32 ms·

Many things are so much less efficient now, though. Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods

by rland 6y ago

Many things are so much less efficient now, though. Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again. We eat meat in nearly every meal. We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick; now we cling to half-life for years or decades. We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. When we wanted to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them, quickly making ourselves useful. Now we spend years learning totally unrelated stuff, just to prove that we're human beings with a pulse who can be hired. Now, flying across the world to have fun is 'necessary,' because parks and natural areas in our own backyards are not enough. etc...

pojntfx 6y ago
The industrial revolution and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race
- quotemstr 6y ago
  The industrial revolution is the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity. It allowed the planet to host seven and a half billion people instead six hundred million. Do the lives of all these people mean nothing to you? What about all their positive experiences? Would you return us to the Malthusian limit to live out your agrarian fantasy? Which 6.9 billion people would you let die?
  - el_oni 6y ago
    That's a rather fallacious argument. 6.9bn people never existing != killing 6.9bn people. And the hosting of those 7bn people has caused irreperable damage to ecosystems. Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing?
    - quotemstr 6y ago
      > Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing? Why should I care about "entire species"? I'm happy that we made smallpox extinct. Likewise, I'd be ecstatic if we decided to drive the mosquito out of existence. I'm all for caring about nature, but towards the end of improving human welfare. Where saving some random species conflicts with saving people, choosing anything but the latter is just monstrous. Sentient creatures (only humans, currently) have moral worth. Non-sentient creatures, none.
      - el_oni 6y ago
        Thats such a selfish outlook. The same outlook that leads to overfishing, soil erosion and monoculture agricuture. We think we are optimising for human welfare and happiness whilst simultaneously destroying our ability to give future generations the same prospects that we have. So why are you happy for the untold billions who will never be born because we've ruined out planets ability to sustain us? Sustainability is about being able to give future generations the same quality of life that you have had. And society as it stands is not sustainable
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      In case you are unaware we were losing babies by the truckload just a century ago. There was death, but we all forgot since we dont see it anymore.
      - el_oni 6y ago
        I am aware. And that is progress that is good for humanity. However air quality is decreasing and global temperatures are increasing. A century from now we'll be losing a truckload more babies Its like we rose to the top of the bell curve and are now hurtling down the other side
        hef19898 6y ago
        Where exactly is air quality decreasing? At least in developed nation air quality, and water quality, improved over the last decades. Climate Change is another topic but there seems to be some movement as well on that front.
  - baby 6y ago
    Depends what you value more I guess. These lives or the many more lives that could live in the future?
  - quonn 6y ago
    Nobody would die since they wouldn‘t even exist in the first place. And what about the negative experiences? Especially for the vast majority of poor people? I agree that in the end the industrial revolution was a wonderful thing. But not because of the number of people.
    - cheesecracker 6y ago
      Number of poor people has gone down thanks to industrialization - even while at the same time total population numbers have exploded. https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508 https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508
- cheesecracker 6y ago
  how can anybody believe such bullshit? Put your money where your mouth is: you can still live without industrialization. Find some wood, build your hut, and go for it. Come back in five years and tell us how much you hate industrialization. If you haven't "efficiently died", that is.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Living in a hut in the woods is quite different from living in pre-industrial society.
    - cheesecracker 6y ago
      Nevertheless, you are still free to do it. Maybe join the Amish, for starters (although afaik they don't shun all technology). In any case, you can get together with a group of friends and live the way you imagine. There are enough people who dream of that kind of lifestyle, that you should be able to find a group that is large enough.
    - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      I do wonder whether the Amish would take converts. There are certainly communes around that would. And yet, here we all are. Granted, here we'd still be if half the population was voluntarily leaving modern society.
  - rland 6y ago
