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The available quality of cloth did, in fact, diminish.
by fwip 9mo ago
The available quality of cloth did, in fact, diminish.
- Terr_ 9mo agoHold up, why it changed matters to parent-poster's argument. Consider the difference between: 1. "The technology's capability was inferior to what humans were creating, therefore the quality of the output dropped." 2. "The costs of employing humans created a floor to the price/quality you could offer and still make a profit. Without the human labor, a lower-quality product became possible to offer." The first is a question of engineering, the second is a question of economic choice and market-fit.
- fwip 9mo agoSome of both. The fabric and clothes were worse, and cheaper. This put many traditional workers out of business, making actually good clothes scarcer, and eventually, more expensive than they previously were.
- Terr_ 9mo agoI think the poster's "LLMs are not like textile machines" point hinges on whether a step down in quality is required due to engineering issues or not, at least for an equivalent product. (E.g. bulk cloth, rather than fine embroidery.)
- fwip 9mo agoI'm talking about equivalent products. The cloth made by machine during the Industrial Revolution was meaningfully worse in quality than the hand-made stuff.
- ekianjo 9mo agoNot really. Polymers in clothes are everywhere and they have very désirable properties compared to pure cotton. Untreated cotton had many problems.
- trollbridge 9mo agoMaterials other than cotton (like wool and leather) existed.