tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post8131541900966549026..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Steps toward opennessDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83884938596523403552019-11-21T05:28:57.335-08:002019-11-21T05:28:57.335-08:00(sorry for kind of necroposting)
I read your artic...(sorry for kind of necroposting)<br />I read your article about free trade against central planning, and I'd defend western observers. Any kind of observer who entered great Soviet builds or enterprises (like Eastern gold prospecting) in his professional capacity was terrified by inefficiency of process. For example, Hugh Lincoln Cooper, who was consultant for DneproGES, was literally offended with inefficiency, low productivity of workers and growing budget; we speaks with Soviet officials. My favorite cite was about six points (they were translated to Soviet leadership by the CO of Soviet-American trade company ("Amtorg")). I wouldn't cite all six points here, just sixth one (translation is mine):<br />"Without any mean to conceal his indignation Cooper speaks about rising the cost of DneproGES to 200KK rubles. He declares that, as he built 16 hydroplants personally, and consult the same number, he never was mistaken more then 5% financially. He declares that "mistakes" as DneproGES one can be explained by the very unacceptable organization of works only."<br />("Купер с совершенно не скрываемым возмущением говорит о проекте увеличения сметы Днепростроя до 200 миллионов рублей. Он заявляет, что, построив лично 16 гидроэлектрических станций и проконсультировав еще столько же, он ни разу не ошибался в смете больше чем на 5%. Такая "ошибка", как в Днепрострое, может быть объяснена только совершенно возмутительной постановкой дела")aennohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04387746134627771154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63031688224016513352019-11-09T13:14:51.546-08:002019-11-09T13:14:51.546-08:00onward
onwardonward<br /><br />onwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-86903275314210063252019-11-09T08:50:42.409-08:002019-11-09T08:50:42.409-08:00Military regs - all those man-hours had to be spen...Military regs - all those man-hours had to be spent in an office four stories underground. (That was my one complaint. I joined the Air Force, the service with airplanes as part of the basic mission, and I was assigned to fly a computer console in a room in the fourth sub-basement of a building - which they then had the temerity to call the Air Room.) So no, nobody's time was freed up to do anything that didn't involve making sure that our nuclear weapons were on the bleeding edge of readiness - and that our enemies knew it, because Soviet doctrine [i]required[/i] that if they saw an opening to destroy the West, they had to take it.<br /><br />(Former Colonel Putin of the KGB is an excellent case in point on that, BTW. And not just with Cheeto Mussolini, either - they've apparently been mucking around in the financing of some British politicians as well. Thank Eris for the strides we've made toward transparency already, or we might not have learned about this until after they renamed the country "Airstrip-One"!)Jon S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13585842845661267920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68268123233420342202019-11-08T21:48:39.433-08:002019-11-08T21:48:39.433-08:00"Those man-hours you freed up allowed someone..."Those man-hours you freed up allowed someone to drive a car or fly an airplane or do something with plastic bags which ended up contributing more to global warming which will make us all die. If only you had left well enough alone."<br /><br />In fact, there is a point to this, that non-feudal systems are more complex and squishy and parasites will find many points of entry to exploit and many unexpected side effects and consequences will accompany every good move.<br /><br />So? We become agile. We have transparent-responsive systems. We get better at using diversity and reciprocal accountability. It's a dance, all right, enabling us to keep rising and seeing better. We have to keep dancing, and slothful cynics deem that exhausting.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48179374272877327272019-11-08T20:13:22.661-08:002019-11-08T20:13:22.661-08:00Jon S:
Show me, please, how this exchange is nega...Jon S:<br /><i><br />Show me, please, how this exchange is negative-sum, or even zero-sum. Invoke the heat death of the universe if it pleases you, as I don't see how that affects the figures one way or the other.<br /></i><br /><br />C'mon, this is too easy.<br /><br />Those man-hours you freed up allowed someone to drive a car or fly an airplane or do something with plastic bags which ended up contributing more to global warming which will make us all die. If only you had left well enough alone.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39312095262911274302019-11-08T20:09:52.280-08:002019-11-08T20:09:52.280-08:00duncan cairncross:
