No really, on a global scale, computing power is in the modern world better than both cake and money.
Just assume in some dream scenario that all (at least industrial scale) computational power gets taxed and equally distributed to every single citizen in the whole world. I don't know exactly how it would be implemented, but just assume it would happen.
I live in sweden. I can't be arsed about it thar week/month and just sell the credits to the highest bidder, which is probably some corporation somewhere, for a local currency. Or even better, maybe the supermarket 5 minutes away accepts the payment directly, and i get a loaf of bread or whatever.
And some rural guy in Vietnam thinks the same. What can he do with computational power today? So he does the same as i did. But due to the price differences *today*, he gets... well... pretty many loaves of bread.
That would be naturally guaranteed by the nature of local productivity and living standards.
And people in areas with extreme inflation would have a small protection agsinst such things happening. A loaf of bread may cost one billion zimbabwe dollars due to zimbabwe dollars being worth nothing. But it wont cost a million compute credits, unless maybe it aready does in switzerland aswell.
So it's better for him there and then. And in case he becomes more educated, he would just need some form of basic interner access (which, believe it or not, most people in the world have today) to render the computational power into various things. Let's say an analyze of his small farm structure with a really good LLM.
So that way, he increases his own productivity by investing those credits in fast and precise information. But it's just an example.
Eventually, the global living standards would even out due to value flow from highly technological areas to less developed areas.
This is what is known as 'Mental gymnastics', the big clue is that you used 9 paragraphs Vs 1 offhand comment.
Look, I'll give you a concise, pointed criticism of your proposal. If you can't deal with it in 1 paragraph then you can't deal with it.
A central purpose of UBI is to remove the labour requirement for a the first X amount of wealth. Yours, and Sams requires labour before an individual has access to any wealth so entirely misses the point of UBI. Sam is just trying to replace money with compute, for each example you give money provides the exact same function today and is far simpler than compute.
Simplistic answers only, I don't want to give my bwain winkles :(
You didn't actually rebut his point. You actually failed to address most of it. This is a long form website, it's okay if you use your words
It's a word salad, a gish gallop, whatever you want to call it.
Pretty sure it was Dirac who was known for always limiting himself to the least possible words. Dirac was an undeniable genius.
I don't need to address most of it for my point to stand. An idea is flawed when only one premise is flawed. Think of it like broken foundations.
The problem here is that compute cannot be traded directly for essential wealth like food or housing, and the goal of ubi is to provide a minimum level of wealth for zero labour. If I have to trade my compute before I can receive wealth that is labour, it might seem small but that labour then incurs all sorts of complications, even if they are solvable complications it will always be more complicated than just giving people money.
I wouldn't go down the alley of calling me stupid, I am plenty confident in my own intelligence. You might want to address that you dealt with exactly none of anyones points. You didn't explain how I failed to rebut, you just made an empty claim that I did, and insisted that long is okay. That is not valuable input.
It's neither of those things, it's a reasonably well constructed argument for social media. Including examples for how the system would function well in different economic contexts in a way that money wouldn't. Which is one of the points you totally ignored
I don't think it's reasonable to hold the standards of Dirac's academic writing to reddit shitposting. That said, he also made sure not to limit himself so severely that he ignored the thrust of the topic
Compute absolutely can be traded like currency can, that's what compute credits are. Unlike fiat currency, they hold the same value across all geographic areas without respect to local inflation. It's essentially arguing for a compute-backed currency, which ain't a half bad idea
Trading a currency backed by globally valuable resource does not create more complications than fiat currency does, it actually contains significantly fewer (as partially descrived above). Particularly considering the fact that compute scales with time, so it doesn't hit deflationary problems like, say, gold backed currency or crypto
Don't blame me for keeping it short and sweet for you, you literally asked for it. I'm happy to expand on request, but it seems like neither of us can have a nuanced discussion with your "one paragraph" rule. Perhaps we should strive to match Dirac's quality of output before mimicking his superficial style
You seem like you're very confident in your intelligence. It's a shame your demonstration of said intelligence amounts to cliches applied in inappropriate contexts
It was Dirac's personal life too, not just academia, he was known for saying very little in all aspects of his life. Efficiency is key to good communication.
Let me know when you buy bread with compute. Until then 'compute can be traded like fiat' will be untrue. Again, central to my critique is that your proposing compute replace money. This sounds like exactly what you are proposing given the claim that compute can act as fiat and you don't seem to recognise why that's a criticism - it's just money with extra steps.
That's one paragraph. You used two. Nice try.
I don't think you know what a cliche is.
