What Elon might do… probably won't... but someone must do…
At a sage online conference on Web Disinformation, a speaker referred to my 2017 blog appraising methods of "fact-checking." Alas that none of the problems have been remotely solved and none of the suggested solution methods at all tried. Judge for yourself.
See also my posting: Can we 'fix' social media while maintaining arenas of discourse?
And the CA Democratic Party asked me for a piece of 'futuristic legislation' that would address current problems. The result? The Fact Act.
== A do-able reform ==
But what if it’s good news? A combination of world events and unexpectedly fine polemical persuasion by Biden and others give us a Real Congress of folks dedicated to ending this wretched Phase 8 of the US civil war, by ending the tsunami of cheating?
- Revive the Voting Rights Act. John Roberts has said Congress could do that, any time and thereby eviscerate a lot of the gerrymandering and voter suppression etc. that Republican/confederates depend on. Ye, Roberts will likely writhe for new excuses. Elsewhere I offer additional maneuvers t corner him, then corner him till there’s no room left.
- Forget Constitutional Amendments. Won’t happen. Grow up.
- But this suggestion (offered by one of you in this blog!) could work very well. Repeal the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act that fixed the maximum number of U.S. House of Representative members at 435. Institute the ‘Wyoming Rule,’ where the least populous state gets one rep… and the number of representatives each other state gets is proportional multiples of that population. Wyoming’s 578,803 becomes the population needed for one representative. Hence California (population 39,237,836) gets 68 reps, an increase of 16 over its current 52.
That increases the number of House reps to 573. Not an unworkable number at all!
A decent contractor can expand the halls of Congress to seat more reps and provide office space - or these reps can work remotely based on seniority (which is how they assign office space anyways). It would leave the insanely disproportionate representation of small states in the Senate, only now in at least one chamber every citizen-voter would be equal.
This would also remove the distortions to proportional representation in the electoral college. And of course that is what would drive the goppers absolutely screeching hysteric. Their only chance would be to alter the incentives they have built in for decades, encouraging their own partisans to go Riefenstahl-insane and instead veer toward the center.
- Also make DC and Puerto Rico states (both have more population than Wyoming). DC would get 1 rep and Puerto Rico would get 6, further increasing House membership to 580.
- Dems were already giving Republicans subpoena powers in the Trump Impeachment hearings. And hence, Pelosi & co. should right now act on my suggestion to grant every House member one peremptory subpoena per year. It would ensure the minority party can always investigate! And when that minority is a pack of pig-headed confederates? Big deal! It's when decent folks are in the minority that this would pay off for us all.
After 1870 (DeLong asserts with evidence) it became more like slamming on the gas. Spectacular acceleration… though the steering, through massive veers and devastating wars, seemed more like the gyrating tugs of a terrified drunkard. The unprecedentedly fast change brought with it profound political instability and conflict that (believe it or not) steadied into a better era, after 1945. In fact, as DeLong notes and I have, elsewhere, there are reasons (despite the news) to see glimmers of utopia ahead… once we get past a few cliffs… Interesting interview.
Oh, the title is a take off on W.B. Yeats’s poem The Second Coming:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,. Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
"Opinion Nazi analogies are dangerous. But they are increasingly relevant today."
== Cause for optimism? ==
Big Think offers: Nine astonishing ways that living standards have improved around the world. The world has improved in mind-blowing ways. This is NOT an excuse for complacency! Rather, this and much other good news should give us confidence we CAN eliminate the remaining bad.
I would add:
#10... that 90%+ of all living humans have never witnessed war with their own eyes. Name another time when that was so.
#11. No other civilization trained all its brightest young people to be harsh critics of their own tribal leaders and societal mistakes.
60 comments:
1870 to today
I would argue that we had already managed a TON of human progress before 1870
An average Brit or American in 1870 already had a decent life - a massive amount better than his grandfather
Who had a much better life than his grandfather
By 1870 the improvement process had been running fast for over 200 years
580 is indeed a manageable number of reps.
——
I really think now that Trump’s star is on the wane, he could do some positive by opposing DeSantis. When the two of them trade barbs, they’ll say what they think—when people get worked up, they’re not shy about expressing themselves!
The Federalist Papers and the Constitution are as much about self-seekers checking each other as they are concerned with that which is domestically tranquil and the blessings of liberty.
duncan cairncross said...
