971–980 of 1001 posts
Not everywhere, bot everybody. But enough for me to notice.
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Yeah but most people aren't farmers. How much economic value gets tied up in investment schemes? How many people worked for years on crypto or the metaverse or what-have-you—projects that only existed to boost stock price, rather than because anyone needed them? Our society doesn't optimize the lifestyles of its citizens. It optimizes stock price, which leads to an economy where everyone works a lot, even on things n…
Exactly. A lot of people would be bring more value to society doing literally ANYTHING else than working on the metaverse or something but they won't get compensated the same for the actually useful stuff.
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> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.
Some elements of beauty are objective. As in, they are hardwired into our brains. Some cities are more beautiful than others. Prague is more beautiful than Detroit.
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> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.
Then substitute one of my drawings (or paintings, if I painted) of a person. There's no way in the world that anyone--anyone!--would think mine were better. That's because mine are truly awful.
Rich (relatively?) software bro wants other people to care more. Does not reflect on the economics. Everything is economic. Tech has exacerbated the hyperfinancialization, enshittification, and general reduction to meaninglessness of every action. Caring requires time and energy. Most tech companies aim to consume every freaking instant of your life (or else they serve the other tech companies that do that). For many…
Give me a single actionable item that will enable me to fix the values of anyone else and I will move the world. "Fix the values, fix the world" should go on the wiki page of examples of things that are easier to say than to do
But having more people be able to say "there are jobs I would not take, no matter how much they pay, because they do harm to the world" would make a substantial impact. This is the thing which can be done. Every day opting out of some deleterious but widely held social value. It is not easy.
Among the things people should generally reconsider as providing negative value to society...investment banking, consulting, private equity, corporate law, facebook, VC, most of google, many AI companies
shrug
Being the 1%, and sometimes 1% of the 1% is this world, is either what most normal people call genius or simply insane.
The first thing that springs to mind of "better" world is Japan is I shared this immensely with the author. If only I could learn Japanese I would have lived there.
Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…
Well thanks to all the replies below to prove may be he is not assuming it's because everyone is stupid.
I think this reply also amplifies what the author was saying. Just because the standard is like this and everyone is following the standard doesn't mean the standard is good.
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Then substitute one of my drawings (or paintings, if I painted) of a person. There's no way in the world that anyone--anyone!--would think mine were better. That's because mine are truly awful.
Even then, that's just an opinion that everyone shares. Objectivity isn't when everyone's subjective experiences align—it's when something exists independent of any subjective experience. If there were no humans at all, "beauty" would be meaningless. It's an inherently subjective property which humans ascribe to objects. Conversely, the Earth would still orbit the Sun, because gravity is objective.
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Even then, that's just an opinion that everyone shares. Objectivity isn't when everyone's subjective experiences align—it's when something exists independent of any subjective experience. If there were no humans at all, "beauty" would be meaningless. It's an inherently subjective property which humans ascribe to objects. Conversely, the Earth would still orbit the Sun, because gravity is objective.
In the same way I can state as an objective fact that Patrick Mahomes is way better than either of us at being a quarterback, I can say that any painting I've ever done isn't as good as the Mona Lisa.
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In the same way I can state as an objective fact that Patrick Mahomes is way better than either of us at being a quarterback, I can say that any painting I've ever done isn't as good as the Mona Lisa.
A better quarterback wins games. What does a better painting do—win art contests? Judged by what objective criteria? Art doesn't have rules the way football does. A painting can't "win at being art"; each individual audience member either likes it or they don't.
Well, no, a better quarterback is just a member of a team. They don't dictate whether the team wins or not, they just contribute to it if they are good. Though we can't say whether a given quarterback is good or not because we don't have objective criteria to determine that. It's all relative and arbitrary - as I'm sure you'd agree with.
> What does a better painting do—win art contests?
Maybe? Why not?
> Judged by what objective criteria? Art doesn't have rules the way football does.
Football rules are arbitrary criteria, not objective.
> A painting can't "win at being art";
Why not? The Mona Lisa has the most viewers so maybe that means it is the best art?