People do pay to see movies, to read books, to go to the museum, and for formal education… Do you think the ratio of cost to go to film school per video made for an individual is the same ratio as the cost for stock video library per video made for an AI?
>The world keeps getting better as technology advances
Will it, forever? Is that a given? Technology might also destroy the planet.
It's not "likelihood of getting caught" because even if you have a 1 in 5 shot at getting away with a crime, desperate folks (or folks with a shaky understanding of probability) will still take the risk. It has to be "certainty of getting caught" which requires more than just more police, but also public messaging, education, etc. See: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
Well of course I read the things I link. To clarify, my points are:
1. "Likelihood" ≠ "Certainty" - I might think there's a high chance of getting caught, but unless I'm overwhelmingly certain that I'll get busted, I'll still take a risk. This is an important distinction, because it's not as though there's a linear correlation between likelihood of getting caught and crime rate.
2. This perception can be increased in ways other than just investing in police. A city could invest in cameras and signs that say "you're on camera." They could take out advertisements showing the conviction rate for particular crimes. They could hire rehabilitated offenders to share their stories with kids. The list goes on, there are plenty of ways to spend that money that might be more effective than giving it to police departments.
Lowest 10th percentile of which society? In Europe or the US, maybe, but certainly there are whole regions of the world toiling away in horrific conditions to make their baseline standard of living possible. Conditions that are at least as bad, if not worse, than those of ancient Pompeii.
As awful as those conditions were arguably they are still better than the conditions the bottom 10% would’ve experienced historically (which were almost inconceivable awful by modern standards try reading some of the descriptions of ancient Roman mines and quarries, the mill jail would likely be a significant improvement over being a slave in a mine).
>With their feet chained, and dressed in rags, Apuleius describes the workers as having “eyes so bleary from the scorching heat of that smoke-filled darkness they could barely see, and like wrestlers sprinkled with dust before a fight, they were coarsely whitened with floury ash.
Any examples of regions of the world where things are as bad as that? I've travelled a bit and seen nothing like that.
Not that it’s a fair comparison modern medicine and some (even on a minimal level) access to healthcare means that the majority of people who are alive now would’ve been dead.
In my experience, even the poorest of the poor get vaccinated and have at least some access to modern medicine in government hospitals.
People who work as "servants" have cheap cell phones, TVs, and some commute to work on cycles and motorized vehicles.
There are pockets, of course, where what you say holds, but in aggregate, the lives of the bottom x% are probably better than their (our) distant forefathers due to commoditized conveniences that we take for granted.
I don’t know what your experience is but measles vaccinations, for example, still haven’t hit 90% penetration globally: in some countries it can still be 50% of children unvaccinated. And it’s probably the most widely available vaccine globally.
> In my experience, even the poorest of the poor get [stuff]
Stuff costs.
For every advantage a person receives, someone above them will leverage it for their own benefit. Increased productivity from automation does not flow toward fewer hours for the same pay but to increased output for the same pay - or perhaps to less pay when forced out of their career.
Vaccine-lengthened lives are spent working more years to survive, typically at less than ideal jobs.
The gadgets you tick off (in context that infers they a measure life improvement) come with costs.
Where time is saved, expectations are increased to fill that time. This trend has led us to a state where ordinary lives are massively more complex. Routine events have many more steps and requirements.
Gadgets themselves are conduits for rent-seeking exploitation, which requires still more resources from a finite pool.
Predictably, society has a growing need for mental health services. Some areas have services for those who are overtaxed and without resources. Many areas do not - despite widespread signaling that mental health services universally available.
However, I can agree that the advantages you mention are serving to get us where we are.
You've skipped the part where gadgets ("stuff") are a massive increase in quality of life - that's mostly why people get them - even though there are costs associated with them, the benefits far outshine the cost, making stuff a net benefit.
For example, my mother still remembers how it was to do laundry before washing mashines. Washing sheets generally took most of the day and was filled with manual labor. That's how women spend every third or fourth Sunday back then (had to be Sunday, because they were working in a job on the other six days of the week), before they could finally afford a washing machine.
