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Time is the only real currency we have

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Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#281

Post by mauritzio »

MattGaiser wrote: post #108
mauritzio wrote: post #106

What if we would give every person a fix amount of money every week during lifetime. Where money older then a year becomes worthless? No inherithing, no accumulation, no positive interest. Because every person is worth the same and all we do, is spending our lifetime doing stuff keeping us busy.

> Where money older then a year becomes worthless? No inherithing, no accumulation, no positive interest. Rampant inflation as every dollar is shoveled into assets.

Don't think so then there is no real inflation: the total assets equals automatically the amount of money month after month after month..

Better then the never ending growing amount of inflation paper we have noadays.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#282

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #262
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> farms are not shipping cheap crops to us at their expense. They are trading. I misplaced a word - at the expense of more local options in need of food. Either way I'd hope that'd be assumed, but I fixed it to not leave it to chance. > These "sweatshops" brought them out of poverty in rural areas - they would've been a subsistence farmer and had less wealth. It feels unfair for them to only be paid pennies for an ob…

Thinking it's technology doing that is a mistake. It's people doing that. Like the folks who ruined their Easter Island environment. Technology has also saved us from environmental disasters. Whaling was stopped when oil was found. The denuding of trees from the landscape stopped when coal was discovered. (It's still going on in the Amazon, sadly.)

That's why in my OP I said:

> Technology can be dehumanizing, or very humanizing. It's up to us to curate it properly. Endless advancement in the name of technology will simply destroy the human race.

Whaling largely stopped because of regulation and social factors, not technology, just like cutting down trees - it can be sustainable if you simply do not cut down all the trees in an area, replant, etc. This is an example of curation of technology.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#283

Post by TeMPOraL »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #282
WalterBright wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking it's technology doing that is a mistake. It's people doing that. Like the folks who ruined their Easter Island environment. Technology has also saved us from environmental disasters. Whaling was stopped when oil was found. The denuding of trees from the landscape stopped when coal was discovered. (It's still going on in the Amazon, sadly.)

That's why in my OP I said: > Technology can be dehumanizing, or very humanizing. It's up to us to curate it properly. Endless advancement in the name of technology will simply destroy the human race. Whaling largely stopped because of regulation and social factors, not technology, just like cutting down trees - it can be sustainable if you simply do not cut down all the trees in an area, replant, etc. This is an exa…

I think I'll have to disagree with you here. The way I understood history, "regulation and social factors" only happened because an alternative to whale oil was found. To an arguably large degree, social progress is a consequence of technological breakthroughs.

In general, and simplifying the dynamics a bit, I'd say this: what happens in a society is constrained to what makes economic sense. You can attempt change (e.g. get whaling banned), but you will not succeed when the economic pressures go strongly against you (e.g. there's no substitute for whale oil and demand is large, so regulations will not happen because of a combination of lobbying and international competition). Your society is always limited to what economics allow, and the way you reshape that economic landscape is through technology. You find substitute for whaling oil. Or a better fuel than wood. Or (upcoming invention) develop lab-grown meat that's competitive to regular one - I bet that vegans will think it was their activism that achieved a future without factory farming, but the way I see it, once we crack lab-grown meat, factory farming will be gone in a blink of an eye.

Another example I like: there were many attempts at reforming the Catholic church in the past, but the one that succeeded happened after the printing press was invented, which let reformatist ideas spread far and wide before the church could contain them.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#284

Post by bbbobbb »

lisper wrote: post #185
bbbobbb wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are domains in which I can get 100x or 1000x improvements (i.e. 1 line of Lisp code is the equivalent of 1000 lines of Java or C) That's quite an extraordinary claim. Would you mind sharing some examples of that?

It's very hard to give short examples because for any short example you can find another language that does the same thing with similar effort. For example, this: https://edicl.github.io/cl-who/ is basically PHP embedded in Common Lisp. So any example I give you to show how cool CL-WHO is you could render it in PHP and conclude that PHP is similarly cool. The Big Win only happens if you want to combine a feature that…

Hmm, I am not particular convinced by the example.

How is this different from developing on say JVM, using Kotlin and finding a library providing DSL for HTML?

I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages.

I wouldn't dare to challenge that lisps tend to produce concise code but being able to write 10x less code as basis and 100-1000x less on any regular basis seems too good to be true.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#285

Post by lisper »

bbbobbb wrote: post #284
lisper wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to give short examples because for any short example you can find another language that does the same thing with similar effort. For example, this: https://edicl.github.io/cl-who/ is basically PHP embedded in Common Lisp. So any example I give you to show how cool CL-WHO is you could render it in PHP and conclude that PHP is similarly cool. The Big Win only happens if you want to combine a feature that…

Hmm, I am not particular convinced by the example. How is this different from developing on say JVM, using Kotlin and finding a library providing DSL for HTML? I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages. I wouldn't dare to challenge that lisps tend to produce concise code but being able to write 10x less code as basis and 100-1000x less on any regular b…

> 100-1000x less on any regular basis

I didn't say I could get 100-1000x on a regular basis. What I said was:

> There are domains in which I can get 100x or 1000x improvements

Domains like that exist, but they are outliers. Normal improvement is 10x.

> I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages.

Most programming languages are Turing-complete so nothing is "fundamentally impossible" to express in any of them. The thing that is fundamentally impossible in most non-Lisp languages is to extend the language with new syntax and control constructs within the language itself.

