4 ms·

When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? When it became cheaper to make games did the quality go up? When it became cheaper to mass produ

by samiv 9mo ago

When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? When it became cheaper to make games did the quality go up? When it became cheaper to mass produce X (sneakers, tshirts, anything really) did the quality go up? It's a world that is made of an abundance of trash. The volume of low quality production saturates the market and drowns out whatever high quality things still remain. In such a world you're just better of reallocating your resources from the production quality towards the the shouting match of marketing and try to win by finding ways to be more visible than the others. (SEO hacking etc shenanigans) When you drive down the cost of doing something to zero you you also effectively destroy the economy based around that thing. Like online print, basically nobody can make a living with focusing on publishing news or articles but alternative revenue streams (ads) are needed. Same for games too.

dpoloncsak 9mo ago
>When it became cheaper to x did the quality go up? ...yes? It introduces a lower barrier to entry, so more low-quality things are also created, but it also increases the quality of the higher-tier as well. It's important to note that in FOSS, we (Or atleast...I) don't generally care who wrote the code, as long as it compiles and isn't malicious. This overlays with the original discussion...If I was paying you to read your posts, I expect them to be hand-written. If I'm paying for software, it better not be AI Slop. If you're offering me something for free, I'm not really in a position to complain about the quality. It's undeniable that, especially in software, cheaper costs and a lower barrier to get started will bring more great FOSS software. This is like one of the pillars of FOSS, right? That's how we got LetsEncrypt, OpenDNS, etc. It will also 100% bring more slop. Both can be true at the same time.
- samiv 9mo ago
  I'd say that those high quality things that still exist do so despite of the higher volume of junk and they mostly exist because of other reasons/unique circumstances. (Individual pride, craftsmanship, people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints etc) In a landscape where the market is mostly filled with junk by spending anything on "quality" any commercial product is essentially losing money.
  - dpoloncsak 9mo ago
    >people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints Isn't this the exact point I was making...? I get you're arguing it's only a single factor, but I feel like the point still stands. More hobbyists, less financial constraints
- Draiken 9mo ago
  > but it also increases the quality of the higher-tier I truly don't see this happening anymore. Maybe it did before? If there's real competition, maybe this does happen. We don't have it and it'll never last in capitalism since one or a few companies will always win at some point. If you're a higher tier X, cheaper processes means you'll just enjoy bigger profit margins and eventually decide to start the enshittification phase since you're a monopoly/oligopoly, so why not? As for FOSS, well, we'll have more crappy AI generated apps that are full of vulnerabilities and will become unmaintainable. We already have hordes of garbage "contributions" to FOSS generated by these AI systems worsening the lives of maintainers. Is that really higher quality? I reckon it's only higher quantity with more potential to lower quality of even higher-tier software.
- BrenBarn 9mo ago
  The problem is that with the amount of low-quality stuff we're seeing, and with the expansion of the low-quality frenzy into the realm of information dissemination, it can become prohibitively difficult to distinguish the high-quality stuff. What matters is not the "total quality" but sort of like the expected value of the quality you can access in practice, and I feel like in at least some areas that has gone down.
fainpul 9mo ago
> When it became cheaper to … did the quality go up? No, but the availability (more people can afford it) and diversity (different needs are met) increased. I would say that's a positive. Some of the expensive "legacy" things still exist and people pay for it (e.g. newspapers / professional journalism). Of course low quality stuff increased by a lot and you're right, that leads to problems.
- samiv 9mo ago
  Well yeah more people can afford shitty things that end up in the landfill two weeks later. To me this is the essence of "consumerism". Rather than think in terms of making things cheaper for people to afford we should think how to produce wealthier people who could afford better than the cheapest of cheapest crap.
  - helloaltalt 9mo ago
    But in the context of softwares, the landfill argument doesn't fit exactly well (well, sure someone can argue that storage on say, github might take more drives but the scale would be very cheaper than say landfill filled with physical things as well > Rather than think in terms of making things cheaper for people to afford we should think how to produce wealthier people who could afford better than the cheapest of cheapest crap. This problem actually runs deep and is systemic. I am genuinely not sure how one can do it when the basis of wealth derives from what exactly? The growth of stock markets which people call bubbles or the US debt crisis which is fueling up in recent years to basically fuel the consumerism spree itself. I am not sure. If you were to make people wealthy, they might still buy cheapest of cheapest crap just at a 10x more magnitude in many cases (or atleast that's what I observed US to do with how many people buy and sell usually very simple saas tools at times)
    - samiv 9mo ago
