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Economies of scale is how society lowers the cost of meeting the demand for things people want. Uber, Airbnb, and Meta have negative externalities that have gon

Economies of scale is how society lowers the cost of meeting the demand for things people want. Uber, Airbnb, and Meta have negative externalities that have gone “unpriced” in the market because our policy makers are incompetent. But at large, they’ve net benefitted society, many more times over than they’ve hurt anyone whose job was displaced from the cycle of innovation and those individuals have found new jobs, or adapted to compete (taxis making a comeback, except they’re not fucking scumbags anymore because they don’t have a monopoly). If you believe technology and innovation is characterized as “using economies of scale to exploit the average person” you’d necessarily come to some pretty weird positions throughout history. Take the natural ice trade for example. Were refrigerators an evil means of exploiting and displacing the 100,000 workers who powered the natural ice trade? Or was it a better solution to the public health hazards, brutal dangerous working conditions, and high price paid by society to the Ice Monopoly?

Silagi 4mo ago
I vehemently disagree that meta or airbnb have done more to benefit society than not, but I'll take the overall argument; that technology, on the whole, benefits society overall. Which is true, on the long term. But we have no reason to believe that AI will be different in that case. In the short term, technologies have absolutely been used to exploit the average person; the industrial revolution benefited us all over time, but tell that to the kids killed in early industrial manufacturing centers. Look at how the transition to globalization went in the 80's-10's; entire sections of the US were essentially shut down because of the improvements in communication technology, and unless you're in support of the current state of the US, you'd agree we're still dealing with the consequences of that. Even in your own case, there's an argument to be made that CFCs meant the overall damage to humanity was greater than the ice trade, just spread out over more people. The exploitation was similar, but it was less visible. Even if we've eventually reached a point where people were better off, you can't argue that the health of the average person was never exploited for the benefit of the few. To be clear, I'm not separating myself from this; I'm fully aware that work I've done has displaced people. I'm just chafing against the moralizing around it. It feels like the people making these arguments are trying to remove themselves from responsibility while continuing to build on top of companies like Amazon, that are built on top of exploiting people that absolutely cannot advocate for themselves.
- hahahacorn 4mo ago
  We agree for the first few sentences! I’m a huge proponent for AI displacement taxes because of the rapid pace of acceleration and a lack of confidence that our economies reabsorption mechanisms are adequate. If your claim is that in the short term there are negatives caused by innovation, then… well yeah! There is no such thing as a free lunch, and it’s exceedingly rare to ever have pure upside in anything ever. Life is a series of trade offs and hard decisions. The Industrial Revolution literally lifted a significant portion of the population out of poverty, and also hurt children in the beginning. I’m very glad we have child labor laws that are strict and well enforced. If your claim is that the Industrial Revolution was a net negative because children died, I would like for you to pull up the chart of child mortality from before and after the Industrial Revolution and go ahead and tell me what you see. On the other hand, I think lots of people over index on the harms caused because it’s so easy to. You’ve clearly thought at length about quantifying the harm of big tech and your work. But have you ever quantified the positive impact? You can rationalize the tradeoffs of your actions without moralizing the harms you caused. It’s not okay for children to die in factories, but without those factories far more would’ve died from illness, hunger, etc.
