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Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

mattsclancy.github.io

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Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#61

Post by inigyou »

throw0101a wrote: post #35

The century from 1870 is filled with many one-time only developments that will never happen again: Things like accepting germ theory (so treating sewage and drinking water), the development of vaccines and antibiotics, the creation of mechanical motion (previously biological methods, in the horse, was the fastest mode), electricity (artificial light that did not entail burning things), mechanical/electrical calculati…

I think we had a lot of jumps left in biology. We will have true immortality within 500 years at this rate. We've just switched over to artificial light without burning things, as we were burning things for light the whole time until recently.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#62

Post by sususuuss »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #25
blfr wrote: post #2

Will we see any growth acceleration? The Internet doesn't seem to have had this effect. AI may turn out to nothing in terms of gdp growth or even be hugely deflationary.

> The Internet doesn't seem to have had this effect. This is both correct and incorrect. US and China tech did totally skyrocket in the 21st century and pulled the GDPs of both the US and China up like mad. The one western continent that had none of the Google, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, Tencen, Micron, SK Hynix, NVidia, that's nowhere in drones, etc. saw his GDP (in USD and inflation adjusted) barely moving and that'…

As an European: ouch, but there is some truth to this.

It is however crystal clear in what direction both your examples are headed and I’m not sure it’s the wonderland you seem to think it is. China is an authoritarian hell-hole and the US is.. I don’t know there is even a word for it. Let’s just say I’m glad to be on this side of the pond.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#63

Post by bluegatty »

chii wrote: post #39
bluegatty wrote: post #30

No - the growth today is capital expenditures, not productivity. To be fair, the industrial revolution was a 100 year period or so, computers, web, cloud, mobile and AI will likely be perceived in the same historical framework. AI will take some time to pan out in terms of productivity, but it will. A better comparison might be railroads.

Why is railroad a better comparison?

Railroads were a legitimate innovation that reshaped industry and society, there was no doubt about that - but it required massive capital expenditures, even buy in from regular people. As a result, there was speculative bubble, massive over investment, bubble bursts.

And yet all of the track laid was ultimately put to good use, and it was transformative.

Elon's 'magic' is attracting legions of retail investors - Dentists, Lawyers, others who keep those valuations high.

Some of them believe, on some level, that he's going to put 1 million people on the moon. After all - why would he strike a deal with the board for a bonus on that target?

Because it's a fake deal, intended to give legitimacy to a scammy proclamation.

Altman's 'magic' is the nauseating narrative around 'the singularity' and 'AGI'

Tesla, Space X, AI - are all very real, they're doing materially good things, but that's actually what makes it dangerous.

'NFTs' are narrative nonsense based on nonsense.

AI and Space are narrative nonsense based on something legitimate ... which gives the backers an inch of ground to stand on, which ironically imbues some of them ridiculous cognitive impairment.

And a lot of populist fools all around, carving out niches on ideological or populist territory (aka 'Elon Bad', 'Elon God', 'AI fake', 'AI will do everything') etc.

The truth is extra hard to discern because the future does actually depend on 'the herd' - and how much they can be convinced, and in a sustainable way etc..

Some degree of 'narrative' might bode well for everyone, too much is fraud.

Railroads were a perfect opportunity for overstatement.

Our system of capitalism is partly at fault: builders have no choice but to 'play the game' to some extent, they have to balance that with reality, and hopefully morality.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#64

Post by literalAardvark »

agumonkey wrote: post #51
literalAardvark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the big ones. Only issue is the US is crap at collecting tax from them.

sorry i was really asking, i'm quite jaded about internet and i don't see what's so valuable (of course all i see is reddit youtube ..)

All of Amazon, Apple, all the AI stuff, Google, including YouTube, yes.

They make tons of money for the US. Value is somewhat more subjective, but Amazon for instance certainly creates an enormous amount of value, as do Google's search and maps products.

I would argue that the democratisation of knowledge that YouTube has enabled is also very valuable.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#65

Post by LeBit »

cheschire wrote: post #10

The growth will be in stocks and capital gains, in the consolidation of wealth by a few individuals. If GDP increases, that’s just money left on the table by the ultra wealthy.

I wonder if I will witness the real revolution in my lifetime.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#66

Post by Nevermark »

The industrial revolution was a mini-quake compared to automated cognition. But we can learn some things from it.

I see the industrial revolution as the invention of the cart. It made horses more productive. Then the car replaced horses.

