I think about these ideas quite often, and someone who has put this idea out there with much more eloquence and humility than I am capable of is Louis C.K - http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aba_1332656862 - Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.
Not being content with what we have and not being endlessly amazed by it is what propels us to drive for even greater advancements instead of standing around like remnants from an ancient society completely gobsmacked by a guy making a quarter appear out of our ear.
Yes, we live in the most advanced times ever and there's lots of awesome stuff. Let's go make more awesome stuff.
> The entirety of humanity’s knowledge is – of course – free
Really? Isn't most of the important, peer-reviewed, scientific stuff behind academic paywalls?
> you live in the most amazing time imaginable
Sorry to put a downer, but mankind has been marvelling at their own progress since the dawn of time. In 100 years people will look back at the primitive beginnings of the information age and marvel how much better things are in their current time.
There's plenty wrong with our current world and societies. I can easily imagine a world where technology benefits us better, solves more problems, societies become more equal, etc. etc.
> The entirety of humanity’s knowledge is – of course – free
I was using a degree of hyperbole for the benefit of word economy. It's like when Louis CK remarked "Everything is amazing, no-one is happy". It's obvious he doesn't mean "everything" or "no-one", but a more factually precise "Most of our first-world lives are remarkably great, yet most of us complain disproportionately about them" isn't quite so catchy. I was aiming to write a commentary, not a white paper.
As for your second point, I think we're in agreement. I agree it's likely that in 100 years our current best will look like crap. That's a good thing. It seems that mankind is on a permanent positive trajectory – a realisation that seems to elude most people, sadly – and that by itself is pretty damn amazing.
The most powerful tool on the web is still words... And if your words are good, people will read them. [1]
There's something incredibly powerful about this piece of work and about the world in which we live. That's why Justin's single web page was translated in to 20 languages and shared over 8,000 times in just a few hours. [2]
I thought about a similar thing recently; and I concluded that what most people make (in money) is completely undeserved in terms of work they do. (At least, in my case, I am SW developer and I am sure I wouldn't myself pay for the amount of work I do - there is like 3 orders of magnitude difference of what I would be willing to pay for a feature and what a feature costs to develop.)
The point is, we should stop thinking in terms what we deserve; if we truly were making what we deserve (for our work), most of us couldn't live.
This idea is related to labor theory of value, which is simply wrong. Currently, thanks to organization and machinery, the vast amount of work needed to sustain our lifestyle is not done by human beings, but it's simply granted to us.
That's one of the reasons why I am against libertarianism. Strict meritocracy, while nice in theory, would mean utter poverty for most people.
I'm confused. What do you mean by deserve? If you reject the labor theory of value, then on what do you base that amount?
And whether a meritocracy would lead people to poverty depends on what you consider meritorious. People have widely different ideas of such, which means that no such evaluation can be made.
On the amount of work I put in compared to amount of work I get back in my salary (or the amount of work necessary to have my living standard). The latter is much higher. So either (a) I exploit other people or (b) the extra work comes from machinery and organization (productivity). But although my salary is above average, it doesn't explain the difference, so (a) is probably not such a big factor.
I consider merit based on amount of work you do, disregarding the productivity. I am not my own cause of high productivity, I was simply born to that world. In capitalism, why should I? The productivity can be (and often is) ascribed to capital, which is owned by somebody else.
As you correctly say, people have different ideas about this. But the point is, someone has to own the capital and the productivity gains (it may be the collective ownership, though). Just saying you don't care who owns it (because you believe in value of your work alone) will make you poor, because you will in essence give up those enormous gains.
There's a third explanation: c) you're capturing some of the value put in by a lot of dead and some not-quite-dead people.
The value of a computer running your software is tremendous. The delta in value between a computer that runs your software and one that doesn't is pretty miniscule in comparison. The value you're delivering is due in part to people like Archimedes through Von Neumann and Linus Torvalds and millions of others. Does that mean you owe part of your salary to Archimedes' descendants? We're all Archimedes descendants.
