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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#261

Post by pjmlp »

esafak wrote: post #228
th43o2i4234234 wrote: post #227

The critical point of the article holds true of everything in human social networks (be it religion/culture/philosophy/apps/industry...). If you don't achieve virality, you're as good as dead. Once a episteme/meme spreads like wild-fire there's very little chance for a reassessment based on value/function - because the scope is now the big axis of valuation. It's actually worse because humanity is now a single big bo…

> If you don't achieve virality, you're as good as dead. Are you? Maybe the worse solution peaks faster, but can be supplanted by a better solution in the future, like how Rust is displacing C/C++ in new projects. The better solution may never be popular yet persist.

For Rust to fully displace C++, it needs to eventually bootstrap itself, until then, C++ will be around.

Additionally there are no significant new projects being done in Rust for the games industry, AI/ML, HPC, HFT, compiler backends, hardware design,....

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#262

Post by pjmlp »

GiorgioG wrote: post #30
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript really illustrates the ultimate path-dependence of evolution. It got widely deployed during a boom time and therefore we are stuck with it forever.

We don’t have to be stuck with it forever. Start pushing WASM instead of React, etc. We can get there, but as technologists we have to make a concerted effort to do so.

Only if the tooling was half as good as Flash.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#263

Post by inglor_cz »

tovej wrote: post #260
inglor_cz wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we would all be f'ing _thrilled_." I think the argument is pretty much the opposite: not everyone would be thrilled. The wannabe priest class (think of Greta and her How dare you! ), which is always with us, would be frustrated from the lack of something to preach about. Of course there is always Israel vs. Palestine.

I myself am convinced that man-made global warming can't be stopped without changing the way our political economies work, and I happen to believe that Palestinians are people and therefore deserve basic human rights (which they do not currently have). I'm also a researcher. I _would_ be thrilled if there was an expedient way to solve climate change. But the best systems models for the earth all tell us that there's…

The motivations of regular participants vs. leaders may be rather different. Only a specific type of person is attracted to leading crowds.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#264

Post by reshlo »

raincole wrote: post #216
dkarl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

> if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down If some people feel frustrated or let down because we achieve a literal miracle (by today's technology standards) that saves millions of lives I'm willing to call them mentally unhinged.

If we could solve climate change purely technologically, I wouldn’t feel let down by the fact that we solved climate change. I would absolutely support solving it in that way.

I would also feel frustrated by the knowledge that there were many people who were willing to sacrifice unimaginable numbers of humans and animals for the sake of making more profit for themselves, who were not held to account for their actions. If a person acts in a way that they should know will lead to future suffering, the development of an unforeseen technological solution to that suffering should not wipe their moral slate clean.

Trying to kill someone using a non-functional weapon, that you believe is functional, is not morally equivalent to taking no action just because it didn’t have an effect.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#265

Post by psychoslave »

bccdee wrote: post #187

> Both early Unix and C compilers had simple structures, are easy to port, require few machine resources to run, and provide about 50%-80% of what you want from an operating system and programming language. > Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses. The key argument behind worse-is-better is that an OS which is easy to implement will dominate the market in an ecosystem with many competing hardware standards. Ope…

Unix and C are still there, and while on shallow level this can be more or less ignored, all abstractions end up to leak sooner than later.

Could the industry get rid of C and ridiculous esoteric abbreviation in identifiers, it could almost be a sane world to wander.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#266

Post by hoseja »

circlefavshape wrote: post #102
dkarl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

> For example, if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down by the solution because it would solve the problem without addressing the moral shortcomings that led to the problem. Oof. Now I understand something I didn't before

It's the meme:

A:"Only Global Communism can solve Climate Change."

B:"Nuclear power also solves climate change."

A:"I don't want to solve Climate Change, I want Global Communism."

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#267

Post by kragen »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #243
kragen wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only isn't that an accurate summary of Graham's book, it isn't even a topic discussed in the first half of the book, which is all I've read so far. I suspect it isn't a topic discussed in the book at all; can you back up your assertion with some quotes?

Yes, but the book also has enough inaccuracies as to make it... I don't know what. For example, in the first chapter the author says "no one knows what a session is," which is patently false. I myself implemented control logic in telco equipment to respond to X.225 compliant messages to change the state of an abstract state machine used on either side of the connection. And while I'm sure it's possible to use CONS or…

I think he means to be saying that, in the context of TCP/IP, nobody knows what a “session” in the OSI sense would correspond to—not that nobody has ever implemented X.225. Presumably Graham knows that people have written X.225 implementations and isn't trying to convince his readers otherwise?

I don't know enough to judge his assertion that the session layer exists to solve problems created by half-duplex terminals. (He doesn't seem to specifically call out Ceefax.)

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#268

Post by bsenftner »

tovej wrote: post #260
inglor_cz wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we would all be f'ing _thrilled_." I think the argument is pretty much the opposite: not everyone would be thrilled. The wannabe priest class (think of Greta and her How dare you! ), which is always with us, would be frustrated from the lack of something to preach about. Of course there is always Israel vs. Palestine.

I myself am convinced that man-made global warming can't be stopped without changing the way our political economies work, and I happen to believe that Palestinians are people and therefore deserve basic human rights (which they do not currently have). I'm also a researcher. I _would_ be thrilled if there was an expedient way to solve climate change. But the best systems models for the earth all tell us that there's…

And I'm of the opinion that we'll not change our political economies without a material society adjustment, a threshold recognition between an emotional reasoning and a more controlled rational level of reasoning. Basically maturity; we've got a material volume of immature adults that derail any and all public and many private conversations with immature observations, short sighted reasoning, and the belief that their unprofessional opinion carries weight with those whose careers are the issue at hand. Until we do something about these, frankly, idiots, we're left adrift in a culture of unintended chaos.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#269

Post by adastra22 »

thfuran wrote: post #240
adastra22 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 wouldn’t be pulled out of the ocean. You’d have to liquify it from air in a different process. The molecular pumps are used to extract dissolved ions or solutes from sea water and only act as fast as diffusion.

So this is desalination? That seems unrelated.

I listed cleaning up toxic waste and co2 sequestration as separate things, yes.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#270

Post by adastra22 »

Log_out_ wrote: post #239
adastra22 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not fantasy. I’m working on a startup to enable this technology. It’s a hard problem, but not impossible. And the energy needs are not as great as you think. A relatively small patch of the Sahara or Gobi desert or open ocean would be sufficient.

its indistinguishable from fantasy extrapolating from the given track record . Previous fantasy technology break through like harbor bosch were viable only "after" major diaasters and worldwars and brought with them ever more destructive hidden costs.

Haber-Bosch predates the world wars.
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