6 ms·

Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.

by watt 6y ago

rakkhi 6y ago
Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty
- ilaksh 6y ago
  You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
    - lm28469 6y ago
      > Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now. The only reason we can't is because people like you think we can't and take the status quo as a god given immutable system which is inherently "right". There are plenty of things to be done to reduce, instead of increase, inequalities
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        You can't do anything about it because we don't genetically enhance children. Yet. As of two years ago, we mapped out about 2000 genes that contribute to intelligence. A decade ago, we knew of 100. Another decade or two from now, we'll have it entirely mapped out and we'll start to engineer our kids. The reason we'll do this is because our enemies will do this and a high IQ population is a strategic advantage. Its not about "systems" or the status quo. The status quo changes over time, always. Used to be, your ability to throw a spear and kill an animal for the tribe set you apart. Then, what vagina you came out of and what sperm were used to create you designated your station in life. Then, it became your ability to facilitate trade between parties. Later, it shifted to your ability to leverage the output of your fellow man to build a factory or a railroad. Now, in the Information Age, you're limited solely by your IQ, your creativity, and your grit. Those who advanced in the systems above all had grit, determination, willpower, drive. That's a necessary condition and likely always will be, but the other conditions all changed. IQ will likely be the stopping point, at least for humanity. What happens beyond us, that's anyone's guess. Unfortunately, you're still falling back into "utopia-vision". You think if we just build the right "system", we can eliminate all this. Not for a very long time. Probably not ever, and if we ever do, we won't be humans in the current sense, because whereas you're concerned with systems, I'm concerned with human nature, and as it we exist right now, human nature won't support any system where billions of people are propped up by millions for their survival. The resentment it generates, on both sides, is simply unsustainable. The "smart" people who generate all the wealth that the rest of society survives on will resent having to work to maintain society, and the rest of society that receives that wealth will resent not having the same quality of life as the "smart" people who make it all possible in the first place, usually not realizing they'd all be starving to death if the "smart" people decided to merely shut off access. And we won't end up a society of all philosophers and artists because frankly you have to be smart to be a decent philosopher and you have to be creative to be an artist. Most people have middling qualities of both traits. Furthermore, due to the interconnectedness of our global society, people are interested in, can access, and generally are only interested in the "best". Andrew Yang said it best during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle in regards to trying to "regulate" and "break up" Big Tech. No one's interested in using the second-best tech product. Don't believe that? Android and iOS are essentially at parity. You could also say Samsung and Apple are at parity. Almost no one uses Windows Phone OS even though its perfectly acceptable as an operating system and was more than capable of doing what almost every single person needs. But it was the second-best choice, with Android / iOS being the best. We see how that played out. I'm afraid we're in a really rough, really shitty ride. I want to be wrong, because if I'm wrong it means a better world, but I'm using the history of human nature as my reference.
  - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
    It's a mix of intelligence and privilege. You only need to be just smart enough to take full advantage of said privilege. IIRC nobel prize winners have a median IQ of 120. You don't have to be that smart to win a nobel prize, but damned if it doesn't help to have parents to back you every step of the way through your education and training, and the sympathetic ear of a rich and connected network of peers and friends to help you secure grant money.
murukesh_s 6y ago
out of what? what if you own a sustainable farm house with solar grid. you don't give a shit about anything else..
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. A similar view leads to banks with massive loans and low interest rates own more of our productive capacity than feudal lords did over serfs. In Australia tax 35% average, 10% VAT, capital gains and bankls take 30% of your after tax income as a mortgage...
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. These are extremely new concepts (besides human contact, but that you can always have), people use to live differently for 99% of human history. Saying there is no other way than the current way is plain wrong and borderline dangerous. Just talk to your grandparents and you'll feel like they lived on another planet. Our current lifestyle of unchecked consumption, absorption entertainment 3+ hours a day, traveling to the other side of the country/world thanks to cheap airlines &c. are not the norm, they're an anomaly > The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. While not technically wrong, this is a choice you have to make for yourself. There is more to life than consuming other people's production, be careful not to get trapped in the rat race

Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.

by watt 6y ago

Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.

Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty

ilaksh 6y ago
You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now. The only reason we can't is because people like you think we can't and take the status quo as a god given immutable system which is inherently "right". There are plenty of things to be done to reduce, instead of increase, inequalities
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      You can't do anything about it because we don't genetically enhance children. Yet. As of two years ago, we mapped out about 2000 genes that contribute to intelligence. A decade ago, we knew of 100. Another decade or two from now, we'll have it entirely mapped out and we'll start to engineer our kids. The reason we'll do this is because our enemies will do this and a high IQ population is a strategic advantage. Its not about "systems" or the status quo. The status quo changes over time, always. Used to be, your ability to throw a spear and kill an animal for the tribe set you apart. Then, what vagina you came out of and what sperm were used to create you designated your station in life. Then, it became your ability to facilitate trade between parties. Later, it shifted to your ability to leverage the output of your fellow man to build a factory or a railroad. Now, in the Information Age, you're limited solely by your IQ, your creativity, and your grit. Those who advanced in the systems above all had grit, determination, willpower, drive. That's a necessary condition and likely always will be, but the other conditions all changed. IQ will likely be the stopping point, at least for humanity. What happens beyond us, that's anyone's guess. Unfortunately, you're still falling back into "utopia-vision". You think if we just build the right "system", we can eliminate all this. Not for a very long time. Probably not ever, and if we ever do, we won't be humans in the current sense, because whereas you're concerned with systems, I'm concerned with human nature, and as it we exist right now, human nature won't support any system where billions of people are propped up by millions for their survival. The resentment it generates, on both sides, is simply unsustainable. The "smart" people who generate all the wealth that the rest of society survives on will resent having to work to maintain society, and the rest of society that receives that wealth will resent not having the same quality of life as the "smart" people who make it all possible in the first place, usually not realizing they'd all be starving to death if the "smart" people decided to merely shut off access. And we won't end up a society of all philosophers and artists because frankly you have to be smart to be a decent philosopher and you have to be creative to be an artist. Most people have middling qualities of both traits. Furthermore, due to the interconnectedness of our global society, people are interested in, can access, and generally are only interested in the "best". Andrew Yang said it best during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle in regards to trying to "regulate" and "break up" Big Tech. No one's interested in using the second-best tech product. Don't believe that? Android and iOS are essentially at parity. You could also say Samsung and Apple are at parity. Almost no one uses Windows Phone OS even though its perfectly acceptable as an operating system and was more than capable of doing what almost every single person needs. But it was the second-best choice, with Android / iOS being the best. We see how that played out. I'm afraid we're in a really rough, really shitty ride. I want to be wrong, because if I'm wrong it means a better world, but I'm using the history of human nature as my reference.
- wing-_-nuts 6y ago
  It's a mix of intelligence and privilege. You only need to be just smart enough to take full advantage of said privilege. IIRC nobel prize winners have a median IQ of 120. You don't have to be that smart to win a nobel prize, but damned if it doesn't help to have parents to back you every step of the way through your education and training, and the sympathetic ear of a rich and connected network of peers and friends to help you secure grant money.

murukesh_s 6y ago

out of what? what if you own a sustainable farm house with solar grid. you don't give a shit about anything else..

rakkhi 6y ago
Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. A similar view leads to banks with massive loans and low interest rates own more of our productive capacity than feudal lords did over serfs. In Australia tax 35% average, 10% VAT, capital gains and bankls take 30% of your after tax income as a mortgage...
- lm28469 6y ago
  > Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. These are extremely new concepts (besides human contact, but that you can always have), people use to live differently for 99% of human history. Saying there is no other way than the current way is plain wrong and borderline dangerous. Just talk to your grandparents and you'll feel like they lived on another planet. Our current lifestyle of unchecked consumption, absorption entertainment 3+ hours a day, traveling to the other side of the country/world thanks to cheap airlines &c. are not the norm, they're an anomaly > The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. While not technically wrong, this is a choice you have to make for yourself. There is more to life than consuming other people's production, be careful not to get trapped in the rat race