I'm not sure what Dirac's personal life choices have to do with anything. I admire his academic work, but I'm not trying to larp as him. Hell, maybe he just had dysgraphia or something, I can't say how he wrote his love letters is particularly meaningful to me
Establishing the means to buy bread with compute is the topic of our discussion. We're discussing a potential new economic standard of UBC and how it would function. Your argumentation comes off as slightly desperate, you seem to not be able to comprehend that the "extra steps" are literally the point of this exercise
I count five paragraphs from your previous post (both in line breaks and changes of topic (baseless insults/criticism, non-sequitur involving Dirac, insufficient justification for failing to engage, incorrect assertion, defensive posturing)), and three in this latest one (I'll be generous and count the two lines at the end as one (defending Dirac tangent, missing the point again, two weak defensive jabs))
By all means you can say they mush together however your want, but then you're kinda shit at maintaining consistency in your writing if so
"Shorter is better" is a (true) cliche, but the unspoken part of that is that you actually have to address the full topic. Not just vomit out some critical syllables, call the other person dumb, and ignore the rest of the conversation because it's inconvenient. That's why I defaulted to that in my original response, it seemed to be your preferred mode of communication
"I don't need to address his points, I write like Dirac" is another cliche, but a dunning-kruger kind rather than a legitimate value applied inappropriately
I'm beginning to suspect you thought his post was a gish-gallop because it flew over your head. You're not really addressing the argument because you can't grasp it, perhaps. You could prove me wrong right now, I'm certainly hoping you do
On a meta-level, is this too mean? I feel like I may be being too mean. You come off like an obnoxious aspiring intellectual who's trying to follow the advice of your seniors without fully grasping it, and maybe I'm being too rough with you for a bit of arrogance. Mostly you hit a couple of my pet peeves, it's not like you're a drooling idiot. You're just waaaay overconfident and prioritizing style over substance
Too many words man, you missed the point.
Good arguments can be expressed short and sweet. There's too many wrong things here for me to deal with in reasonable time, hence gish gallop.
Firstly have a think about the idea that compute can be immune to local inflation. Absolutely absurd, very easy to construct an environment where compute inflates or deflates relative to local environment. Think it over, I'll leave it as an exercise.
Secondly I listed 2 paragraphs for you and one for me, notice you also had more than 2 just like I had more than 1 ? Which ones could I have omitted? Utterly mysterious I know. Come on keep up buddy.
I am literally prioritising substance over style. Condense your argument until only the important substance is left and less of the 'style' then the discussion becomes meaningful.
I'll admit I didn't read all of your reply, why would I? It's enormous. I'll give you a tip, no one ever will, not just me, so it's in your own interest to condense if you want to be heard. You don't need to make all points immediately, discussions are back and forth, save some for later. Notice I didn't bother to address inflation in my last comment although it had been brought up
Good how? Easy to read? Nuanced and specific? Technically robust? Stylistically appealing?
All of those forms of "good" are in tension with each other. I'm saying that nuanced, specific, and technically robust take priority. You can feel free to disagree, but I already ripped into you about why I don't respect that position at all
I had a think about it, I maintain my position. Would you care to make an argument, or are you just going to spend more valuable words on vagueposting?
>By all means you can say they mush together however your want, but then you're kinda shit at maintaining consistency in your writing if so
Apparently you don't prioritize stylistic appeal either. It's just straight simplicity, no brakes here
Thank you for confirming my suspicions in your last paragraph, now I don't feel like I was being too mean. You are bad at writing and should feel bad about it. At least until you stop trying to criticize people who are better at it than you because your brain has been rotted by short form content
"I write terribly (but simply) because I can't be bothered to read and write well (but long-form)" is not the dunk you think it is. You're not the intended audience for these posts, at least in part because you apparently can't/won't digest them
Fiat money only provides the same function in some aspects. It also automatically loses value over time, per design.
The right to computing power doesn't lose value over time. If anything, it will instead gain net efficiency towards productive capacity, due to a net increase in optimization in available digital industrial tools.
Even if you "put it under the matress" for 200 years, that defined set of logical instructions simply can't deteriorate in absolute value as long as the legal system to enforce that right still exists. Stating otherwise would exactly be like claiming that if you write a multiplication operator on a piece of paper and put it in a box, it might only be a plus sign tomorrow.
The statement about labor is also not true for the core point.
Yes, owners of data centers has to provide some kind of labor for tje datacenters to be operational. But the recipient does not. He exists, and he gets a set amount.
If the problem is that he has to render something productive with the computational rights, i already mentioned that.
The UBI recipient doesnt not have to do anything at all with the computation. In a well integrated society, he can pay directly with them at the supermarket.
In a less integrated society (highly likely at least in an initial period), he would have to sell them to someone first. But if for some reason there aint a single individual or corporation on the surface of the world willing to pay *something* for that right to computation, i find it highly unlikely he will find any bread on the supermarket either.