"We stand on the shoulders of giants" -- Chartres
This is partly a different way of expressing your (b), but I prefer this framing.
The question then is, is this (c) a part of the merit? It seems to me that not entirely so. If this is part of merit then inheriting a factory is also merit of the person who inherited it, which contradicts my intuition.
Of course, knowledge as such is in public domain, which is a state of affairs I am perfectly happy with. But I guess I can imagine a system where it isn't (just like factories of dead owners are not becoming public domain), so I cannot be completely ignorant to the issue of who owns that knowledge (unless I want to be really poor).
there is like 3 orders of magnitude difference of what I would be willing to pay for a feature and what a feature costs to develop.
Sure, but remember that the perception of money is relative. Would paying your salary seem unreasonable to a billionaire who wanted that feature? Do you spend money on restaurant meals that you're perfectly able to cook yourself just to save a bit of time?
We live in a world where my Dad almost single-handedly can grow enough food to feed 10,000 people. (Of course, he has lots of help from the much maligned agro-industrial complex). This really distorts the value of money, for the reasons that you have pointed out.
People will not be amazed, at least for more than a day, by anything that's widely shared. Never had, never will. Human beings, being what they are, a few enlightened souls excluded, derive happiness by the advantages they enjoy and the power they hold __over other people__. Henry VIII lived in an age before anesthesia, dentistry, where bathrooms were appalling by today's standards, where palaces where rat-infested and where life could be cut short in often agonizing ways. Yet, I am sure he would trade all the advances of the last 400 years for being able to sent men to their deaths for no reason other than angering him and being able to have any woman that attracted his gaze. Most of us would.
I could describe the medieval age same way: "Gee guys, we have stuff made of iron - so sturdy.". This is not to lessen the achievements, I just want my mind to be safely backed up among several planets before I die.
Also there is an implicit assumption that certain countries are rich based on their merits and not based on geo-political manipulation.
While i sympathize in some ways, i.e. looking back things are quite something to compare with the past, the reason we aren't happy yet is that things are also still kind of shitty.
Cars are still a brilliant way to get killed; cars are extremely inefficient.
Oil is going to run out at some point.
Traffic monitoring works only in some places.
Internet via cellphones is generally prohibitively expensive, and quite laggy compared to wired internet.
Cellphone UI and especially data input is still an order of magnitude slower than mouse and keyboard.
Smartphones, if used with some regularity, do need a recharge once every two days at least.
I don't even want to think how ineffecient they are.
Humanity's knowledge in the internet is difficult to access and only really accessible to those who spent a lot of time learning how to search it.
I write software for a living too, but i've no idea if it'll ever benefit anyone.
Sometimes i spend more time on a software solution to a problem that could be solved faster with less time in a manual way.
I enjoy all the fruit in the supermarket, but i don't like to think about which elements along that supply chain live a life that's much worse than mine and don't get even remotely adequate compensation. etc.
I hold both of these truths in my mind: Things are amazing. Things aren't nearly as amazing as they were thought to be.
When the history of the last 20 years is written, most of what happened in the developed world will be relegated to the footnotes, or compressed into slogans like "technology advanced rapidly."
Here's what really matters: according to the UN, nearly a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years. Further gains are feasible and expected.
Sure, if we had moved past capitalism, we could have eliminated poverty by now. And if we had moved past the light-speed limitation, we'd be traveling amongst the stars by now. So why don't we just do that?
As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system we've come up with . . . except for all the others. The trick to moving past capitalism is not regressing backward from it.
Some big regressions famously happened in recent centuries with our big experiments in public ownership. Unfortunately, large scale public ownership has some complications that tend to result in large scale death.
Curious, what do you consider the next 'leap' from capitalism? Something completely new, or some socialist/capitalist hybrid?
Or something like the Incans(? - correct me if I'm wrong) - one of the Ancient indians had a system where there was no money, people took what they needed/wanted, and everyone contributed to the whole of society.. There was no such thing as currency.
I am amazed. This is the best of all possible worlds.
That's the good news. It's also the bad news.