      Re software and landfill.. true to some extent but there are still ramifications as you pointed out electricity demand and hardware infrastructure to support it. Also in the 80's when the computer games market crashed they literally dumped games cartridges in a hole in the desert! Maybe my opinion is just biased and I'm in the comfortable position to pass judgment but I'd like to believe that more people would be more ethical and conscious about their materialistic needs if things had more value and were better quality and instead of focusing on the "price" as the primary value proposition people were actually able to afford to buy other than the cheapest of things. Wouldn't the economy also be in much better shape if more people could buy things such as handmade shoes or suits?
Telemakhos 9mo ago
When it became cheaper to publish text, for example with the invention of the printing press, the quality of what the average person had in his possession went up: you went from very few having hand-copied texts to Erasmus describing himself running into some border guard reading one of his books (in Latin). The absolute quality of texts published might have decreased a bit, but the quality per capita of what individuals owned went up. When it became cheaper to mass produce sneakers, tshirts, and anything, the quality of the individual product probably did go down, but more people around the world were able to afford the product, which raised the standard of living for people in the aggregate. Now, if these products were absolute trash, life wouldn't make much sense, but there's a friction point in there between high quality and trash, where things are acceptable and affordable to the many. Making things cheaper isn't a net negative for human progress: hitting that friction point of acceptable affordability helps spread progress more democratically and raise the standard of living. The question at hand is whether AI can more affordably produce acceptable technical writing, or if it's trash. My own experiences with AI make me think that it won't produce acceptable results, because you never know when AI is lying: catching those errors requires someone who might as well just write the documentation. But, if it could produce truthful technical writing affordably, that would not be a bad thing for humanity.
- frm88 9mo ago
  When it became cheaper to publish text, for example with the invention of the printing press, the quality of what the average person had in his possession went up: you went from very few having hand-copied texts to Erasmus describing himself running into some border guard reading one of his books (in Latin). The absolute quality of texts published might have decreased a bit, but the quality per capita of what individuals owned went up. Today the situation is very different and I'm not quite sure why you compare a time in history where the average person was illiterate and (printed) books were limited to a very small audience who could afford them, with the current era where everybody is exposed to the written word all the time and is even dependent on it, in many cases even dependent on it's accuracy (think public services). The quality of AI writing in some cases is so subpar, it resembles word salad. Example goodreads: the blurb of this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237615295-of-venom-and-vengeance https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237615295-of-venom-and-v... was so surreal I wrote to the author to correct it (see in comments to the authors own review). It's better now, but it still has mistakes. This is in no way comparable with the pasts goes down a bit this is destroying trust even more than everything else, because it this gets to be the norm for official documents people are going to be hurt.
FrustratedMonky 9mo ago
I think for 'technical' writing, there is going to be some end-state crash. What happens when all the engineers left can't figure out something, and they start opening up manuals, and they are also all wrong and trash. And the whole world grinds to a halt because nobody knows anything.
Terretta 9mo ago
I agree with you, however: One of the qualia of a product is cost. Another is contemporaneity. If we put these together, we see a wide array of products which, rather than just being trash, hit a sweet spot for "up-to-date yet didn't break the wallet" and you end up with https://shein.com/ https://shein.com/ These are not thought of as the same people that subscribe to the Buy It For Life subreddit, but some may use Shein for a club shirt and BIFL for an espresso machine. They make a choice. What's more, a “Technivorm Moccamaster” costs 10x a “Mr. Coffee” because of the build and repairability, not because of the coffee. (Amazon Basics cost ½ that again.) Maybe Fashion was the original SEO hack. Whoever came up with the phrase "gone out of style" wrought much of this.
theptip 9mo ago
> When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? Obviously, yes? Maybe not the median or even mean, but peak quality for sure. If you know where to look there are more high-quality takes available now than ever before. (And perhaps more meaningfully, peak quality within your niche subgenre is better than ever). > When it became cheaper to make games did the quality go up? Yes? The quality and variety of indie games is amazing these days. > When it became cheaper to mass produce X (sneakers, tshirts, anything really) did the quality go up? This is the case where I don’t see a win, and I think it bears further thought; I don’t have a clear explanation. But I note this is the one case where production is not actually democratized. So it kinda doesn’t fit with the digital goods we are discussing. > basically nobody can make a living with focusing on publishing news or articles Is this actually true? Substack enables more independent career bloggers than ever before. I would love to see the numbers on professional indie devs. I agree these are very competitive fields, and an individual’s chances of winning are slim, but I suspect there are more professional indie creators than ever before.
- BrenBarn 9mo ago
  I don't think peak quality is a very meaningful measure. As you say, it turns everything into "if you know where to look".
anamax 9mo ago
> When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? Average quality or peak quality?

