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Can you do a back of the envelope calculation to figure out how large those "more valuable but also more difficult to monetize" effects would be? As I noted in

Can you do a back of the envelope calculation to figure out how large those "more valuable but also more difficult to monetize" effects would be? As I noted in the blog post you cited, most of this discussion is just meaningless verbiage. No one even attempts to quantify the the effects they claim are so important. (In the HN comments on that post, many people suggested such effects; the minute you crunch numbers they turn out to be tiny.) It's the intellectual's dream lifestyle. One that used to be possible for writers and academics. It still is possible - go live in a rural area, consume very little, and survive with bad internet (still vastly better than the no internet of previous eras). People just don't like to do it because of the low status it entails, and because they've grown used to modern consumption that they'd need to give up.

blfr 11y ago
No one even attempts to quantify the the effects they claim are so important. Perhaps I didn't phrase that strongly enough but growing the economy or making it more efficient is not the point. It's at most a rationalization. go live in a rural area, consume very little, and survive with bad internet That's not a realistic advice. It's extremely difficult, puts having a family largely out of reach, and places you away from potential collaborators. Even Joey Hess[1][2] has to resort to crowd funding and grants. [1] https://joeyh.name/ https://joeyh.name/ [2] https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  That's not "realistic advice", but that's what people did back in the day. Also, the only reason it "puts having a family largely out of reach" is due to women's sexual choices - most women prefer a man who lives a higher status lifestyle. Sorry, but you aren't entitled to a wife; if women prefer a different lifestyle, that's their choice. And again, what fraction of people who stop working in the for-profit economy will actually be as productive as Joey Hess?
  - blfr 11y ago
    No, that's not what people did back in the day. Those who managed lived off advances from their publishers, inheritance, sponsors, or Church sinecures. It's not possible nowadays. You need to promote your works and it became much less socially acceptable. It's a weird observation that going off the grid would price you out of the dating market. Plenty of "starving artists" and outright bums have more success with women than salarymen. And again, what fraction of people who stop working in the for-profit economy will actually be as productive as Joey Hess? That's the direct counterargument to most BI hopes. Of course, it's very difficult to verify empirically and mostly depends on what you already believe about human nature. We don't even know if Joey Hess is more or less productive than he would be otherwise.
    - ticviking 11y ago
      Have you ever lived out west? It's literally how it was done. Go west, steal some land from whatever non-white people are there. Have many babies and bootstrap civilization on the empty land. yummyfajita's is missing that this isn't possible now because we're out of land to steal, and the state gets pissy about building a log cabin in national forest service land.
lmm 11y ago
Non-empirically-validated numbers obscure a lot more than they clarify. The scarmig comment you link to shows that almost all of the effects you included were irrelevant and this whole exercise was worse than useless. Using this much precision at this level of accuracy can only ever mislead.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It's not about precision, it's about knowing if we are even in the ballpark. And it's an incredibly valuable exercise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem It's also about knowing what facts need to be true for a BI to work. Then we know what facts we need to verify to determine if it's true, in contrast to all the meaningless verbiage in this thread. Also, Scarmig's comment was quite valuable. It showed exactly what the driving effect is - that's precisely why you should do a back of the envelope calculation. And as all the non-quantitative comments show, it's also why any comments suggesting an effect but not doing such a calculation are worse than useless.
  - lmm 11y ago
    > Also, Scarmig's comment was quite valuable. It showed exactly what the driving effect is - that's precisely why you should do a back of the envelope calculation. And the driving effect turned out to be a disputed premise that we already knew about from our directional, non-quantitative discussions. The quantitative side is just a meaningless overcomplication (the monte carlo part especially), especially when none of the parameters was empirically validated. You wouldn't value a company you were thinking about investing in that way. A quantitative examination would be valuable if we agreed on the premises, or if we disagreed on conclusions but weren't sure where the disagreement on premises that was driving this was. Neither of these scenarios is the case for basic income. We know what the questions under dispute are; it's time for empirical experiments.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      You wouldn't value a company you were thinking about investing in that way. That's exactly how you value an early stage company - back of the envelope calculations and monte carlo.

blfr 11y ago

No one even attempts to quantify the the effects they claim are so important. Perhaps I didn't phrase that strongly enough but growing the economy or making it more efficient is not the point. It's at most a rationalization. go live in a rural area, consume very little, and survive with bad internet That's not a realistic advice. It's extremely difficult, puts having a family largely out of reach, and places you away from potential collaborators. Even Joey Hess[1][2] has to resort to crowd funding and grants. [1] https://joeyh.name/ https://joeyh.name/ [2] https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/

yummyfajitas 11y ago
That's not "realistic advice", but that's what people did back in the day. Also, the only reason it "puts having a family largely out of reach" is due to women's sexual choices - most women prefer a man who lives a higher status lifestyle. Sorry, but you aren't entitled to a wife; if women prefer a different lifestyle, that's their choice. And again, what fraction of people who stop working in the for-profit economy will actually be as productive as Joey Hess?
- blfr 11y ago
  No, that's not what people did back in the day. Those who managed lived off advances from their publishers, inheritance, sponsors, or Church sinecures. It's not possible nowadays. You need to promote your works and it became much less socially acceptable. It's a weird observation that going off the grid would price you out of the dating market. Plenty of "starving artists" and outright bums have more success with women than salarymen. And again, what fraction of people who stop working in the for-profit economy will actually be as productive as Joey Hess? That's the direct counterargument to most BI hopes. Of course, it's very difficult to verify empirically and mostly depends on what you already believe about human nature. We don't even know if Joey Hess is more or less productive than he would be otherwise.
  - ticviking 11y ago
    Have you ever lived out west? It's literally how it was done. Go west, steal some land from whatever non-white people are there. Have many babies and bootstrap civilization on the empty land. yummyfajita's is missing that this isn't possible now because we're out of land to steal, and the state gets pissy about building a log cabin in national forest service land.

lmm 11y ago

Non-empirically-validated numbers obscure a lot more than they clarify. The scarmig comment you link to shows that almost all of the effects you included were irrelevant and this whole exercise was worse than useless. Using this much precision at this level of accuracy can only ever mislead.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's not about precision, it's about knowing if we are even in the ballpark. And it's an incredibly valuable exercise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem It's also about knowing what facts need to be true for a BI to work. Then we know what facts we need to verify to determine if it's true, in contrast to all the meaningless verbiage in this thread. Also, Scarmig's comment was quite valuable. It showed exactly what the driving effect is - that's precisely why you should do a back of the envelope calculation. And as all the non-quantitative comments show, it's also why any comments suggesting an effect but not doing such a calculation are worse than useless.
- lmm 11y ago
  > Also, Scarmig's comment was quite valuable. It showed exactly what the driving effect is - that's precisely why you should do a back of the envelope calculation. And the driving effect turned out to be a disputed premise that we already knew about from our directional, non-quantitative discussions. The quantitative side is just a meaningless overcomplication (the monte carlo part especially), especially when none of the parameters was empirically validated. You wouldn't value a company you were thinking about investing in that way. A quantitative examination would be valuable if we agreed on the premises, or if we disagreed on conclusions but weren't sure where the disagreement on premises that was driving this was. Neither of these scenarios is the case for basic income. We know what the questions under dispute are; it's time for empirical experiments.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    You wouldn't value a company you were thinking about investing in that way. That's exactly how you value an early stage company - back of the envelope calculations and monte carlo.