On the Exponential View | Hacker News Reader

On the Exponential View

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105 pointshunglee213 comments

The author lost me very early on by making claims about inevitability. Things like the "global village of free information" are hardly inevitable - I believe it's a lot more fragile than people think. "Free" is under continual attack from IP monopolists, and "information" is under rising attack from noise injection. The easiest way to take facts away from people is to drown them in bad information.

"Global village" is under attack as well, from a rising desire for closed-nationalist societies.

There's a lot more to the article than that.

As you will seen if you read the talk n

This was a great article. I enjoyed how he connected many problems facing the world at the current moment, and posited increasing automation as the main reason for wage stagnation since the 1970s. With automation, companies do not need to hire as many workers to achieve the same profits, which is captured by capital rather than labour. Another impressive part of this article is that unlike most papers that only report the problem, he actually proposes some reasonable sounding solutions:

Juno - a ride-sharing service similar to Uber, but that differs from Uber in that it sets aside 50% of the share of capital to be earned by drivers as they give more rides (unlike the more lopsided distribution of Uber that heavily favours capital).

I will definitely give Juno a try if I'm ever in NYC, the only city it's currently offered. Thank you for sharing.

Wealth inequality is really an instance of homophily. Money attracts money. The rich get richer.

Wealth inequality harms the economy, because as people get poorer they can no longer participate in economic activity. Businesses need consumers with money to spend.

When enough people become sufficiently poor, uneducated, and angry, then you get Trump.

This is a long read but well worth the time. Takes a higher level look at trends in automation and the econome in general.

> ... cities are becoming incredibly important and it’s sort of inevitable that people will flock to cities.

I question this inevitability. There's no reason that the migration from small towns to large cities is guaranteed to continue and not reverse at some point.

The author is both a spectacular commentator and a great writer. We need more like this excellent article.

Interesting, well documented article. Good to save for reference.

When are you internet addicts going to realize:

1.) You spend too much time online.

2.) You mistake your online sources of knowledge and experiences for reality.

3.) You are endlessly writing science-fiction.

The amount of collective dillusional behavior that has captured the imaginations of participants on social media forums such as this is truly awe inspiring!

You sound like one of those old curmudgeons who were warning people about reading books 100 years or so ago.

And you have created a throwaway user profile, which seems to indicate you have an online presence and reputation that you care about.

I'm going to take a guess that your comments apply as much to your own self as to the people you call "you internet addicts".

Yes, I am a recovering addict who sometimes reads HN while taking my morning shit. Your perceptions are correct, I am as much reminding myself the epistemological dangers of engaging in social media.

It was a mistake to reengage with this toxic and ignorant community.

However, I still use the internet, just in a restricted manner. I find that removing frictionless sources of information makes for a much more pleasant experience. I use a Chrome plugin called Shut Up that removes all comments. I pay for subscriptions to a number of news sources that hire editors and fact checkers. I redirect all social media sites to 127.0.0.1. I wrote a custom script for YouTube that hides related content.

YouTube, wikipedia, and an RSS reader seem to not trigger the depression I was suffering when I was reading HN, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.

The election was the final straw as I saw many people fully captured by the illusions of their ever shrinking ideological bubbles which are most definitely caused by social media.

If you twerps dared speak to me the way you talk in these forums I would most definitely start a physical altercation. I can't say I'm ashamed of the asswhoopings I've laid on loose and arrogant lips in the past.

Fortunately for me people have an awareness of the physical repercussions of their actions in meatspace. Reality is what is experienced outside of the world of symbols on a screen!

But yes, again, thank you for reminding me why I need to finally remove the last connection to this hideous forum and trade my smartphone and the $1400/year price tag for a dumb brick and my personal salvation!

That's just snide without a point.

I'll provide one for you though: despite what it claims ("becoming actors"), all these thoughts aren't really actionable.

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