I would argue that we had already managed a TON of human progress before 1870
[...]
By 1870 the improvement process had been running fast for over 200 years
For info, Delong agrees with you.
His argument for choosing 1870 is that progress before that had been slow - extremely slow for most of human history, still slow from the 15th to the 19th century. But something happened around 1870 that accelerated progress far beyond what had been the case before that.
You can read about this on his substack (I think all of it is free to read):
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/70000-years-of-human-economic-growth
So looking forward to the Trump v DeSantis GOP civil war.
Please pass the popcorn.
We can say to DeSantis’ supporters that God works in mysterious ways. God can use Trump to keep DeSantis from becoming too uppity—he must be humbled.
I apologize if this isn't the place for this, but I just heard Greg Bear passed away :(
What I am posting about Greg Bear:
That hearty-wise and dauntless laugh... I hear it now... and I will hear it always. Greg was the best of us... certainly the best of the ‘Killer Bees! The real article, as a human, as a good man, as a leader in our broad SF guild of explorers-of-the-plausible. And yes, the most admirable trait of all – a good life partner to the wonderful and kind daughter of Poul and Karen and father to their grandchildren. And our dear friend. Cheryl and I extend blessings and love to Astrid & their clan... and to all who loved Greg and his immortal works.
One Turing test for the arrival of AI will be if the charming, witty, brilliant Greg Bear emulators convey some of his sharp wit… and that hearty laugh I already miss so much.
I won't say RIP. Judging from PSYCHLONE and other great tales, Greg would take ANY kind of afterlife as a challenge and a dare to poke at the rules. He doubted it. I doubt it. But if so, go get em tiger. Drive em crazy with questions!
Gregory
I agree that there was a massive acceleration in progress - but it was NOT 1870!!
The step was less than distinct but it was several hundred years earlier - 1870 does NOT NOT NOT represent any type of change on that curve
1870 was the year of the Franco-Prussian War, which eventually led to... you know.
——
The massacre last night is more evidence that DeSantis must be kept in Tallahassee—out of DC. Otherwise such mass murders could become as common as school shootings.
What clairvoyant decades ago could have predicted that disaffected youths would kill a dozen or so students at a time? Last night’s perp is a 22 year old.
I kind of agree re 1870. Esp in Britain and post civil war US. Factories churned out things only upper castes could afford befor: like iron bed steads to elevate real mattresses off the vermin infested floor. And massive amounts of cheap paper and books. And a tsunami of textiles from those horrid dickensian mills, so that those same abused workers got multiple clean changes. And mountains of cheap soap. And...
...and sure. I would hate it there/then! But progress seemed... well... until the Titanic and then 1914, things seemed inevitable...
Dammit. I liked Greg Bear. I had a very memorable time with him in 1987 at the New Orleans Worldcon. I went out to dinner with a group that included Bear and Jerry Pournelle. Since I was not important, I waited till everyone else was seated before taking a seat. The only one left was in between Bear and Pournelle. What a night!
"GMT shall we wager whether the top priority of Kevin McCarthy's narrow House majority - and it will unite MAGAs with RINOs -- will be to hamper the IRS from hiring the hundreds of new auditors intended (under Pelosi legislation) to go after rich tax cheats?"
I hope not. I hope to be one of the 87,000 new tax enforcement personnel. I had lunch last week with some old co-workers and colleagues from the Ohio Department of Taxation. One of them is working for the IRS. He is going to try and make sure that my applications get some fair attention. I may be blackballed by the Ohio GOP (by former Speaker of the Ohio House Jo Ann Davidson no less) but the Feds won't care about that. I have excellent credentials and decades of experience.
I won't make that wager, David. McCarthy and the GOP in the House may try to make a fuss, but there is not much they can do. The funding for the IRS staff increases were enacted by a bill that was signed into law. The only way to stop the increases would be by another bill signed into law or enacted over a presidential veto.
However, I am strongly in favor of House hearings into whether the IRS has been acting with bias. Government investigators, including tax auditors and tax prosecutors, must carry out their official duties in an unbiased manner avoiding all impropriety or even the appearance of impropriety. I am active with a number of groups made up of non-partisan tax professionals, many of whom are IRS or former IRS attorneys. There has been growing concern over the last 20 years that some parts of the IRS have been favoring certain groups and disfavoring other groups.