by samiv 9mo ago

dpoloncsak 9mo ago

>When it became cheaper to x did the quality go up? ...yes? It introduces a lower barrier to entry, so more low-quality things are also created, but it also increases the quality of the higher-tier as well. It's important to note that in FOSS, we (Or atleast...I) don't generally care who wrote the code, as long as it compiles and isn't malicious. This overlays with the original discussion...If I was paying you to read your posts, I expect them to be hand-written. If I'm paying for software, it better not be AI Slop. If you're offering me something for free, I'm not really in a position to complain about the quality. It's undeniable that, especially in software, cheaper costs and a lower barrier to get started will bring more great FOSS software. This is like one of the pillars of FOSS, right? That's how we got LetsEncrypt, OpenDNS, etc. It will also 100% bring more slop. Both can be true at the same time.

samiv 9mo ago
I'd say that those high quality things that still exist do so despite of the higher volume of junk and they mostly exist because of other reasons/unique circumstances. (Individual pride, craftsmanship, people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints etc) In a landscape where the market is mostly filled with junk by spending anything on "quality" any commercial product is essentially losing money.
- dpoloncsak 9mo ago
  >people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints Isn't this the exact point I was making...? I get you're arguing it's only a single factor, but I feel like the point still stands. More hobbyists, less financial constraints
Draiken 9mo ago
> but it also increases the quality of the higher-tier I truly don't see this happening anymore. Maybe it did before? If there's real competition, maybe this does happen. We don't have it and it'll never last in capitalism since one or a few companies will always win at some point. If you're a higher tier X, cheaper processes means you'll just enjoy bigger profit margins and eventually decide to start the enshittification phase since you're a monopoly/oligopoly, so why not? As for FOSS, well, we'll have more crappy AI generated apps that are full of vulnerabilities and will become unmaintainable. We already have hordes of garbage "contributions" to FOSS generated by these AI systems worsening the lives of maintainers. Is that really higher quality? I reckon it's only higher quantity with more potential to lower quality of even higher-tier software.
BrenBarn 9mo ago
The problem is that with the amount of low-quality stuff we're seeing, and with the expansion of the low-quality frenzy into the realm of information dissemination, it can become prohibitively difficult to distinguish the high-quality stuff. What matters is not the "total quality" but sort of like the expected value of the quality you can access in practice, and I feel like in at least some areas that has gone down.

fainpul 9mo ago

> When it became cheaper to … did the quality go up? No, but the availability (more people can afford it) and diversity (different needs are met) increased. I would say that's a positive. Some of the expensive "legacy" things still exist and people pay for it (e.g. newspapers / professional journalism). Of course low quality stuff increased by a lot and you're right, that leads to problems.

samiv 9mo ago
Well yeah more people can afford shitty things that end up in the landfill two weeks later. To me this is the essence of "consumerism". Rather than think in terms of making things cheaper for people to afford we should think how to produce wealthier people who could afford better than the cheapest of cheapest crap.
- helloaltalt 9mo ago
  But in the context of softwares, the landfill argument doesn't fit exactly well (well, sure someone can argue that storage on say, github might take more drives but the scale would be very cheaper than say landfill filled with physical things as well > Rather than think in terms of making things cheaper for people to afford we should think how to produce wealthier people who could afford better than the cheapest of cheapest crap. This problem actually runs deep and is systemic. I am genuinely not sure how one can do it when the basis of wealth derives from what exactly? The growth of stock markets which people call bubbles or the US debt crisis which is fueling up in recent years to basically fuel the consumerism spree itself. I am not sure. If you were to make people wealthy, they might still buy cheapest of cheapest crap just at a 10x more magnitude in many cases (or atleast that's what I observed US to do with how many people buy and sell usually very simple saas tools at times)
  - samiv 9mo ago
    Re software and landfill.. true to some extent but there are still ramifications as you pointed out electricity demand and hardware infrastructure to support it. Also in the 80's when the computer games market crashed they literally dumped games cartridges in a hole in the desert! Maybe my opinion is just biased and I'm in the comfortable position to pass judgment but I'd like to believe that more people would be more ethical and conscious about their materialistic needs if things had more value and were better quality and instead of focusing on the "price" as the primary value proposition people were actually able to afford to buy other than the cheapest of things. Wouldn't the economy also be in much better shape if more people could buy things such as handmade shoes or suits?

