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So now the ancillary question from your example is: "Is hand-spun cotton better than industrialized polyester?"

by butlike 6mo ago

TeMPOraL 6mo ago
Define better. Fast fashion sucks, but hand-spun cotton won't give you Kevlar or modern wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials for your furniture or... <insert half thousand different things adjacent to modern textile production>. It's always win some, lose some with the economy, but technology itself opens previously impossible capabilities.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
  It used to open them to most of the population - at least that was the ideal for a couple of decades - but now it seems to be opening them to oligarchs more than workers. It's essentially a political energy source. It heats everything up. Eventually it either explodes, goes through a phase change to a new (meta)stable state, or collapses back to a previous state.
- jimbokun 6mo ago
  What is the AI equivalent of wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials? So far the only product AI is producing is layoffs.
  - TeMPOraL 6mo ago
    > wind-resistant clothing Better autocomplete/autocorrect, "circle on screen" -> OCR anywhere, high-quality automated background removal[0]. > fireproof materials No big examples to point at now, except maybe whatever security fixes that'll come out of Glasswing Project[1]. > So far the only product AI is producing is layoffs. AI-related[2] layoffs are a direct consequence of useful things AI is delivering. -- [0] - Super useful for e.g. making ID photos, which I notice I need to do increasingly often, which is likely a consequence of proliferation of remote/digital ID verification, which nicely ties us back to question 'butlike expressed, i.e. how much is technological progress actually improving things. [1] - https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing [2] - As opposed to "we wanted to lay off people anyway, AI just provided a socially-acceptable excuse".
- butlike 6mo ago
  Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.' Your comment got me thinking about if technology is actually better, but that's a whole new discussion. We wouldn't need the fireproof furniture if we all used the local sweat lodge for bathing or the mess hall yurt for cooking. We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same amenities (just in a different city).
  - TeMPOraL 6mo ago
    > Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.' I'd generally agree, but there are always caveats. See e.g. glass vs. plastic bottles - glass looks like strictly superior solution environmentally, until you consider how much fuel is saved across entire logistics chain by plastic bottles being significantly lighter. > We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same amenities (just in a different city) FWIW, I was thinking more about people who like to walk around in windy places, including mountains, etc. But even if we exclude tourists, we're still left with people who work at altitudes (including infrastructure anywhere - get on a high enough pole or roof, it's going to be windy). More generally, there are people doing useful work, including construction, services, and research, in all kinds of extreme environments, and this is directly enabled by post-industrial era fabrics.
awongh 6mo ago
If you're implying that hand-spun cotton is better, that's an easy question to answer- people used to spend a huge amount of their income on clothing, also spending a huge amount of time washing it. Industrialization made clothing so much cheaper that it's now completely disposable. There's plenty of reasons why that's not a bad thing. One reason people forget that "good quality" shoes existed was that you could only afford to buy one pair ever, not that things were made better, necessarily. (or could be both, but that replacing a pair of shoes was a financial hardship, because hand-made things, even back then, were expensive). Even if you're against fast fasion I don't think anyone wants a pair of shoes to cost $10,000.
- butlike 6mo ago
  It seems to me you're advocating for waste, as I'm not seeing the "plenty of reasons why completely disposable cheap clothing isn't a bad thing" argument. Replacing shoes wasn't necessary because there were cobblers. For clothing; tailors. I'd much prefer to get a set of clothing, then work with it over the course of its lifetime, over sending it to the landfill after one tear.
  - wordspotting 6mo ago
    Many companies are following planned obsolence framework to keep their industry alive. That is the major reason for waste and drop in quality.
jimbokun 6mo ago
What's the AI equivalent of industrialized polyester in your analogy? From a consumer perspective, AI isn't really producing any new products with real market demand. Chatbots are fun, but there's no indication consumers are willing to pay for them.

So now the ancillary question from your example is: "Is hand-spun cotton better than industrialized polyester?"

by butlike 6mo ago

So now the ancillary question from your example is: "Is hand-spun cotton better than industrialized polyester?"

Define better. Fast fashion sucks, but hand-spun cotton won't give you Kevlar or modern wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials for your furniture or... <insert half thousand different things adjacent to modern textile production>. It's always win some, lose some with the economy, but technology itself opens previously impossible capabilities.

TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
It used to open them to most of the population - at least that was the ideal for a couple of decades - but now it seems to be opening them to oligarchs more than workers. It's essentially a political energy source. It heats everything up. Eventually it either explodes, goes through a phase change to a new (meta)stable state, or collapses back to a previous state.
jimbokun 6mo ago
What is the AI equivalent of wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials? So far the only product AI is producing is layoffs.
- TeMPOraL 6mo ago
  > wind-resistant clothing Better autocomplete/autocorrect, "circle on screen" -> OCR anywhere, high-quality automated background removal[0]. > fireproof materials No big examples to point at now, except maybe whatever security fixes that'll come out of Glasswing Project[1]. > So far the only product AI is producing is layoffs. AI-related[2] layoffs are a direct consequence of useful things AI is delivering. -- [0] - Super useful for e.g. making ID photos, which I notice I need to do increasingly often, which is likely a consequence of proliferation of remote/digital ID verification, which nicely ties us back to question 'butlike expressed, i.e. how much is technological progress actually improving things. [1] - https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing [2] - As opposed to "we wanted to lay off people anyway, AI just provided a socially-acceptable excuse".
butlike 6mo ago
Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.' Your comment got me thinking about if technology is actually better, but that's a whole new discussion. We wouldn't need the fireproof furniture if we all used the local sweat lodge for bathing or the mess hall yurt for cooking. We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same amenities (just in a different city).
- TeMPOraL 6mo ago
  > Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.' I'd generally agree, but there are always caveats. See e.g. glass vs. plastic bottles - glass looks like strictly superior solution environmentally, until you consider how much fuel is saved across entire logistics chain by plastic bottles being significantly lighter. > We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same amenities (just in a different city) FWIW, I was thinking more about people who like to walk around in windy places, including mountains, etc. But even if we exclude tourists, we're still left with people who work at altitudes (including infrastructure anywhere - get on a high enough pole or roof, it's going to be windy). More generally, there are people doing useful work, including construction, services, and research, in all kinds of extreme environments, and this is directly enabled by post-industrial era fabrics.

awongh 6mo ago

If you're implying that hand-spun cotton is better, that's an easy question to answer- people used to spend a huge amount of their income on clothing, also spending a huge amount of time washing it. Industrialization made clothing so much cheaper that it's now completely disposable. There's plenty of reasons why that's not a bad thing. One reason people forget that "good quality" shoes existed was that you could only afford to buy one pair ever, not that things were made better, necessarily. (or could be both, but that replacing a pair of shoes was a financial hardship, because hand-made things, even back then, were expensive). Even if you're against fast fasion I don't think anyone wants a pair of shoes to cost $10,000.

butlike 6mo ago
It seems to me you're advocating for waste, as I'm not seeing the "plenty of reasons why completely disposable cheap clothing isn't a bad thing" argument. Replacing shoes wasn't necessary because there were cobblers. For clothing; tailors. I'd much prefer to get a set of clothing, then work with it over the course of its lifetime, over sending it to the landfill after one tear.
- wordspotting 6mo ago
  Many companies are following planned obsolence framework to keep their industry alive. That is the major reason for waste and drop in quality.

jimbokun 6mo ago

What's the AI equivalent of industrialized polyester in your analogy? From a consumer perspective, AI isn't really producing any new products with real market demand. Chatbots are fun, but there's no indication consumers are willing to pay for them.