GMT -5 8032
There has been growing concern over the last 20 years that some parts of the IRS have been favoring certain groups and disfavoring other groups.
I'm glad you added that last bit about 20 years. Too many people I hear make it sound as if presidents Obama and Biden have used the IRS to target political enemies, when it seems to me that Trump was pretty open about doing so. And it's important to note that "targeting" a politician who is actually committing crimes is not in itself politicization. In fact, not going after a politician committing crimes because it will anger his supporters is politicization.
GMT -5 and Larry Hart
I would say that it has been a lot longer than 20 years that the IRS has been used politically
The IRS has always been far too gentle on the very rich - and Churches
It has been going on for more than 20 years, but my professional experience with this issue started in 1995 when I took the position of Assistant Attorney General (Tax) for the Virgin Islands Department of Justice. I was a tax prosecutor for 7 years and a tax hearing officer for 10 years. So I can look at what has been going on inside the IRS with an insider's understanding.
The IRS, and other investigative agencies, have their own agenda. Many of the people there are highly professional and would never allow bias to influence the way they do their job. I've worked with them; I trust them. But there are a lot of others who are barely competent as tax lawyers...this type frequently rises to the top of the administrative ladder.
The Ohio Department of Taxation is controlled by this type of creature...people hired by the GOP and Democratic administrations. They forced out all of the experienced attorneys and replaced them with younger, more impressionable lawyers....sorry. This all came out last week during that lunch. We were all furious over what has happened to that agency.
Law enforcement must be fair and impartial...and it must avoid even the appearance of unfairness. Certain parts of the IRS fail in that regard. I have to get back to work now. I am working at 3 jobs right now and I won't get finished until 10 pm local time.
Did NOT expect to be saying this to GMT when we first met. But hope you get the IRS job. And go get em, tiger!
GMT:
<<
But there are a lot of others who are barely competent as tax lawyers...this type frequently rises to the top of the administrative ladder.
>>
That obeys Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracies:
An organization has two kinds of employees: those who serve the organization's mission, and those who serve the organization's interests. The second type controls the organization and sets its rules.
- paradoctor
Gregory Byshenk,
Okay. Now I've gone and given you the impression that lots of people have that persuasion skill. That was unintended. Most of my space friends do NOT have it. I can do it in certain ways with small teams, but I'm better at promoting. Far better.
Chances are high that scrappy entrepreneurs have the skill.
Let me turn things around a bit. $100M is indeed a lot of money. It proved to be 'enough' for SpaceX to get them to the next funding round. If Musk had not possessed the persuasion skill, though, it would not have been enough. I would have guessed he needed something north of $250M and maybe twice that because of the political risks he face in competing with the dinosaurs.
I suspect the dinosaurs didn't not comprehend the threat he posed. Had they done so, they would have been whispering in the ears of Senators who would have been asking questions of the FAA and every other licensing unit which would have slowed early development to a crawl. Payrolls must still be met even when politics intrudes and that has destroyed more efforts than I can count. THAT is what I expected would happen with SpaceX in the early years (it's been done to other teams), so I was cautiously optimistic at best.
———
I was eyeball deep in the industry and advocacy groups for many years, so I've met a lot of people who get off their butts and do things. I've also met a lot of wannabee's. It has been a joy seeing some of them succeed tempered by intense frustration when I see the persuasion skill in a wannabee.
Musk IS able to persuade people. Not everyone, though.
If you've ever met someone who is truly charming, you might have seen the flip side to that skill. When a glamour breaks, the charmed person can go from loving to hateful VERY quickly. People with strong persuasion skills are charming to some degree because the object of their attention believes!
Astonishing things can be done by people who believe, but run for the hills when the glamour breaks. Poison daggers come out.
Paradoctor
I have found that its slightly different
An organization has two kinds of employees: those who serve the organization's mission,
and those who serve the THEIR OWN interests.
The second type gets promoted faster (as they are concentrating on being promoted) and end up controlling the organization and setting its rules.
Engineers, Senior Engineers tend to be type one - by the time you get to Vice President its 100% Type two
An organization has two kinds of employees: those who serve the organization's mission,
and those who serve the THEIR OWN interests.
"Organizations do not attract the people they need, but people who benefit from their structures."
We have no shortage of managers and administrative staff. We have a shortage of skilled workers.