The capabilities we have are, largely, drawn from that finite stock of petrol Emberton mentions in passing, as well as larger stocks of coal, and somewhat smaller ones of natural gas (though we've been using less of those to date).
When they're gone, there's going to be a hell of a bill for the piper.
This isn't a new revelation. William Stanley Jevons, no raving left-wing radical himself (he's a father of the "marginal revolution" of economics on which much of neoclassical economics is based) wrote of this in 1865 in a book called The Coal Question, asking what would happen when Britain exhausted its admittedly considerable stores of coal. It begins:
DAY by day it becomes more evident that the Coal we happily possess in excellent quality and abundance is the mainspring of modern material civilization. As the source of fire, it is the source at once of mechanical motion and of chemical change. Accordingly it is the chief agent in almost every improvement or discovery in the arts which the present age brings forth. It is to us indispensable for domestic purposes, and it has of late years been found to yield a series of organic substances, which puzzle us by their complexity, please us by their beautiful colours, and serve us by their various utility.
Jevons notes that he's hardly the first to raise the spectre of coal exhaustion -- barely 13 years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published, mineral surveyor John Williams asked the question in The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain.
It's one thing to admire the pleasing vista in the rearview mirror. Another to ignore the rapidly approaching cliff's edge.
25 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 76.2 ms ] threadNot being content with what we have and not being endlessly amazed by it is what propels us to drive for even greater advancements instead of standing around like remnants from an ancient society completely gobsmacked by a guy making a quarter appear out of our ear.
Yes, we live in the most advanced times ever and there's lots of awesome stuff. Let's go make more awesome stuff.
Really? Isn't most of the important, peer-reviewed, scientific stuff behind academic paywalls?
> you live in the most amazing time imaginable
Sorry to put a downer, but mankind has been marvelling at their own progress since the dawn of time. In 100 years people will look back at the primitive beginnings of the information age and marvel how much better things are in their current time.
There's plenty wrong with our current world and societies. I can easily imagine a world where technology benefits us better, solves more problems, societies become more equal, etc. etc.
> The entirety of humanity’s knowledge is – of course – free
I was using a degree of hyperbole for the benefit of word economy. It's like when Louis CK remarked "Everything is amazing, no-one is happy". It's obvious he doesn't mean "everything" or "no-one", but a more factually precise "Most of our first-world lives are remarkably great, yet most of us complain disproportionately about them" isn't quite so catchy. I was aiming to write a commentary, not a white paper.
As for your second point, I think we're in agreement. I agree it's likely that in 100 years our current best will look like crap. That's a good thing. It seems that mankind is on a permanent positive trajectory – a realisation that seems to elude most people, sadly – and that by itself is pretty damn amazing.
There's something incredibly powerful about this piece of work and about the world in which we live. That's why Justin's single web page was translated in to 20 languages and shared over 8,000 times in just a few hours. [2]
[1] http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
[2] HN Submission & Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5913381
The point is, we should stop thinking in terms what we deserve; if we truly were making what we deserve (for our work), most of us couldn't live.
This idea is related to labor theory of value, which is simply wrong. Currently, thanks to organization and machinery, the vast amount of work needed to sustain our lifestyle is not done by human beings, but it's simply granted to us.
That's one of the reasons why I am against libertarianism. Strict meritocracy, while nice in theory, would mean utter poverty for most people.
And whether a meritocracy would lead people to poverty depends on what you consider meritorious. People have widely different ideas of such, which means that no such evaluation can be made.
I consider merit based on amount of work you do, disregarding the productivity. I am not my own cause of high productivity, I was simply born to that world. In capitalism, why should I? The productivity can be (and often is) ascribed to capital, which is owned by somebody else.
As you correctly say, people have different ideas about this. But the point is, someone has to own the capital and the productivity gains (it may be the collective ownership, though). Just saying you don't care who owns it (because you believe in value of your work alone) will make you poor, because you will in essence give up those enormous gains.
