HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

There is a video [0] I love that explains an argument for this well. The more people you have participating and iterating in a field, and more generally in life, the better that field/life ultimately becomes. Allowing more women in the video game field will ultimately make more satisfying and novel games for you and for everyone else.

Modern video games are interactive art. People have emotional experiences from finishing games with stories and performances that speak to them. Part of this emotion comes from a deep understanding of the "lived experience" of people. There are parts of the lived experience that drastically differ for women and men, on the whole. Does that mean that men couldn't write a story that women find powerful and challenging? Of course not. But men aren't going to fully grok the little details of how society treats women, which means a lot of relevant themes relevant go unexplored if there aren't women on creative teams.

Diversity of experience translates into diversity of ideas. Hell, I always thought that was a strength for FOSS, after all.

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[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ - Kurzgesagt

I'm quite fond of the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt which has deep videos that are targeted at a "you don't need to be an expert in the subject to understand."

There's a video on this subject - Can YOU Fix Climate Change? https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc

You may also like A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place – Egoistic Altruism https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ

Fair point. In defense of my moral model, it's backed up by this idea: are things perfect? No. Is the system working? Yes, and astonishingly well. Is there a better way to get from here to there, where "there" is some improved state of prosperity and development? No. Human nature is what it is, and our systems must exploit our nature rather than combat it.

It's all based on measurable positive outcomes, rather than some theoretical idea that being eye-wateringly rich is somehow bad - morally bad, or bad for society. That idea is rooted in the old, pre-growth, pre-industrial paradigm, when all wealth was seized by force in some way. Today, some wealth is from violence, but the overwhelming majority is new money that was created out of nothing but good old human intelligence.

Here are some references backing up my idea that the system works.

Here's one focusing on the most important metric, human development: http://hdr.undp.org/en/dashboard-human-development-anthropoc...

This one is from the World Bank. You have to go into the metrics and countries. There are metrics that aren't of interest here, but some are, like access to clean cooking fuels, or electricity. But it's easy to see that most of it is pointing in the right direction. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indi...

Here's a book about all the things that ordinarily fuel existential pessimism: https://www.amazon.com/Fewer-Richer-Greener-Prosperity-Popul...

Here's a book about how innovation progresses exponentially, and what it means for the masses: https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp...

Here's that classic video by Hans Rosling giving us some perspective on the progress over the last century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Here's another video on the same thing, by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ

EDIT: here's another fun one: https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index

I think a lot of people (including me) want China to join the club of first world countries, not just economically, but also in terms of respect of human rights. How do you get there? By banning chinese products and heavily penalizing them? Or by inviting them to get their people richer and more educated?

There's actually a very interesting kurzgesagt video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ

⬐ yumraj

That's a rather native view, that unfortunately was shared by a lot of folks in the West. Ref: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-go...

⬐ philwelch

> I think a lot of people (including me) want China to join the club of first world countries, not just economically, but also in terms of respect of human rights. How do you get there?

Nobody knows because it hasn't been done. China, like Russia, is powerful enough that it will only become a free country if its rulers want to.

⬐ educationdata

"I think a lot of people (including me) want China to join the club of first world countries, not just economically, but also in terms of respect of human rights. "

-- Really? A lot? I don't think so. My experience is Chinese middle class rarely care about human rights issues. Most of them are extremely cold blood. As long as their own family is not hurt, they don't care about human rights issues at all. As long as they can get rich and stay rich, they will praise the authoritarian regime.

⬐ rchaud

> My experience is Chinese middle class rarely care about human rights issues.

Isn't this true for middle classes in most countries? Would there be any tangible benefit if the Chinese middle class made a symbolic show of supporting human rights (as is often done in the west), while their leaders continued to use their tax yuan to prop up polluting industries, bad working conditions, Uighur mass detentions?

⬐ ethbro

I'd say the 1960s Civil Rights movement in the US was primarily successful because it mobilized the middle class.