____
Just read: Twitter Germany employees form works councils and sue the company for layoff protection. Depending how Musk reacts, he invites criminal charges and fines for violating labor security laws. Pure speculation, but he can be targeted himself by law enforcement because he did not erect a "meat shield" of upper managers to blame.
_____
I'd say the turning point of progress started around WWII: The invention and proliferation of computers, mass media, nuclear technologies, modern vaccines, antibiotics, missiles, radar etc. all happened in the decades between 1920 and 1960, whereas the years between 1870 and 1914 saw less technological progress, comparatively.
______
A thing people often forget about the consequences of the War of 1870/71: What would have happened to Europe if the French, or better, the Bonapartists had won? I doubt we would have avoided WWI, only the players would have differed. France would have remained add odds with other European powers, especially Great Britain, and would possibly lost it's vestiges of democracy. And the idea of a unified German state was in the world since 1848... and would have cost France enormous ressources to keep the lands occupied.
Alfred Differ: run for the hills when the glamour breaks
Wonderful phrasing, marks the inflection point* between 'Scott-ish' romanticism and Scottish enlightenment. You even kept the 'u' (as do most Americans). Pure dead brilliant.
* Real inflection points occur in the heart, not necessarily in chronology. Psychohistory is not simply history. Musk seems to have trouble grasping that. Alas, many got bedazzled by the orange glare.
Alfred Differ:
People with strong persuasion skills are charming to some degree because the object of their attention believes!
Much as I hate to admit it, Donald Trump charms people that way. It only works on about 40% of Americans, but that's no mean feat.
scidata:
You even kept the 'u' (as do most Americans). Pure dead brilliant.
I think Americans who know the difference distinguish "glamor" (from fame and celebrity) from "glamour" (an almost supernatural effect on perception).
I credit your countryman Dave Sim for my knowing the difference.
Re: glamour
It looks like it's a Scottification of the word grammer, an old word for 'learn'. Although the Scottish variant meant 'occult learning' as in Hogwarts I guess. Old meanings sometimes do come around again, and magical thinking never dies.
@scidata,
In (British) Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the fairie characters can put a "glamour" upon themselves--that is, a spell which makes them look desirable and attractive. Dave Sim points out that the idea of the "glamor" of a celebrity like Taylor Swift is a non-supernatural version of the same thing.
All fashion models are alien refugees from planet Glamouria. Didn't you learn that in MIB school?Better get that neuralizing reversed.
In my mind, I spell it glammer, as in yammer yammer yammer.
I've previously mentioned my Agent Based Modeling group before and how occasionally fashion models attempt to join. Fairies attempting to join an ultra-rationalist, computational group. We all know what happens if positrons fall into a pool of electrons.
Alfred Differ said...
Chances are high that scrappy entrepreneurs have the skill.
I would suggest that - to be successful - scrappy entrepreneurs more or less need to have the skill. One needs to be able either to persuade someone to fund your startup sufficiently or to persuade people to work for hopes and dreams (or both). If one can do neither, then one will have a very difficult time.
Note, though, that if one is able to self-fund, then one needn't do either.
Let me turn things around a bit. $100M is indeed a lot of money. It proved to be 'enough' for SpaceX to get them to the next funding round. If Musk had not possessed the persuasion skill, though, it would not have been enough. I would have guessed he needed something north of $250M and maybe twice that because of the political risks he face in competing with the dinosaurs.
True, he raised another $100M+ in the years immediately after the F1. But it is much easier to raise money after you have already shown that you can accomplish your goal.
I suspect the dinosaurs didn't not comprehend the threat he posed. Had they done so, they would have been whispering in the ears of Senators who would have been asking questions of the FAA and every other licensing unit which would have slowed early development to a crawl. Payrolls must still be met even when politics intrudes and that has destroyed more efforts than I can count. THAT is what I expected would happen with SpaceX in the early years (it's been done to other teams), so I was cautiously optimistic at best.
No reason to be otherwise. It could have turned out that $100M was not enough, and then who knows what would have happened.
Having sufficient capital (monetary or human) may be a necessary condition for succes, but not a sufficient condition. Things can go wrong in all sorts of ways.
Musk IS able to persuade people. Not everyone, though.
Musk seems to be able to persuade people who want to be persuaded. Sam Bankman-Fried was able to persuade people to believe the things they already wanted to. That sort of persuasion isn't all that hard.
