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Moore's Law for Everything

moores.samaltman.com

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Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#161

Post by Dylan16807 »

heleninboodler wrote: post #117
Aunche wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think launching sports cars into orbit is inherently any more wasteful than say the development of the Deep Blue chess computer. It may have been a vanity project, but the ultimate goal was to test a proof of concept.

I didn't say it was wasteful or make any judgments about it. It's just a fact that a level of lifestyle that allows a person to launch his personal sports car into space has been achieved.

It's a level of lifestyle that allows a person to donate his personal sports car to replace an inert mass, because he'll buy another car.

While he and many others could buy personal space launches, that launch is not a demonstration of such. He wasn't paying for it, and it wasn't for him.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#162

Post by S_A_P »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #157
nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

Horses aren't the center of the economy, though. It's fundamentally different. Horses might always want more and more things no matter how much they get. But they don't create demand in our economy, so we'll never know. No matter how much humans get, they'll always want more. And other humans will have to come up with ways to meet that demand. Sure - if we ever reach a time where the entire human race says "this is e…

I think this is a good take- Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy. In fact horses were probably the main driver for developing mechanical solutions since horse ownership is expensive and time consuming. There was no incentive to make life/jobs better for horses, and as soon as a better replacement was available horses were not necessary for most people.

So you cant swap out horses for humans as they analogy is completely flawed.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#164

Post by colinmhayes »

notahacker wrote: post #113
larsiusprime wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which will tax you 100% of the value of your property If it's a property tax, yes. If it's a land tax, no. Under land tax you tax the "ground rent" value of the land, not what's built on it. "Ground rent" is what it costs to rent out your land if it was an empty lot with nothing on it. Property tax and land tax are very different things with very different effects.

The Georgist land value (which Altman suggests might be more practically replaced by a system linked to actual property transaction values) is still going to be a sufficiently large proportion of the value of a typical home to ensure pretty much anyone not living in a multistorey tenement block is paying massively higher tax rates on their home than anyone pays on a YC company.

As it should be. Single family homes are wasteful, they should cost more.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#165

Post by hospadar »

nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

I hope we discover less work!

I so agree that increasing automation doesn't always mean more Jobs That Make Money (even if it might continue to for a while yet). Maybe when there's less work for humans to do we just... work less? and get more?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#166

Post by aksss »

imtringued wrote: post #160
nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

If you could restrain those pesky humans or prevent them from reproducing then it would be a valid concern.

As prosperity increases, growth booms but then predictably falls below replacement rate. So humans kind of do this on their own if you can get through the boom period without breaking things too badly.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#167

Post by Dylan16807 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #159
Dylan16807 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment directly says it's not a good analogy. Complaining that they didn't specifically say "allegory" is really nitpicky. The terms are very close and overlap.

If someone says Animal Farm is a good story, but it wouldn't work if the animals were humans, I would say they didn't get the message.

Depends on what reason they gave. If they misunderstand something about humanity, that's a great jumping point toward discussion.

But if they said "yes, those politics would happen in humans, but some of these other factors are more important toward the eventual outcome[...]" then that's perfectly compatible with understanding the story. And that's roughly what the earlier commenter did! They accepted the argument that jobs will go away, while saying the secondary and tertiary effects would be different.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#168

Post by imtringued »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #153
ravi-delia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent what is likely way too much mental energy wondering about this, and I'm no closer to an answer. Is there any limit to lifestyle inflation? Is it possible to have growth that simply outpaces what a human could possibly consume? Intuitively it seems obvious that there should be something like that, but in the 1800s our growth today would seem like it should be enough.

People can't all reliably afford food and shelter, so I don't think lifestyle inflation is the real problem.

Overpopulation is a problem. People will claim that the plant can support 20 billion+ people but they conveniently forget that these people will have an incredibly low standard of living.

Even if we were to assume that an arbitrarily low standard of living is acceptable, at some point that standard of living will include mass starvation and death so there is a real capacity limit. Being well below that limit is a virtue.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#169

Post by sour-taste »

I think that this essay assumes the possibility of infinite growth. That runs into the reality that we are actively running into the limitations of our interactions with the natural world. What else is climate change but an indication that we've reached the limit of what we can produce using our current technology. Now, it is possible that we can find a way to reduce our impact on the earth while continuing to grow, but I'm not sure that we can do that AND generate the astronomical growth this essay requires.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#170

Post by mdorazio »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #26

Imagine: 1) I'm the owner of a single family home 2) My income drops to roughly zero because of AI 3) My property values go through the roof 4) I now owe 2.5% of these sky-rocketing property values every year, to be paid from my non-existent income Doesn't this scenario lead to me either selling my "gifted" shares to pay property taxes, or ending up a renter at best and homeless at worst? I can imagine this proposal…

If your property value doubles and you lose your job, why wouldn't you sell your property for a massive gain, take that money and buy a new house somewhere cheaper, thereby avoiding the tax issue entirely? Seems like a situation where you want to have your cake and eat it, too.
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