Jim has not answered my points...duncan cairncross:<br /><i><br />Jim has not answered my points<br /><br />When I rearrange a production line and change some of the tools and we double the output<br />...<br />Where are the COSTS of these changes?? - costs that somehow equal the benefits?<br /></i><br /><br />I think his point is that when you improve productivity, you hasten global warming, which will make us all die. When you improve people's lives, allowing them to work less and have more free time, you free them to do destructive things that contribute to global warming, which will make us all die.<br /><br />A Dilbert punch line once had the boss counseling, "Job satisfaction is like stealing from the company." I think that's similar to what jim is arguing. Improvement in one's life is like stealing from the universe.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65142248119817958792019-11-08T18:22:37.261-08:002019-11-08T18:22:37.261-08:00Asimov's own personal favourite story was &quo...Asimov's own personal favourite story was "The Last Question", which had a stunning solution to heat death. A less 'spiritual' method for delaying it would be to use stars' own power to propel them back towards the mother world.<br />https://www.universal-sci.com/headlines/2018/6/20/how-an-advanced-civilization-could-stop-dark-energy-from-preventing-their-future-explorationscidatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04992209167553267488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-17994219325150111282019-11-08T18:00:08.546-08:002019-11-08T18:00:08.546-08:00Still, the neuronal deficiency might be addressabl...Still, the neuronal deficiency might be addressable with this!<br />https://www.newscientist.com/article/2221743-europes-first-home-brain-zap-device-for-depression-launched-in-uk/<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-29810642195665146752019-11-08T17:59:40.772-08:002019-11-08T17:59:40.772-08:00Just today I was interviewed by BBC World Service ...Just today I was interviewed by BBC World Service on my "Lift The Earth" concept for rescuing our planet from gradual solar temp increase, 100Myr from now. At (comparatively) minuscule cost, Earth could be moved outward faster than the sun's warming, extending lifespana billion or more years. <br /><br />The Heat Death guys will answer... "and then???"<br /><br />Obviously I've dealt with such concepts for a long time! e.g. in HEAVEN'S REACH. But eventually even those living in suspended time at the edge of black holes face evaporative demise... and yet Tipler, Penrose and my friend Freeman Dyson have all showed ways to extend things incredibly. In the Penrose case, the extension... by conformal mapping onto a new big bang... is infinite.<br /><br />So bite me, cynics. Our ob is to make heirs whose minds and souls and civilization are enough better than ours that THEY can fret about such things. And zero summers are no help in that project. So yeah, bite me.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-31032060166744661042019-11-08T17:25:04.551-08:002019-11-08T17:25:04.551-08:00Alfred: I would love to see the details on your pr...Alfred: I would love to see the details on your prof's "Baryonic matter" speculation on the heat death of the universe. Especially given the amount of dark matter out there.<br />As for positive sum arguments the notion that entropy defeats all doesn't work on a planetary level, let alone in an economic or societal level. <br />An example from the early days of BBSes, when the god botherers saw a fertile environment for prosetylising to the unclean unaware that their prefabricated arguments were about to be subject to unlimited scrutiny. Life on Earth, they proclaimed, was impossible without God, because a) you cannot build order from chaos and b) you cannot create energy to build order from chaos. Therefore gawd.<br />Well, you can build order from chaos by TAKING away energy: just take some water vapour and freeze it. Snowflakes, the apothesis of order! And as for 'creating energy' you can add existing energy, and you can credit god provided your particular god is Ra, ie, the sun. Energy isn't created, but it is added, locally. Not a closed system. <br />Reason, of course, had mixed results. These were people, after all, who believed it world-wide floods that rose the sea level by 10,000 metres, but not in sea rise of millimeters caused by global warming.Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03024670772812706971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34676542391155920422019-11-08T17:06:20.610-08:002019-11-08T17:06:20.610-08:00Wow Jon S. An impressive life experience and servi...Wow Jon S. An impressive life experience and service, independent of its value as an argument example!David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-28847316726135634812019-11-08T15:42:08.191-08:002019-11-08T15:42:08.191-08:00An example.
