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Comment by coffeecat | Hacker News Reader

"80% as good as the real thing, at 20% of the cost" has always been a defining characteristic of progress.

I think the key insight is that only a small fraction of people who read recipes online actually care which particular version of the recipe they're getting. Most people just want to see a working recipe as quickly as possible. What they want is a meal - the recipe is just an intermediate step toward what they really care about.

There are still people who make fine wood furniture by hand. But most people just want a table or a chair - they couldn't care less about the species of wood or the type of joint used - and particle board is 80% as good as wood at a fraction of the cost! most people couldn't even tell the difference. Generative AI is to real writing as particle board is to wood.

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Particle board:

- degrades faster, necessitating replacement

- makes the average quality of all wood furniture notably worse

- arguably made the cost of real wood furniture more expensive, since fewer people can make a living off it.

Not to say the tradeoffs are or are not worth it, but "80% of the real thing" does not exist in a vacuum, it kinda lowers the quality on the whole imo.

> it kinda lowers the quality

That's why it's "80% of the real thing" and not "100% of the real thing".

Who said anything about particle board. There is factory created furniture that uses long lasting high quality wood. It will last generations and is still less expensive than handcrafted furniture.

How about

- There are 8 billion people on the planet now and there isn't enough high quality furniture quality wood to make stuff for all of them.

Up until the time of industrialization there just wasn't that much furniture per person in comparison to what we have now.

The reason 'real' wood furniture is more expensive is not that there isn't demand or artisans creating it, there are likely more than ever. Go buy hardwood without knots and see how much the materials alone set you back.

The trade off isn't 'really good furniture' vs 'kinda suck furniture'. It's 'really good furniture' vs 'no furniture at all'.

You did not read my comment very well. I was not commenting on the the particle board tradeoff, or even the AI tradeoff we find ourselves in now. I was saying that reduction to a lower common denominator (80%), even though it seems innocuous, actually does have broader effects not usually considered.

If you make better furniture, it will last longer, and you don't need as much wood to serve the same number of people.

It will cost more, sure, but that keeps people from just throwing it out; they sell it instead of throwing it out. The amortized cost is probably similar or even better, but less wasteful.

Yep I own a rocking chair that my great great grandfather built on a lathe and a dining table my grandfather built. Meanwhile I’ve eventually had to replace almost everything I’ve bought from IKEA.

In some cases that "eventually" has been before putting the damned thing together because the low quality particle board they use can't even survive shipping.

(per capita) buy one cabinet every time you move (they break if you try to move them), or buy one quality piece of wood furniture and resell it when you don't want it.

it's disposable plates vs dishwasher ones, but particle board vs actual furniture

Knotty softwoods can make perfectly suitable furniture. They can (and are) grown at scale.

I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint that the supply particleboard furniture has suffocated the marketplaces for mid- and low-end wooden furniture. Such pieces definitely exist affordably (I’ve bought them at places like Marshall’s, for instance). But they seem comparatively underrepresented in the market.

Maybe a consumer preference for flatpack furniture is enough to explain this? But then again, wooden furniture can be flatpacked too—ikea has plenty of it.

The main issue with AI is that it still relies on the industries it destroys for its training data. You still need people to cover the news, to review products, to write about their feelings and to find new things to talk about. AI just denies these people an audience or attribution.

This is where the particle wood analogy falls apart. IKEA creates its own goods. AI relies on the work of the industry it's destroying.

> Generative AI is to real writing as particle board is to wood.

Incredible analogy. Saving this one to my brain's rhetorical archives.

One law I would like to see if expected durability. Food has an expiry date and ingrediant list. Something similar should accompany all products so consumers can make an educated choice how long it's gonna last and what's gonna break

"Nice metal <thing> you have there, would be a shame if one of the critical moving parts inside was actually plastic."

Sure it's awful but look how much you get.

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