> if there is a word for this phenomenon for how our system has gotten into such a rotten stat
There is, it's the system's name: Capitalism
Noone ever in the universe claimed that this system serves primarily the needs of humans. It serves profit. Now there is a ven diagram that has a union area between profits and needs, but the system does not care about making this union bigger, it cares about making the profits bigger. When that overlaps with needs... it is just a happy side effect.
and yet the largest group of professional utilitarians in the world (economists) largely do claim what you are saying ‘nobody even in the universe’ would.
transitive preference satisfaction is generally a pretty good framework. if you give more people what they want, you get more of what you want in turn.
I tend to agree with this sentiment, but my takeaway is slightly different.
People who would describe themselves as supporters of "capitalism", as well as supporters of "communism" or "socialism", are not able to admit that their belief systems are actually religious in structure. Not spiritual perhaps, but effectively "secular religions".
Both capitalism and its nemesis arose in the mid 1900s, when humanity was obsessed with modernist thinking about "solving problems once and for all". And in that context, the people fell in love with these two "clean systems". A more perfect set of rules.
Sure, capitalism doesn't claim to be the most powerful god. But in surrogacy, it claims to be "the least imperfect system". Which is structurally the same claim: declaring the scripture to be some apex that is not surpassable.
The main difference between communism and capitalism was how it was implemented. The USSR went full-tilt ideologically rigid, and collapsed very quickly. The US didn't go full-tilt capitalism. It implemented a hybrid system with a high marginal tax, welfare programs, subsidies, labour unions, public works projects, along with a market system, and that hybrid non-ideologically rigid model served it well.
Around the time it was clear the USSR was collapsing, the USA went hard tilt in favour of ideological purity in capitalism. Systematic series of clawbacks in the tax regime, privatization, elimination of labour unions.
As they leaned into the religion, it was used against them, much like the communist religion was used against the people of the USSR. And now they have been robbed of their prosperity, of the value of their efforts, much like the people in the USSR were robbed.
Nice read but we also have democracy to prevent things but it still feels effectively hi-jacked by such fictional constructs like capitalism and the lobbying power
Theoretically we should be able to think of the majorities or ourselves and we can have a good system
but we also feel like a lack of choice I suppose, the elections feel between just two parties with choosing the lesser evil (I think zohran is cool tho in the democratic party and maybe he could signify some good things I guess)
Personally I feel like we need to focus more on the incentives and competency of people more than anything and try to vote it on that and not what they speak I suppose.
We don't have democracy because the people with the most money can use a century of learning how to manipulate people through mass propaganda, advertising, pr, spin to get the results they want. People don't form political opinions in a vacuum, they are formed by the messages they receive.
'Both capitalism and its nemesis arose in the mid 1900s, when humanity was obsessed with modernist thinking about "solving problems once and for all". And in that context, the people fell in love with these two "clean systems". A more perfect set of rules.'
All of this is junk. Karl Polanyi famously puts the birth of capitalism very late compared to other important thinkers, in 1834, by defining it as characterised by markets of fictitious commodities, i.e. stuff like labour, land, money. More mainstream would be to point to the Renaissance or british 16th century.
The idea that capitalism and communism would be dependent on an art movement of the early 20th century is quite bizarre, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 and by the late 19th century when modernism started to form unions and communist parties were already common.
Actually, modernism is a reaction to the apparent stalling of 'progress', WWI and nostalgia for the optimism of the early modern period. I.e. from 1500 to late 1800s. In part it was also a reaction to what is usually called modern physics, i.e. things like newtonianism and ether hypotheses breaking down in due to Michelson-Morley and early study of quantum phenomena, relativity and so on.
> All of this is junk. Karl Polanyi famously puts the birth of capitalism very late compared to other important thinkers, in 1834, by defining it as characterised by markets of fictitious commodities, i.e. stuff like labour, land, money. More mainstream would be to point to the Renaissance or british 16th century.
Once again, I'm not referring to theorycraft here. I'm talking about the pragmatics of it.
"Capitalism" as an ideological polemic that stood opposed to "Communism" was a concept that society adopted in the mid 1900s.
What you're talking about is some labeling of some social and economic mechanisms.
Marx might have described communism. But when the USSR came to power, the specific brand of communist _ideology_ that was adopted by the government was its own thing, its own creature and entity.
Likewise, many theorists might have described a loose economic structure as "capitalism", but the "Capitalism, Freedom, and American Pie", as an ideological fixpoint that was sold to society as something to aspire to was something entirely different from the academic theorycraft you're referring to.
another absurd ahistorical comment on HN, where capitalism apparently arose in the mid 20th century despite the long-standing pre-existence of stock issuing multinationals, wage laborers, currency-mediated trade, reserve banking, etc.
The American ideological fixture of Capitalism certainly did arise then. I'm not talking about the general descriptive academic theory that labels certain loose economic and social models as capitalism. I'm talking about the capital C capitalism, standing opposite to capital C communism. The USA vs USSR, the grand battle of ideologies.