    It's not so easy for the individual to do that. The skills necessary for pre-modern life are only taught by being raised by a group who lives that life. Nearly all such groups have been destroyed -- and even if you wanted to, you couldn't go join a tribe at the edge of civilization as an individual. Not to mention that in many areas, it's not possible to make life by hunting and gathering because biodiversity in the natural environment has been destroyed. So, it's not really possible as you say. Even though it's not really possible, such bullshit is worth giving a bit of thought, at least.
    - cheesecracker 6y ago
- ulfw 6y ago
  Says person who wrote this on his computing device connected to the internet, powered by electricity.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Quoting the Unabomber's manifesto is an interesting choice.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  You mean by saving billions from abject poverty? Yes, what a disaster.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    Billions that didn't exist beforehand and thus didn't need to be saved from anything?
    - phpnode 6y ago
      Poverty and deprivation are not post-industrial inventions
- ivanhoe 6y ago
  yeah, because nothing beats working whole day in fields to grow food, and then still dying of hunger because it was too rainy, or there was no enough rain or hailstorm destroyed everything. Also using any spare moment to weave and repair old clothing because you couldn't afford to buy any new clothing, as everything was hand made and super expensive; traveling on horses or foot that takes days; occasional plague or small pox epidemic and all the other great things about ol' way of life...
oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
Your basic premise actually is fact, not opinion, despite the weak evidence you present. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox Planet Money had a great episode on this with Nordhaus.
quotemstr 6y ago
Anti-modernity is a tiresome perspective. It's always the same: the past was some kind of lost idealistic state and the contemporary world is a fallen and corrupt one inimical to the human spirit. Every generation has had people who thought this way, going back at least as far as the Sumerians. so what? Writing something doesn't make it true. In reality, technology has been a huge boon to humanity, and the more of it we have, the better. > Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again Yes. Now instead of eating salt pork and tubers all winter, we can enjoy a healthy and balanced diet year-round. How inefficient. > We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick; now we cling to half-life for years or decades. People like Stephen Hawking can lead a full life. How inefficient. > We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. Travel across town can happen in minutes, not hours. Our kids can visit their friends and have rich social connections instead of helping with the corn harvest. How inefficient. > When we wanted to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them, quickly making ourselves useful. Now we spend years learning totally unrelated stuff, just to prove that we're human beings with a pulse who can be hired. Previously, you were born into a trade and just joined your father's guild. Now someone of any background can prove himself via an impartial process and work on problems he feels passionate about. How inefficient. > Now, flying across the world to have fun is 'necessary,' because parks and natural areas in our own backyards are not enough Now people can experience all humanity has to offer instead of limiting their perspectives to whatever backwater their parents happened to call home. How inefficient.
- bambax 6y ago
  > Our kids can visit their friends and have rich social connections instead of helping with the corn harvest. The reason our kids don't help with the corn harvest and have "rich social connections" (?) is that we hire immigrants do it, paying them as little as possible and denying them basic rights.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
bambax 6y ago
The modern world is a version of the paperclip maximizer thought experiment[1], which was devised to warn about the dangers of "AI" but applies much better to us with our ordinary "I". We make more and more things we don't need, in ever greater quantities, using more and more resources, and destroy the planet in the process. We won't stop until there's nothing left. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
- rland 6y ago
  Yes, the "paperclip maximizer" already applies: corporations. I can't remember the post, but someone wrote that corporations are effectively an AI which maximizes profit. In many ways, we have already invented AI; its objective function is to maximize profits, often to the detriment of, well, everything.
  - chii 6y ago
    no - a corporation is not the same as an AI that effectively maximizes profits. An AI that is more intelligent than a human may be able to come up with plans for profit maximization that no humans can come up with. A corporation is only going to be able to come up with a plan that a human _could_ come up with. A corporation is merely a sociopathic human intelligence that is hell bent on profit-maximization.
