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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

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-life anarchists aren't proposing the naïve "burn it all down" anarchy. Apparently that's just a media thing. (Some claim it's authoritarian propaganda, but I suspect it's just writers going: "we need a bad guy who wants to destroy society, but they need a reason , and we've had too many religious extremists: let's make this one an anarchist!"… though maybe this is a false dichotomy? Someone's probably written a…

The link between anarchists and 'burn everything down' comes from the fact that in reality, many anarchists have very much taken the 'shoot first' and then hopefully build something better later path. Those anarchists who didn't do that, were just never politically or socially relevant. So they can write nice pamphlets all they like about what 'real anarchism' actually is. > we need a bad guy who wants to destroy soc…

Well, no… Anarchism can be achieved via parallel construction, provided that the existing society doesn't fight back. For example, mutual aid networks (as described by Peter Kropotkin). And an anarchist society could transition to a communist society (or pretty much any other society) – but even Friedrich Engels' "withering away of the state" route to communism (attributed to Karl Marx, but Wikipedia disputes that it was actually his idea) does not require the destruction of the existing society to precede communism.

I only have a superficial understanding of these ideas; but it seems to me that a good idea, whatever the ideology behind it, is worth implementing. And "we should make sure everyone gets fed by looking after each other" is a pretty good idea, so it shouldn't matter that it's technically "anarchy".

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#562
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think being an expert in one field means you need to constantly engage in an academic level of discourse. It's extremely normal for blog posts featuring vibes-based hot takes to hit #1 on HN. I think that's fine, if the take is good.

yeah but as non-experts in the field, how does HN know the take is actually good, and not just well put together and sounds really good?

By exercising their judgment, I suppose. How does anyone know if any take is good? Even experts sometimes post bad takes. There's no substitute for critical reading.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#563
This post is so eloquent! This post describes a lot of ideas that I have been thinking about, and Tao has created a framework that lets me describe many of these thoughts.

I think people have been really underestimating the power of small organized groups, and I have been putting significant effort into invigorating the small groups around me.

Tao hints at some of the values of small groups, but I think he misses the irreplaceable value that small groups have. We as a society have conceptualized value itself into certain quantities, mostly in dollar amounts (time, money, income, wealth, assets, services, etc) that we have lost our humanity. I find it amusing that Tao describes "a sense of purpose" as a "softer" benefit, and I agree that this is the lens by which society implicitly sees "a sense of purpose" - a sense of purpose does not have a monetary value that can be assigned to it. Even so, what is all the money in the world worth without a sense of purpose?

Tao correctly points out that "large organizations" "offer substantially more economies of scale" and "provide significant material comforts", I wonder if humanity is ready to wonder if it really needs more material comforts at a global scale. Perhaps we can start paring down some of our global organizations into their core functions of providing material comforts and we can start invigorating small organizations to nourish our souls.

We spend so much time, energy, and mental anguish over challenges like war and political gridlock. Our natural inclination to consolidate power into large organizations to overcome these challenges may be counterproductive because these large organizations naturally dehumanize us. And when this dehumanized organization inevitably fail to achieve the original noble goals of e.g. strongarming Russia into peace with Ukraine, we naturally try to push for more power and use different forms of aggression or increase the magnitude of our aggression, not only to try to "conquer" the "problem" but also feel safe in our membership into a big and powerful organization capable of such aggression. This might also drive us to abandon "small organizations" for some "great cause". For example, look at all the time and energy we put into global political coalitions on social media rather than local causes.

Tao may be right that we need to fundamentally rethink how these different levels and sizes of organizations need to engage with one another. When we encounter a problem, even a big problem, a big organization sometimes is not only ineffective but they can be actively harmful.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What subsidies is Stargate project getting from US government?

I remembered incorrectly. They are getting "emergency declarations" support: > Donald Trump called it "the largest AI infrastructure project in history", and he indicated that he would use emergency declarations to expedite the project's development, particularly regarding energy infrastructure. So it might not be strictly a subsidy, but it surely is taxpayer-support.

