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I was expecting a more nuanced article that talked about the “Suez Moment” in America but this is basically a (not even a good) critique of deindustrialization.

by pm90 6mo ago

Phui3ferubus 6mo ago
I don't expect anything from the guy who declared self driving cars are easy, everyone is just doing it wrong, and he could do it better in a just a year; 5 years ago. The fame totally went to his head :P It is somewhat common issue for Nobel award winners, in this case the scope is limited "I am great at security and reverse engineering, that makes me an expert for anything IT related".
- 21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
  Nobel Nacre.. The nobelprize is hyper destructive to the scientists receiving it. Its hard to one up from there or return to your field- everyone is bombarding you with high expectations. You can only fail after you received olympic gold. Thus, as scientists inflict change on society, and society hates change, it is like a oyster, trying to protect itself from a grain of sand, wrapping it in Nacre, protecting itself from further change, by encapsulating the changing factor which remains neutered from its ability to do science.
  - daymanstep 6mo ago
    Nobel prize is usually awarded many years after the work was done and by the time its awarded the scientist is usually well past their prime
    - curio_Pol_curio 6mo ago
      GP might be making a prediction about Demis Hassabis, who happens to break the mold you've just described (but he is not a member of "the Physics community" so their expectations won't mean anything to him?)
- ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
  > self driving cars are easy Self-driving cars are easy though, 12-year-olds make them in high school STEM classes. You just give it a light sensor so it can follow a strip of white tape down the middle of the "road" and let it go from one place to the other. Oh, until it hits an obstruction. Okay well you add some sort of bumper switch to it so if it hits an obstruction it stops and backs up, to find a route round it. Ah right, well, let's see, that didn't work so well when the obstruction was much smaller and squashier than the car. Let's have some sort of distance sensors that - ah bollocks, they pick up everything including objects beside the road, and stop the car. Okay what about some sort of camera and machine vision system? Great, that lets it "see" the road ahead and steer or brake to avoid obstacles! But it turns out it now needs to understand a bit of physics, at least enough to stop it booting it wide open through a sharp bend and ending up shiny side down. Right so now it will drive at a sensible speed through bends, use a camera to look for obstructions, LIDAR to look for obstructions too, and it can actually follow road markings quite well, and even pick up speed from signs. Ah. It can't actually be used around other vehicles because it can't anticipate what they're going to do, and keeps getting into bad situations that it then needs to brake and swerve to avoid. Oh well, turns out self-driving cars aren't easy after all.
suddenlybananas 6mo ago
I don't quite see the Suez Crisis analogy quite working because China (the rising power) is not really involved against the US (the waning power).
- vrganj 6mo ago
  China is selling the world solar panels while the US is making gas unaffordable.
  - dv_dt 6mo ago
    The US passed up multiple opportunities to fund its own more foundational solar industry
    - alex43578 6mo ago
      The US does a terrible job trying to throw government cash at problems. See: Solyndra, PPP, the US’s inability to build ships, or most recently the debacle of Biden’s $7.5B rollout of EV chargers that only managed to build a few dozen stations in 3 years.
      - dv_dt 6mo ago
        This is exactly how the opportunities were passed up. I am convinced its in no small part because of the unrealistic expectations of a very high success ratio with a small number of experiments. The US throws a lot of money at relatively few bets while China funds entire competitive markets at smaller scales and lets the ecosystem vet them. There is also political alignment in funding next generation technologies even if it's disruptive of established industries. Lobbying of fossil fuel industry did not stop renewable factory investments in China. Whereas in the US any failure of a renewable investment was highlighted by fossil fuel lobbyists as a pretense to stop the investments
        alex43578 6mo ago
        PPP was a ton of small bets, with rampant fraud and waste (and a stupid fundamental idea). The EV chargers were supposed to fund hundreds of stations in each of the 50 states: only a few dozen were built in 4 years. If the government focuses on one big project, like the SLS, it becomes rife with pork and clumsily slow. But there’s hardly a better track record with splitting a program up among applicants or states (see SNAP, rampant fraud in “autism” services, PPP, or homelessness in California)
stingraycharles 6mo ago
Yeah it's a very short-sighted article. Taking a quote like this: > I can’t believe those who seriously try and say America’s value is in consuming. as a case against outsourcing manufacturing really doesn't understand the value that societies create when they are on the forefront of innovation. Maybe, just maybe, at a certain point physical labour is not the best way to use your working population, but instead, you know, services, innovation, etc? America has been doing pretty good in that regard over the past few decades. (For disclosure, I'm not from America, but still think this is a silly article)
- direwolf20 6mo ago
  China is at the forefront of innovation. America is not, except for financial innovation a.k.a. the best ways to get money out of people without doing actual work.
  - boxed 6mo ago
    China is a the forefront of catching up. Don't mistake that for innovation. China isn't building the best chips, that's Taiwan with really Netherlands doing the hard part. China is catching up to European car makers except they've largely caught up to Tesla in the powertrain (I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons). In the AI space obviously China is just running after playing catch up. Biology, catch up. Chemistry, catch up. Physics, catch up. Where is China leading?
    - adjejmxbdjdn 6mo ago
      > I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social security data, etc are just “silly political reasons”.
      - boxed 6mo ago

I was expecting a more nuanced article that talked about the “Suez Moment” in America but this is basically a (not even a good) critique of deindustrialization.

by pm90 6mo ago

I was expecting a more nuanced article that talked about the “Suez Moment” in America but this is basically a (not even a good) critique of deindustrialization.

