 »

tavavex wrote: post #74
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can still accomplish big innovations without those innovations coming from, or being controlled, by nation-state private companies. We've ran high-risk R&D projects successfully before as public projects - Manhattan project, the space race & moon landing, ARPANET, etc. So you prefer nation-state nations over nation-state private companies. :-)

Is that a bad thing? Democracies, even if flawed, are accountable to their citizens at least to an extent. Their power structures aren't dictatorial, like in a company, and can be steered and course-corrected. Private companies are accountable to no one, their only motivator and reason for existence is profit. If they're allowed to run our society, the outcome that we're seemingly inching towards, there will be nothi…

If there is one thing that we learned from the 20th century it is that societies that gave more private control over how resources were used did better than those that had more state control over how resources were used. Perhaps in the 21st century that has changed, but for me that falls under the "extraordinary claims" category with the corresponding evidence requirements.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#116

Post by sct202 »

nostrademons wrote: post #28

Matches my experience. Our kids' co-op preschool went out of business last year; their actual preschool got bought by private equity and is struggling to survive. Longtime neighbors say the spirit of volunteerism in the upper schools is suffering. And institutions that were big civic centers when I grew up - freemasons, Boy/Girl/Cub/Brownie Scouts, 4-H, YMCA/YWCA, local bowling/skating rinks, etc - are now shadows of…

There was a wave of less formal topic based community groups when Meetup launched, but COVID + Meetup buyout & price hikes has led to most of them shutting down.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#117

Post by stego-tech »

I would argue that the role of small orgs has shrunk significantly from the perspective of the majority, but grown in importance and impact for groups outcast from that majority.

The example I like to trot out is the amalgamation of furry and queer persons into a larger unit when collaborating at scale, but otherwise fostering positive impacts in smaller groups. The response to their successes has been attacks by larger orgs who are unable to integrate or co-opt them for profit (corporations) or power motives (politicians), as well as cringe-y reputations by individuals not included in those groups (see the mocking of both subcultures and groups by eRandos). Yet despite these negative attacks, both groups continue to grow and create parallel economies, logistics networks, communities, and even limited forms of governance (cons, parades, and social forums).

So in that vein, I believe we’re simply in the midst of an era of transformation, from a broken system to something new. Smaller orgs often lead these changes until one or more balloon in size, at which point they become the larger and more dominant organizations in the new era that follows. What we’re seeing now is a classic fight between opposing political, social, and economic views, aided by technology on both sides of the battle and fundamentally reshaping how conflicts are waged.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#118

Post by Ar-Curunir »

woah wrote: post #100
bluGill wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say that, but when you point out that they could have that if they accept a lower standard of living they lose interest (and if possiple downvote or otherwise try to shout you down)

They want a trad farming lifestyle without technology but they get mad when you tell them that they have to work 4am-10pm in the summer and one child dies per winter

A secure lifestyle and a good lifestyle are not mutually exclusive. We have the tech to enable something which at least somewhat approximates, and even if we didn’t, it’s easy to imagine a world in which the trillions of dollars spent on wasteful garbage like surveillance, ads, engagement-farming, etc were instead redirected towards research and development of technology which enables a secure _and_ good lifestyle.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#119

Post by deelowe »

rangestransform wrote: post #37
cs702 wrote: post #21

Great post, thought-provoking. Highly recommended. Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Here are just a few examples, from memory: * The Bell system was broken up, resulting in a geographically distributed telecom network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System : Your phone company was local. * Banks cou…

- What if Google didn't have more money than god, and couldn't afford to bankroll Waymo ~10b? - Would TSMC have gotten as far if Apple couldn't reliably buy out months of capacity on the next node, bankrolling TSMC's tech development? - Would we even have >10B-param LLMs at all? There is something to be said for the concentration of resources, such that they can be deployed on projects with payoffs years or decades l…

I would gladly accept a bit of a slow down on progress if it meant my contributions to society were more meaningful. Additionally, I strongly believe this continuous dwindling of small organizations has resulted in an overall loss of community and a sense of belonging. In my opinion, this is what's causing the overall decline in health that we're seeing in developed nations.

For many, life seems aimless. Your future is to simply contribute what you're told to some faceless multinational for which after 20 years your only recognition will be a small piece of canvas with a mass produced screen printed design.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#120

Post by Ar-Curunir »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #84
radlad wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that you are proposing a false dichotomy: that if they do not want one consequence of the current system, they should eschew the entire system. But in actuality, I like some parts of how society is organized, and dislike some other parts. I don't want to leave society - I want society to be better.

Except this is impossible: >They want a job market where one single breadwinner can support their house, spouse and kids If society also wants women to be able to have the same income earning opportunities as men and hence have financial freedom. Animals compete and compare themselves to others, and so everywhere, dual earning households will outcompete single earning households, and so most market participants will…

No? An easy comparison would be a world where the both partners work 20hrs/wk each, for a total of 40hrs, with the rest devoted towards, eg, childcare.

That addresses the reason for working (eg, pursuit of interests outside family-raising), while also eschewing the need for full time childcare.

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