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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
#32I'm not sure I entirely agree with the framing, despite agreeing with many of the points raised. I think it's relevant to recognize that large organizations often become large by consuming smaller organizations. And that they consume smaller organizations precisely because they offer something like purpose and meaning, and other emotional/spiritual needs. When there are no more smaller organizations to consume, the larger organizations fracture out of an absence of these necessities. The division of 'small' and 'large' organizations is maybe relevant in today's economic structure but it does not feel absolute or permanent. Anyway, this well highlights the importance of genuine connections and activities at the individual level.
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#33I’m not sure if that’s true. As a counterpoint, things we rely on like Amazon are actually a lot of tiny businesses that have ideas and now we are able to get their more tailored products, whereas two decades ago, I just got to buy whatever walmart or bestbuy was willing to sell us. Also consider youtube, I watch a lot of tiny creators and two decades ago the only thing available was the major tv networks and cable t…
Many big corps launch small brands to fake authenticity
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#34It seems to me that:
- on average, complexity is increasing.
- most patterns in how civilization is arranged oscilate over time
- what's happening right now is most likely an artifact of right now (economics, power structure, culture, politics, etc).
- it seems that a shift back to smaller groups is likely in the future
- what I'm not sure about is whether the larger groups need to dissolve or stabilize in order for smaller groups to rebound
- I can't help but think that if our whole economic system reconfigures after reaching sufficient abundance, more of people's time will be spent on satisfying the soft needs met by smaller social groups, and less time will be spent on what feels meaningless
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think he was making claims in the context of a professional mathematician. I think he's a popular guy (because of his status) and he's discussing his own thoughts on modern nihilistic thinking while calling for 3rd spaces on his own social media. Seems...fine? For an individual to that, we don't have to ascribe some degree of reverence to his thoughts anymore than I would yours. That extra reverence is all us…
I'm not saying he shouldn't share it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is #1 on HN right now and I'd encourage people who are interested in this topic to read the mountains of scholarship on these topics written by experts.
I came here to say the same thing... he's eloquently stating something, and kinda makes sense, but I bet we have actual real data around this. It's a fun mental exercise but if you REALLY want to know, there should be good sources.
Heck, ChatGPT should be able to answer that.
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#36I 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…
Why is it a "bad idea" for him to post his take? I guess your concern must be that people will give it too much weight due to him being a mathematician.
This is currently #1 on HN. I suspect that a lot of people will read this and decide not to look into relevant scholarship because the text here is packaged nicely and it is presented by somebody that this community (rightly) respects very deeply.
In other contexts I've seen Tao cite scholarship outside of his field when engaging with it. I wish he'd done that here.
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#37Great 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 later. The same could be said for all the tech that came out of Bell Labs or PARC. Advocating for smaller businesses is advocating for shorttermism to some degree; even startups today are funded based on the premise that they could potentially capture an entire market in a few years.
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#38I 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…
He sort of counters his own argument by having so much influence as an individual :)
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is ad hominem. He presents meaningful ideas and we would all benefit from you responding to the ideas.
I do not think that it is unreasonable to say that a layperson providing a extremely high level analysis of a topic that spans entire academic fields is likely not terribly insightful. The history of communications networks (just one of the many enormous topics he covers here) is a whole field with piles of academics publishing constantly.
Do you have any interesting info to share from these enormous piles of academic publishing?
Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly
#40In the early 1800's Alexis de Tocqueville attributed a lot of American success to its small organizations/associations:
"There is nothing, according to me, that deserves more to attract our regard than the intellectual and moral associations of America....
In democratic countries the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one."