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I am not sure the inflation thing is true. Yes prices are higher, but do we really need to work harder today for the things we had yesterday? Well maybe if you compare two consecutive days, but how about 30-40 years? Some things like housing and education are undeniably more expensive, but how about electricity? It was a major budget item when I was a kid, now it is an after thought.

Also many things that we spend our money on today couldn't be purchased at any price 40 years ago.

So while we can complain about prices we should check if our expectations are actually the same as they were in the past. Maybe those have inflated as well.

ChipTuner 6mo ago

Well I think there is a generational thing here too. Specifically on the electricity thing, our bills have nearly doubled in the past 5 years, and utility usage is on everyone's mind by me. I mean hell, I pay like $200/month and live with other people. The price of electricity went from of the cheapest on the east coast at $.09/kwh to about $0.16 from 2019 to may of this year.

Sure most consumables have gotten cheaper alternatives, but that's it they're cheaper, and arguably have to be replaced more often. I don't really want to get into the quality argument, but if were going to say that the exact same goods have gotten cheaper in proportion to the buying power of the dollar I think it's fair to ask _what_ were buying.

Example:

The pickup truck I daily drive listed at $21,500 off the lot in 1999. The exact same truck now, same options, configuration etc, in 2020 model in 2020 listed for $80,000. That same 2020 pickup used in 2023 with 65,000 miles on it was still priced at $48,000 which I almost bought like a sucker (which was a really good deal at the time). You could argue that my 1999 F250 could almost be replaced with a 2020 F150 in towing capacity, so I wouldn't need an F250 anymore an F150 _can_ almost do the same job compared. Are you getting the same product? Are you getting the same value?

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ChipTuner 6mo ago

Yes, the newer one is, safer quieter, drives smoother etc. I understand where some of the price has gone. But I can't get the same thing I had, for the same price. Unfortunately, this was my previous area of expertise, the newer ones cost signifcantly more to own year/year, and are significantly less reliable than the 94-03 configurations were then, and now.

Daniel Wigton 6mo ago

As things evolve, biology/technology etc they always get worse on average over the short term, but better on average over the long term. How do today's trucks stack up against trucks from the 70's and 80's? you might have a few well-maintained exceptions, but by-and-large vehicles from that era were complete garbage.

Any random modification to a system is more likely to be detrimental than productive. Thus things are always getting worse. But detrimental changes are less fit and lose out to positive changes over the long run so things are always getting better.

The only way things get worse and stay worse is if people stop trying things or if there stop being sufficient people to maintain them.

I suspect that a time will come in the next decade or two when a truck comes along that is both more affordable than yours and is far better in utility. Efforts like the Slate pickup give me hope. It is kinda trash, but it has really great ideas.

liminal 🦠 6mo ago

Just to note, in case you'd like to explore more: What you're describing is The Baldwin Effect and Hinton & Nowlan's "How learning can guide evolution" - where evolution instantiates systems in some fitness landscape, a global exploration process, and learning has each system explore their local neighborhood. When combined, what results is not that the most fit are selected, but those instantiated in areas with the highest capacity to improve their fitness are selected, while those that may start off with high fitness, a small change can send them into a trough.

So ultimately, the evolutionary process results not in finding the peaks (because it doesn't really help if you're stuck on a massively thin plateau in fitness space), but the places with highest capacity to improve.

Daniel Wigton 6mo ago

Hmm. Interesting. I guess I have taken it for granted that this was the case. I don't think we could evolve language without it. Humanity is unique in the amount of information encoded memetically. I take it to be 50/50 with genetic information. Not for any rigorous analysis of information content but as the roughest possible rounding meaning "I don't know but it is a lot"

I haven't actually ever studied evolution so take everything I say with all the salt the sea.

But ...

I define life very generally as information that replicates in it's environment.

So the idea that human replication includes biological encoding as well as educational encoding presents no problem. There is also no reason the information cannot choose the better carrier. Education allows extremely fast and complex adaptation, but it is also very lossy.

I don't think it is possible to completely understand the interplay of different types of information that we have. We can't see all the assumptions that go into the perceptions that allow us to communicate in the first place. We also can't see all the consequences of what may seem silly traditions. Things like marriage that are half encoded in our DNA and half encoded in society.

Then you get to the fact that society is it self an emergent evolving thing. All the information needed to run society cannot be encoded into one individual. I think this where the notion of sheeple comes from. We understand one corner of learned social necessity and assume everyone else who doesn't understand it is a sheep. But they are thinking the same of us as they perform their own critical function.

This is why I don't like labeling things "Fiat." It could be that things that don't make sense to us and appear dictated from on high are simply received cultural encodings that are inhabiting different minds.