You're discussing gadget-derived, quality of life improvements. Those are time savings, as you exampled.
>For example, my mother still remembers how it was to do laundry before washing machines. Washing sheets generally took most of the day and was filled with manual labor.
I discussed how time savings don't translate into more leisure time but into more obligations to fill that time. My delivery was a bit lecture-y, but I did address the point.
Anyway, along with no net gains in discretionary time there are tremendous increases in complexity to ordinary living. We've wound up being far more taxed than we were before.
If we focus exclusively on the gain=n without including the inevitable cost=n2, we get an unhelpful overview of what we're up against.
that's an odd comparison, there were no vaccines in ancient Pompeii, but they had fresh running water everywhere, they had a fully working well maintained sewage system, they had fully working well maintained piping system, they had fully working and well maintained infrastructures, such as roads, public buildings, public baths, markets, they had access to high quality food, they had very low crime levels (compared to the period of course), people were protected from outsiders by a fully working well equipped army, the State was present and vigilant, there was virtually no kind of organized crime syndicate running things locally, like modern Camorra, something that's not true anymore not in some poor of the poorest land, but in Italy in 2023 in the same areas where Pompeii was.
Go and see how they live in Scampia and you'll be shocked how backwards society went over time.
The economic elite probably did. Everyone else? Unlikely, especially not consistently. Most people were dirt poor by modern standards (no real equivalent in the western world)
> no kind of organized crime syndicate running things locally
We know that how? The whole patron-client system was essentially that. also why do you claim that state was “ was present and vigilant”? As far as we know that’s certainly a silly claim if we compare it to modern Italy.
having the sewage and water systems was was pretty cool pf course by premodern standards. But almost everyone still had to use communal fountains or latrines unless they were slaves in some rich person’s mansion.
First of all I was talking about thermal baths were bacteria do not survive anyway.
But secondly, Romans did not know antibiotics or bacteria or how infections worked, we do and still there are several outbreaks every year in almost every "first world" country.
Do I need to remind you about COVID?
People still do not wash their hands and it helped a global pandemic spread.
So in the end things were definitely not worse when preventive measures were a lot worse and a lot of the knowledge about how disease spread was a mystery.
But they were a lot cheaper and better maintained compared to today.
If we were putting the same effort 2 thousand years later, we should be living in a literal heaven.
> Everyone else? Unlikely
More than they do today. One would think that 2 thousand years later the situation should be much better, and yet it's not.
Again: look at the e-coli outbreak in the US, the richest country in the World, in 2022 and 2023, not in 312 B.C.
Ancient Romans could not preserve food, so it was fresh by definition except the kind of food they could dry up (salted or air dried) or keep in oil (olive oil, which was popular in every Mediterranean ancient culture)
> We know that how?
It's called history, you might be surprised how many things we can learn by studying it.
There were elites who could get away with a lot and did a lot of shady stuff, but definitely nothing of to the kind of the organized crime we know today as mafia or cartels.
The greatest threat were pirates, who, as the name implies, only attacked ships sailing in the open sea. Which was already a very risky activity on its own back then.
> First of all I was talking about thermal baths were bacteria do not survive anyway.
Large Roman bathhouses had multiple pools with different temperatures.
> Romans did not know antibiotics or bacteria or how infections worked
That’s kind of my entire point. The overall quality of life is much better because of what we know.
> d better maintained compared to today.
I’m not sure what saunas or swimming pools you go to but I certainly don’t believe that they are as dirty and unmaintained in general as you’re implying.
> If we were putting the same effort 2 thousand years later, we should be living in a literal heaven.
I think that by ancient standards we do (in the developed world). Humans are just very adaptable.
> but definitely nothing of to the kind of the organized crime we know today as mafia or cartels.
Because most things modern criminal organizations engage in were actually legal back then. Some of stuff they do now were just standard practices in the Roman society, which was structured a lot like the mafia organizations were back in the 1800s (a lot less secrecy than now).
