observation

I think that the main takeaway and I think Thiel's explanation has the most explanatory power (Tech Stag Hypothesis).

It just doesn't ring true.

Both slavery and imperialism have had a long history before capitalism. Capitalism exists in circumstances with no plausible relationship to slavery or imperialism.

It annoys me because this dialectic is so obviously wrong.

ny large political system eventually turns out to be either authoritarian or ineffective

Your thoughts on seasteading, even as a hypothetical?

There is something in what you say.

I have to say I think this conflation of altright and neonazi is lazy in the extreme. By the media and most posters here.

Democratic socialism has overlapping territory with communism but we wouldn't say Sweden == Soviet Union.

those ideologies have at their core the idea of resisting cultural and civilizational decline. I personally think their scapegoats, theories, and solutions are all BS but they're getting somewhere because they are talking about the problem.

I find the most incisive statements are to be found among the neoreactionaries and technocommericalists, with Thiel's loosely associated Stagnation Hypothesis being compelling to me.

The angst comes from the secondary implication that the future is not set and magic will not happen and that we are actually going to have to deal with our problems.

He says "we can't sit and wait for the movie of the future to unfold", it's the same idea.

The ray of light there is that it is put forward that our funk is to do with social changes in how we think or past civilizational technical debt. A good example of that thought from Hollywood is Interstellar.

I feel like it used to be the case that "change how we think can change who we are/what happens" used to come from the left but now it's coming from the right. The right looks at past glories and says we must change to get to something better, the left says it is all terrible and we must prevent anything from going wrong which means everything must stay the same.

There's been a weird role reversal of some sort.

This will continue and will get worse until people get their heads out of the 20th century and start articulating new visions of the future.

I've yet to hear of an example of that from the left, the utopians have lost faith. I've listed some examples in my other post but like I said to people like Stross they likely smell of sulfur.

There is some light but it's from obscure political ideologies.

Nakamoto's Bitcoin, Yarvin's Urbit, Friedman's Seasteading.*

These seem concerned with the technical debt we have, used loosely.

As the famous Ycombinator talk by Balaji Srinivasan pointed out these kinds of projects have a common theme of starting from first principals.

I blame the stagnation on the rejection of nuclear energy and biotechnology by our society. We built a fine collection of mythological fog stories around each of them, nuclear might produce mutant children and kill us all, biotechnology might produce race/class war (more mutants). Where have all of these misanthropic ideas been cultivated? Hollywood and the Universities. Actually I blame people like Mr Stross for this, the breed of people who decided we had a moral imperative not to support the use of these technologies.

The piles of fissile material, petri dishes and computer circuits don't contain any urge to murder us all. The existential funk started proper I think like yourself, with the failure of Communism, and then a loss of faith in democracy (increasing numbers of non-voters), lots of apathy.

This is why I feel like we should revitalize the old Victorian spirit of exploration, get the body moving, work together in gentleperson clubs (hacker spaces) and that shall produce more optimistic individuals. Then when we toy with new ideas we shall be less so inclined to view them darkly. I'm open to suggestions.

* To Charlie (who will be reading this thread and can tell me exactly what he thinks) I suspect these sorts of possibilities have a whiff of sulfur about them? I'm also curious to know if you've read Nick Land's essays. Context: Yarvin/Land are accusing Mr Stross of the thing he was flaking the transhumanists with, namely that his socio-political (socialist-democrat?) beliefs are a thinly veiled form of Christianity, where original sin is discrimination and paradise is multicultural utopia.

I suppose after a thousand or so years it kind of seeps in everywhere even when it becomes assumed it is on its last legs.

The story of slow moving AI is compelling, but since The Election there has been 24 hour news/outrage coverage of how we're all going to hell ever since - so at least one paperclip maximizer has influenced the motivation to make the talk.