When I enlisted in the Air Force, my ...An example.<br /><br />When I enlisted in the Air Force, my first (and, as it turned out, only) duty station was at Offutt AFB in Nebraska, at HQ SAC (now USSTRATCOM), in the software section of Force Timing and Deconfliction (XOXPC if you're interested in the alphabet soup - also dually assigned to JSTPS/JPPPC). One of the responsibilities of the most junior person in the section was the production of the monthly JPIC report. (Interim changes to the nuclear plan, or JPICs, were issued as needed; once a month, we sent a report containing all the JPIC numbers each base was supposed to have received, so they could make sure they got the right info.) This report was produced by reading the table that all the entries were checked off in, then typing up the number ranges in a particular format (to fit physically in a particular way on a reel of tape). This report was sent to Admin to be typed, back to Software for proofreading, back to Admin for corrections, and so forth.<br /><br />I did this the "correct" way once, having been told that it was "impossible" to write a COBOL program to do it. After that experience, I went through the manual, found how to write the program, and did so. The procedure went from taking three man-days to one man-hour, including waiting for the printout.<br /><br />So, there was a cost - about six man-days of a junior software engineer's time, once. There was a value received - three man-days of time split between two sections of an office, each and every month. That seems to me to be a positive-sum exchange; the Air Force got an accurate monthly report, and I freed up a programmer's time in perpetuity to work on more important factors (like, at the time, accounting for the newly-introduced rail-mobile Peacekeeper missile - you'd need ballistic calculations for multiple locations along the rail-path).<br /><br />Show me, please, how this exchange is negative-sum, or even zero-sum. Invoke the heat death of the universe if it pleases you, as I don't see how that affects the figures one way or the other.Jon S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13585842845661267920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-87753880530413395322019-11-08T15:27:42.835-08:002019-11-08T15:27:42.835-08:00Jim has not answered my points
When I rearrange ...Jim has not answered my points<br /> <br />When I rearrange a production line and change some of the tools and we double the output <br /><br />When we do some training - and reduce defects by 50% <br /><br />When we introduce a new component that does the same job but uses half the material <br /><br />Where are the COSTS of these changes?? - costs that somehow equal the benefits?<br /><br />Is my few hours of "skull sweat" somehow worth more than the thousands of hours of wasted labour that was saved?? duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-32395079638320677982019-11-08T15:20:36.814-08:002019-11-08T15:20:36.814-08:00WOw LH that's some Kentucky story!
ent: "...WOw LH that's some Kentucky story!<br /><br />ent: ". So for me “positive summers” are myopic troglodytes..."<br /><br />yes, we know that's your go to. Poor flatlander.<br /><br />Roger Penrose... smarter than all of us here... has answers to the Heat Death of the Universe.<br /><br />And yes, I know that human history gives little reason to expect that positive sum thinking would ever have arisen, under conditions that were nearly always zero sum... unless you count parenting. I am more amazed that 60% of Americans seem capable of it, to some degree, than I am suprised at jim or locum's incapacity. But what astounds me is their frantic evasion of curiosity and urgency of blanket denial... not disagreement over evidence or particulars, but a desperate need to deny what they absolutely and purely cannot comprehend, at a level that appears to be organic. That has come as a true surprise.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66206876165186995772019-11-08T15:09:52.563-08:002019-11-08T15:09:52.563-08:00treebeard,
it's the simplest refutation of
...treebeard,<br /><br /><i> it's the simplest refutation of </i><br /><br />It's not a refutation of anything mentioned here. It's an incantation. One of those "Circles of Protection" meant to ward off some otherworldly foe.<br /><br />"Heat Death of the Universe" can be used in certain physics arguments as a limiting case counter-example, but in philosophical arguments it is a weasel-like way to avoid the claim.<br /><br />Besides, one of my profs showed how the heat death has already happened. It was neat trick that involves trying to account for everything in the universe. Baryonic matter like us is just a tiny slice of what's out there.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-79845003362996720182019-11-08T14:50:40.124-08:002019-11-08T14:50:40.124-08:00jim,