> The greatest threat were pirates, who, as the name implies, only attacked ships sailing in the open sea.
Romans were generally pretty afraid of being kidnapped and sold into slavery even when traveling on land. In cities gangs and organized crime were certainly a huge issue in poorer parts of the city of Rome as far as we know.
> things we can learn by studying it
you’re right... I’d suggest you get some books not meant for 8 year olds if you’re really interested in the field. They might not paint such a straightforward picture you seem to have in your head, though
Anyway, it’s quite funny that we’re arguing about this. A very weird position to take by you considering most people back in those days lived in such horribly abject conditions you seem to be somehow incapable of comprehending.
And politically and socially too. In comparison to the Roman empire all but the very extreme modern authoritarian regimes would seem like egalitarian utopias (if we focus on human rights and the rule of law).
> That’s kind of my entire point. The overall quality of life is much better because of what we know.
It's not much better, it could be much better. But on average it is not, compared to the living standards of the Planet Romans were much better of than many are today in the richest Country in the World.
Besides, what really changed is the impact of war on the population, not much of the rest.
And yes, medical advancements, which are not equally shared though, even though they should be a human right by now.
> Because most things modern criminal organizations engage in were actually legal back then
It was harder for them to be formed, it was mostly small bands of bandits outside the city walls.
Weapons, for example, were very expensive and very much controlled.
> which was structured a lot like the mafia organizations
[citation needed]
> Romans were generally pretty afraid of being kidnapped and sold into slavery even when traveling on land
same thing happens in 2023 in Southern Italy to immigrants. It's just hidden from public opinion.
OTOH not many people traveled on land back then, most were born and died in the same plot of land, without ever seeing nothing else in their lives.
> In cities gangs and organized crime were certainly a huge issue in poorer parts of the city of Rome as far as we know.
I happen to live in the place that was called Suburra, precisely were the Argiletum was.
It was the part of the city dedicated to brothels and lower income classes in general, but also where Julius Caesar built his domus.
So, you know, not the kind of neighbourhood one would bring their kids to, but if you think about it, is Downtown LA any better today? At least the Suburra was surrounded by some of the most important monuments and public services of the time and the most popular today (the Colosseum, the Capitolium, the Forum of Caesar, the Forum of Augustus, Trajan's Forum, the Quirinal Hill etc etc)
Is there something as iconic in Downtown LA today? to counter balance being 12 times as dangerous as the national average.
> A very weird position to take by you considering most people back in those days lived in such horribly abject conditions
Is this really your argument?
Who's the 8 year old boy, actually?
you don't seem to understand the concept of context, yes, they were abject by modern standards, but they were a very high standard of living back then.
And that standard was more equally distributed then, than it is today.
Of course some Neapolitan came and downvoted the comment.
I'm Italian BTW, the problem is not the people living in Scampia, the problem is the fact that a place like Scampia exists and everybody there thinks it's normal.
The Romans would have never allowed something like that. Their slaves had better lives than that.
> The Romans would have never allowed something like that. Their slaves had better lives than that.
That’s either sarcasm or you certainly know almost absolutely nothing about how the Romans treated their slaves. You could try looking up the conditions of slaves working in mines or agricultural estates or some of the laws related to slavery they had… (also sexual exploitation was on a whole other level which is hard to even grasp for us)
> Scampia
I’m sure it’s much nicer that some of the slums in Ancient Rome, the city itself (Pompeii and Herculaneum were relatively well off cities at the time in probably one the richest regions in the world (Campania))
A lot of folks seem pissed off by this, but it cannot be denied it adds a lot of headaches for developers. Specifically really demoralizing to UI/UX devs who try and bring their skills to the open source world (either they are designing UI that is getting overhauled by themes, or they're designing themes that are getting shunned in missives like this).
But all of this feels like an expectation of folks who want the free software ecosystem to more closely resemble how their disciplines function in the hierarchical divisions of responsibility and control in the private corporate world.
