4 ms·

The links and reasoning you provide are in line with the post article, i.e. that there are multiple reasons for current situation that are grounded in the real

The links and reasoning you provide are in line with the post article, i.e. that there are multiple reasons for current situation that are grounded in the real world. And that even though we could have better tools, we're constantly hitting local Nash equilibrium where it doesn't make sense to adopt them. Which means that your "cartel" is just the real world itself. We might not like it, it may suck, but it is what it is - you don't wanna fight things like gravity, you have to build ugly and bulky flying machines until one day you have a teleport which will be so far ahead that you can throw away all your planes and airports on a whim. But until then the planes is your best bet. > Agriculture is an "anti-productivity cartel" This is a very good example, and again it's in line with the headline article. Modern agriculture is the product of the same pressure to the system: there is no way you can scrape existing process and rebuild it with better technologies from the ground-up, because you'll starve billions to death in the process. Also in this case nobody is optimizing for the parameters those solutions are better at than existing methods, so there we have it. > How is it possible that millions of refrigerators have doors rather than drawers Mine has drawers in the freezer [1] - it's very neat indeed, and it's also an incremental thing because the main fridge area (don't know the English word for it) is still a single door. But again, there are real world reasons it's done this way, most of all being it's just more convenient this way and your regular household doesn't care for extra $5 it'll spend on the extra cooling. Meaning, it lies in the nature of the system consumer - the humans. [1] https://mcgrp.ru/images/1199961/2329042.jpg https://mcgrp.ru/images/1199961/2329042.jpg

carapace 6y ago
> Which means that your "cartel" is just the real world itself. Well, it's your "cartel". I don't think an unconscious conspiracy really counts as a nefarious cartel. But the effect is very real: we ignore things like Red and Elm in favor of things like Rust and JS-et.-al. and I think a large part of it is that we know, deep down, that we're getting paid to party, effectively. As far as it being "just the real world itself", sure, because that's tautological. > you don't wanna fight things like gravity, you have to build ugly and bulky flying machines until one day you have a teleport which will be so far ahead that you can throw away all your planes and airports on a whim. But until then the planes is your best bet. But bad software isn't gravity, it's just bad software. Westinghouse changed the emergency brakes on trains from default open to default closed (when the pressure failed) and saved who-knows-how-many lives and dollars (from trains not rolling down hills when the pressure failed.) We are just really stupid. Even when we build trains and things. We should be so lucky to have the constraints of aviation on our software. Wouldn't be so broken and wasteful then. Again, Englebart invented the "teleporter" in 1968. (Changing the content of the metaphor doesn't unbreak it. We have the magic teleporting cure for cancer already, and have had it for decades.) > there is no way you can scrape existing process and rebuild it with better technologies from the ground-up, because you'll starve billions to death in the process. Yeah you hear that a lot but it's not true. (E.g. "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A ) It turns out again that we are just being stupid. It's an easy fix.

carapace 6y ago

> Which means that your "cartel" is just the real world itself. Well, it's your "cartel". I don't think an unconscious conspiracy really counts as a nefarious cartel. But the effect is very real: we ignore things like Red and Elm in favor of things like Rust and JS-et.-al. and I think a large part of it is that we know, deep down, that we're getting paid to party, effectively. As far as it being "just the real world itself", sure, because that's tautological. > you don't wanna fight things like gravity, you have to build ugly and bulky flying machines until one day you have a teleport which will be so far ahead that you can throw away all your planes and airports on a whim. But until then the planes is your best bet. But bad software isn't gravity, it's just bad software. Westinghouse changed the emergency brakes on trains from default open to default closed (when the pressure failed) and saved who-knows-how-many lives and dollars (from trains not rolling down hills when the pressure failed.) We are just really stupid. Even when we build trains and things. We should be so lucky to have the constraints of aviation on our software. Wouldn't be so broken and wasteful then. Again, Englebart invented the "teleporter" in 1968. (Changing the content of the metaphor doesn't unbreak it. We have the magic teleporting cure for cancer already, and have had it for decades.) > there is no way you can scrape existing process and rebuild it with better technologies from the ground-up, because you'll starve billions to death in the process. Yeah you hear that a lot but it's not true. (E.g. "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A ) It turns out again that we are just being stupid. It's an easy fix.