I love how Yud can quantify the relationship between inefficiency and
wealth inequality without needing a single argument. He just magically
knows that wealth inequality can explain only a factor x2 of the gap
between ‘improved productivity’ and our providing for everyone.
Weighing in late on this thread, but everyone always overlooks the added side benefit of expropriating every millionaire, which is that we'd have *no more millionaires*.
obviously wealth inequality is the majority of why poverty still exists, but 20,000$ isn't always enough to lift someone out of poverty
not that yud always deserves the charitable interpretation, but the charitable interpretation is that he is saying that inequality *alone* doesn't cause poverty, that there are other factors, and that it's worth considering them when slowdowns on the order of 50x exist
I would argue that those other factors would be largely ameliorated by eliminating wealth inequality; that they're co-morbid, but the point here isn't \_complete\_ nonsense
of course, non-charitably, he's clearly engaging in motivated reasoning to appease his capital-daddies who fund MIRI
>Sure, but it's going to be enough >95% of the time.
Hard disagree. I'd lean more towards 5%. Houses are expensive and rent is high. Debts soar. Plus, the weight of a lifetime of feeling like money always disappears (and lack of experience managing money beyond the cling-to-existence level) leads people to squander windfalls, and that's hard to overcome as well.
That's not actual 1.90 dolars a day, by the way, it's adjusted for the cost of living wherever you are and including _all income_, that is food you grow, rent equivalent for the housing you live in if you're so lucky to own any, money sent by relatives working abroad, everything. Imagine surviving in the US on slightly less than 60 dollars a month, paying your rent and having three meals a day or, hell, being able to eat altogether! World bank poverty measurements are a series of incredibly cruel jokes.
Well, obviously? I don't believe I said they do. Rather, the poverty line is _equivalent_ to having an income of 1.90 dollars per day in the US or under 60 dollars a month. At 2017 PPP adjustments that would translate to something like 22 dollars a month in Mali or Thailand (PPP conversion factor 0.37 for both). Now PPP is not perfect, but I don't see why you would necessarily be able to maintain a more dignified life there on this budget than on 60 dollars per month in the US?
ok so your point is that the stated poverty line is too low. that seems rather moot to the discussion about whether 20k/person would lift many out of poverty.
but to your direct point I'll say that at least in some places their use of natural resources for food/shelter (e.g. self-constructed / hunting) makes the PPP a bad estimate (and it's already an imperfect estimate just because of regional variation)
_Use of natural resources is supposed to be included in this figure_. If you catch fish for food, or live in a shack you have self constructed out of asbestos cement roofing sheets and plastic bags, World Bank data includes that into the income calculations for the poverty lines (I'm sure the methodology isn't perfect but you'd be incredibly naive if you believe it actually understates the amount of privation involved instead of the other way around). And even this level of bullshit _still_ leaves half a billion or so people worldwide below the $1.90 line, let alone the more realistic $3.20 (1.9 billion in 2018) and $5.50 lines (3.4 billion).
That's how horrendous global poverty actually is. It's beyond unconscionable that leeches like Bezos and Musk have been sucking up yet even more wealth in the face of this completely unimaginable deprivation, or that morons like Yudkowsky can act all mystified about any of this.
20k USD would be a mind bogglingly large amount of money for many of the worlds poor. Almost 50 percent of the worlds population lives off less than 5.50 usd per day. 20k would be enough to live off for nearly 10 years at 5.50 per day.
never be charitable to these morons. he truly believes that being poor has nothing to do with how much money you have, because he's a complete dunce, a 100 percent dunderhead, stupid beyond belief. if you HAVE to be charitable, say he's saying this garbage because he believes it and not because peter thiel requires it of him
You misunderstood what he was saying. He was saying that the belief that Bloomberg could give everyone $1M was innumerate, and you'd have to be innumerate to believe wealth inequality is THAT bad.
Since wealth inequality isn't at that astronomical level (of being able to give everyone $1M) Yud believes that something additional is required to explain poverty.
Whether he is right or not is another question but at least understand what he is saying.
I'm not here to talk about the merits of his argument, only to point out what he meant by the sentence where he mentions a certain kind of innumeracy. If you and he could establish a line of communication you'd discover that he doesn't believe that Bloomberg could give every American $1M.
However I agree with you that his view does seem to be that wealth inequality, on its own, can't explain poverty.
He seems to be saying that he believes "slowdowns" are required in addition. Honestly, I have too little context to understand what he means by this and it hasn't begun to touch the sides of convincing me.