It is not that I don't understand the c...jim,<br /><br /><i> It is not that I don't understand the concept of positive sum, I just think that it is wrong.<br /><br />You guys are making the claim that you can get something for nothing.<br />I am saying everything comes at a cost. </i><br /><br />You are simply mistaken. Costs that they perceive are incurred by players of a game and used (hopefully) in advance to shape their decisions. If they miss them the first time around in a repeatable game, they'll use them later.<br /><br />If you want to argue that there are ALWAYS costs associated with gains, you are taking a god-like perspective suggesting you have future or revealed knowledge. A priori knowledge. Do you want to go that far? I doubt it, but that is the ONLY way you can defend your position from us pointing out your error.<br /><br />everyone else,<br /><br />I'm inclined to think Jim DOES understand what positive sum means, but rejects it as an element of our reality. He's not alone in this. Most humans through history understood intuitively that every gain comes with a loss. It really IS a weird transition we've made in rejecting that old, intuitive understanding.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-19034096437328638572019-11-08T14:41:26.724-08:002019-11-08T14:41:26.724-08:00Ah, yes. Because of the heat death of the univers...Ah, yes. Because of the heat death of the universe, caused by entropy, nothing can be positive sum. QED.<br /><br />By the same token, evolution could not possibly happen because it is anti-entropic. Therefore God must have created life. QED.<br /><br />"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing." ;)A.F. Reyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08102355714883828348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22922726130840865042019-11-08T13:12:26.536-08:002019-11-08T13:12:26.536-08:00Ah, yes. Cynicism. What stupid people think wisd...Ah, yes. Cynicism. What stupid people think wisdom sounds like.Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03024670772812706971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8935172390858539542019-11-08T13:11:09.650-08:002019-11-08T13:11:09.650-08:00It is my go to, cuz it's the simplest refutati...It is my go to, cuz it's the simplest refutation of Progress worshippers, much like the existence of evil is the easiest refutation of monotheists. When people beat you over the head with their religious abstractions, especially self-contradicting ones, you have every right to refute them, no? And I fail to see how reductio ad Hitlerum is anything but yelling "squirrel!" in this conversation, whereas reductio ad Heat Death clearly is relevant.Treebeardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03418009308135148330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48003318788228408562019-11-08T12:53:20.758-08:002019-11-08T12:53:20.758-08:00SQUIRREL!
Wow, not even part of the conversation ...SQUIRREL!<br /><br />Wow, not even part of the conversation and you went right for Heat Death of the Universe.<br /><br />We know that's your go to.<br /><br />Just like we know you're a Nazi.<br /><br />Tell us something we don't know. (or better yet, don't)<br /><br />Smurphshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00539117423893094607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-80753809823159436442019-11-08T12:27:03.880-08:002019-11-08T12:27:03.880-08:00Well if you expand your “horizons of inclusion” wi...Well if you expand your “horizons of inclusion” wide enough, nothing is positive sum, so these two ideals are contradictory. Include the whole universe, and everything is zero sum, (or maybe negative infinity sum, calculated from the present moment). So for me “positive summers” are myopic troglodytes spinning fairy tales, like flat earthers.Treebeardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03418009308135148330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-38132978763684058612019-11-08T09:21:25.346-08:002019-11-08T09:21:25.346-08:00Dr Brin:
I’d have to guess the national GOP is be...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />I’d have to guess the national GOP is begging the KY legislature not to go that far. Because it would be a last straw for many outside of KY.<br /></i><br /><br />Hopefully, they'll treat the "faithless elector" scenario the same way when its time comes.<br /><br />And there's also this to consider...<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/kentucky-governor-election.html<br /><i><br />...<br /><br />There is a 120-year-old precedent in Kentucky — but an ill-omened one — for the apparent loser to successfully contest a close race for governor. Passions over the effort to overturn the result of the 1899 election ran so high that armed partisans poured into the state capital, and the ultimate winner was shot on the street. He died of the wound three days after being sworn in.<br /></i>Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21938697847529379852019-11-08T09:16:23.197-08:002019-11-08T09:16:23.197-08:00Dr Brin:
Hm, well… It’s more like cheating in ele...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />Hm, well… It’s more like cheating in elections ALWAYS happens unless vigorously prevented.<br />Stealing from the commons ALWAYS happens unless vigorously prevented.<br /></i><br /><br />Ok, but the stealing isn't usually done by the masses. It's done by the powerful privatizers in the <b>name</b> of protecting the commons from the masses.<br /><br />Say we're back in the Garden of Eden, and all we have to do to eat is to pick fruit from the apple tree. What's more likely--that everyone is going to grab and hoard so many apples that the tree can't sustain the supply? Or that someone is going to declare that since the tree isn't anyone's private property, he's claiming it as his own, building a fortified wall around it, and anyone who wants apples has to pay him for his private property?<br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-35483518313989422482019-11-08T08:41:02.725-08:002019-11-08T08:41:02.725-08:00I’d have to guess the national GOP is begging the ...<br />I’d have to guess the national GOP is begging the KY legislature not to go that far. Because it would be a last straw for many outside of KY.<br /><br />“ stooges on the left fight tooth and nail against nuclear energy”<br /><br />George, other than anecdotes, SHOW us this ‘tooth and nail” fight please. Sure you trawl around, you’ll find some anti-nuke groups. But the sort of rabid thing you imply? At NIAC we fund some nuclear. Have you heard of Stewart Brand? He and the techno libs support it.<br /><br />Big Oil may be anti-nuke and have some money slipped to a few left groups. But it’s otherwise silly/anecdotal. <br /><br />It’s not so much the dangers as the COST and TIME, and those could go down if libs were offered a DEAL. "Give us smoother regs for half a dozen experimental New Gen reactors and we’ll give you a nationwide mandate for solar roofs.<br /><br />LH “Sure. Voter fraud does happen too, occasionally. But "does happen" is a far cry from "will inevitably happen", which is what is usually meant by "The tragedy of the commons".”<br /><br />Hm, well… It’s more like cheating in elections ALWAYS happens unless vigorously prevented. <br />Stealing from the commons ALWAYS happens unless vigorously prevented. <br /><br />Where jim collapses is his inability to grasp that it CAN be prevented. He lives wallowing in the positive sum results.<br /><br />“It is not that I don't understand the concept of positive sum, I just think that it is wrong.”<br /><br />And yet every example he gives shows an utter inability to even grasp the concept. Denial can be an ugly thing. A flatlander howling “I know what ‘UP” is! And frantically pointing to the left. <br /><br /> Here’s the thing. If told by many smart folks that I don’t seem to understand a concept, that elicits in me CURIOSITY! <br /> There’s not a trace of that from jim, just panic.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-23627806577975408302019-11-08T08:11:14.526-08:002019-11-08T08:11:14.526-08:00jim said:
"You guys are making the claim that...jim said:<br /><i>"You guys are making the claim that you can get something for nothing."</i><br /><br />That is not remotely what positive sum means. You've clearly demonstrated yet again that you don't understand the concept. You've got target fixation. You are determined to make a point and for some reason, I suppose to push back against David (?) you are determined to force fit positive sum into it even though it doesn't fit. Why bother? I don't think anyone disagrees with the basic point you are making, what everyone is disagreeing with is your use of positive sum. It's wrong, simple as that.<br /><br /><i>"I am saying everything comes at a cost."</i><br /><br />Yes, we do understand that that is what you are saying. And it is accurate, it is important to realize, but what it <i>isn't</i> is a refutation of positive sum because with respect to positive sum it is a non sequitur.Darrell Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14054311762477388637noreply@blogger.com