4 ms·

The calculus of the opportunity cost presented here isn't the tiny incremental improvement attached to my already amply comfortable lifestyle, but rather the ag

The calculus of the opportunity cost presented here isn't the tiny incremental improvement attached to my already amply comfortable lifestyle, but rather the aggregate full-time loss of many dozens or hundreds of engineers, data scientists, and investment $$$ diverted to trivial pursuits. Or put more simply. The lost problem-solving potential for 8-10 hours a day of a single PhD in Applied Mathematics massively dwarfs the 10 minutes that person saved having their car parked for them.

Swizec 10y ago
But what about the time cost/opportunity of a single full-time phd versus 10 minutes a day for the 253 million cars on US roads today? Globally? Assuming parking only once a week for each vehicle, that's over 60,000 hours of saved time per day. That engineer's time investment is virtually free in comparison. Of course these savings will only materialize after parking technology becomes commoditized. Commoditization is part of tech progress.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  "Assuming parking only once a week for each vehicle, that's over 60,000 hours of saved time per day" That complicated stuff with associated costs might benefit middle class and up. The few who buy it among them. Many will also want the pride of parking themselves, distrust the technology, and so on. You're not saving 60,000 hours a day so much as a tiny faction of it. If you succeed where others failed for a few decades worth of PhD hours on computer vision, pathfinding, robotics, etc. Simplifications in this thread are way off. The real world involves interplay of the technical capabilities, whatever regulations will be, finances, and social factors.
johnnyhillbilly 10y ago
I think you misunderstand how much time and focus is spent on trivial problems. Somebody already replied to this, but I will add more on the same note. 1 If some scientist finds a way to save a minute per instance of brushing your teeth, and if there is no difference in quality and cost, that is 600 million+ minutes saved every day in the US alone. 2 If some scientist finds a way for nocturnal people to contribute to society like other people, that is surely on the same magnitude as 1. 3 If some scientist finds some way to cut 10% of time on inspecting welds, it is surely a huge boost to the economy. This is of course not meant to endorse situations where the quality drops. E.g. "If one cent is saved per unit of milk produced, I can buy a new yacht!"
- im_down_w_otp 10y ago
  Aggregations in this case aren't interesting unless the component part of the aggregation is by itself interesting. A human, due to real constraints can't do a whole lot with an extra minute per day, and humans as a social body due to real constraints can't effectively collectively block-allocate 600 million diffuse minutes to some other cause. Each of them can only reallocate the minute they own/save. The units and the distribution matter here... a lot. This seems obvious enough to illustrate using your own narrative. What if I saved 6 Billion people 1ms per day? That's nearly 70 aggregated whole days saved per day. What are you going to spend your newly found 1ms on?
  - auntienomen 10y ago
    Reading hacker news. You never know which minute is the one with the good idea.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    1min here, 10min there, 5min over there and before you know it, that's a whole extra hour of browsing the internet every week!

Swizec 10y ago

But what about the time cost/opportunity of a single full-time phd versus 10 minutes a day for the 253 million cars on US roads today? Globally? Assuming parking only once a week for each vehicle, that's over 60,000 hours of saved time per day. That engineer's time investment is virtually free in comparison. Of course these savings will only materialize after parking technology becomes commoditized. Commoditization is part of tech progress.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Assuming parking only once a week for each vehicle, that's over 60,000 hours of saved time per day" That complicated stuff with associated costs might benefit middle class and up. The few who buy it among them. Many will also want the pride of parking themselves, distrust the technology, and so on. You're not saving 60,000 hours a day so much as a tiny faction of it. If you succeed where others failed for a few decades worth of PhD hours on computer vision, pathfinding, robotics, etc. Simplifications in this thread are way off. The real world involves interplay of the technical capabilities, whatever regulations will be, finances, and social factors.

johnnyhillbilly 10y ago

I think you misunderstand how much time and focus is spent on trivial problems. Somebody already replied to this, but I will add more on the same note. 1 If some scientist finds a way to save a minute per instance of brushing your teeth, and if there is no difference in quality and cost, that is 600 million+ minutes saved every day in the US alone. 2 If some scientist finds a way for nocturnal people to contribute to society like other people, that is surely on the same magnitude as 1. 3 If some scientist finds some way to cut 10% of time on inspecting welds, it is surely a huge boost to the economy. This is of course not meant to endorse situations where the quality drops. E.g. "If one cent is saved per unit of milk produced, I can buy a new yacht!"

im_down_w_otp 10y ago
Aggregations in this case aren't interesting unless the component part of the aggregation is by itself interesting. A human, due to real constraints can't do a whole lot with an extra minute per day, and humans as a social body due to real constraints can't effectively collectively block-allocate 600 million diffuse minutes to some other cause. Each of them can only reallocate the minute they own/save. The units and the distribution matter here... a lot. This seems obvious enough to illustrate using your own narrative. What if I saved 6 Billion people 1ms per day? That's nearly 70 aggregated whole days saved per day. What are you going to spend your newly found 1ms on?
- auntienomen 10y ago
  Reading hacker news. You never know which minute is the one with the good idea.
- Swizec 10y ago
  1min here, 10min there, 5min over there and before you know it, that's a whole extra hour of browsing the internet every week!