Sorry if I came across as brusque. Just thought you'd misinterpreted what he meant in his first tweet.
I feel like the proper response if I were on twitter would be to just
post a picture of him without comment but since I’m on Reddit, can you
imagine being this publicly baffled by something so painfully obvious? I
guess it isn’t hard when you’ve accepted prima facie the beneficence of
the status quo
It’s worth remembering that this guy’s community is quite
convinced that systemic racism isn’t real, that inequality goes away
quickly within a generation or two, and… The like.
It’s almost as if, you can’t have one without other. One would think
he is smart enough to realize it is the very system at play, but maybe
he’s too smart for all that.
The standards for what poverty is increased concomitant with
increases in wealth. Poverty in 1500 was near universal and regularly
deadly, poverty in 1930 meant you could still get food and housing,
poverty in 2021 still sees you have access you stuff royalty couldn’t
imagine.
There aren’t famines anymore, they’ve left our cultural
consciousness, etc. The scale and depth of problems is relative. By
medieval standards, there’s no poverty in our day and age. Poverty still
exists because we up our standards, as we should.
You know wealth doesn't exactly do anything. People had to invent shit for things to advance.
I've never authored a single scientific article that was financed by venture capital.
Shit you've invented is part of your wealth and produces more wealth. Wealth that can be invested to do more shit. Bessemer furnaces, for instance
Thousands of papers have been authored by money taxed off the top of venture capital, and money venture capital has poured into various places has driven innovation.
Not really anymore, especially in the first world because food is so plentiful and inexpensive nowadays. Obesity is a bigger social issue than malnutrition.
'especially in the first world'
All five words are necessary for the phrase because, 'In the first world' and 'especially in the first world' have different meanings.
Aside from how much work "in the first world" is doing for this line of argument, considering that number is barely scraping 1/8th of the global population\*, [twenty fucking six million American adults have been affected by hunger recently](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/hunger-coronavirus-covid-pandemic-crisis). One out of eight adults and one out of six households with children. You need to wake up.
\* 330M in the US, maybe up to 500M in the EU + a few other European countries, 126M in Japan, 40M in Canada, 30M in Australia + NZ, 52M for South Korea if you insist, comes up to the total of slightly above 1 billion and you'll be hard pressed to get it any further than that I think.
From the USDA which collects these statistics:
1. Overstating the severity of the condition represented by a statistic:
Example—incorrect: In November 2009, a prominent national online news source reported, "A Department of Agriculture report...said the number of Americans that were hungry rose to 14.6 percent."
Discussion/comment: Food insecure does not always mean "hungry." The 14.6 percent was actually the percentage of households that were food insecure in 2008. "Were hungry" describes a more severe condition, and most Americans would not consider conditions in most food-insecure households to be appropriately described as such.
Alternative, accurate language (updated to 2019 statistics): "In 2019, 10.5 percent of U.S. households were unable to put adequate food on the table at times during the year." (Further description may clarify that for most food-insecure households, the inadequacies were in the form of reduced quality and variety of food rather than insufficient quantity.)
26 million Americans affected by hunger is less than 1/3 of adult and 1/6 of children/adolescents with obesity. Nor does affected by hunger constitute a famine or that they starved to death.
I suggest you should take up a career teaching your brand of mental gymnastics to all those obese adults and children, you seem so good at this you would solve the problem in no time.
I'm confused - obesity is linked with poverty, but not caused by it. There are plenty of other elements of a capitalist society that drive mass obesity, and the person you're arguing with is simply sticking to the fact of the numbers. Comparing modern obesity epidemics to death by destitution is ridiculous and obscures the vastly different causes of both.
Why are you accusing me of being a paedophile? I just tried to comment something benign and fundamentally basic and I'm being stacked on for reasons I don't grasp because I don't understand what I said wrong.
Because you are saying the same things, and acting like Pinker.
Which granted, you might genuinely not know who he is, or you might be trolling. Anyway, in case of the former, most of this sub isn't a fan of Pinker and [Current Affairs has a nice takedown (with cartoons! (Not a dunk on you btw, I just like cartoons)))](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man).
And it is all funny, because if you talk to Pinker about his associating with Epstein, he also gets mad (on twitter you just get blocked).
Hi, I'm a joke explainer, sucking the fun out ... shit I had something funny here.