Was that the same Donald Trump who said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours if elected?

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#565
post #558
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? 20 mid sized Googles is better for US power than 1 mega Google dominating the planet? Repeat for any corporation. Breaking these megacorps benefits little guys like you and me, but I doubt it benefits state power on the global stage

i think it could be argued that sure, 20 Googles would be better for US power, yes. why wouldn’t it be? it would drive more innovation which likely would only increase our influence on multiple levels. there could be more reason to argue it would absolutely be more secure—if any of these tech giants or one of the people inside were to sell us out it could be very very bad. if one or two out of twenty were to sell us…

As long as the state has power over Google (and it does, even if the media cycle presents it like they’re powerless), they can surveil billions of people, control populations, distribute propaganda.

Look how the US is able to spread it’s culture everywhere, cut off regimes, debank people it doesn’t like, all by controlling a few choke points.

Look how China uses its corporations to increase state power. The US does the same but with a few more carrots (lucrative govt contracts).

A mega corp means you can do your coercion behind closed doors rather than with sweeping regulations

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#566
post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's accurate? So all the current billionaires are descendants of other billionaires?

It seems you're implying that since being a billionaire is not 100% heritable, it must be a result of individual merit (leap 1) which is purely synonymous with skillfully allocating resources (leap 2) more than any other type of person (leap 3) rather than any other explanation for how they got there, say, sociopathy, right place right time, etc.

> It seems you're implying that since being a billionaire is not 100% heritable, it must be a result of individual merit

Nope, another strawman, I never claimed it was 100% merit. You claimed that wealth is purely heritable which is easily proven false by observing reality.

> sociopathy

So your claim is that sociopathy is more important for getting rich than skill?

> right place right time

Choosing the right business to build given the state of the world is a skill. Business requires luck the same way poker requires luck, and let me tell you, if you play poker vs a skilled player you will lose a lot of money.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#567
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholders receive power proportionate to their buying power. Citizens get a single vote. > You sometimes cam buy your way into citizenship. As a shareholder, it is your given right to vote in a shareholders meeting. Maybe - depending on your jurisdiction. Just like whether you have citizenship or not.

> Shareholders receive power proportionate to their buying power. Citizens get a single vote. Historically, there did exist experiments that not each person has the same voting power (for example the Prussian "Dreiklassenwahlrecht" [three-class franchise]): > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreiklassenwahlrecht Depending on the amount of taxes you paid, you were assigned to one of three classes. The sizes of each of th…

Likewise, there are companies with classes of stock, each with different voting rights.

But at this point we are simply discussing semantics.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#568
post #21

Great 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…

I feel point 1 is a more specific example of point 4. Point 3 makes sense because banks are handling peoples money, I don't know enough about point 2.

However point 1 & 4 is more about market power than anything else, point 3 is more about ensuring confidence in basic financial services aren't undermined by risk taking which feels like a separate point.

Sometimes for reasons other than foul play or a poorly design regulatory system, there's value in an organisation being large as it has increasing returns to scale, it can produce more output with the same input compared to smaller organisations. It's also unfortunately one way how monopolies form, easiest example being utility companies because there's also a case not to break them up as well as they can provide the service at a cheaper cost, but will they? Which makes the problem harder to solve then just breaking these firms up.

In NSW Australia (New South Wales the state Sydney is based in), the problem was approached by creating an institution called IPART which basically determines prices/rates for both public and private monopolies. In Sydney there are private motor ways and tunnels, IPART determines the rates, and the water company (Sydney Water) largely has its rates also decided by IPART, same goes for council rates (tax on land/properties, etc). IPART is far from perfect, it answers to the Premier (the Governor) so there's a risk of it becoming an instrument of popularism, but this means Sydney water is chronically underfunded (and water rates aren't even that high), this has second order effects like Sydney Water dragging its feet on committing to providing infrastructure. There are massive fixed costs with starting a water utility firm so it impacts stuff like residential construction reducing overall house supply, which is a problem in Sydney when housing is so expensive.