It is taking people longer to wrap their heads around the reality than I thought it would. If there was a competitive human species on the planet getting smarter by the day, people would get it.

It is hard to maintain awareness of something which presents questions with no obvious answers. The one answer I have, is we need to clean up the ethics in our systems. Ethics are not costs against value, they are the full accounting and optimization of all value.

More intelligent creatures than us, not held back by our our outdated biologically instincts, won't have any trouble with that game theory.

So ethical systems are not just a shield for us as individuals, but also of inherent value to new forms of self-interest.

But that won't help us, if we don't push to align and strengthen our own systems now. And reverse the concentration of power in corrupt individuals who demonstrate every day that they are not interested in the wellbeing of humans in general.

This is urgent. We do not have a lot of time to effect this change.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#67

Post by lukan »

inigyou wrote: post #58
lukan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speedup in communication is fast, but the real physical work still needed to be done. Machines were very powerful with this, but not flexible. AI powered robots will be flexible (once they work reliable) ..

Most robots are better without AI.

A robot without AI ... is not a robot, but a (remote controlled) drone/machine.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#68

Post by hamper653 »

cherryteastain wrote: post #49
hamper653 wrote: post #14

Early capitalism didn’t have steady growth because of technical advances. It had steady growth because it was early capitalism. When capitalism expands (be it by replacing older modes of production, or through rebuilding after a world war), it always has steady growth. When there’s nowhere left to expand to, the machine always grips. Technical progress doesn’t prevent this outcome, it accelerates it. More productivit…

> Early capitalism didn’t have steady growth because of technical advances. It had steady growth because it was early capitalism. The same technical advances created rapid growth in non industrialized non capitalist societies once they were introduced like the USSR or China. It's silly to say that orders of magnitude reductions in human labour needed to produce food, provide clean water, build sanitation and sewer sy…

> The same technical advances created rapid growth in non industrialized non capitalist societies once they were introduced like the USSR or China.

What created rapid growth in both the USSR and China is precisely their respective transitions from non capitalist societies to capitalist societies. Regardless of the technical advances of the (very different) times.

> It's silly to say that orders of magnitude reductions in human labour needed to produce food, provide clean water, build sanitation and sewer systems do not result in steady growth regardless of economic system.

No, what’s silly is to talk about "economic growth" regardless of the economic system. The growth in "economic growth" is a growth of exchange value produced in a given year. It makes sense only where production is meant for exchange, i.e. in capitalism.

And no, it is not silly to say that orders of magnitude reductions in human labour needed to produce food, provide clean water, build sanitation and sewer systems do not result in steady growth in capitalism. It is silly that orders of magnitude reductions in human labour needed to produce food, provide clean water, build sanitation and sewer systems do not result in steady growth in capitalism. Capitalism is silly.

> Producing the food easily is more fundamental than deciding who gets what amount of easily produced food allocated to them.

Now that’s a silly thing to say. Producing food easily is useless if the producers themselves can’t access it.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#69

Post by ernst_klim »

blfr wrote: post #7
ernst_klim wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I believe that growth caused by the rise of IT, be it Internet or LLM, will be marginal, because the benefits for humanity are very marginal compared to that caused by steam engine, wing, antibiotics or telegraph. Everything IT does is slightly simplifying things we already could do. We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup…

I think the speedups and conveniences of modern IT and the Internet have been massive: I can bank from my pocket, review the best photos out of 100k+ just when riding a tram, get virtually any good produced anywhere delivered to my doorstep in 1-3 business days (and it will be the exact kind and make I chose, not something that happened to be available), read virtually any book ever published while my appointment is…

> I can bank from my pocket

My opinion on that is, it's not such a big gain compared to legacy banking with checks, phone calls etc. All the operations you can do now you could do with legacy banks, just a bit slower. Given banking is not something you do every second, the overall speedup is tiny.

Re: Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

#70

Post by ernst_klim »

mahkeiro wrote: post #37
TacticalCoder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's very myopic view. The gains by the rise of IT have been staggering ... You can't make people who have basically been, their entire lives, coding variations of JavaScript "punch the monkey" abusive ads understand the impact the Internet had on the world.

I wonder if people saying this really had an active life before Internet because if you do the change is so massive that it’s difficult to comprehend.

I did live before internet bc widespread internet came quite late to my country, and I must say it wasn't all that different. Dating, job search and social interactions were actually easier and more pleasant.
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