I didn't know who he was. There was no joke from my perspective, I made a bland, meaningless, simple comment about poverty and suddenly I have people insulting me and making out like I'm a paedophile.
Just to be clear — nobody thinks you literally are a child molester, they’re simply making fun of your “bland, meaningless” comment by comparing it dismissively to Steven Pinker. The explanation of ‘Epstein associate’ is rather a joke at Pinker’s expense given the links between the two.
I’m just clarifying for you that nobody is calling you a pedophile. They’re comparing you to a writer they don’t like and then additionally insulting him by implying that he is (at least) pedophile-adjacent.
German economist in 1925: "The average German has over 1000 times the wealth of our caveman ancestors - men who regularly had to be worried about all sorts of deadly prehistoric beasts. Today almost no men are killed by wild animals. Could our caveman forefathers even imagine the delights of coin-operated Amberolas?"
Poverty is obviously relative, it can only exist as a relative term - like "he is tall". I'm making fun of you because you're making an extremely stupid and obvious point in a way that you think is profound.
>poverty in 2021 still sees you have access you stuff royalty couldn't imagine.
Wow dude, Russian royalty of the 1800s couldn't imagine the deliciousness, calorie density and widespread availability of the Big Mac. And all at an affordable price! What a time we live in
>I think it's basic?
So were the points of my hypothetical German economist.
Russian royalty of the 1800s are not the only royalty that existed. I was intending to refer to medieval royalty.
>So were the points of my hypothetical German economist.
I don't follow. You said that I think I was being profound, I correct you, then you say the points of the German economist are basic.
>Russian royalty of the 1800s are not the only royalty that existed. I was intending to refer to medieval royalty.
Medieval royalty could not imagine the amount of time people have spent playing the 2006 videogame Sonic The Hedgehog (available on *both* Playstation 3 and Xbox 360). Could even William The Conqueror have spent a fraction of his leisure time experiencing such joy as those lucky gamers who have played Sega's most enduring franchise series of games?
>I don't follow. You said that I think I was being profound, I correct you, then you say the points of the German economist are basic.
The function you think you are having is of the wise sage, who speaks only common sense but has a perceptive and piercing view of the world. "Profound" and "basic" are not antonyms, although you seem to be treating them as such. I'm here to inform you that not only do you not have a perceptive view of poverty and politics, you are only making a fool of yourself with your inane posts.
> Medieval royalty could not imagine the amount of time people have spent playing the 2006 videogame Sonic The Hedgehog (available on *both* Playstation 3 and Xbox 360). Could even William The Conqueror have spent a fraction of his leisure experiencing such joy as those lucky gamers who have played Sega's most enduring franchise series of games?
No, they couldn't.
>The function you think you are having is of the wise sage, who speaks only common sense but has a perceptive and piercing view of the world. "Profound" and "basic" are not antonyms, although you seem to be treating them as such.
I said I didn't think it was profound, nor do I think I'm a wise sage.
> I'm here to inform you that not only do you not have a perceptive view of poverty and politics, you are only making a fool of yourself with your inane posts.
I make a simple comment, not intended to be a thorough and piercing study of poverty, and I get people telling me I'm a paedophile and a fool.
>I make a simple comment
The comment of my hypothetical German economist was equally as simple, don't you agree? What do you think I "missed" in that comment? The German economist knows equally as well as you that poverty is a relative term, and he is just as humble about his statement as you were. He does not think he is being profound, he is simply making a basic point.
edit: I don't want to be too mean here so I should probably level with you. Everyone on this sub is a politics/philosophy junkie and we've all heard the exact same inane argument you're making a million times before (hence the Pinker jokes). What you're saying is a well-worn neoliberal cliché which, in our current times, seems to manifest as an increasingly nervous tic. So people are just going to make fun of your bad posts.
Correction, you get compared to a Epstein associate.
All two words are necessary for the phrase because, 'Epstein' and 'Epstein associate' have different meanings.
And word to the wise, don't debate with Marxbro, just accept Marxbro as your lord and saviour.
E: also read Marxbros edit.
The difference between you're a famous paedophile and you're an associate of the paedophile, (with the implication that you are also a paedophile bceause of the island and jet and stuff?), is a bit empty
[im gonna reply to several of your comments at once so I don't spam more, so if some things don't make total sense right now it is about the 3 comments you just posted in reaction to what I said not just this one]
As is going from 'well poverty has decreased' to 'well people are not starving in the western world'. Which was what set this all off. (Doing this sort of goalpost switch is also what themotte (a subreddit sneerclub dunks on a lot (mostly because it has a lot of neo-nazis and people fine with neo-nazis) is named after. So that is why I was making the weird 'red alert the motte is coming from inside the house' jokes (and yes, it wasn't a themotte, it was more a goalpost shifting but erugh im turning into fallacy man)).