    - rland 6y ago
      Think of what it would take to produce a phone, for example. A single person could not possibly know enough to do so. Our cleverest work their whole lives just to know enough to design some small part. There's just too much to know, too much to orchestrate, coordinate. Even to build one, let alone a million. Yet, a single corporation is intelligent enough to do this. I think we already have achieved super-human intelligence.
      - ideals 6y ago
        "I, Pencil" by Leonard Read is very relevant to this thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
jlg23 6y ago
I understand your sentiment to some degree, but I also see the benefits of modern development: > [food] Even when we live in rather harsh conditions we can have a balanced diet (where I live, without modern means of transportation, my diet would be exclusively Barbary figs, fish and mussels. If I wanted meat, someone would have to tend goats and sheep full time and that person would have to roam a huge area to find enough food for them). > [medicine] I am not dying of an infection, I take antibiotics. > [raising kids] Kids can now easily try out things their parents never did, understood or appreciated. The cost for the parents is negligible while the benefit for the kids can be tremendous. (That's why know how to play the flute, how I got into software development and into theatre). > [education] I have at least a basic understand of the problem domain when writing software for chemists or biologists; I understand political processes and have a broad cultural knowledge. Even when I don't know, I know that I don't know. > [travel] I really understand that there are different cultures, way beyond hearsay. That allows me (to some degree) to critically reflect on my own culture, to understand what shaped it.
- randomdata 6y ago
  > I have at least a basic understand of the problem domain when writing software for chemists or biologists While that may be efficient in certain scenarios, what are the odds of winning that lottery? As market efficiency shows up in income, and incomes have held stagnant even as the population gains more and more education, we know that most people aren't winning. They are only losing.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Re: antibiotics, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE argues that we’ve lost respect for the effectiveness of antibiotics. That ties in with the original argument that we’ve become less efficient, or at least effective, if it’s true.
- acituan 6y ago
  I want to play the devil's advocate so forgive the extra cynicism; > Even when we live in rather harsh conditions we can have a balanced diet We can have a balanced diet, but it is not the cheapest or most convenient; 40% of Americans are obese, and there is so much we can fault willpower for it. Heart disease, diabetes etc. being top killers, we are still actually dying and suffering from mal-nutrition. The system that fills 90% of our supermarkets with crap food is very efficient for itself, but that efficiency is not shared with the entirety of population. > I am not dying of an infection, I take antibiotics. Yet we stumbled so hard supplying basics like masks in a rather middling pandemic. High efficiency supply chains came at the cost of high fragility, again a cost paid by the entirety of population. Besides, death is not the worst of all fates. E.g. 1/8 of Americans are on antidepressants, and this rate is increasing sharply. 10 percent of kids are diagnosed ADHD, 60% of which are pushed amphetamines, again at increasing rates. Is this an increase in efficiency? For whom? > Kids can now easily try out things their parents never did, understood or appreciated. Novelty at all costs is the core mission of AI recommended content pushed to kids. Do you think a nation that can't fight with high obesity rate is really doing well with limiting screen time? Do we know the long term effects of this 'stimulation obesity'? Again, this is efficiency for the company that profits from the engagement, and we're just gonna roll with the experiment and see where the costs will show up. > I understand political processes and have a broad cultural knowledge Look at the quality of political discourse dominating the US. Does it sound educated, able to reflect critically, able to allow ideas fight instead of people? Many attended to college, paid high tuition sure, but what was gained in the end? The system they attended, the admin class grew and made money very efficiently indeed. Did it reflect to the quality of education? > I really understand that there are different cultures, way beyond hearsay Almost the entire rest of the world already understands this because certain dominating "cultures" long been in their land, whether by force or through TV, internet, merchandise, food etc. Kids in far far away places grew up with Batman, McDonalds, Coca Cola, they watched MTV when TV was a thing, now we're letting YouTube decide what they should find relevant etc. The fact that an American is required to travel to understand there are different cultures is an exception and a privilege.
thinkloop 6y ago
Effeciency makes luxuries possible. Luxuries are stacked effeciencies.
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