We remember that right?
The ideology was born in the mid 1900s, in the middle of modernist fervour where humanity believed itself to be on the cusp of some sort of transformation into a kind of godhood. We had invented flight, we had harness light itself, we had controlled temperature, we had learned how to build buildings of any shape and size. And likewise we turned our attention to a machine for people.
Set up the right rules, and everything else will follow, the ideologies posit.
No the OP is right, we had a whole department vanish: translators. Half laid off and half absorbed to other roles. I am waiting for this to backfire eventually, but even if it does, it will still be cheaper to handle the backfire than employing all those people.
> To some engineers this is a bitter lesson, they chose to be engineers precisely because they don’t want to manage. AI inside one IDE will only get you so far though, so you start a second IDE and a third.
No, we chose to be engineers because someone has to actually do work and deliver stuff while everyone plays with the new toy.
Here is the question that no hype-driving AI coding enthusiast has answered so far on HN, or anywhere: Show us what what did you build in 3 months that we would have built in 3 years?
I still haven't got anyone to answer this, maybe this will be a first.
So this would exclude anything besides human body?
What about animals?
To me best definition of intelligence is:
It's the ability to:
- Solve problems
- Develop novel insightful ideas, patterns and conclusions. Have to add that since they might not immediately solve a problem, although they might help solve a problem down the line. Example could be a comedian coming up with a clever original story. It doesn't really "solve a problem" directly, but it's intelligent.
The more you are capable of either of the two above, the more intelligent you are. Anything that is able to do the above, is intelligent at least to some extent, but how intelligent depends on how much it's able to do.
> As models increasingly shape how millions understand social and political issues, hidden biases could have a wider, undetected influence.
And where is the problem with that?
The problem is that the system wants to ensure the subordinates believe what they're told to believe. And this requires precise control. But there is a methodological problem when we move from one-way narrative control from TV and social media to a two-way interaction like an LLM chat.
When you ask an LLM a political question and it disagrees with you then you argue and at the end it tells you you're right. So it doesn't really matter what it's initial political output is.
So the actual "problem" is that LLMs fail to stay true to carefully crafted political propaganda like other media. Which I don't care at all.
A healthy thinking person should only use an LLM as a mapping tool, not a truth seeking machine. About every topic including politics.
What are the rights things to criticize in your opinion?
Also, asking out of ignorance, what things need to move forward? I thought wikipedia is a solved problem, the only work i would expect it to need is maintenance work, security patches etc.
> What are the rights things to criticize in your opinion?
I think criticism should be based on looking at what they were trying to accomplish by spending the money, was it a worthwhile thing to try and do and was the solution executed effectively.
Just saying they spent $X, X is a big number, it must be wasteful without considering the value that is attempting to be purchssed with that money is a bit meaningless.
> Also, asking out of ignorance, what things need to move forward? I thought wikipedia is a solved problem, the only work i would expect it to need is maintenance work, security patches etc.
I think the person who i was responding to was referring to volunteer travel not staff travel (which of course also happens but i believe would be a different budget line item). This would be mostly for people who write the articles but also for people who do moderation activity. In person meetings can help resolve intractable disputes, share best practises, figure out complex disagreements, build relationships. All the same reasons that real companies fly their staff to expensive offsites.
Software is never done, there are always going to be things that come up and things to be improved. Some of them may be worth it some not.
As an example, there are changes coming to how ip addresses are handled, especially for logged out users. Nobody is exactly saying why, but im 99% sure its GDPR compliance related. That is a big project due to some deeply held assumptions, and probably critical.
A more mid-tier example might be, last year WMF rolled out a (caching) server precense in Brazil. The goal was to reduce latency for South American users. Is that worth it? It was probably a fair bit of money. If WMF was broke it wouldn't be, but given they do have some money, it seems like a reasonable improvement to me. Reasonable minds could probably disagree of course.
And an example of stupid projects might be WMF's ill-fated attempt at making an AI summarizer. That was a pure waste of money.
I guess my point it, WMF is a pretty big entity, some of the things they do are good, some are stupid, and i think people should criticize the projects they embark on rather than the big sum of money taken out of context.
Completely agree with the motivation (dont like the parens)
Here is another use case i found helpful for html: i use a different, dimmer color for the closing html tags.
I now only use my own tree-sitter syntax and my own neovim highlight colors, i literally stripped all the defaults.
I started writting code with literally white text on a black background, and i only added new highlight groups when my brain really needed it. This way every color becomes deliberate and i gradually add in just what i need
There is, it's the system's name: Capitalism
Noone ever in the universe claimed that this system serves primarily the needs of humans. It serves profit. Now there is a ven diagram that has a union area between profits and needs, but the system does not care about making this union bigger, it cares about making the profits bigger. When that overlaps with needs... it is just a happy side effect.