And this is similar to what I said at the beginning. A lot engineers really love engineering, and many of them do it on their own time without even being paid. Tell them you will pay them something to do engineering and many will be glad to take up your offer. Tell them you think their ideas are great and you will pay them to develop them and a lot of them will jump at the chance - even if you are paying below market rates.
Heh. Y'all are funny this morning. 8)
I am making a distinction between 'glamor' and 'glamour' with the second one being the one that produces the feeling that magic was involved.
Some fashion models can do both.
------
I've met entrepreneurs who can't do either who still succeed. They tend to produce small organizations... or work with someone who can.
------
I was busy between '96 and '07 trying to get start-ups of mine to work. I'm intimately familiar with the need for a combination of charm and cash. Turns out only some of the people you think you need for a team are susceptible to any one way to approach them.
If you think cash would dominate... it doesn't. Real human beings are moved by a variety of motives and that's what makes us both resilient and cantankerous.
'Glamor' is the US spelling of 'glamour', according to the Authority (OED*).
However you choose to spell the characteristic, the sooner people are educated as to what it feels vs what it means, the sooner they'll head for the hills. These are predators.
* although I heartily recommend Merriam-Webster's twitter account: who knew 'word of the day' could be so deliciously subversive?
scidata:
I've previously mentioned my Agent Based Modeling group before and how occasionally fashion models attempt to join.
And I still can't believe that you discourage them from doing so.
We all know what happens if positrons fall into a pool of electrons.
There's got to be the rare exceptional beauty who can also engage in a nerdish banter.* Try imagining what would happen if one of those joined in.
* It is possible. I married one.
"I suspect the dinosaurs didn't not comprehend the threat he posed. Had they done so, they would have been whispering in the ears of Senators..."
Or hired saboteurs.
On topic is this new WIRED piece on the new art generating programs. comments?
“On four services alone—Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Artbreeder, and DALL-E—humans working with AIs now cocreate more than 20 million images every day. With a paintbrush in hand, artificial intelligence has become an engine of wow.”
Another disturbingly insightful and eventually optimistic look at the near future from Kevin Kelly. “Because these surprise-generating AIs have learned their art from billions of pictures made by humans, their output hovers around what we expect pictures to look like. But because they are an alien AI, fundamentally mysterious even to their creators, they restructure the new pictures in a way no human is likely to think of…” https://www.wired.com/story/picture-limitless-creativity-ai-image-generators/
Stable Diffusion is the open source system that can be downloaded free and is used already by many for Co-Creative Art Therapy.
Tony,
Some are predators. Some are the people we marry. It’s the same opening in our emotional armo(u)r.
Well said. Bureaucracies can become nonfunctional if they are not properly led or supervised.
When we first met, it was in the dealers room for a tiny con in Columbus, Ohio in October 1998. I was buying a copy of BRIGHTNESS REEF for a marine biologist friend of mine. You are her favorite author. Just as I completed the sale, you came into the room. I described my friend to you and you wrote a lovely dedication to her. I took a strong liking to you from that day on.
GMT - ;-) !
Alfred Differ said...
I've met entrepreneurs who can't do either who still succeed. They tend to produce small organizations... or work with someone who can.
Starting a business requires at least some capital (how much depends a lot on what you are doing and how). Most people need at least some income, even if that is below what they could earn somewhere else. And most entrepreneurs have their own expenses, apart from the business. Without capital, one is basically involved in a hobby that might pay off at some point in the future. [I suppose one other possibility is to find someone who thinks your ideas are so good that they will sign a large contract allowing you to fund your development that way - but unless you already have a product, this is basically someone betting on you.]
If you think cash would dominate... it doesn't. Real human beings are moved by a variety of motives and that's what makes us both resilient and cantankerous.
Whether cash dominates depends on whether there is "enough". If there is, then it won't dominate; if there isn't, then it probably will - because you won't be able to do the things that you need to do to succeed. As you pointed out, if it had cost $150M to get a working F1, then SpaceX might have failed. But even having "enough" cash is not sufficient, obviously, and given enough capital, other things come into play.
gregory byshenk:
I suppose one other possibility is to find someone who thinks your ideas are so good that they will sign a large contract allowing you to fund your development that way - but unless you already have a product, this is basically someone betting on you.]