⬐ rchaud

I agree that that period was an outlier in terms of large-scale activism post-WW2. However, there was also the small matter of 50,000 dead draftees in Vietnam that propelled public anger. The US government had a vested interest in making policy changes that kept the peace, especially with the threat of an expansionist USSR on the horizon.

⬐ wbl

You are getting the dates badly wrong. Voting rights act was 1965, opposition to the war was limited until Tet Offensive.

⬐ lostlogin

I didn’t read baby’s comment as meaning a lot of Chinese people want better human rights in China, I read it as a lot of people everywhere want that.

⬐ baby

This is what I meant, thanks.

If you like this you may also like:

- "Egoistic altruism" video by Kurzgesagt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

- Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen. Presents an argument for how contributing to positive sum economic growth is one of the best things you can do for humanity in the medium-to-long-run.

> I wonder why they suddenly care?

You would think it a silly idea: educating people into certifications that overqualify them and likely lead to their exit to greener pastures. There is the other end of the pipe to consider: students leaving high school would see Walmart employment as a way to afford their education - providing an everlasting stream of new employees. In addition, Walmart relies on successful innovators to stock their shelves with compelling products. This is selfish positive sum reasoning[1], where doing good ironically results in more for you.

That's my best guess, at least.

[1]: https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ

⬐ tracker1

You overestimate the number of people willing and able to use this program compared to the paths to promotion. A lot of people will not take advantage, and will not complete their program. Most private colleges have their pricing structure set so that most people run out of various funding programs before they even graduate (generally at 2.5-3 years in).

So, if 10% of employees start, less than 1% will finish. I think there's probably more than enough room for 1% of their employees to move up. Also, great PR form.

This is amazing! I'm very excited for a future where more and more tasks can be automated, enabling humans to get higher and higher living standards with the same/fewer input resources.

In short, technology is a wonderful thing that allows very low marginal costs. This is what we need to make the future a better place, given a consistent or growing population.

"Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less." This is a perfect demonstration of that.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ

"A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place – Egoistic Altruism"

⬐ marnett

What past productivity improvements and/or economic developments have ever pointed to your fantasy being realized? How will thousands of workers in the Philippines and India losing their call center jobs result in "higher and higher living standards?"

I'm sorry but given historical context and popular capitalist intent, this future you speak of is simply fantastical. The working class would sooner be made extinct before a Jetsons-esque future of leisure for all came to fruition.

⬐ CryptoPunk

I recommend you look at the statistical evidence. The average wage in the developing world has doubled, and the global poverty rate has halved, over the last 20 years. That's all thanks to automation.

⬐ marnett

Well average wage is a poor metric. Hopefully it is median global household income that has doubled.

Taken to its logical extreme, there is no wage whatsoever if a majority of jobs are automated.

⬐ CryptoPunk

The wage growth has been widely distributed, though I don't know the median wage statistics off hand. I presume they're approximately equavalent average wage statistics.

As for jobs, most of those that existed 200 years ago no longer exist or employ a tiny fraction of people they employed at that time, yet we don't have mass unemployment. Automation has never had a broad-based negative impact on the demand for labor. Its effect has been exactly the opposite.

⬐ bitL

Alright, let's do a small breakdown:

20% of all jobs will be lost to self-driving cars

25% of all jobs will be lost to automated customer support/marketing/non-direct human interaction

10% of all jobs will be lost to automating away all middlemen

5% of all jobs will be lost to automating away rudimentary programming

Now, who is going to win here?

⬐ None

None

⬐ ansible

> I'm very excited for a future where more and more tasks can be automated, enabling humans to get higher and higher living standards.

That's been the dream for a long time in some circles. With the enormous productivity gains and ability to leverage external energy sources (fossil fuels, solar, etc.) we could have built a society of wealth and leisure for all.