I dont know, I kinda prefer living a half-life. In a sense everyone is damaged in one way or another. In the meanwhile there is always a chance of getting a new cure. Except when you are no longer available..
- rland 6y ago
  I have a very personal/weird opinion on this issue. I'm type 1 diabetic, so I must have insulin or else I have a couple painful weeks to live, at best. On the one hand, yes, modernity keeps me alive, at far greater than "half-life," thanks to control theory and hi-tech sensor technology. But on the other hand modernity was the very thing which caused my t1d in the first place -- environment is thought to cause t1d, with rates much higher in developed countries. This issue is one of those 'what does it all mean' type of issues, for me personally.
throw0101a 6y ago
> Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again. We eat meat in nearly every meal. If you live in a coastal city, it may actually be more efficient (on a J-per-kg basis) to have something shipped from far away on a boat than over land in a truck. I'm sure there's cross-over point between the two that can ostensibly be calculated.
eezurr 6y ago
From reading the article, it appears the author is talking about efficiency and convenience. >Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again. We eat meat in nearly every meal. The author touches upon this when he chooses to wait at the butcher for fresh bacon vs walking into a grocery store and leaving a minute later with plastic wrapped water logged bacon. The convenience (i.e "efficiency") is the multitude of options available at the grocery store, at the cost of human interaction and quality. >We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick; now we cling to half-life for years or decades. I think this falls outside of the articles context >We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. This culture was created from "stranger danger" and helicopter parenting. >When we wanted to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them, quickly making ourselves useful. Now we spend years learning totally unrelated stuff, just to prove that we're human beings with a pulse who can be hired. As mentioned, author talks about the loss of humanity. >Now, flying across the world to have fun is 'necessary,' because parks and natural areas in our own backyards are not enough. It is convenient to do so, and like the grocery store, there are more options
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
These all seem like valuable, positive aspects of progress and increased efficiency to me. Waiting a year to eat another in-season fruit or vegetable is a bad thing that we ought to use technology to solve. It’s not wholesome or contentment or whatever, it’s a bad, unproductive limitation. Apprenticeships often lead to servitude and heavily suppressed wages, more similar to indentured servants. It is not a glamorous or romanticized vision of steadily mastering a craft. All of your examples follow this pattern. It reads like Luddite anti-progress fantasy and glorification of past limitations like a sort of noble savage lie.
derefr 6y ago
> We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. Now, now. We can't really do the former any more in most of America; there's nowhere for kids to go. Overstrict zoning, and massive property developments plopped down in outlying low-land-value areas, has killed suburbia and replaced it with exurbia. Most detached single-family homes in America are now in "housing islands" in the middle of huge stretches of nothing, only accessible to urban centers by highways. (And without viable public transit accessible to said kids, because adults are too car-obsessed to fund it.) And that's not really more or less efficient; it's just silly and self-defeating. People buy these houses precisely for the dream of suburbia; but they find it isn't there to be found. It's not a vicious cycle; it's simply a trick, a con, on the part of the property developers, misleading people into thinking they can have their whole family integrated with the life of a city despite living many miles away from it with no easy access. A child could have a "busy calendar" in the 1950s—friends, hobbies, clubs, sports, etc.—and get along just fine, because they actually could walk to everything in town, because they functionally lived "in" the town they lived in. (Or they didn't live "in" a town at all, but rather "on a farm" — but that used to be its whole own lifestyle with its own coping mechanisms. Now suburban children may as well live on a farm as well—but without even the livestock to bother.)
Udik 6y ago
> we now have produce shipped around the globe That is in fact extremely efficient, as it allows to grow food in an industrial way: at scale, with optimal process and conditions. > We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick And also to remain sick forever when we were curably sick, for lack of cures. Amputated limbs for simple infections, lifelong toothaches, broken backs, skin, ear and eye infections, fleas, etc. > to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them Yes, sent as an apprentice at an artisan's shop, probably before age ten. Or working in the fields (all that nice ploughing, by hand) or just learning your father's trade.