Speaking of "a science fiction novel about economics".:)
Betting on the future has much in common with time travel. What if you didn't need to seek out venture capital, but were capable of literally grabbing some of your future earnings, bringing them back to the present, and using them for start-up capital? As long as those future profits actually materialize, this is not fundamentally different from borrowing the cash from someone else and then paying them back out of those same future earnings.
I mention this because, to a science fiction writer (or reader), the not-so-happy path is more interesting. What happens when you borrow from the future but the future profits never do materialize? In the non-fictional world, someone loses that money. It might be the venture capitalist you borrowed from, or it might be shareholders, or the people those initial shareholders pumped and dumped on. Alfred could probably explain better than I can where the money is lost. But the point is that, depending on contracts and agreements and the physical location of dollar bills, the answer to "Who loses that money?" is clear cut and unambiguous in any particular situation. Point being, it doesn't create a paradox or cause the universe to split into multiverses or explode.
I maintain that if backwards time travel were possible, it would work the same way. If you traveled back in time like Marty McFly and caused your parents not to meet each other so that you were never born, the laws of physics would determine exactly what happened. It would not require the universe to be conscious of the paradox and to abhor it.
I also maintain that while backwards time travel is a fascinating concept (to me, anyway), it is relegated to the realm of fiction, because, sorry, but it is not possible. But borrowing money from the future is possible--at least kinda sorta metaphorically. So that's the closest we're going to get to backwards time travel in real life.
Old news, but I'm still curious. Considering the indignant calls for crucifying the leaker of the Dobbs decision, should Samuel Alito be impeached over it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html?searchResultPosition=4
Wow. Guess I should have read ahead before posting that bit about the scOTUS leak.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Items/Nov22-1.html
Recall that when the Dobbs decision did leak, [scOTUS majority leader, John] Roberts angrily promised that he would get to the bottom of the matter and that the perpetrator would be identified and punished. Since then... crickets. Perhaps he simply never found the answer he was looking for. Or perhaps he found the answer and decided he was best off burying that information. Whatever it is, the Chief Justice is now on Congress' radar. The Democrats want to know what Roberts has done to identify the Dobbs leaker and also what he knows about the apparent access to Alito (and other conservative justices) that certain outsiders seem to enjoy.
gregory byshenk,
Capital comes in many forms ranging from what you know to the pennies in your pocket to the time you've sunk in the effort. What any of it is actually worth depends on how the 'partners' see it when things go well or a bankruptcy judge sees it if they don't. 8)
But yah. If no one thinks to bring cash, everyone spends most of their time working their day jobs. Been there. Little gets done on the startup for obvious reasons and success chances are near zero. So are impacts to the risk averse 'investors'.
------
The way the game really works, though, is you need 'enough' capital in funding stage N to get to stage N+1. Stage one is usually self-funded by the core partners. Wanna sell birthday cakes for fun and profit? Someone buys ingredients. Someone makes a kitchen available. Someone washes dishes. Hopefully one of the core partners has friends and family who will chip in since they are usually stage two investors.
When Musk started SpaceX he already had a long list of people he could approach for the first couple of stages. He had that from previous efforts and people who wished they had been involved in those earlier. Failure begets experience while success begets relationships.
Alfred Differ said...
But yah. If no one thinks to bring cash, everyone spends most of their time working their day jobs. Been there. Little gets done on the startup for obvious reasons and success chances are near zero. So are impacts to the risk averse 'investors'.
Yes, to be successful you need a) a good (and actually achievable) idea; b) some number of good people who can help you achieve it; and c) enough money to get you from idea to product. If you miss any one of them, then your chances of success plummet. Having all of them is no guarantee of success, though; as noted earlier, there are all sorts of ways to fail.
Duncan, et al.
As a further note, Delong recognizes that there can be arguments for different inflection points:
I wound up writing a book looking forward from 1870 that is overwhelmingly about the political-economy consequences of the magnificent explosion in the rate of technology-driven growth, with occasional side-glances at the parts of the original project that I was unable to execute.
[...] Was the explosion of wealth and productivity of 1870 causally-thin, in the sense that institutions had to evolve then in a way that was unlikely to get the explosion? Or was the growth acceleration of the Second industrial Revolution, the one big wave of Robert Gordon, causally-thick—largely baked in the cake, while the causally-thin nexus or nexuses came earlier?
From: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/another-excellent-and-thoughtful
Alfred Differ:
Failure begets experience while success begets relationships.
