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Europe needs to escape providerism

loeber.substack.com

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Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#81

Post by t8sr »

dang wrote: post #17

Oh gosh, can we please not do national/regional bickering here? That's not curious conversation ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.

I don't see anything about this post that's against the guidelines. The topic is eminently relevant. I agree with others who have said that this is getting flagged simply because people disagree, on an emotional level. Maybe that's enough to not want this discussion here, but then we should also remove posts discussing Rust (hah).

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#83

Post by rightbyte »

elteto wrote: post #64

This one is sure to elicit strong opinions here on HN. People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate. But why does having high quality of life have to be orthogonal to having a strong tech market? I think the more interesting question is could Europe maintain their standards _and_ also have a strong tech indus…

> I think the more interesting question is could Europe maintain their standards _and_ also have a strong tech industry that could compete with the US?

Those things are not contradictions. Outside of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google's fields the competition level in tech is quite good. And honestly, I only want one of those around me at all.

> People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate.

I would not say that. Europe is stretching from Portugal to the Urals.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#84

Post by loeber »

sabas123 wrote: post #77
probablynish wrote: post #29

It's tempting to read just the headline and see an opportunity to express your views on the great Europe vs US online debate (everyone has a take), but the article does have an interesting thesis. > If you wanted to regulate AI, I think you’d want to regulate somewhere at the production level, not at the consumption level. Why is it that the EU regulators are focusing entirely on the consumption level? > Well, becaus…

The distinction between usage and production is a silly one imo. Every producer is also probably a consumer of tools.

Author here. I think you misunderstood the distinction I was drawing. How you train ML models is distinct from how you apply ML models. Regulating applications is so wide-ranging and full of edge cases that it's severely impractical. How you train them is a much narrower scope where you could actually set some regulatory constraints. (I do not endorse regulating AI at this point in time, this is just for the sake of argument.)

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#85

Post by trgn »

lordnacho wrote: post #67
hansvm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, not a single American I've talked to who was on the fence about moving to Europe was deterred by not knowing the native language well enough. Whether overly optimistic or not, the prospect of spending a few months learning well enough to barely get by and spending more time later to become more adept never amounted to even a footnote in the deciding factors.

Sure, they convince themselves that everyone speaks English, which is generally true in the kinds of places that hire expats. But plenty of them find it hard to fit in socially, and then leave later.

Yeah, the language factor is hugely underrated.

I think it's less the money aspect, and more the fact that American society is more bland, uniform. It's easier to fit in. In Europe, unless it's a true international metro (amsterdam, london, brussels, ...), there's a huge cultural barrier. You just can't hitch into it as an adult. Your children will fit in, but not you.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#86

Post by peoplefromibiza »

missedthecue wrote: post #11
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.

that's a textbook example of survivorship bias.

those who would benefit from migrating to Europe cannot afford to, are greatly discouraged or straight up can't (passport, language barriers etc)

OTOH most of those going to the US right now are from eastern Europe, following the flood after the wall fell.

Or people who are going there to increase their salary, not necessarily their quality of life. I have several friends who are working for one of the FAANGS in the US but come back to Italy for medical check-ups or holidays because here's cheaper, safer and it's a better place to spend your free time or raise kids.

European population in the US is pretty stable though.

In the end people of European descent are still the largest ethnic group in the US of A, the USA were founded mostly by anglo-germans while the opposite has never been true.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#87

Post by n0rlant1s »

dang wrote: post #17

Oh gosh, can we please not do national/regional bickering here? That's not curious conversation ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.

dang: Your about bio says "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups" and that is exactly what is happening here. It's a fruitful discussion with a lot of nuance and yes, disagreement. Nothing here seems against guidelines

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#89

Post by peoplefromibiza »

n0rlant1s wrote: post #45

I love how this is a post about the European regulation of technology and people are arguing in the comment section about quality of life

well the article clearly says that the problem is that EU passes legislation that are from the point of view of the customer not the producer, which is a way to increase the quality of life, you as a consumer are (more?) protected against the exploitation by those entities with large pockets and zero incentives to behave ethically.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#90

Post by marcusverus »

woodruffw wrote: post #38
dividendpayee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article suggests heavily that, the way things are going, that's not going to be the case in the future. Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.

> Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off. As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life. Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the…

It seems odd that the Europhiles always fall back on such oblique support. Life expectancy, for example, is heavily impacted by things like demographics and obesity. The 'better life index' is literally editorial content. Its outcomes are driven by its creators' choices with regard to the wording/framing of their questions and the weights of the various components of their scores. The US, for example, has an average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita of >60% the OECD average.. but gets an "8.5" on income? Weird.
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