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This misses the point of the example, though. The point is that not all labor has the same value. Albert Einstein's thoughts produced a lot more social utility

by darawk 6y ago

This misses the point of the example, though. The point is that not all labor has the same value. Albert Einstein's thoughts produced a lot more social utility than mine do, for instance.

claudeganon 6y ago
Even Einstein, despite his immense genius, wouldn’t fail to acknowledge the social utility and necessity of all the mathematicians and scholars whose work informed in his own. He certainly wouldn’t express the sentiment “they were doing all that math and physics before I came along anyway.” Quite ironically, he was also a strident socialist, so I doubt he’d disagree with the labor theory of value either. I used the example of the library cataloging because I think it’s an apt parallel. These systems, invented by librarians for organizing all of the world’s information, prior to the internet, have contributed immense social utility and enabled work that would be otherwise be unimaginable and impossible. But no librarian would claim that Melvil Dewey’s accomplishment was greater than that of all the works that have been catalogued. Page rank itself was derived from measures of academic citation impact scoring by Eugene Garfield, who I likewise imagine would’ve felt the same, despite being a successful entrepreneur on similar terms. The sort of hubris behind thinking that abstractions of a network are more valuable than the network and its labor itself perhaps explains why libraries remain an incredible resource and Google search gets worse and worse, year after year.
- darawk 6y ago
  I don't really understand your point. Obviously the whole network is important. Einstein's contributions would not have been possible without the society around him to produce food and shelter, the centuries of mathematics and physics research he built upon, etc.. Nobody is claiming that these people did something completely on their own, or did not draw upon immense wealth created and produced by others. The point is that each individual person's marginal contribution to the global utility function is not equal. Einstein built upon the work of others but the edifice he created is worth more than the one I have created. He increased the social utility function more than me, so we can say that his work is more valuable than mine. This is completely orthogonal to whether or not he had help.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    My point is that your conception of individually-oriented social utility is based on hierarchical forms of epistemology that the people you cite themselves did not embrace. It’s a projection of Capitalist logic and forms of valuation that has little to do with how these networks work or form new knowledge. Identifying individual variations in social utility is less important than furthering the network’s growth and ability to produce further improvements, in aggregate. This is why most serious researchers don’t work in industry and why the business world is dominated by inanity and con men.
    - darawk 6y ago
      > My point is that your conception of individually-oriented social utility is based on hierarchical forms of epistemology that the people you cite themselves did not embrace. It’s a projection of Capitalist logic and forms of valuation that has little to do with how these networks work or form new knowledge. Are you rejecting the concept of variation in aggregate utility? I don't think that you need any sort of capitalist epistemology, or hierarchical vision of society to explain the presence of utility variance. > Identifying individual variations in social utility is less important than furthering the network’s growth and ability to produce further improvements, in aggregate. This is why most serious researchers don’t work in industry and why the business world is dominated by inanity and con men. Identifying individual variations in utility is how you maximize network growth. That is precisely the reason capitalism is structured the way that it is. Direct resources to people and entities who are growing the network, in proportion to how much they are growing it. That is the distilled essence of capitalism.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        > Are you rejecting the concept of variation in aggregate utility? I don't think that you need any sort of capitalist epistemology, or hierarchical vision of society to explain the presence of utility variance. No, of course there is variance in aggregate utility. It’s what weight that variance is given relative to support of the entire network that determines its ability to produce and further, useful knowledge. Overemphasis on individual contributions and direction of resources to them and away from the overall health of the network results in various forms of gaming and pseudo-novelty. Citation rings and replication crises are obvious examples of this. >Identifying individual variations in utility is how you maximize network growth. That is precisely the reason capitalism is structured the way that it is. Direct resources to people and entities who are growing the network, in proportion to how much they are growing it. That is the distilled essence of capitalism. The distilled essence of Capitalism is that people who own Capital accrue more by using it to buy the labor of others, who must concede to this arrangement as a condition of their survival. I expect on this point we’d irreconcilably disagree, so it’s probably best to leave it aside. Resources in Capitalism, however, are not directed toward people who are growing the network in socially useful or ways that sustain its overall health (including maintaining its diversity), but toward individual nodes or small clusters that pursue their own short term growth for growth’s sake at the expense of the network’s overall health. The externalities of pursuing such growth and the periodic crises it produces are almost never taken into account. Google is a good example of this because again, they observed a useful signal within a knowledge network and added extra utility in making it available to be easily leveraged by others. But from there, the prioritizing of their own growth deteriorated the network’s overall health, as observed in things like the explosion in various forms of SEO optimization and content mills, surveillance advertising and its malware, foreclosing of the web in services like AMP, and use of its market position to bully competitors and quash innovation independent of them.