You might have thought you made an pretty basic simple obvious comment, but in fact you didn't you made a comment filled with a lot of unexplored neoliberalist status quo pro western lives assumptions. In the same manner which Pinker did (he even wrote a book about it). That is why you get dunked on.
That you have no clue what is being talked about made it funnier. (but now it is just getting mean, so sorry about that). E: I guess we are all a bunch of angry sharks here, circling the poor poster who came in not knowing what was going on. Wait, sneerclub sharks... Snarks. We are snarks.
Hey but congrats, you are just as smart as Pinker, a man who millions prize for being a smart person who [writes books and shit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#Bibliography). So you got that going for you at least. (And just ignore the Epstein associations, most people at the top do that anyway ;). And for the record, I'm not calling you a pedophile).
> As is going from 'well poverty has decreased' to 'well people are not starving in the western world'.
I wasn't trying to say that, I wanted to say poverty has decreased, this effect is more pronounced in the west, like, I'd rather be poor in Australia than Sudan.
I've always been clumsy with words, by skipping over vast portions for thought process and assuming for some reason that everybody would just follow that process.
It's a bit confronting to be described as someone for whom the only point of reference is Jeffrey Epstein. It's the first conclusion and a bit of a kick to the jaw.
Yeah, I figure, but you just picked the absolute wrong place to come and talk about that stuff.
'but it will eventually improve for the rest of the world' is an (often unspoken) excuse a lot of techno rationalists/transhumanists/lesswrongers use (at least I have seen variants like that, even if to their credit, at least (most of) the EA movement sees this is wrong).
It is also often used by neo-liberals, combine that with this being a 'dunking' sub which often gets racists (no literal racists) trying to 'set us straight' about IQ. You just got a double barrel volley of sneer. You not knowing what the fuck we are talking about prob didn't help (most people here know who pinker is, at least I assume) and it must have hurt.
It is all made extra weird because dunking on Pinker is something sneerclub and slatestarcodex have in common. (don't worry if you don't know any of the places I'm talking about)
So in short, you picked the wrong echochamber today pardner.
E: none of this is to say your 'but there are less poor people in the west' or 'but starving people have cellphones now' isn't a bad one btw.
Think of SneerClub as a delicious banquet. Your posts are "bland" and "simple" like army surplus rice crackers from a Korean War era rations pack. The question then becomes; why are these "bland" and "simple" rice crackers littering my otherwise scrumptious meal?
Calm down, you're acting very irrational at the moment. You were simply compared to a known Epstein associate, not Epstein himself. This is very simple and is easily understood by everyone.
If it helps: people are comparing you to pinker bc he spews (and is most known for spewing) the same kind of neoliberal dreck, not bc you are being particularily pedophilic by association with a notorious pedophile
I love how Yud can quantify the relationship between inefficiency and wealth inequality without needing a single argument. He just magically knows that wealth inequality can explain only a factor x2 of the gap between ‘improved productivity’ and our providing for everyone.
[removed]
I feel like the proper response if I were on twitter would be to just post a picture of him without comment but since I’m on Reddit, can you imagine being this publicly baffled by something so painfully obvious? I guess it isn’t hard when you’ve accepted prima facie the beneficence of the status quo
It’s worth remembering that this guy’s community is quite convinced that systemic racism isn’t real, that inequality goes away quickly within a generation or two, and… The like.
It’s almost as if, you can’t have one without other. One would think he is smart enough to realize it is the very system at play, but maybe he’s too smart for all that.
This reads like a bad Numb3rs cliffhanger. Maybe writing prog lyrics would be a better creative outlet.
I’m sure the sparkling billionaires appreciate him pushing attention away from wealth inequality.
The standards for what poverty is increased concomitant with increases in wealth. Poverty in 1500 was near universal and regularly deadly, poverty in 1930 meant you could still get food and housing, poverty in 2021 still sees you have access you stuff royalty couldn’t imagine.
There aren’t famines anymore, they’ve left our cultural consciousness, etc. The scale and depth of problems is relative. By medieval standards, there’s no poverty in our day and age. Poverty still exists because we up our standards, as we should.