Maybe we will still. The hope is that if there is enough of a productivity gain in a short enough time period (like the introduction of AGI powered robots) that this could still happen.

⬐ sp527

The technology promises "wealth and leisure for all". The capital owners promise "it'll trickle down". Technical utopianists need to start tempering their optimism with the realities of human nature and design systems accordingly.

⬐ bluGill

The living standards of the average person is much better than it was 200 years ago. 75% of the world has a cell phone.

Yes the rich have it better, but the poor also have improved in ways that the rich of 200 years ago couldn't imagine.

⬐ sp527

I don't consider the present highly problematic, though it is imperfect.

The problem is the relatively imminent (next 50-100 years) reality of nearly complete human obsolescence. That's when you'll see societal degradation at previously unthinkable levels. And no that's not Luddite fallacy. The next epoch of technological innovation is going to be unlike any that came before.

A lot of people champion UBI, while forgetting that something like 3B+ people currently live on less than $2.50 a day. That's really all the evidence you need to know that the future is going to be pretty grim. Do we think it's more likely that plutocratic systems will award sustainable UBI packages to the mass unemployed via wealth transfer (which is anathema in said systems) or that market forces will discover the absolute minimum survivable income level and create new strata in first-world societies that hover just above pure barbarism?

⬐ CryptoPunk

Average income and wealth has massively increased over the last century, so we are slowly but surely getting to that utopia. But it happens at a pace that is too slow to be experientially perceptible.

I would add however that there does appear to be some barrier limiting the ability of ordinary people to accumulate financial capital, and I attribute that to friction/fixed-costs imposed by regulations.

New services, like Robinhood, and technology, like cryptocurrency, could address this, and allow wider participation in capital markets.

⬐ anonymous_ch

The average American eats better than kings from the past 2,000 years. Wealth and prosperity is 100% relative.

⬐ ansible

I think our only realistic hope is actually various non-profit foundations and such.

When you think about it, I can download (for zero cost), a high-quality operating system and attendant applications which would have cost hundreds of dollars 20 years ago, and would have cost a fortune 40 years ago. Ditto for educational materials, entertainment, etc.

In that sense, we are quite wealthy in comparison to previous generations. If charitable organizations can leverage the automation of the future to help people, we might then see all humans across the planet lifted out of poverty.

But yeah, I don't expect corporations to do this. And it seems unlikely that most governments will either.

⬐ icantdrive55

1. And 501c3's will take care of the rest?

Nonprofits are not a magical entities. I have found most very self-serving. Self-serving the founders whims, and "pockets".

Hell even the great Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation give so little back to the womb (America) that cultured/encouraged his money making career. It's almost like the wealthy hate their family?

We saw how Bush's Thousand Points of Light went. Humans are selfish. And the lack of spirituality is just making them more so.

2. At this point, I'm just seeing so many jobs being lost to people who don't expect much (yes--there are people who don't think much about putting six people in a 10 x 12 room), and jobs lost to technology.

3. I only see two ways out, and most of you won't like it.

A. Tax the wealthy more.

During and after WW2 we were taxing Them at 90%, and they didn't complain. It takes the fear of death to lessen the drip on their wad?

B. Tie all Fees/fines to income.

We're all in this mess together.

I don't see a rosy future. I just see more homeless.

The wealthy realized they don't need their family (America). They have the world to sell, and exploit to.

I got off track, but don't see nonprofits curing our problems.

⬐ sp527

Interesting perspective. I share your pessimism about corporations and governments.

But sadly I think government is the only institution with the necessary leverage (tax base, mandate, etc) to accomplish this. Non-profits are also fairly dubious in their motives, subject to corruption, and generally highly inefficient. I'm not sure they're going to be our saviors either.

⬐ sp527

Hmm this comment is getting downvoted, so I'll just reference the Red Cross fiasco as one good example of what I mean: https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-fin....

If you haven't worked in the NGO space, you really don't understand just how bad it is.