Sometimes these larger entities form as a result of government created entry barriers, in America it's easier to get small business funding than it is in Australia. Also in Australia we have laws about prohibiting pharmacies opening too close to each other, which is incredibly dumb. There's a very strong Pharmacy lobby, not big pharma but instead drug stores which might be a uniquely Australian phenomena. But it means there's no drug store near my local train station in an area that was recently redeveloped, or a single Pharmacy in areas like Sydney Olympic Park, but 10 in a smaller older area such Granville.

In Australia we have 2-3 large grocery stores (Coles, Woolworths and to a lesser extent IGA), a 4th exists to an even lesser extent but has struggled to grow and has been struggling in part due to the land planning regulatory framework. Most cities in the US have something similar, but in NSW it's in overdrive plays a big part in why housing is so unaffordable as it largely determines how much floor space is allowed on each lot and how tall buildings can be. But back to groceries, it's very difficult for ALDI to get permission to build as many grocery stores to compete due to energy barriers imposed by the planning system. If you own the land, you need to first get a planning proposal in to rezoned and planning controls updated, then you need to make a seperate development applicaition which can easily take 5 years.

I believe parking minimums in the USA can have a similar effect, as many cities require different levels of free parking for different land use.

Sometimes over regulating things can result in a lack competition, and it's not always a result of a lack of government intervention. And sometimes there's value in allowing organisations to be large. And when it is a problem sometimes the solution isn't always break them up.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more than one possible structure to sustain an active constraint against power grabs, to be sure. But a Senate elected by the state governments was effective in doing it for as long as it was in place. There are other things that could work instead, but sometimes the old thing only stopped working because it stopped happening. And either way you would still need the something else to be used instead rather t…

You have done nothing to demonstrate any of those claims, though. Make your case without the appeal to history to make it valid.

It's an empirical fact that in all the years from the founding to the passage of the 17th Amendment the US federal government was much smaller than it quickly became in the years following its passage, so all of the available evidence is consistent with the theory.

Moreover, the mechanism of operation makes logical sense. Senators want to keep their seats and state legislators don't want to have their own regulations preempted by federal laws unnecessarily and don't want excessive federal spending because money collected in federal taxes can't be collected in state taxes and taxpayers have a threshold level of total taxation they're willing to put up with

So I'm not sure what you're asking for other than logic and evidence.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link between anarchists and 'burn everything down' comes from the fact that in reality, many anarchists have very much taken the 'shoot first' and then hopefully build something better later path. Those anarchists who didn't do that, were just never politically or socially relevant. So they can write nice pamphlets all they like about what 'real anarchism' actually is. > we need a bad guy who wants to destroy soc…

Well, no… Anarchism can be achieved via parallel construction, provided that the existing society doesn't fight back. For example, mutual aid networks (as described by Peter Kropotkin). And an anarchist society could transition to a communist society (or pretty much any other society) – but even Friedrich Engels' "withering away of the state" route to communism (attributed to Karl Marx, but Wikipedia disputes that it…

Sure and if I claim that you should do a 1-handed handstand and say 'communism' three times in a row, it will surely create communism right? I can even write it down on a piece of paper and call it a 'manifesto'. But in the actual real world writing stuff down doesn't make it true at all, even if the person that wrote it is famous.

> For example, mutual aid networks

That in reality have never even come close to achieving much more then mutual aid. That such action could be wide ranging enough to replace the state is nothing more then fantasy.

The closest thing to that is Muslim Brotherhood doing aid, but that is with a clear component of military power as well.

> but even Friedrich Engels

Why would you say 'even'. Engles is not in any way shape or form qualified to make such statements. In his times non of these ideas had been tested. And said different things at different times for different people. Engels specifically publicly called out mass death would happen.

In the real world it has never happened and there is no indication that it would ever happen.

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