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Moore's Law for Everything

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Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#501

Post by simonh »

ben_w wrote: post #489
simonh wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say.

I’m saying “if so you should be able to find an actual example.” is false. CGP Grey argued (paraphrased) “if X happens in the future, Y will be like Z”, you are arguing that Y will never be like Z in the future because Y is not currently like Z.

But X has happened many times, and Y has never yet become like Z. Automation has replaced workers on massive, ginormous, gigantuan scales. Factories have replaced manual workers, then more efficient factories have replaced those factories, and then that's happened again several times over. Yet still we have near full employment and many, many more open positions than we have unemployed.

How long are we supposed to wait for this prediction to come true, and how many times does this have to be disproved across how many economies?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#502

Post by fnord77 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #137
AlexandrB wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His workers are poorer because his company's enormous valuation comes from the surplus value they produce but do not receive as compensation. You might be poorer if you own a small business those workers would frequent if they had more money. Edit: You might also be poorer if you tried to compete with Amazon and were crushed like a bug by their anti-competitive practices.

Labor theory of value lmao. Amazon workers are richer because they've been given an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have. If they could have a better job they'd take it.

trickle down economics!

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#503

Post by simonh »

TheTrotters wrote: post #459
spoonjim wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what, 90% of humans are also tools that a small percentage of other humans use to accomplish their goals. Few people would argue that the job of “Amazon warehouse worker” is anything other than a tool for Jeff Bezos to become richer and more powerful. The person who has that job, from when they clock in to when they clock out, is functionally equivalent to a horse. Amazon software engineers are the same, they j…

By that same logic Jeff Bezos is just a tool I use to get some obscure math textbook written in English shipped to my apartment in Eastern Europe overnight.

The point is that a horse can only do a dramatically narrow functions. It's basically a big walking engine. Conversely Jeff Bezos can tend a garden, build a house, create art, write documents, package goods, negotiate contracts, recruit employees, organise a company, care for children, drive a car, take out the trash, cook diner, etc, etc.

Comparing people and horses in terms of jobs they can do, and their ability to adapt to new tasks is so unbelievably dumb it's staggering it even needs to be pointed out. This is why these arguments for automation imminently putting vast swathes of people permanently out of work has never come true, in the hundreds of years it's been predicted.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#504

Post by ben_w »

simonh wrote: post #501
ben_w wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m saying “if so you should be able to find an actual example.” is false. CGP Grey argued (paraphrased) “if X happens in the future, Y will be like Z”, you are arguing that Y will never be like Z in the future because Y is not currently like Z.

But X has happened many times, and Y has never yet become like Z. Automation has replaced workers on massive, ginormous, gigantuan scales. Factories have replaced manual workers, then more efficient factories have replaced those factories, and then that's happened again several times over. Yet still we have near full employment and many, many more open positions than we have unemployed. How long are we supposed to wa…

X is “AGI invented”. Not special purpose AI, not automation, AGI — the G stands for “general”. If this has ever happened, it wasn’t on Earth (unless you count evolution producing us, in which case the example is “Neanderthals are all dead”).

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#505

Post by machiaweliczny »

IMO AGI is pipe-dream and it will require breakthrough(Darwin/Einstein level) rather than incremental improvements. This means it can happen tomorrow or not happen in 1000s of years. What's more likely is (post)capitalism for all but I think we need new money and value distribution and funding models for that and projects like Ethereum can possibly deliver this. +1 to taxing land.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#506

Post by ben_w »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #505

IMO AGI is pipe-dream and it will require breakthrough(Darwin/Einstein level) rather than incremental improvements. This means it can happen tomorrow or not happen in 1000s of years. What's more likely is (post)capitalism for all but I think we need new money and value distribution and funding models for that and projects like Ethereum can possibly deliver this. +1 to taxing land.

While I don’t think it’s a pipe dream, I agree we don’t know how far we are from achieving it, and that it may be tomorrow or never.

I think it’s worth planning for as if it’s imminent, because of the cost of it happening without planning is unbounded while the cost of planning now is perhaps a few thousand PhDs.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#507

Post by legulere »

ksdale wrote: post #500
legulere wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what (mandatory) insurances are for. Not insuring against events you cannot deal with alone is gambling.

At $12,000 per person, you can't insure against much at all without seriously cutting into the food and shelter.

Healthcare is around 10% of GDP (bar some countries that have organized their healthcare system inefficiently like my native Germany).

That still leaves you with $10.800. A liability insurance costs here around 50–100€ per year for a family. What more insurances do you need? GDP per capita also includes pensioners, so you do not need to count pension into this.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?most_...

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#508

Post by Judgmentality »

colinmhayes wrote: post #208
Judgmentality wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone says Animal Farm is a good story, but it wouldn't work if the animals were humans, I would say they didn't get the message.

Animal farm is a fictional story about humans disguised as animals. The horse allegory is a non-fictional story about the downfall of horses which are very much not human-like.

The horse allegory is a fictional story involving talking horses. It is hardly any more fictional than a symbolic retelling of communism spreading. Both are intended to prove a point, not accurately portray the details of history.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#509

Post by ksdale »

legulere wrote: post #507
ksdale wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $12,000 per person, you can't insure against much at all without seriously cutting into the food and shelter.

Healthcare is around 10% of GDP (bar some countries that have organized their healthcare system inefficiently like my native Germany). That still leaves you with $10.800. A liability insurance costs here around 50–100€ per year for a family. What more insurances do you need? GDP per capita also includes pensioners, so you do not need to count pension into this. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?m…

My understanding is that reducing a single person's income from 12,000 to 10,800 is a big deal. And in any case, my original point was that this is barely "enough," and this is assuming a perfectly efficient and equitable distribution. It may actually, technically be enough, but it's poverty. It's only not poverty if you also receive the income for people you take care of who don't actually need all of the income (like kids). I don't think arguing over whether $11,000 is as good as $12,000 is particularly meaningful because I don't think $12,000 is enough either, and my main disagreement with the original poster was with the statement that there has been enough for a long time. That seems unequivocally untrue to me.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#510

Post by statstutor »

scatters wrote: post #495
statstutor wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq... World Gini coefficient for wealth has increased from 0.804 to 0.904 between 2008 and 2018, where 1 means that a single person holds all the wealth .

Wealth inequality is immaterial; what matters is (lifetime) consumption inequality. Income inequality is an imperfect substitute measure.

Labour accounts for about half of world income, from memory, with capital accounting for the other half of world income. If wealth centralises, then so does income.

Besides, you replied to try and refute a comment which was quite unambiguously about wealth inequality. It's possible to occasionally admit you were wrong, rather than doubling down when you are.

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