  - Silagi 4mo ago
    I think we're roughly on the same side here? I'm explicitly against moralizing about AI by people who benefit from other forms of tech exploitation, e.g. using Amazon for hosting; I'm not against the idea of AI as a whole; I think it's an inevitability. I just believe all of us should be willing to accept our own responsibility for the state of it. I also believe it could eventually work out to be a net benefit to the species; but in the short term, it's going to hurt us badly, as most technological revolutions have. I'm saying everyone involved, directly or indirectly, should be willing to accept their fraction of responsibility for the people who are suffering in the interim, and that moralizing about it is disingenuous. I'm pretty sure we're not disagreeing at all. Over time, most technological revolutions have benefited society. That doesn't mean they didn't exploit people, though. Even in the current world, there's more slaves than there have ever been. People are still being exploited by technology. It's just more diffuse, and (I'm hoping) the average suffering in the world has gone down.
newaccountman2 4mo ago
I am not weighing in on the fundamental issue you are debating with the other person, but clearly Facebook has provided no benefit to society lol wth It's just a parasitic, largely useless, and often actively harmful advertising machine. The only possible positive it has done is transfer a lot of money and capital to employees who often come from middle-class backgrounds.
- hahahacorn 4mo ago
  Meta’s primary issue is an alignment problem. They’ve built the most valuable human connection network ever and then added a misaligned algorithm on it. You’re conflating Meta’s alignment issue with its overall benefit / harm to society. There is a singular, obvious thing that you interact with everyday that is very very bad (unless like me you don’t have it). And the invisible parts of what they do that are extremely beneficial are less obvious. To be fair say from the list Meta is closest to being a net negative, like they’re the worst of the big tech companies and the only one I would refuse to work at. So I get what you’re saying, but to say they’re largely useless signals that you don’t know what they do and how they impact society at large, other than their very evil algorithms.
  - newaccountman2 4mo ago
    ...so, what is this thing they do, that in your view is "extremely beneficial"?
    - hahahacorn 4mo ago
      All of their open source work, facebook marketplace, messenger connecting people, low cost distribution for small business, crises and humanitarian tooling, abuse/spam/threat detection at scale, etc.
      - newaccountman2 4mo ago
        Quite a stretch. The open source stuff is nice and all, but I wouldn't say React, GraphQL, Cassandra, or any of the other stuff is "beneficial to humanity" lol wtf > facebook marketplace Craigslist exists, plus other startups were aiming to do that and one would have found its footing if not for Facebook marketplace. Either way, this doesn't make up for any of the negatives people ascribe to Facebook. > messenger connecting people This is a fucking joke, as there were and are numerous other instant messaging apps. > low cost distribution for small business Yeah, small businesses can have Facebook pages, but this isn't that beneficial. We are talking "extremely beneficial" here, not "some features are useful to some people". > crises and humanitarian tooling Yeah I can see it being useful for governments to communicate, but unfortunately outweighed by the misinformation > abuse/spam/threat detection at scale, etc Cool that they try to solve problems their platform is susceptible to? They are doing this for themselves and it's proprietary software, isn't it? IDK what kind of bubble you exist in where people genuinely believe any of the above would constitute "extremely beneficial". Large quantities of people, including those holding down jobs, in the richest country in the world are barely able to put food on the table, people are getting kidnapped by masked Federal agents who are entering homes without warrants, and there are multiple ongoing wars in the world, but, yeah, Facebook, "extremely beneficial", solving the hard problems xd