Telemakhos 9mo ago

When it became cheaper to publish text, for example with the invention of the printing press, the quality of what the average person had in his possession went up: you went from very few having hand-copied texts to Erasmus describing himself running into some border guard reading one of his books (in Latin). The absolute quality of texts published might have decreased a bit, but the quality per capita of what individuals owned went up. When it became cheaper to mass produce sneakers, tshirts, and anything, the quality of the individual product probably did go down, but more people around the world were able to afford the product, which raised the standard of living for people in the aggregate. Now, if these products were absolute trash, life wouldn't make much sense, but there's a friction point in there between high quality and trash, where things are acceptable and affordable to the many. Making things cheaper isn't a net negative for human progress: hitting that friction point of acceptable affordability helps spread progress more democratically and raise the standard of living. The question at hand is whether AI can more affordably produce acceptable technical writing, or if it's trash. My own experiences with AI make me think that it won't produce acceptable results, because you never know when AI is lying: catching those errors requires someone who might as well just write the documentation. But, if it could produce truthful technical writing affordably, that would not be a bad thing for humanity.

frm88 9mo ago
When it became cheaper to publish text, for example with the invention of the printing press, the quality of what the average person had in his possession went up: you went from very few having hand-copied texts to Erasmus describing himself running into some border guard reading one of his books (in Latin). The absolute quality of texts published might have decreased a bit, but the quality per capita of what individuals owned went up. Today the situation is very different and I'm not quite sure why you compare a time in history where the average person was illiterate and (printed) books were limited to a very small audience who could afford them, with the current era where everybody is exposed to the written word all the time and is even dependent on it, in many cases even dependent on it's accuracy (think public services). The quality of AI writing in some cases is so subpar, it resembles word salad. Example goodreads: the blurb of this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237615295-of-venom-and-vengeance https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237615295-of-venom-and-v... was so surreal I wrote to the author to correct it (see in comments to the authors own review). It's better now, but it still has mistakes. This is in no way comparable with the pasts goes down a bit this is destroying trust even more than everything else, because it this gets to be the norm for official documents people are going to be hurt.

FrustratedMonky 9mo ago

I think for 'technical' writing, there is going to be some end-state crash. What happens when all the engineers left can't figure out something, and they start opening up manuals, and they are also all wrong and trash. And the whole world grinds to a halt because nobody knows anything.

Terretta 9mo ago

I agree with you, however: One of the qualia of a product is cost. Another is contemporaneity. If we put these together, we see a wide array of products which, rather than just being trash, hit a sweet spot for "up-to-date yet didn't break the wallet" and you end up with https://shein.com/ https://shein.com/ These are not thought of as the same people that subscribe to the Buy It For Life subreddit, but some may use Shein for a club shirt and BIFL for an espresso machine. They make a choice. What's more, a “Technivorm Moccamaster” costs 10x a “Mr. Coffee” because of the build and repairability, not because of the coffee. (Amazon Basics cost ½ that again.) Maybe Fashion was the original SEO hack. Whoever came up with the phrase "gone out of style" wrought much of this.

theptip 9mo ago

> When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? Obviously, yes? Maybe not the median or even mean, but peak quality for sure. If you know where to look there are more high-quality takes available now than ever before. (And perhaps more meaningfully, peak quality within your niche subgenre is better than ever). > When it became cheaper to make games did the quality go up? Yes? The quality and variety of indie games is amazing these days. > When it became cheaper to mass produce X (sneakers, tshirts, anything really) did the quality go up? This is the case where I don’t see a win, and I think it bears further thought; I don’t have a clear explanation. But I note this is the one case where production is not actually democratized. So it kinda doesn’t fit with the digital goods we are discussing. > basically nobody can make a living with focusing on publishing news or articles Is this actually true? Substack enables more independent career bloggers than ever before. I would love to see the numbers on professional indie devs. I agree these are very competitive fields, and an individual’s chances of winning are slim, but I suspect there are more professional indie creators than ever before.

BrenBarn 9mo ago
I don't think peak quality is a very meaningful measure. As you say, it turns everything into "if you know where to look".

anamax 9mo ago

> When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up? Average quality or peak quality?