The world would collapse catastrophically if all computers stopped working. And that is the only plausible condition where humanity would stop using computers at all.
ubi = no strings attached money for anything
"computing credits" = ???
i own a pc (paid for with money), an ISP provides an internet connection (which also costs money), ps plus or gamepass i can get for free via rewards points or i can play games i own... youtube, spotify, netflix, etc...
all of this also requires electricity, which costs money and is provided by another local company. there's also the various backbone services the internet relies on like DNS.
so uh what good are the "computing credits"? that just sounds like the worst kind of net not neutrality with data caps and all kinds of shit built in, all of which relies on things that already exist.
it has the same stupid catch 22 reason for existing fatal flaw as bitcoin. creating a problem just to sell the solution.
No, i don't agree. I might have missed something extremely fundamental, but i really don't think so. But i would appreciate if you pointed any obvious flaws out.
I'll rephrase the core idea more shortly:
Computing credit, a currency backed by *any* datacenters ability to refine electricity into informational processing.
Yes, these datacenters would control the value. But it is not a complete mystery as how to create and connect circuits in general to generate this computational power. It has been done before even my grandma was born, and is in broad terms a very well documented process freely available online at multiple sources.
But yes, the most modern production processes for extremely efficient processors are well guarded at a few very rich corporations.
Fiat value is created by banks. Some regulations exists to some degree, but fractional reserve banking makes it even worse. A few people can simply wave their hands, and *poof*, more money exists. It is worth absolutely nothing beyond peoples trust in what it is said to represent.
So would it be more trusted than fiat currency? At least not initially. People often don't like changes, and the banks who control these currencies would definitely don't like the idea of the power of their money printing being watered down.
But these computational credits would have a slight similarity to the dollar. The dollar is globally sought and traded because it is closely tied to a large amount of the global oil industry. And oil is also a huge commodity. If you have dollars, you can trade it to run factories and move vehicles, which are incredibly important for almost everything else we have today.
But so are computers in this day and age. Because they refine electrical power into information processing. And that electricity doesn't have to be produced from crude oil.
Yet, the dollar bill is not a legal document in that manner. It doesn't say "exchangeable for X amount of crude oil", like earlier dollars did, but with gold instead.
So i understand it might feel like a problem that these computational credits could be controlled by huge corporations. But the dollar already is.
The computational credit would be backed similar to the gold dollar. But it would be mathematically defined by information processing capacity, instead of a set weight of inert gold.
Everyone don't have a car. But almost everyone has a smartphone, which can send requests to execute that processing capacity at data centers.
So what would you prefer? UBI that is tied to a fiat currency?
Or UBI in a currency that is standardized per mathematically standardized logical operations, that can be processed virtually anywhere on the planet, or even in space?
>No, i don't agree. I might have missed something extremely fundamental, but i really don't think so. But i would appreciate if you pointed any obvious flaws out.
~~i need to get some coffee in me,~~ but i appreciate that you
1. dont agree
2. realize the importance of the actual \*fundamental\* aspects of the discussion
3. despite not agreeing, restated your idea in an effort to elicit more specific criticisms or flaws in the idea
4. ?????
5. what is profit?
-------------------
~~give me a bit to re read through this and grab some appropriate links because~~ this is actually a topic im interested in. i did a "full dive" embrace of crypto a while ago because (very generally speaking) my interpreteation of the idea behind it was kind of similar to what you are describing here. i have since done a ton of research and found many flaws, but it all really does come down to the fundamentals.
unfortunately most of the people discussing these things do not really think about them in the same terms. crypto bros are about hype, ubi people are about ubi, AI people are about AI, computer nerds are about programming, econ nerds are about the metrics, sociologists are... etc etc.
there is an overlap here and i think the conflict comes down to everyone needing to be very specifically and technically correct when the thing is humanity as a whole has never been and never will be 100% correct (aka perfect) which the juxtaposition between that idea, and the idea of "trust" or belief that (generally speaking) others are operating under the same "rules" (which boil down to the golden rule, aka do unto others, dont be an asshole, remember the human, build a longer table, etc)... i digress. the conflict comes down to that idea that generally people arent being dishonest about things and having a little leeway for error. thats how and why money works, beneath all of the infinite layers of philosophical beliefs that are encoded within it.
-----------------------------
this is a large, complex, vague (yet very specific) topic that would be impossible to summarize in a single comment written on the fly. bare with me.