The trouble I think is that nearly everything I can imagine Mr Stross supporting as progress basically backfires because at least half the public will have you for lunch over infringements to liberties. Once you're being tossed between the bulls horns of the left and right it's hard to imagine positive outcomes. At the start of the talk microtransactions were mentioned. That seems like a much better route because it is not partisan in nature.

Yes, but can you build the Sears house for 35k today without materials substitutions. I don't think you can, prices of commodities were probably lower then, which is not in line with received wisdom.

The reason why I mentioned a Tiny House or THOW is that the comparison is much closer, I think like most countries in the past there were no planning permission or taxes on house building. A THOW too is built by the owner, but it is 200-300 sq ft and not 1200 sq ft.

The website you listed suggests a 50k modular house costs closer to 130k to install once everything is worked through. Do you believe the Sears house cost ~150-200% more in the end? Sure they had to dig wells too but I don't think that is plausible.

The solution I have found is crowd sourced or expert recommendations from the following sources:

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools book and website. Metafilter Reddit's Buy It For Life subreddit Finehomebuilding's Tool Guide

I find I buy less stuff, but of much higher quality or utility in this way. Some times I get something at a cheap price which works really well, like my Kiwi knives. Other times I have to be educated into realizing why something costs what it does and why or why not it's worth the money. Usually the answer is that the price is right because the object lasts much longer than the cheapo alternative or that the cheap version has a health drawback.

Recent Examples:

Merkur Safety Razor vs cartridge disposables ($$$) (factor of 100 decrease in cost!) Cast iron skillets vs Teflon pans ($$$) Tempered glass (container/bakeware) vs disposable trays/soon-to-be-cracked stoneware. ($$$) Induction cooking vs Gas (health) Expensive meat vs cheap meat. (health) Glycerin soap vs liquid soap/regular soap ($$$)

Here's a clear example. I buy a hard shave soap in a nice wooden bowl that costs $30. That's way more than a can of foam, but I've been using this for over four years now and it's only half used.

I don't do this with everything. I have a Silvercrest blender that has worked for a year, expected lifespan of three years I think, about $30 but buying a Vitamix or Blendtec at $500+ wouldn't 'pay me back' in a lifetime.

[waffle]

The China market isn't a problem if and only if it is understood by the consumer that they're getting disposables, so they should stock up and throw away more frequently. That requires money and space a lot of people do not have.

China production is immensely valuable for the bottom billions of the world who simply cannot plausibly afford West levels of wealth.

The rub is of course that you and I are getting lots of boxes with broken appliances/tools.

I don't know, it might be much easier.

I myself went on one, found it helped concentration, but neglected to keep up a daily practice since.

Personally I've always felt the existence of the garage to be an underrated contribution to American innovation.

I don't mean Americans aren't aware of it, I mean that sort of thing never comes up when Europeans discuss how to increase innovation. They will produce 'e-centers' and 'hubs' but I think most of the good stuff just comes from some people screwing around, probably with some things that don't rate much fanfare or seem adequate for a proposal.

Sorry about the edit, I thought I was waffling on too long.

My position is not that you're wrong, it's that most of us are missing the subtext of our technological development which is that nearly all of it is computer related and we've papered over failures in a large number of technological areas by simply not talking about them (in society, not on HN).

Economists know that GDP measures are skewed by the fact that “a car is not a car” — that is, a new car today is much more than a new car from 30 years ago. It is safer and more comfortable, and consumers who pay the same amount in real dollars for a new car today are better off than consumers who bought a new car in years past.

That is true. I wouldn't dispute the affect of accumulated incremental changes to existing product lines, it's meaningful.

It's true in two directions. For instance many items today are inferior goods to past goods. Here is an example.

New growth lumber is inferior to old growth lumber. Something made out of wood such as siding, framing or window/door frames will require more frequent replacement due to rot, insects, weather. The old growth equivalents lasts for decades and even centuries. Today we rely on a mixture of more frequent maintenance and often toxic additives (protective coatings) and if that doesn't work we are forced to leap to far more complex, sometimes expensive replacements e.g. UPVC, I-Joists, LVLs.