by rland 6y ago

pojntfx 6y ago

The industrial revolution and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race

quotemstr 6y ago
The industrial revolution is the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity. It allowed the planet to host seven and a half billion people instead six hundred million. Do the lives of all these people mean nothing to you? What about all their positive experiences? Would you return us to the Malthusian limit to live out your agrarian fantasy? Which 6.9 billion people would you let die?
- el_oni 6y ago
  That's a rather fallacious argument. 6.9bn people never existing != killing 6.9bn people. And the hosting of those 7bn people has caused irreperable damage to ecosystems. Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing?
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    > Why are you so happy for the extinction of entire species, but not for 6.9bn people not existing? Why should I care about "entire species"? I'm happy that we made smallpox extinct. Likewise, I'd be ecstatic if we decided to drive the mosquito out of existence. I'm all for caring about nature, but towards the end of improving human welfare. Where saving some random species conflicts with saving people, choosing anything but the latter is just monstrous. Sentient creatures (only humans, currently) have moral worth. Non-sentient creatures, none.
    - el_oni 6y ago
      Thats such a selfish outlook. The same outlook that leads to overfishing, soil erosion and monoculture agricuture. We think we are optimising for human welfare and happiness whilst simultaneously destroying our ability to give future generations the same prospects that we have. So why are you happy for the untold billions who will never be born because we've ruined out planets ability to sustain us? Sustainability is about being able to give future generations the same quality of life that you have had. And society as it stands is not sustainable
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    In case you are unaware we were losing babies by the truckload just a century ago. There was death, but we all forgot since we dont see it anymore.
    - el_oni 6y ago
      I am aware. And that is progress that is good for humanity. However air quality is decreasing and global temperatures are increasing. A century from now we'll be losing a truckload more babies Its like we rose to the top of the bell curve and are now hurtling down the other side
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Where exactly is air quality decreasing? At least in developed nation air quality, and water quality, improved over the last decades. Climate Change is another topic but there seems to be some movement as well on that front.
- baby 6y ago
  Depends what you value more I guess. These lives or the many more lives that could live in the future?
- quonn 6y ago
  Nobody would die since they wouldn‘t even exist in the first place. And what about the negative experiences? Especially for the vast majority of poor people? I agree that in the end the industrial revolution was a wonderful thing. But not because of the number of people.
  - cheesecracker 6y ago
    Number of poor people has gone down thanks to industrialization - even while at the same time total population numbers have exploded. https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508 https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508
cheesecracker 6y ago
how can anybody believe such bullshit? Put your money where your mouth is: you can still live without industrialization. Find some wood, build your hut, and go for it. Come back in five years and tell us how much you hate industrialization. If you haven't "efficiently died", that is.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Living in a hut in the woods is quite different from living in pre-industrial society.
  - cheesecracker 6y ago
    Nevertheless, you are still free to do it. Maybe join the Amish, for starters (although afaik they don't shun all technology). In any case, you can get together with a group of friends and live the way you imagine. There are enough people who dream of that kind of lifestyle, that you should be able to find a group that is large enough.
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    I do wonder whether the Amish would take converts. There are certainly communes around that would. And yet, here we all are. Granted, here we'd still be if half the population was voluntarily leaving modern society.
- rland 6y ago
  It's not so easy for the individual to do that. The skills necessary for pre-modern life are only taught by being raised by a group who lives that life. Nearly all such groups have been destroyed -- and even if you wanted to, you couldn't go join a tribe at the edge of civilization as an individual. Not to mention that in many areas, it's not possible to make life by hunting and gathering because biodiversity in the natural environment has been destroyed. So, it's not really possible as you say. Even though it's not really possible, such bullshit is worth giving a bit of thought, at least.
  - cheesecracker 6y ago
ulfw 6y ago
Says person who wrote this on his computing device connected to the internet, powered by electricity.
pseudalopex 6y ago
Quoting the Unabomber's manifesto is an interesting choice.
ekianjo 6y ago
You mean by saving billions from abject poverty? Yes, what a disaster.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  Billions that didn't exist beforehand and thus didn't need to be saved from anything?
  - phpnode 6y ago
    Poverty and deprivation are not post-industrial inventions
ivanhoe 6y ago
yeah, because nothing beats working whole day in fields to grow food, and then still dying of hunger because it was too rainy, or there was no enough rain or hailstorm destroyed everything. Also using any spare moment to weave and repair old clothing because you couldn't afford to buy any new clothing, as everything was hand made and super expensive; traveling on horses or foot that takes days; occasional plague or small pox epidemic and all the other great things about ol' way of life...