It is of course trivial to embed a Lisp interpreter within any language, and that will let you do Lisp-y things within that language. But then your performance will suck, which is why no one does that despite the fact that it is theoretically possible. It is not so much about what is possible as it is about the ways in which your language molds your thought processes. For a C programmer, embedding a DSL is an esoteric advanced technique. For a Lisp programmer, it's as easy and therefore as common as writing a function.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#286

Post by achillesheels »

darawk wrote: post #242
TeMPOraL wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, those are orthogonal concerns. I love the modern world, there isn't a time and place in past history I'd prefer to live in to where and when I'm now. But at the same time, the way how new technology modifies the environment[0] is very interesting and worth a separate consideration. It sometimes does go too far - technology can be dehumanizing, if we're forced to lose some cherished values to accommo…

I think the point is that if the people agitating about productivity being evil had their way we'd all still be hunter gatherers. Yes, it may well be that pausing development where we are would be more comfortable for those of us currently alive. But some people find meaning in the advancement of the human condition. That takes real effort, and causes a lot of people short term pain. But permanently making the world…

You reminded me about Jared Diamond’s lamentation on the agricultural revolution [1]. My jaw was dragging on the floor for a full week after reading it!

Cultivating human potential necessitates the leisure that technology gives us. And when actualized, human potential gives not just the world but the cosmos greater beauty. This makes it self-evidently worthwhile.

[1] http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/Thoc/Readings/Diamond_Worst...

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#287

Post by bananamerica »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #250
bananamerica wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brazilian the idea of not having baggers makes me immediately concerned about unemployment...

Thats one thing the pandemic has made clear - how many jobs are unnecessary.

Depends on your criteria for necessity. I’d argue that if a job is required to give a person a living wage, than it is necessary.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#288

Post by jpfdez »

didericis wrote: post #161
clairity wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s kind of (not as eloquently) how i came to land on the labor theory of value needing to be more prominent in economic policy. our application of energy (both physical and mental) transforms matter and collects/redirects ambient energy to productive use. that’s what generates value—gold in the ground is essentially worthless until we use labor to extract it. that it’s rare and has other interesting properties th…

Time is easily wasted, though. The labor theory of value ignores this, and ignores the value of cleverness as a result. If I need to grind wheat for bread every day, I could spend hours a day working hard to grind it by hand, or I could spend a month or so to build a very basic water wheel/grindstone and free up all that time. The resultant bread is still bread either way. If someone chooses to spend all their time d…

Imagine that a craftsman value of his manufacture is the time and the necessary skill applied.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#289

Post by bbbobbb »

lisper wrote: post #285
bbbobbb wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I am not particular convinced by the example. How is this different from developing on say JVM, using Kotlin and finding a library providing DSL for HTML? I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages. I wouldn't dare to challenge that lisps tend to produce concise code but being able to write 10x less code as basis and 100-1000x less on any regular b…

> 100-1000x less on any regular basis I didn't say I could get 100-1000x on a regular basis. What I said was: > There are domains in which I can get 100x or 1000x improvements Domains like that exist, but they are outliers. Normal improvement is 10x. > I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages. Most programming languages are Turing-complete so nothing…

> I didn't say I could get 100-1000x on a regular basis. What I said was:

I know, sorry for misrepresenting that. I just assumed that this happens often enough for you to mention it.

I would be happy with any random 1000x improvement or two you've encountered over the years (imagine something like Java/Kotlin baseline for comparison).

I don't really buy the regular 10x improvement either though (as in something achieved by other means than different form of formatting). Happy to be proven wrong though, my lisp experience is limited to some clojure.

> Most programming languages are Turing-complete so nothing is "fundamentally impossible" to express in any of them

Sure, that's why I said "fundamentally impossible to describe concisely", as in something you can only express concisely in lisp (because of prefix notation? macros? I don't know) and it is bound to be 10x verbose mess in a c-like lang.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#290

Post by lisper »

bbbobbb wrote: post #289
lisper wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100-1000x less on any regular basis I didn't say I could get 100-1000x on a regular basis. What I said was: > There are domains in which I can get 100x or 1000x improvements Domains like that exist, but they are outliers. Normal improvement is 10x. > I was hoping for practical things that fundamentally impossible to describe concisely in non-lisp languages. Most programming languages are Turing-complete so nothing…

> I didn't say I could get 100-1000x on a regular basis. What I said was: I know, sorry for misrepresenting that. I just assumed that this happens often enough for you to mention it. I would be happy with any random 1000x improvement or two you've encountered over the years (imagine something like Java/Kotlin baseline for comparison). I don't really buy the regular 10x improvement either though (as in something achie…

> I would be happy with any random 1000x improvement or two you've encountered over the years

I already provided two examples. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22980487

"Two which I have personally worked in are autonomous spacecraft control and chip design."

> I don't really buy the regular 10x improvement either though (as in something achieved by other means than different form of formatting).

Why exclude a "different form of formatting"? That phrase is sufficiently vague that it could potentially refer to just about anything.

> something you can only express concisely in lisp (because of prefix notation? macros? I don't know) and it is bound to be 10x verbose mess in a c-like lang.

You are still fundamentally misunderstanding the claim. It is not that there is anything that can be done in Lisp that could not in principle be done in a c-like language with a comparable number of keystrokes. The history of c-like languages is one of continual refinement and adding features that do precisely this.

The difference is that in Lisp if you need a feature that isn't already there you don't need to wait 30 years for standards committees and compiler writers to catch up. All you need to do is take ten minutes to write a macro.

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