321–330 of 370 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People need to do something in order to recieve money Why? What purpose does this serve? Why should people have to prove their worthiness to be allowed to continue living?
Because I ain't giving away my money to freeloaders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, what you're describing is technological advancement. It's great! I'm fully in favor of it, and I fully believe in it. It's not the singularity. The singularity is a specific belief that we will achieve AGI, and the AGI will then self-improve at an exponential rate allowing it to become infinitely more advanced and powerful (much moreso than we could ever have made it), and it will then also invent loads of ne…
> "The singularity is a specific belief that we will achieve AGI That is one version of it, but not the only one. " John von Neumann is the first person known to have discussed a "singularity" in technological progress.[14][15] Stanislaw Ulam reported in 1958 that an earlier discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in human life, which gives the appearance of approa…
Just because you can find someone referring to something else as a "technological singularity" doesn't mean it's reasonable to say that must, or even could, have been the definition the person I was replying to was using.
...And I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone to agree with you that "we founded companies" somehow satisfies the conditions of the Singularity, unless they're deeply invested in the idea that The Singularity Is Happening Now, and have entirely forgotten just what that's actually supposed to mean, or why they wanted it to be happening.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>until something goes significantly wrong Data breaches are so common they don't even register any more, and people share far more personal information now (willingly or not) than they used to. Remember when the common advice was "don't use your real name online"? Now every service demands your phone number to register, and those temporary email services (like 10minutemail) rarely work any more, in my experience. Dow…
> Now every service demands your phone number to register That appeared as a defense against people impersonating you, i.e. two factor authentication.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the Nokia brick days you could easily go a full week between charges. Of course it's an apples to oranges comparison since a modern smartphone has infinitely more functionality, but in this one thing modern phones remain objectively worse.
You can still go a week on a modern phone if you restrict your usage to what you would do on a Nokia brick phone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've noticed this is leading to less high quality products being produced in general. If the only real axis people understand is price then products can't compete on quality/durability/maintability/etc, and so they're pushed aside to lower the cost. A recent example: I've bought many articles of clothing from Eddie Bauer over the years because they have been generally high quality and durable, and even so are only a…
There is an interesting counter balance to this consumer tendency: the business. Businesses/organizations in a lot of ways act much more "rationally" than the individual consumer. So you'll see generally better car/truck maintenance in fleets than by consumers. Then there is a cool feedback/blowoff valve where more expensive + higher quality "pro" tools get discovered by consumers, drive up demand, the price falls, a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you have to dig holes and fill them back in to get the money? And some more people can do the useless work of tracking who filled and dug how many holes.
if you oversimplify things, you lose the point. I moved houses. I took all of my stuff from my old house, moved it into a new house. Later, I moved all of that stuff back out of that house when I moved out of that one. Was moving my stuff into that house pointless, then? I could have just skipped a step and put it all in storage and then just not had any furniture for the entire time and saved money. In fact, if you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> things are getting much more expensive while the quality is declining This is totally untrue, material things have gotten way cheaper over time. TVs, cars, phones, technology, appliances, the list goes on and on. And quality has improved on many of these, a $500 TV today is way bigger and better than a $5k TV from a few decades ago. Same for cars & phones when you adjust for inflation. Home gadgets / IOT are much m…
Yes, and you can get fresh tomatoes any time of year for cheap and they're so firm they won't get damaged in transit and with a blast of ethylene they're a perfect shade of red when you buy them. All things unquestionably better than the past. What's there to complain about?
My family calls those "water balloons".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> things are getting much more expensive while the quality is declining This is totally untrue, material things have gotten way cheaper over time. TVs, cars, phones, technology, appliances, the list goes on and on. And quality has improved on many of these, a $500 TV today is way bigger and better than a $5k TV from a few decades ago. Same for cars & phones when you adjust for inflation. Home gadgets / IOT are much m…
Yes, and you can get fresh tomatoes any time of year for cheap and they're so firm they won't get damaged in transit and with a blast of ethylene they're a perfect shade of red when you buy them. All things unquestionably better than the past. What's there to complain about?
Taste and nutritional value a worse then in the past. Arguably the two most important things when it comes to food.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven’t followed the recent history of Eddie Bauer, but seems they’ve sullied their brand for a while. Sam’s Club has been selling Eddie Bauer stuff for years. I don’t think a $37 pair of Eddie Bauer hiking boots are going to be quality.
The more or less inevitable trend of "outdoor stores/brands" is to become increasingly sort of "outdoorsy casual" stores of some sort with--maybe--some camping/hiking gear at some level.
For the first few years, there aren't enough product issues for most of the hardcore enthusiasts to notice - maybe your tent ripping was just bad luck, or it may take two years for even a mediocre tent to weaken and fail for all but the people taking their tent to Denali or something.
Eventually the people who know move on and stop paying for the poorly made crap, but it's still seen as an exclusive brand by people who care about showing off they can afford something expensive vs. those for whom the quality was worth paying more for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long. That's rewriting history especially in terms of software and hardware. Appliances like Microwaves, etc were revolutionary for its time. Only problem: they lasted forever (>20 years). No 1 needed to buy it again = no…
>> Appliances like Microwaves, etc were revolutionary for its time. Only problem: they lasted forever (>20 years). No 1 needed to buy it again = no business. It was deliberately not made to last as long and possibly not exactly cheaper both in cost and retail price. This is a common myth that was debunked a while back. Essentially people get fooled by survivorship bias: they only see the few old appliances that someh…
It's still a thing today though? It's not survivorship bias. Take the Microwave example. In a lot of countries it is very hard to buy just a traditional (convection) Microwave now. They force these 4-in-1 or an inverter Microwave.
> leads them to conclude that things were higher quality back in the day
It says nothing about "quality". So continuing, yes the inverter Microwaves are "quality", offer more control and costs more but due to all the complexity dies way faster. A lot of them die in > This is a common myth that was debunked a while back.
By who? By you? Another example - SSDs have been made to not last as long. We went from SLC -> MLC -> TLC -> QLC etc. The writes were reduced. Did the consumers want this? No. There just wasn't much "choice". Top of line Samsung consumer SSDs just changed. During COVID some vendors sneakily adjusted it too. So, yes quality went worse. Deliberately.