Especially [1]. So many millions of American jobs are driving. Rideshare drivers, sure, but taxi drivers, couriers, delivery drivers, truckers, etc. The economic incentive to switch to driverless tech will be really strong, more than white collar AI automation, I think. So... what's the plan? That these drivers will all live in a hellscape where robot cars patrol their streets, surveilling them as they struggle against poverty?
Hi! I liked some parts of the post, and others not so much. But please, don't pay attention to haters. The world need brave people like you that believe in their work and don't care about what other people think. Please, keep writing in your blog!
I can relate about physical exercise—I had debilitating long covid symptoms for about six months with no end in sight. Could not work out, had to plan climbing stairs around my schedule so I'd have 20 minutes after to recover. Until I was forced to go on a business trip to Europe for two weeks where I was walking 20-30,000 steps a day and carrying luggage everywhere. Afterwards I felt 80-90% better, it was crazy. Still no way to know if that was just coincidence or not, but I keep seeing anecdotal stories about physical activity being key.
This is actually a good point. Not necessarily true for everyone, but it can be caused by avoiding physical exercise too much after being sick for weeks. It mimics/triggers depression and you feel sick/bad because of that. Had that pre-2019, so it sounds very familiar. I felt sick for months and when I had to ignore it, it went relatively quickly away (in a few days really).
Some might call this psychosomatic, but I feel like calling it like this is maybe reversed or at least sounds reversed to me as the physical state triggers the psychological condition and can then start a vicious cycle, which is only broken on the physical level.
edit: Of course don't go full tilt and be sensible with your physical exercise after not doing anything (lying in bed) for a week or more. Even a walk in the park can be exercise!
I don't think it's psychosomatic because it mirrors other physical injuries in weight training.
There is a threshold beyond which an injury becomes too severe and requires proper rest, an immobilizer, and physical therapy. It requires a little bit of experience to identify those injuries but below that threshold it's better to soldier through the pain with lighter intensity exercise that works the injured muscles.
A safe example is working through delayed onset muscle soreness.
With LC it's difficult when you get POTS, i.e. my resting HR was 60 and the moment I stood up it shot to over 150, making me dizzy and super unwell. Rowing machine and electrolytes helped quickly though. Also, post-exertional malaise (PEM) is real, when I overdid it with sport on my good days, I paid by a week in bed unable to move. Pycnogenol/OPC turned out to be a great help with that.
Full tilt meant 200m walk in the park -> instant PEM. When you have no clue what is going on, stop applying your basic recipes on new health issues from pandemics, you would literally harm other people that could suffer because of your silliness. Imagine this condition being more like being at 3/4 of slow dying from asphyxia on Mt. Everest. It felt like I was 70 years older and started understanding what old people go through when their body stops functioning properly. I am pretty sure there is some oxygenation issue as when I went to high mountains and left the gondola at the top of the mountain, I almost passed out from lack of oxygen and that was only like 6,000ft difference. That corrected once I went back to the valley so I could limp back to my hotel.
> When you have no clue what is going on, stop applying your basic recipes on new health issues from pandemics, you would literally harm other people that could suffer because of your silliness.
How can my comment harm people? It didn't say that walking (any distance) is the only or the lowest exercise possible nor did I say that lack of exercise is the only explanation to begin with. Actually the opposite is implied and taking a walk was an example for something that is usually not considered exercise.
I was reacting to your edit when it became clear you didn't consider that just a short slow walk can send LC people to a bed for a week, i.e. physical activity is not an answer for people suffering from it.
Definitely I think the psychological aspect plays a key role. I have not kept up with the Covid-19 literature in the last year and a half, but I recall many women reporting that it disrupted their cycle. In fact, my partner contracted Covid-19 and had an altered period for a few months and developed acne for the first time in their life. So it would seem hormones are being messed with, which can really mess with your emotions/mental state and like you say, could jumpstart a vicious cycle.
>The world keeps getting better as technology advances
Will it, forever? Is that a given? Technology might also destroy the planet.