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

Your basic premise actually is fact, not opinion, despite the weak evidence you present. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox Planet Money had a great episode on this with Nordhaus.

quotemstr 6y ago

Anti-modernity is a tiresome perspective. It's always the same: the past was some kind of lost idealistic state and the contemporary world is a fallen and corrupt one inimical to the human spirit. Every generation has had people who thought this way, going back at least as far as the Sumerians. so what? Writing something doesn't make it true. In reality, technology has been a huge boon to humanity, and the more of it we have, the better. > Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again Yes. Now instead of eating salt pork and tubers all winter, we can enjoy a healthy and balanced diet year-round. How inefficient. > We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick; now we cling to half-life for years or decades. People like Stephen Hawking can lead a full life. How inefficient. > We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. Travel across town can happen in minutes, not hours. Our kids can visit their friends and have rich social connections instead of helping with the corn harvest. How inefficient. > When we wanted to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them, quickly making ourselves useful. Now we spend years learning totally unrelated stuff, just to prove that we're human beings with a pulse who can be hired. Previously, you were born into a trade and just joined your father's guild. Now someone of any background can prove himself via an impartial process and work on problems he feels passionate about. How inefficient. > Now, flying across the world to have fun is 'necessary,' because parks and natural areas in our own backyards are not enough Now people can experience all humanity has to offer instead of limiting their perspectives to whatever backwater their parents happened to call home. How inefficient.

bambax 6y ago
> Our kids can visit their friends and have rich social connections instead of helping with the corn harvest. The reason our kids don't help with the corn harvest and have "rich social connections" (?) is that we hire immigrants do it, paying them as little as possible and denying them basic rights.
- ekianjo 6y ago

bambax 6y ago

The modern world is a version of the paperclip maximizer thought experiment[1], which was devised to warn about the dangers of "AI" but applies much better to us with our ordinary "I". We make more and more things we don't need, in ever greater quantities, using more and more resources, and destroy the planet in the process. We won't stop until there's nothing left. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence

rland 6y ago
Yes, the "paperclip maximizer" already applies: corporations. I can't remember the post, but someone wrote that corporations are effectively an AI which maximizes profit. In many ways, we have already invented AI; its objective function is to maximize profits, often to the detriment of, well, everything.
- chii 6y ago
  no - a corporation is not the same as an AI that effectively maximizes profits. An AI that is more intelligent than a human may be able to come up with plans for profit maximization that no humans can come up with. A corporation is only going to be able to come up with a plan that a human _could_ come up with. A corporation is merely a sociopathic human intelligence that is hell bent on profit-maximization.
  - rland 6y ago
    Think of what it would take to produce a phone, for example. A single person could not possibly know enough to do so. Our cleverest work their whole lives just to know enough to design some small part. There's just too much to know, too much to orchestrate, coordinate. Even to build one, let alone a million. Yet, a single corporation is intelligent enough to do this. I think we already have achieved super-human intelligence.
    - ideals 6y ago
      "I, Pencil" by Leonard Read is very relevant to this thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil

jlg23 6y ago

I understand your sentiment to some degree, but I also see the benefits of modern development: > [food] Even when we live in rather harsh conditions we can have a balanced diet (where I live, without modern means of transportation, my diet would be exclusively Barbary figs, fish and mussels. If I wanted meat, someone would have to tend goats and sheep full time and that person would have to roam a huge area to find enough food for them). > [medicine] I am not dying of an infection, I take antibiotics. > [raising kids] Kids can now easily try out things their parents never did, understood or appreciated. The cost for the parents is negligible while the benefit for the kids can be tremendous. (That's why know how to play the flute, how I got into software development and into theatre). > [education] I have at least a basic understand of the problem domain when writing software for chemists or biologists; I understand political processes and have a broad cultural knowledge. Even when I don't know, I know that I don't know. > [travel] I really understand that there are different cultures, way beyond hearsay. That allows me (to some degree) to critically reflect on my own culture, to understand what shaped it.

randomdata 6y ago
> I have at least a basic understand of the problem domain when writing software for chemists or biologists While that may be efficient in certain scenarios, what are the odds of winning that lottery? As market efficiency shows up in income, and incomes have held stagnant even as the population gains more and more education, we know that most people aren't winning. They are only losing.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Re: antibiotics, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE argues that we’ve lost respect for the effectiveness of antibiotics. That ties in with the original argument that we’ve become less efficient, or at least effective, if it’s true.
acituan 6y ago
I want to play the devil's advocate so forgive the extra cynicism; > Even when we live in rather harsh conditions we can have a balanced diet We can have a balanced diet, but it is not the cheapest or most convenient; 40% of Americans are obese, and there is so much we can fault willpower for it. Heart disease, diabetes etc. being top killers, we are still actually dying and suffering from mal-nutrition. The system that fills 90% of our supermarkets with crap food is very efficient for itself, but that efficiency is not shared with the entirety of population. > I am not dying of an infection, I take antibiotics. Yet we stumbled so hard supplying basics like masks in a rather middling pandemic. High efficiency supply chains came at the cost of high fragility, again a cost paid by the entirety of population. Besides, death is not the worst of all fates. E.g. 1/8 of Americans are on antidepressants, and this rate is increasing sharply. 10 percent of kids are diagnosed ADHD, 60% of which are pushed amphetamines, again at increasing rates. Is this an increase in efficiency? For whom? > Kids can now easily try out things their parents never did, understood or appreciated. Novelty at all costs is the core mission of AI recommended content pushed to kids. Do you think a nation that can't fight with high obesity rate is really doing well with limiting screen time? Do we know the long term effects of this 'stimulation obesity'? Again, this is efficiency for the company that profits from the engagement, and we're just gonna roll with the experiment and see where the costs will show up. > I understand political processes and have a broad cultural knowledge Look at the quality of political discourse dominating the US. Does it sound educated, able to reflect critically, able to allow ideas fight instead of people? Many attended to college, paid high tuition sure, but what was gained in the end? The system they attended, the admin class grew and made money very efficiently indeed. Did it reflect to the quality of education? > I really understand that there are different cultures, way beyond hearsay Almost the entire rest of the world already understands this because certain dominating "cultures" long been in their land, whether by force or through TV, internet, merchandise, food etc. Kids in far far away places grew up with Batman, McDonalds, Coca Cola, they watched MTV when TV was a thing, now we're letting YouTube decide what they should find relevant etc. The fact that an American is required to travel to understand there are different cultures is an exception and a privilege.

thinkloop 6y ago

Effeciency makes luxuries possible. Luxuries are stacked effeciencies.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

I dont know, I kinda prefer living a half-life. In a sense everyone is damaged in one way or another. In the meanwhile there is always a chance of getting a new cure. Except when you are no longer available..

rland 6y ago
I have a very personal/weird opinion on this issue. I'm type 1 diabetic, so I must have insulin or else I have a couple painful weeks to live, at best. On the one hand, yes, modernity keeps me alive, at far greater than "half-life," thanks to control theory and hi-tech sensor technology. But on the other hand modernity was the very thing which caused my t1d in the first place -- environment is thought to cause t1d, with rates much higher in developed countries. This issue is one of those 'what does it all mean' type of issues, for me personally.