I'm not saying the technology is bad. It's great engineering ingenuity, I'm stating its requirement exists because of a failure in our ability to match or improve qualitative tree farming and botanical biotechnology.

So the “house” from the Sears catalog isn’t likely comparable to a house today with the same number of rooms. For example, the size of bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, closets, and garages has increased greatly in the last 100 years. New homes are more energy efficient and have safer wiring. Does this close the gap with a $32k house? Not in Silicon Valley, but there are parts of the country where the house (excluding the land, which Sears didn’t include either) is worth around $50k.

This is a big subject, I'll just throw one dart at you.

There is a hidden assumption. Why are your houses more energy efficient? It's because a barrel of oil doesn't cost $1 anymore.

There's a dark side to energy efficiency.

The side affects of higher insulation requirements is that houses cost more, studies on passive houses suggest 10%-20% more in the positive scenarios. The real problem though is that the most common forms of insulation offgas toxins and since houses are meant to be more air tight... The fact is that most buyers of houses and most builders of them aren't up to speed on what is required to do this sort of housing without health risks.

Right now most houses in my country, without the latest insulation requirements, suffer from moisture, mildew and mold problems, all of which is not positive for human health - this only gets worse with the new regulations because consumers don't understand the importance of hvac or building houses as holistic systems.

Most of my complaints seem to go away if we actually had a real biotech revolution.

When DNA was discovered, when Human Genome was decoded, they said the exact same things they are now saying about CRISPR, that's what troubles me.

I see that view as a form of revisionism. Was it ethnic based nationalism, or was it ethnic based nationalism and political ideology and perverse financial incentives and class warfare and... seemingly countless other things.

Wages really do buy less house than 100 years ago.

This would have been about 1920 when the Sears kit houses were invented.

Look at this: http://eastsidehill.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/1927...

The inflation calculator here:

32,424.83 in today's dollars for a respectable, quality 8 room house.

Sure it doesn't include land or labour but there's no way an 8 room house costs 32k today.

Today that would buy you a Tiny House on the low end of that market.

In my opinion, and I know we are far richer than our great-grandparents, but anybody arguing we're quantitatively richer than our parents has a long row to hoe. If this is progress it sure is lumpy. As Peter Thiel says the most likely explanation is we've had an nearly completely unacknowledged (by Western intelligentsia) stagnation technologically.

Listening to the shipping forecast is a kind of modern day ritual, I get something similar out of ASMR videos such as this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD6ZktAF_hk

It's not only what is said, but the timbre of the voice, repetitions and odd names, all these are hallmarks (some types) of the ASMR phenomenon Youtube.

Milo Yiannopoulos advocates for practices that would literally kill people, in addition to advocating for pedophilia and getting very close to Nazi talking points.

You should be able to post some links illustrating this. I expect he says a lot of things that sound like that but which really aren't on closer inspection. Traditionally the political wings produce fan fiction of the other side and heavily paraphrase whatever the other side says.

Are you aware that Milo Yiannopoulos does not claim to be on the far right and they don't think he is either? His political orientation is best described troll-wing.

I had no idea Yetis were into Communism! :-)

Thanks for this, it makes entertaining reading on a cold winter's day in front of a roaring fire.

You may be interested in the podcast audio drama "The White Vault".

It's very well produced.

Sure. Why don't I hear more about Americans doing medical tourism then? Is there some kind of information asymmetry, because it sounds to me as if there ought to be a lot of money to be saved if the sick people knew where they could purchase the medicine they require.

I can sympathize with this because I remember needing a medical procedure that I was forced to travel to a different country to solve, it wasn't even about the money but a case where I the patient was given poor information and then ignored, I actually took the doctor to the board over it in the end, and they ultimately provided a correct solution but it was easier in the end just to travel abroad to fix it.

