We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis • Hacker News Board

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#391

Post by banannaise » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

nautilus12 wrote: post #388

AngryData wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the same thing as saying North Korea's failures are actually due to democracy. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea" Obviously the name of an organization doesn't mean jack compared to their actually implemented and enforced policies. The first things the Nazi's did when they gained power was kill all the socialists, communists, and unionists. They are anything but socialist.

This is a common rewriting of history in the last few years. Hitlers speeches are rife with rants against capitalism: "We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation … and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” ~ Hitler

Literally the point you are replying to is that you can't take fascists at their word. You have to use their actions.

Communists were among the first inhabitants of Hitler's concentration camps. The Communist Part of Germany started the organization Antifaschistische Aktion, the direct precursor of what we now know as Antifa.

And please stop equating "anti-capitalist" and "communist". The two are not the same or even close.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#392

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #333

heavyset_go wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

[deleted]

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#393

Post by banannaise » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #333

heavyset_go wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

That's because the United States invades free countries that aren't capitalist.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#394

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #360

sudosysgen wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is not the only device that can translate relative preferences. Just because things are scarce does not mean that non-scarce tools such as software must be bent to monetary incentives that reduce their value.

Any device that is used to ration is money though, there are other means to ration (the three we learn in Econ are beauty, brute force and first come first serve) but any device is by definition money since money is just a rationing device.

No, money has many more attributes than just being used to ration. Importantly money must be fungible divisible and durable.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#395

Post by agalunar » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #310

p_j_w wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit how I feel about advertising in general. Human beings' time is being taken and mouths are being fed not to increase overall output, and thus lifting the overall well being of members of society. Instead, Company A hires advertisers to convince the public to buy their product instead of a competing product to Company B. Value is created for Company A, but entirely at the expense of Company B. At no time…

>At no time in the economic... chain?... of events that is advertising is anything actually created, yet vast sums of money, and thus allocation of resources, is put here. It seems INSANELY wasteful. You're forgetting something, companies start off completely unknown. How did they reach the point where the market has been fully saturated and the only real way to gain more customers is to take them from someone else?…

Right, but there's a difference between connecting a business to a customer who wants the product (which is good!) and influencing the wants and needs of the customer, particularly against the long-term interests of the customer (which is bad).

[I think it's impossible to try and succeed at connecting people with businesses without somewhat influencing their wants and needs, but ideally we limit that.]

Modern ad tech is problematic because it has little regard for people's long-term interest and demonstrably affects people's wants, particularly in the context of searching and automatically-curated feeds: since the internet is so absurdly vast and searches/feeds are the windows to the world, you can partially control the reality in which users live.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#396

Post by 6510 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

Google is going to list inventories in google shopping for free. I really hope the next step is to remove products from the main search engine. Currently it's just like our nice document web was replaced with web applications. Our nice search index is replaced with endless product listings.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#397

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #350

heavyset_go wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are famines, but that didn't stop the market from starving millions of people, either.

When did markets cause famine? We are living in an age of wasted food because we have so much cheap crap (as well as high-quality) available. People are too fat because there's no barrier to over-consumption. Whereas a socialist system causes famines due to central planning leads to poor decision making.

The causes of the Great Irish famine were those imposed by capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Causes_...

The market decided that the starving people who harvested crops didn't need to eat them, because people would pay more for those crops elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Food_ex...

10 million people starved in the Bengal famine: https://www.mensxp.com/special-features/today/27992-the-forg...

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#398

Post by throwaway3699 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #397

throwaway3699 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did markets cause famine? We are living in an age of wasted food because we have so much cheap crap (as well as high-quality) available. People are too fat because there's no barrier to over-consumption. Whereas a socialist system causes famines due to central planning leads to poor decision making.

The causes of the Great Irish famine were those imposed by capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Causes_... The market decided that the starving people who harvested crops didn't need to eat them, because people would pay more for those crops elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Food_ex... 10 million people starved in the Bengal famine: https://www.mensxp.com/spec…

How would socialism have dealt with the first scenario? My understanding is there simply wasn't enough food to go around, and no economic system can fix that. Capitalism at least provides a profit motive to solve the problem (eventually).

The Bengal famine was a top down project specifically designed to profit. There is no "free market capitalism" in that scenario.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#399

Post by throwaway3699 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #393

throwaway3699 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

That's because the United States invades free countries that aren't capitalist.

Oh yeah. The US is guilty as charged, but there's no such thing as a free country that's not capitalist, until we live in a post-scarcity society. Technologically we are many centuries away from that.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#400

Post by dqh » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #315

bayesianbot wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of dating sites at least in Scandinavia/central europe, where men pay per message (or usually buy message packs, it ends up being around 1€ a message IIRC). The (mostly) men answering these messages, pretending to be women, get paid around 0.15€ per reply. And obviously writing messages where they try to prolong the conversation and turn down real life meetings or changing to other (free) messaging sy…

Why does the system charge men and pay women to message, instead of just charging everyone to message? I would have thought that of all places Scandinavia would not price-discriminate users based on their gender ...

It might be because men unfortunately, as a group, disproportionately misbehave in these situations. Sending unwelcome dick pics, sending aggressive messages to people who don’t show any interest in them etc. I’ve wondered myself if charging us to send messages might rein in the antisocial behaviour a bit.