throw0101a 6y ago

> Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again. We eat meat in nearly every meal. If you live in a coastal city, it may actually be more efficient (on a J-per-kg basis) to have something shipped from far away on a boat than over land in a truck. I'm sure there's cross-over point between the two that can ostensibly be calculated.

eezurr 6y ago

From reading the article, it appears the author is talking about efficiency and convenience. >Where formerly we ate what was in season, we now have produce shipped around the globe, sometimes raw foods shipped across the ocean and turned into process foods and then shipped right back again. We eat meat in nearly every meal. The author touches upon this when he chooses to wait at the butcher for fresh bacon vs walking into a grocery store and leaving a minute later with plastic wrapped water logged bacon. The convenience (i.e "efficiency") is the multitude of options available at the grocery store, at the cost of human interaction and quality. >We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick; now we cling to half-life for years or decades. I think this falls outside of the articles context >We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. This culture was created from "stranger danger" and helicopter parenting. >When we wanted to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them, quickly making ourselves useful. Now we spend years learning totally unrelated stuff, just to prove that we're human beings with a pulse who can be hired. As mentioned, author talks about the loss of humanity. >Now, flying across the world to have fun is 'necessary,' because parks and natural areas in our own backyards are not enough. It is convenient to do so, and like the grocery store, there are more options

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

These all seem like valuable, positive aspects of progress and increased efficiency to me. Waiting a year to eat another in-season fruit or vegetable is a bad thing that we ought to use technology to solve. It’s not wholesome or contentment or whatever, it’s a bad, unproductive limitation. Apprenticeships often lead to servitude and heavily suppressed wages, more similar to indentured servants. It is not a glamorous or romanticized vision of steadily mastering a craft. All of your examples follow this pattern. It reads like Luddite anti-progress fantasy and glorification of past limitations like a sort of noble savage lie.

derefr 6y ago

> We used to let our kids out the front door when they were bored, now we drive them all over town for everything in their busy calendar. Now, now. We can't really do the former any more in most of America; there's nowhere for kids to go. Overstrict zoning, and massive property developments plopped down in outlying low-land-value areas, has killed suburbia and replaced it with exurbia. Most detached single-family homes in America are now in "housing islands" in the middle of huge stretches of nothing, only accessible to urban centers by highways. (And without viable public transit accessible to said kids, because adults are too car-obsessed to fund it.) And that's not really more or less efficient; it's just silly and self-defeating. People buy these houses precisely for the dream of suburbia; but they find it isn't there to be found. It's not a vicious cycle; it's simply a trick, a con, on the part of the property developers, misleading people into thinking they can have their whole family integrated with the life of a city despite living many miles away from it with no easy access. A child could have a "busy calendar" in the 1950s—friends, hobbies, clubs, sports, etc.—and get along just fine, because they actually could walk to everything in town, because they functionally lived "in" the town they lived in. (Or they didn't live "in" a town at all, but rather "on a farm" — but that used to be its whole own lifestyle with its own coping mechanisms. Now suburban children may as well live on a farm as well—but without even the livestock to bother.)

Udik 6y ago

> we now have produce shipped around the globe That is in fact extremely efficient, as it allows to grow food in an industrial way: at scale, with optimal process and conditions. > We used to die quickly at home when we were incurably sick And also to remain sick forever when we were curably sick, for lack of cures. Amputated limbs for simple infections, lifelong toothaches, broken backs, skin, ear and eye infections, fleas, etc. > to learn how to do a job, we'd talk to someone doing it and start working directly under them Yes, sent as an apprentice at an artisan's shop, probably before age ten. Or working in the fields (all that nice ploughing, by hand) or just learning your father's trade.