That is so, I think probably taxation as a measure of GDP is too dubious a measure for connecting up with a normal person's experience of taxation, in the ideal world they should be related but evidently the devil is in the detail.

Why is it perfectly fine to give platforms to people spouting Nazi talking points, or transphobia/homophobia/racism, but the minorities those people are saying should be killed aren't given anywhere near as high a platform by universities?

You've provided an objective benchmark.

Please list the occasions this has happened. I have yet to hear a political leader say that. I think you might find those people under Youtube comment sections and on 4chan but I've yet to hear of "kill minority x" as a part of somebody's platform.

I don't think you're going to be able to find anybody who isn't obscure to the point other far rightists haven't heard of him.

Leftists and Rightists interpret the same information completely differently sometimes, when Donald Trump was an anti-Semite, unquestionably, I remember that.

I have a follow up question.

What do you make of this:

https://twitter.com/douglaskmurray/status/616194188489682944

Douglas Murray claims genuine terrorists, people who have been arrested for plotting to murder people, have been lecturing inside a year in UK colleges, it looks like 20 of them have been arrested or killed fighting in Syria and another 80+ are affiliated.

"Last year, there were 123 speeches by extremists, which featured claims such as 'the West is waging a war against Islam'. There were also 145 events in 2013 and 132 in 2012. While the far Right hosted a handful of events, the lists were overwhelmingly dominated by Islamic speakers."

It appears to me that the shoe is quite on the other foot when presented with this information.

This is the thing, the laws in the USA and UK already have provisions for death threats, so when you have to fall back on hate speech or hate crime it is not clear at all that 'hate' isn't merely an appellation that denotes 'people we don't like'.

We talk of dog whistles, but the phrases hate speech and hate crime are also some kind of whistle. If there is a crime, then there exists a law to deal with it. What then does the 'hate' add? Subjectivity and political bias in my opinion.

When I see my ideological enemy I don't get good feelings about them either, but they have the privilege of being able to talk, that should be what is right.

Are you sure Tax Policy Center can be trusted?

Those numbers seem very low for Ireland. I'm willing to be wrong but something seems very off here.

If Americans were as physically fit as they were 50 years ago, would healthcare still be expensive?

The washlet and machine learning.

These bidet/shower toilets are great attachments to existing toilets in America/Europe. The Japanese and Koreans have most of them.

The focus that interests me most is using them for gathering data on lifestyle diseases and using that to improve health outcomes.

Yes, Twitter is censoring him.

Non-American here. There has been a role switch. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Where formerly the right harboured the deepest suspicions of Russia, the liberals have taken over the position, probably as a scapegoat for political retreats.

Posts on HN such as yours and probably mine will turn gray-white fast since if you haven't sufficiently disavowed Goldstein then you are probably a collaborator.

Probably a large portion of the forum thinks the subject is itself immoral. That option isn't specifically anti-semitic even if it gets those undertones, we should expect every nuclear capable state has come up with items of that sort and more like destroying an innocent non-nuclear state to demonstrate convincing evidence for convictions.

You should not be nuked because those are real questions. I think we have organizations (not legal) which kill anybody attempting the variations of what you describe.

We sleep soundly because there exist men willing to do inhuman things to ensure our security. It's unpleasant until compared to the other options. That's what genuine heroism is like. When Putin is praising that organization he is thinking of something like this. We live very sheltered lives I think.

A majority on this forum, including those people who believe their financial situation to be dire are still in the top 1% of the richest people on the planet.

Should our minimum wage workers be funding anti-poverty programs?

I think not, it's obviously more complicated, but the logic of such articles can usually be applied in such a way and that makes me distrust everybody who thinks in this way.

I have a moon question.

So the moon affects the gravity of Earth, producing tides.

If the moon did not exist, would that affect the 'Tyranny of the Rocket Equation', would it be more difficult or easier to launch spacecraft?