Silagi 4mo ago

I vehemently disagree that meta or airbnb have done more to benefit society than not, but I'll take the overall argument; that technology, on the whole, benefits society overall. Which is true, on the long term. But we have no reason to believe that AI will be different in that case. In the short term, technologies have absolutely been used to exploit the average person; the industrial revolution benefited us all over time, but tell that to the kids killed in early industrial manufacturing centers. Look at how the transition to globalization went in the 80's-10's; entire sections of the US were essentially shut down because of the improvements in communication technology, and unless you're in support of the current state of the US, you'd agree we're still dealing with the consequences of that. Even in your own case, there's an argument to be made that CFCs meant the overall damage to humanity was greater than the ice trade, just spread out over more people. The exploitation was similar, but it was less visible. Even if we've eventually reached a point where people were better off, you can't argue that the health of the average person was never exploited for the benefit of the few. To be clear, I'm not separating myself from this; I'm fully aware that work I've done has displaced people. I'm just chafing against the moralizing around it. It feels like the people making these arguments are trying to remove themselves from responsibility while continuing to build on top of companies like Amazon, that are built on top of exploiting people that absolutely cannot advocate for themselves.

hahahacorn 4mo ago
We agree for the first few sentences! I’m a huge proponent for AI displacement taxes because of the rapid pace of acceleration and a lack of confidence that our economies reabsorption mechanisms are adequate. If your claim is that in the short term there are negatives caused by innovation, then… well yeah! There is no such thing as a free lunch, and it’s exceedingly rare to ever have pure upside in anything ever. Life is a series of trade offs and hard decisions. The Industrial Revolution literally lifted a significant portion of the population out of poverty, and also hurt children in the beginning. I’m very glad we have child labor laws that are strict and well enforced. If your claim is that the Industrial Revolution was a net negative because children died, I would like for you to pull up the chart of child mortality from before and after the Industrial Revolution and go ahead and tell me what you see. On the other hand, I think lots of people over index on the harms caused because it’s so easy to. You’ve clearly thought at length about quantifying the harm of big tech and your work. But have you ever quantified the positive impact? You can rationalize the tradeoffs of your actions without moralizing the harms you caused. It’s not okay for children to die in factories, but without those factories far more would’ve died from illness, hunger, etc.
- Silagi 4mo ago
  I think we're roughly on the same side here? I'm explicitly against moralizing about AI by people who benefit from other forms of tech exploitation, e.g. using Amazon for hosting; I'm not against the idea of AI as a whole; I think it's an inevitability. I just believe all of us should be willing to accept our own responsibility for the state of it. I also believe it could eventually work out to be a net benefit to the species; but in the short term, it's going to hurt us badly, as most technological revolutions have. I'm saying everyone involved, directly or indirectly, should be willing to accept their fraction of responsibility for the people who are suffering in the interim, and that moralizing about it is disingenuous. I'm pretty sure we're not disagreeing at all. Over time, most technological revolutions have benefited society. That doesn't mean they didn't exploit people, though. Even in the current world, there's more slaves than there have ever been. People are still being exploited by technology. It's just more diffuse, and (I'm hoping) the average suffering in the world has gone down.

newaccountman2 4mo ago

I am not weighing in on the fundamental issue you are debating with the other person, but clearly Facebook has provided no benefit to society lol wth It's just a parasitic, largely useless, and often actively harmful advertising machine. The only possible positive it has done is transfer a lot of money and capital to employees who often come from middle-class backgrounds.

hahahacorn 4mo ago
Meta’s primary issue is an alignment problem. They’ve built the most valuable human connection network ever and then added a misaligned algorithm on it. You’re conflating Meta’s alignment issue with its overall benefit / harm to society. There is a singular, obvious thing that you interact with everyday that is very very bad (unless like me you don’t have it). And the invisible parts of what they do that are extremely beneficial are less obvious. To be fair say from the list Meta is closest to being a net negative, like they’re the worst of the big tech companies and the only one I would refuse to work at. So I get what you’re saying, but to say they’re largely useless signals that you don’t know what they do and how they impact society at large, other than their very evil algorithms.
- newaccountman2 4mo ago
  ...so, what is this thing they do, that in your view is "extremely beneficial"?
  - hahahacorn 4mo ago
    All of their open source work, facebook marketplace, messenger connecting people, low cost distribution for small business, crises and humanitarian tooling, abuse/spam/threat detection at scale, etc.
    - newaccountman2 4mo ago
      Quite a stretch. The open source stuff is nice and all, but I wouldn't say React, GraphQL, Cassandra, or any of the other stuff is "beneficial to humanity" lol wtf > facebook marketplace Craigslist exists, plus other startups were aiming to do that and one would have found its footing if not for Facebook marketplace. Either way, this doesn't make up for any of the negatives people ascribe to Facebook. > messenger connecting people This is a fucking joke, as there were and are numerous other instant messaging apps. > low cost distribution for small business Yeah, small businesses can have Facebook pages, but this isn't that beneficial. We are talking "extremely beneficial" here, not "some features are useful to some people". > crises and humanitarian tooling Yeah I can see it being useful for governments to communicate, but unfortunately outweighed by the misinformation > abuse/spam/threat detection at scale, etc Cool that they try to solve problems their platform is susceptible to? They are doing this for themselves and it's proprietary software, isn't it? IDK what kind of bubble you exist in where people genuinely believe any of the above would constitute "extremely beneficial". Large quantities of people, including those holding down jobs, in the richest country in the world are barely able to put food on the table, people are getting kidnapped by masked Federal agents who are entering homes without warrants, and there are multiple ongoing wars in the world, but, yeah, Facebook, "extremely beneficial", solving the hard problems xd