A good motto for life in general.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/trump-desantis-republicans.html
The professional class sees Washington fixtures like Mitch McConnell as unexciting but necessary institutionalists — people who know how to work the system to “get things done.”
But that’s not how many voters and anti-establishment conservatives see the self-appointed Republican wise men.
"Anti-establishment conservatives"???
No wonder my wife and I keep hoping the UFO which brought us to this planet comes back for us.
Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show...
The right is grooming mass shooters.
L. H., I feel the blame can be attributed to their belief in "Trash people", they believe they're culling defectives.
Possibly more Sience Fiction manifesting in the mundane world::
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/10/04/Feed-Ourselves-Save-The-World-Protein/
tip o' the hat to James Davis Nicoll.
I've seen arguments for various inflection points. I'm inclined to think many of them are good except where they argue that they are the best inflection point.
The Industrial Revolution is often tied to the invention of the steam engine, yet population growth beyond carrying capacities for some regions in Europe began before the end of the 18th century. Something was already underway.
The Industrial Revolution is often described in phases where steam is an early one. Electricity generation is another. Cheap access to oil is yet another. I think arguing that any one of them is 'most' important misses how wealth was growing across the decades making it possible to capitalize efforts later that would have been Moonshots earlier. No amount of money on earth would have produced an Intel 386 chip in 1962.
One inflection point that I think gets short changed occurred right around 1950 when the English language exploded in size. Vocabulary wasn't just being stolen from other languages. We had to make up a lot of terms. That wouldn't happen... unless something big was happening.
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I think of all this in terms of phase changes instead of inflection points. I don't expect a singularity in the sense many describe today, but I do expect one in the second derivative of any measure of our 'ability to do things'. The first derivative measures the rate of change of that ability, so the second is a measure of acceleration. I suspect if we looked back over the last four centuries we'd find a few singularities in the acceleration. Freedom to innovate competitively does that.
Failure begets experience while success begets relationships.
A variation of that line from 'Joe Hill':
Says Joe: what they forgot to kill went on to organise...
So, who else has been enjoying 'Andor'?
'Andor' is by far the best SW story since 'Empire' and may end up surpassing it. It's also my favorite TV show of the year, which is a high bar.
It may end up redeeming the whole horrible SW franchise.
We-ell, Andor's pacing is painfully slow at times, and some characters don't seem to do anything... yet (why hello there, Syril)
Still, like the Battlestar Galactica reboot, it seems to have struck a chord, and nobody has had to use the Force or anything like that.
One inflection point that I think gets short changed occurred right around 1950 when the English language exploded in size.
So what was happening in the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, when Shakepeare was coining all the words?
Larry,
"I keep hoping the UFO which brought us to this planet comes back for us."
Sorry to break it to you, but the B Ark crashed and the A Ark was never built.
Pappenheimer
... and the builders were wiped out by a plague transmitted by telephones.
"So what was happening in the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, when Shake(s)peare was coining all the words?"
Better to ask what wasn't happening.
1 .The Revolution in Military Affairs, for one thing (the development of modern structured mass armies and ocean-going sail/cannon navies). This is explicitly 1550-1650.
2. The English Civil War, and the more general 30 Years War 1618-1648; the Spanish Armada 1588; fullest extension of the Hapsburg lands; 80 Years war and establishment of the Dutch nation; first Ottoman siege of Vienna 1529.
4. Centralization of political power into national states (France, Spain, Netherlands and England)
5. Colonization by Europe of the rest of the world begins (Spain and Portugal get head starts) as the RMA (point 1) means that no non-European power on Earth can stop a European fleet and attendant armies. Ottomans are still a danger until late 17th, but less and less so during this period
6. Per Wiki, "Significant increase in the ability to read and write throughout the population: by the end of the sixteenth century, at least one third of the male population (of England) could read...." = more customers for Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Also, Newton and Leibniz were being born towards the end of the period, but their massive contributions to science and thus civilization were slightly later. Potty-training had to come first.
Tony Fisk:
So what was happening in the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, when Shakepeare was coining all the words?
King James commissioned a Bible (in the vernacular) for one thing.
As I will likely be away from the internet for much of the day, I wish a happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. It's my favorite holiday of the year, and I heartily resist all attempts to politicize or commercialize it, or to subsume it into the Christmas season. Baby Jesus can wait until Friday.
onward
onward
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