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100 years of whatever this will be

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#661

Post by int_19h »

potatolicious wrote: post #113
nouveaux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> I don't know how you are going to be productive without consensus. At the risk of pedantry (but in this case I think warranted): consensus literally means every single person agrees. This is as opposed to something like democratic rule, where rules can be made and enforced even if not every single person involved agrees. I think OP is using the precise (non-colloquial) definition of "consensus" and rightly points o…

You can certainly get a small room of people to agree on what's good for lunch, if the premise is that there's no lunch at all until they agree on what to have. There will be some compromising involved, so not everybody might get the dish that is their first choice, but the more important thing is that nobody gets something that they hate.

That aside, consensus always has a particular domain of applicability, and by decentralizing, you make that domain smaller - and thus make consensus easier. Federation can be used to replicate this process on as many layers as needed for decentralized organization of larger societies.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#662

Post by MauranKilom »

serverholic wrote: post #617
MauranKilom wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that notion, the fact that almost all home locks are easily pickable and glass windows breakable is also insane. There's tons of valuables behind almost all of these! We found meaningful ways of disincentivizing theft, which turns out to be largely sufficient even in face of fallible security. The exact same applies to card data in the hands of merchants.

"We found meaningful ways of disincentivizing X". Take that logic and apply it to crypto and hopefully that'll help you understand why crypto enthusiasts believe in it. The fact is that we can and do find ways around flaws in a system. Crypto folks just think that a crypto foundation is better than the current foundation of our financial systems.

> Take that logic and apply it to crypto and hopefully that'll help you understand why crypto enthusiasts believe in it.

That's exactly the point of the article: You need some form of guardrail, and that has to be centralized.

> Crypto folks just think that a crypto foundation is better than the current foundation of our financial systems.

How so? I am not under the impression that current financial providers have significant issues in consistently exchanging numbers...

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#663

Post by munificent »

ipaddr wrote: post #553
shebek wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this line of reasoning seems to be missing is that society seems to be getting worse largely because of software.

Seems to and getting worse are two different islands. Things are better than ever for all progressive issues. More people are living healthier and wealthier than ever. Crime, wars are all down. How is software making society worse?

> Things are better than ever for all progressive issues.

Except for economic inequality and the climate.

More poor have been lifted out of poverty, but even so the gap between the richest and poorest is growing. That's a problem not just because it means the poorest could be doing even better than they are, but because inequality is itself a massively destabilizing force that undermines trust and weakens the social fabric.

Our air and water is OK to consume, and the amount of forest cover in Western countries is currently alright. But the diversity and density of natural life, especially animal life, is plummeting. We are living in a Silent Spring right now but it snuck up so fast most of us didn't notice. I remember how loud the outdoors were when I saw a children. Insects buzzing, frogs croaking, fish splashing, rodents rustling. When I go into the woods these days, it looks mostly the same, but it's so much quieter.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#664

Post by Buttons840 »

throwaway803453 wrote: post #430

* Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves I was fortunate to have had a career with mild autonomy to help other team members even if it was slightly out of my job description. But this only happens in a shared office environment where you can see when someone is falling behind or overhear a problem. That physical presence also creates a bond with co-workers that's often more powerful than the corporate…

> If I get work done early, I now just call it a day. Why bother with ad-hoc testing, documentation, checking in on that new hire, proposing a conference paper, investigating technical debt, etc.

Office workers can have this attitude as well. If you'd think poorly of others having this attitude in the office perhaps you should look at your own attitude with remote work.

I have formed bonds through remote work, and yes, they are different, but a lot of the difference you describe is because of you. That's ok, people are different, just don't assume everyone else is the same.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#665

Post by int_19h »

pitaj wrote: post #283
goodpoint wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People constantly forget that large multinationals like Amazon are bigger that many countries, are purely authoritarian structures and work as 100% centralized economies. > Central panning doesn't scale On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability. The problem is that dictatorships (both co…

> large multinationals like Amazon I don't know about the internal workings of Amazon specifically, but many corporations are set up as hierarchical "business units" that each operate as separate companies within: selling their products and services within the company. There's still a market, not everything is determined centrally. > On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the…

Soviet Russia actually had to reintroduce markets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy) to dig itself out of the economic hole caused by the hyper-centralized planning of "military communism".

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#666

Post by long_time_gone »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #597
ignoramous wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, technical progress is key part of progress. If nothing is rooted in people's / society's / community's / government's wants and needs, then what incentives are left for progress? > Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people. I think you may be conflating inventors with innovators. Inventors, like innovators, are a product of their time. The leaps and bounds come from invention. An…

I wasn't talking about needs, I was talking about complaints. Innovators/Inventors are driven by their needs, not by other people's complaints. Unless they need to stop their spouses complaining or something like that.

>Innovators/Inventors are driven by their needs, not by other people's complaints.

A need is the solution to a complaint, no?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#667

Post by shebek »

halostatue wrote: post #583
shebek wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this line of reasoning seems to be missing is that society seems to be getting worse largely because of software.

Or is it getting worse because of how the software is used? I will grant that some software seems to only be usable in weaponized ways (e.g., biometric identification at scale), but something like Facebook could be used for _good_ purposes (connecting people) if it weren’t driven by the wrong metrics (e.g., advertising, surveillance, etc.).

Here's the thing.

If we're talking about a material object, there would be a more or less clear distinction between "what it is", "how it's made", "how it's used", etc.

If we're talking about software, I don't think that's the case any more.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#668

Post by streamofdigits »

Its the worst of times, its the best of times. The digital revolution (or whatever this is) has degenerated into a bizarre mix of speculative frenzy, unprecedented concentration of control on a background of complete disregard for societal impact. Phoneyness and false representations abound - there are no repercussions. The "market" applauds.

Its time to go back to the roots of computing. Reinvent what the digital age means. Imbue it with soul and values in an inalienable way. 100% human-centric. Augmenting human ability, augmenting human society. There is enormous value in that. Not manufactured Ponzi value. Real value. Improving our lot. Solving the real problems of sustainability, persistent inequality, debilitating ignorance and suffering.

If you have talent now is the time to change the world. You know its not utopic because you have seen the extreme leverage of the digital toolkit.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#669

Post by themacguffinman »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #598
themacguffinman wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we solve this equal rights thing? You know, just a quick errand before we restore equal rights: change the prevailing culture and change definitions throughout a complex set of laws. This is exactly the junior developer mindset described in the thread parent: rest…

I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere. it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government). If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition…

Yeah I'm saying it's not pragmatic, it's the opposite of pragmatic. Of course people want governmental recognition, many hetero married couples want it and already rely on it. Gay couples also want equal rights on top of that. They want both.

This is cutting the proverbial baby in half and redefining the legal institution so no one gets what they want, that will go well in a democracy /s

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#670

Post by mavhc »

Shorel wrote: post #573
munificent wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…

Except: Law is code. And we run these programs. We are the processors. And I mean real laws, the ones written in congress. Whatever we are doing, in a sense, is trying to sidestep these laws.

Real laws are maths, slightly real laws are physics. Lawyer laws are just written to cause you to have to hire lawyers
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