Phui3ferubus 6mo ago

I don't expect anything from the guy who declared self driving cars are easy, everyone is just doing it wrong, and he could do it better in a just a year; 5 years ago. The fame totally went to his head :P It is somewhat common issue for Nobel award winners, in this case the scope is limited "I am great at security and reverse engineering, that makes me an expert for anything IT related".

21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
Nobel Nacre.. The nobelprize is hyper destructive to the scientists receiving it. Its hard to one up from there or return to your field- everyone is bombarding you with high expectations. You can only fail after you received olympic gold. Thus, as scientists inflict change on society, and society hates change, it is like a oyster, trying to protect itself from a grain of sand, wrapping it in Nacre, protecting itself from further change, by encapsulating the changing factor which remains neutered from its ability to do science.
- daymanstep 6mo ago
  Nobel prize is usually awarded many years after the work was done and by the time its awarded the scientist is usually well past their prime
  - curio_Pol_curio 6mo ago
    GP might be making a prediction about Demis Hassabis, who happens to break the mold you've just described (but he is not a member of "the Physics community" so their expectations won't mean anything to him?)
ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
> self driving cars are easy Self-driving cars are easy though, 12-year-olds make them in high school STEM classes. You just give it a light sensor so it can follow a strip of white tape down the middle of the "road" and let it go from one place to the other. Oh, until it hits an obstruction. Okay well you add some sort of bumper switch to it so if it hits an obstruction it stops and backs up, to find a route round it. Ah right, well, let's see, that didn't work so well when the obstruction was much smaller and squashier than the car. Let's have some sort of distance sensors that - ah bollocks, they pick up everything including objects beside the road, and stop the car. Okay what about some sort of camera and machine vision system? Great, that lets it "see" the road ahead and steer or brake to avoid obstacles! But it turns out it now needs to understand a bit of physics, at least enough to stop it booting it wide open through a sharp bend and ending up shiny side down. Right so now it will drive at a sensible speed through bends, use a camera to look for obstructions, LIDAR to look for obstructions too, and it can actually follow road markings quite well, and even pick up speed from signs. Ah. It can't actually be used around other vehicles because it can't anticipate what they're going to do, and keeps getting into bad situations that it then needs to brake and swerve to avoid. Oh well, turns out self-driving cars aren't easy after all.

suddenlybananas 6mo ago

I don't quite see the Suez Crisis analogy quite working because China (the rising power) is not really involved against the US (the waning power).

vrganj 6mo ago
China is selling the world solar panels while the US is making gas unaffordable.
- dv_dt 6mo ago
  The US passed up multiple opportunities to fund its own more foundational solar industry
  - alex43578 6mo ago
    The US does a terrible job trying to throw government cash at problems. See: Solyndra, PPP, the US’s inability to build ships, or most recently the debacle of Biden’s $7.5B rollout of EV chargers that only managed to build a few dozen stations in 3 years.
    - dv_dt 6mo ago
      This is exactly how the opportunities were passed up. I am convinced its in no small part because of the unrealistic expectations of a very high success ratio with a small number of experiments. The US throws a lot of money at relatively few bets while China funds entire competitive markets at smaller scales and lets the ecosystem vet them. There is also political alignment in funding next generation technologies even if it's disruptive of established industries. Lobbying of fossil fuel industry did not stop renewable factory investments in China. Whereas in the US any failure of a renewable investment was highlighted by fossil fuel lobbyists as a pretense to stop the investments
      - alex43578 6mo ago
        PPP was a ton of small bets, with rampant fraud and waste (and a stupid fundamental idea). The EV chargers were supposed to fund hundreds of stations in each of the 50 states: only a few dozen were built in 4 years. If the government focuses on one big project, like the SLS, it becomes rife with pork and clumsily slow. But there’s hardly a better track record with splitting a program up among applicants or states (see SNAP, rampant fraud in “autism” services, PPP, or homelessness in California)

stingraycharles 6mo ago

Yeah it's a very short-sighted article. Taking a quote like this: > I can’t believe those who seriously try and say America’s value is in consuming. as a case against outsourcing manufacturing really doesn't understand the value that societies create when they are on the forefront of innovation. Maybe, just maybe, at a certain point physical labour is not the best way to use your working population, but instead, you know, services, innovation, etc? America has been doing pretty good in that regard over the past few decades. (For disclosure, I'm not from America, but still think this is a silly article)

direwolf20 6mo ago
China is at the forefront of innovation. America is not, except for financial innovation a.k.a. the best ways to get money out of people without doing actual work.
- boxed 6mo ago
  China is a the forefront of catching up. Don't mistake that for innovation. China isn't building the best chips, that's Taiwan with really Netherlands doing the hard part. China is catching up to European car makers except they've largely caught up to Tesla in the powertrain (I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons). In the AI space obviously China is just running after playing catch up. Biology, catch up. Chemistry, catch up. Physics, catch up. Where is China leading?
  - adjejmxbdjdn 6mo ago
    > I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social security data, etc are just “silly political reasons”.
    - boxed 6mo ago