The value of a computer running your software is tremendous. The delta in value between a computer that runs your software and one that doesn't is pretty miniscule in comparison. The value you're delivering is due in part to people like Archimedes through Von Neumann and Linus Torvalds and millions of others. Does that mean you owe part of your salary to Archimedes' descendants? We're all Archimedes descendants.
"We stand on the shoulders of giants" -- Chartres
This is partly a different way of expressing your (b), but I prefer this framing.
Of course, knowledge as such is in public domain, which is a state of affairs I am perfectly happy with. But I guess I can imagine a system where it isn't (just like factories of dead owners are not becoming public domain), so I cannot be completely ignorant to the issue of who owns that knowledge (unless I want to be really poor).
Sure, but remember that the perception of money is relative. Would paying your salary seem unreasonable to a billionaire who wanted that feature? Do you spend money on restaurant meals that you're perfectly able to cook yourself just to save a bit of time?
We live in a world where my Dad almost single-handedly can grow enough food to feed 10,000 people. (Of course, he has lots of help from the much maligned agro-industrial complex). This really distorts the value of money, for the reasons that you have pointed out.
Also there is an implicit assumption that certain countries are rich based on their merits and not based on geo-political manipulation.
Cars are still a brilliant way to get killed; cars are extremely inefficient. Oil is going to run out at some point. Traffic monitoring works only in some places. Internet via cellphones is generally prohibitively expensive, and quite laggy compared to wired internet. Cellphone UI and especially data input is still an order of magnitude slower than mouse and keyboard. Smartphones, if used with some regularity, do need a recharge once every two days at least. I don't even want to think how ineffecient they are. Humanity's knowledge in the internet is difficult to access and only really accessible to those who spent a lot of time learning how to search it. I write software for a living too, but i've no idea if it'll ever benefit anyone. Sometimes i spend more time on a software solution to a problem that could be solved faster with less time in a manual way. I enjoy all the fruit in the supermarket, but i don't like to think about which elements along that supply chain live a life that's much worse than mine and don't get even remotely adequate compensation. etc.
I hold both of these truths in my mind: Things are amazing. Things aren't nearly as amazing as they were thought to be.
Here's what really matters: according to the UN, nearly a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years. Further gains are feasible and expected.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...
As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system we've come up with . . . except for all the others. The trick to moving past capitalism is not regressing backward from it.
Some big regressions famously happened in recent centuries with our big experiments in public ownership. Unfortunately, large scale public ownership has some complications that tend to result in large scale death.
What new system would you propose that is better?
Or something like the Incans(? - correct me if I'm wrong) - one of the Ancient indians had a system where there was no money, people took what they needed/wanted, and everyone contributed to the whole of society.. There was no such thing as currency.
That's the good news. It's also the bad news.
The capabilities we have are, largely, drawn from that finite stock of petrol Emberton mentions in passing, as well as larger stocks of coal, and somewhat smaller ones of natural gas (though we've been using less of those to date).
When they're gone, there's going to be a hell of a bill for the piper.
This isn't a new revelation. William Stanley Jevons, no raving left-wing radical himself (he's a father of the "marginal revolution" of economics on which much of neoclassical economics is based) wrote of this in 1865 in a book called The Coal Question, asking what would happen when Britain exhausted its admittedly considerable stores of coal. It begins:
DAY by day it becomes more evident that the Coal we happily possess in excellent quality and abundance is the mainspring of modern material civilization. As the source of fire, it is the source at once of mechanical motion and of chemical change. Accordingly it is the chief agent in almost every improvement or discovery in the arts which the present age brings forth. It is to us indispensable for domestic purposes, and it has of late years been found to yield a series of organic substances, which puzzle us by their complexity, please us by their beautiful colours, and serve us by their various utility.
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ1.html#C... 1
Jevons notes that he's hardly the first to raise the spectre of coal exhaustion -- barely 13 years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published, mineral surveyor John Williams asked the question in The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain.
It's one thing to admire the pleasing vista in the rearview mirror. Another to ignore the rapidly approaching cliff's edge.