by darawk 6y ago

This misses the point of the example, though. The point is that not all labor has the same value. Albert Einstein's thoughts produced a lot more social utility than mine do, for instance.

claudeganon 6y ago

Even Einstein, despite his immense genius, wouldn’t fail to acknowledge the social utility and necessity of all the mathematicians and scholars whose work informed in his own. He certainly wouldn’t express the sentiment “they were doing all that math and physics before I came along anyway.” Quite ironically, he was also a strident socialist, so I doubt he’d disagree with the labor theory of value either. I used the example of the library cataloging because I think it’s an apt parallel. These systems, invented by librarians for organizing all of the world’s information, prior to the internet, have contributed immense social utility and enabled work that would be otherwise be unimaginable and impossible. But no librarian would claim that Melvil Dewey’s accomplishment was greater than that of all the works that have been catalogued. Page rank itself was derived from measures of academic citation impact scoring by Eugene Garfield, who I likewise imagine would’ve felt the same, despite being a successful entrepreneur on similar terms. The sort of hubris behind thinking that abstractions of a network are more valuable than the network and its labor itself perhaps explains why libraries remain an incredible resource and Google search gets worse and worse, year after year.

darawk 6y ago
I don't really understand your point. Obviously the whole network is important. Einstein's contributions would not have been possible without the society around him to produce food and shelter, the centuries of mathematics and physics research he built upon, etc.. Nobody is claiming that these people did something completely on their own, or did not draw upon immense wealth created and produced by others. The point is that each individual person's marginal contribution to the global utility function is not equal. Einstein built upon the work of others but the edifice he created is worth more than the one I have created. He increased the social utility function more than me, so we can say that his work is more valuable than mine. This is completely orthogonal to whether or not he had help.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  My point is that your conception of individually-oriented social utility is based on hierarchical forms of epistemology that the people you cite themselves did not embrace. It’s a projection of Capitalist logic and forms of valuation that has little to do with how these networks work or form new knowledge. Identifying individual variations in social utility is less important than furthering the network’s growth and ability to produce further improvements, in aggregate. This is why most serious researchers don’t work in industry and why the business world is dominated by inanity and con men.
  - darawk 6y ago
    > My point is that your conception of individually-oriented social utility is based on hierarchical forms of epistemology that the people you cite themselves did not embrace. It’s a projection of Capitalist logic and forms of valuation that has little to do with how these networks work or form new knowledge. Are you rejecting the concept of variation in aggregate utility? I don't think that you need any sort of capitalist epistemology, or hierarchical vision of society to explain the presence of utility variance. > Identifying individual variations in social utility is less important than furthering the network’s growth and ability to produce further improvements, in aggregate. This is why most serious researchers don’t work in industry and why the business world is dominated by inanity and con men. Identifying individual variations in utility is how you maximize network growth. That is precisely the reason capitalism is structured the way that it is. Direct resources to people and entities who are growing the network, in proportion to how much they are growing it. That is the distilled essence of capitalism.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      > Are you rejecting the concept of variation in aggregate utility? I don't think that you need any sort of capitalist epistemology, or hierarchical vision of society to explain the presence of utility variance. No, of course there is variance in aggregate utility. It’s what weight that variance is given relative to support of the entire network that determines its ability to produce and further, useful knowledge. Overemphasis on individual contributions and direction of resources to them and away from the overall health of the network results in various forms of gaming and pseudo-novelty. Citation rings and replication crises are obvious examples of this. >Identifying individual variations in utility is how you maximize network growth. That is precisely the reason capitalism is structured the way that it is. Direct resources to people and entities who are growing the network, in proportion to how much they are growing it. That is the distilled essence of capitalism. The distilled essence of Capitalism is that people who own Capital accrue more by using it to buy the labor of others, who must concede to this arrangement as a condition of their survival. I expect on this point we’d irreconcilably disagree, so it’s probably best to leave it aside. Resources in Capitalism, however, are not directed toward people who are growing the network in socially useful or ways that sustain its overall health (including maintaining its diversity), but toward individual nodes or small clusters that pursue their own short term growth for growth’s sake at the expense of the network’s overall health. The externalities of pursuing such growth and the periodic crises it produces are almost never taken into account. Google is a good example of this because again, they observed a useful signal within a knowledge network and added extra utility in making it available to be easily leveraged by others. But from there, the prioritizing of their own growth deteriorated the network’s overall health, as observed in things like the explosion in various forms of SEO optimization and content mills, surveillance advertising and its malware, foreclosing of the web in services like AMP, and use of its market position to bully competitors and quash innovation independent of them.