3 ms·

Problem is, that'll just shift competition somewhere else. This has already happened in Tech to some extent, where the interview process has gone exponential in

Problem is, that'll just shift competition somewhere else. This has already happened in Tech to some extent, where the interview process has gone exponential in just the last few years. We need to aim closer to the root, at the economic concentrations in society that all this competition is about trying to access. In a world of independent artisans, we wouldn't need to worry so much about all this status and hierarchy and gatekeeping. But there are a handful of FAANGs that reign unnaturally like giant totalitarian states. It's like we have Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, when we're supposed to have The Netherlands, Italy, Thailand, Vietnam, and so on. Instead it's like some Tsar expanding over the whole of Eurasia. And you need to get into the bastard's court.

endisneigh 3y ago
The shift is good. It is more meritocratic imo.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  I do see your point. But I feel we only need to look at, say, passing the exams to get into IIT, or at the South Korean school system, to see where this leads. At some point it's just too much, and it doesn't matter how fairly the Hunger Games are administered. Let me put it another way: It's extremely destructive to a society if too much effort is channeled into zero-sum competition within that society.
thfuran 3y ago
>This has already happened in Tech to some extent, where the interview process has gone exponential in just the last few years. What does that mean?
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  Mostly rhetoric, but it gestured towards some mathematical/modeling intuition. I was picturing a graph with time on the x axis, difficulty on the y, and a fairly constant value until recently, at which point things began to increase rapidly. I had in mind instability and explosion, a mania like for tulips, and self-destructive involution, like a society locked in competition with itself to pass the Emperor's exams. Why an exponential? I know that, in contrast, finance people speak of things going "parabolic". But there may be reason for literal exponentials, for dx/dt = x. It's not that difficulty begets difficulty, but that difficulty arises from economic concentration and concentration of opportunities, and economic concentration begets economic concentration.
imtringued 3y ago
Well, the obvious answer has to do with the fact that a shared money system allows money to be concentrated regionally which in turn means that people have to follow the money to where it is being concentrated. The most prominent example is Greece being drained of Euros and of its young workers who have no choice but to go to work in Germany. Then the Germans complain about immigration without realising that they encourage this with their economic policy. They think these things are two separate problems that require separate solutions, when in reality they are the same problem.

endisneigh 3y ago

The shift is good. It is more meritocratic imo.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
I do see your point. But I feel we only need to look at, say, passing the exams to get into IIT, or at the South Korean school system, to see where this leads. At some point it's just too much, and it doesn't matter how fairly the Hunger Games are administered. Let me put it another way: It's extremely destructive to a society if too much effort is channeled into zero-sum competition within that society.

thfuran 3y ago

>This has already happened in Tech to some extent, where the interview process has gone exponential in just the last few years. What does that mean?

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Mostly rhetoric, but it gestured towards some mathematical/modeling intuition. I was picturing a graph with time on the x axis, difficulty on the y, and a fairly constant value until recently, at which point things began to increase rapidly. I had in mind instability and explosion, a mania like for tulips, and self-destructive involution, like a society locked in competition with itself to pass the Emperor's exams. Why an exponential? I know that, in contrast, finance people speak of things going "parabolic". But there may be reason for literal exponentials, for dx/dt = x. It's not that difficulty begets difficulty, but that difficulty arises from economic concentration and concentration of opportunities, and economic concentration begets economic concentration.

imtringued 3y ago

Well, the obvious answer has to do with the fact that a shared money system allows money to be concentrated regionally which in turn means that people have to follow the money to where it is being concentrated. The most prominent example is Greece being drained of Euros and of its young workers who have no choice but to go to work in Germany. Then the Germans complain about immigration without realising that they encourage this with their economic policy. They think these things are two separate problems that require separate solutions, when in reality they are the same problem.