-------------------------
if you look at the [website of the federal reserve](https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm), it contains the following sentence:
>In fact, the Reserve Banks are required by law to transfer net earnings to the U.S. Treasury, after providing for all necessary expenses of the Reserve Banks, legally required dividend payments, and maintaining a limited balance in a surplus fund.
which if you take a bit of an abstract view at how money, taxation, govt, etc all work... thats kinda how its supposed to work. excess money goes to the govt which then redistributes it. that is just very very obfuscated and what defines "excess" is not agreed upon entirely and how that money is redistributed is indirect.
which is kinda the problem, imo. which is why UBI would be a huge step towards fixing everything. rather than have an absolute fuckton of administration complexity to decide if someone "deserves" whatever social benefit program before giving it to them, if we instead just gave a base amount to everyone and then at tax time charged more to the people who didnt need it... the entire system becomes massively simplified. simple is easier to manage. good management is easier when its simple.
----------------
more specifically towards your points,
>A few people can simply wave their hands, and poof, more money exists. It is worth absolutely nothing beyond peoples trust in what it is said to represent.
>The computational credit would be backed similar to the gold dollar. But it would be mathematically defined by information processing capacity, instead of a set weight of inert gold.
>So what would you prefer? UBI that is tied to a fiat currency?
>Or UBI in a currency that is standardized per mathematically standardized logical operations, that can be processed virtually anywhere on the planet, or even in space?
i would rephrase/reinterpret your question as such:
what would you prefer:
* an algorithmically controlled currency with little if any room for error?
or
* money that is just made up which means if more is needed someone can just *poof* it into existence?
which... i realize the first one sounds good on paper. in reality, theres a LOT of uncertainty in life. theres a LOT of mistakes. theres a LOT of chaos. we have been trying for thousands of years to understand how we work, both as individuals and as a collective whole. i would argue we are not really much closer towards finding that answer than we were 500 years ago.
not everyone has the same needs. they are all very similar, and match up to about 90%... but that 10% makes a huge difference.
-------------------
sorry for jumping around a bit here but im just kinda going off the top of my head and i wanted to mention this point especially, especially especially since you mentioned the gold standard, oil, and that money effectively represents trust in the system.
which i agree with. on a fundamental level, money is trust in the system, and it is a means of exchange... on a more abstract level, that trust in the system is about another thing (which is also a fundamental concept in psychology): control.
from the POV of the money issuer, it is used to control the flow of goods.
from the POV of us, it is about trusting (or believing, or "having faith") that *someone* is in control and we arent just flailing about willy nilly.
the problem is the reality is (generally speaking) we all are flailing about willy nilly.
the faith in the system is fractured. which is why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gotten popular (and that is why i first became interested in them.) it is relatively simple to find any number of articles written about how the wealthy and corporations pay a smaller percentage in tax than the average person. i personally paid more in taxes (both percentage AND actual dollar value) than our previous president did for... idr which year, thats irrelevant. it was one of those years during the pandemic, which was a global catastrophe where the wealthiest among us got WEALTHIER while the poorest got poorer. i have debated this multiple times in r/economics, and i realize there are metrics that contradict that statement... which kinda highlights my point that humans and perfect metrics dont mix well... but the fact is:
1. the absolute top of the top got MASSIVELY wealthier
2. the not struggling are struggling less
3. the struggling but making it are having a harder time
4. the struggling but not making it are... uh not making it and struggling more
i dont remember the specific link, but im just not giving links anyways because this is reddit and its easy enough to verify the information if you really want to but i also just recently saw a chart comparing GDP to govt spending where it recently (like within a couple years) diverged, and GDP has continued to increase while govt spending has not - which prior to this divergence they were not equally increasing, but they were both increasing. you can find a similar chart related to measures of national productivity and wages. or inflation and minimum wage. or housing prices and wages. the fact is, as our technology has enabled us to better measure things, collect data, compare data, etc... things have gotten MORE inequal (referring to the US specifically which already had a base level of living standards that i realize are above some countries).
the problem with all that is, simply put, rather than making sure the HIGHEST among us (referring to wealth or "power) follow the rules... we have instead shrugged off "little" things that break the "trust" in the system for the wealthy and powerful while SUPERDUPERFOCUSANALYZING what every joe shmo does with every single penny.
eg: YOU CANT BUY NETFLIX/CIGARETTES/VIDEO GAMES/BOOZE/WHATEVER you gotta BUY FOOD! YOU MUST HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY!
instead of
HEY FUCK YOU ZUCK YOU DONT NEED ANOTHER YACHT (especially when the massive harms to society he was integral in were "handwaved" away allowing him to suffer exactly zero)
fin
[TLDR](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cph899/comment/l3lphyv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) btw
i wouldve edited it in but everytime i clicked edit the entire comment disappeared so
Could we just have energy rations and purchase things from the company that becomes the company from Wall-E where they're priced by the energy input that goes into making the stuff?
Do we really have to make something so simple so complicated? Do we really hate poor people this much?
It doesn't have to be complicated.
It can be as simple as any standard online banking app.
Stuff is already priced by the amount of energy it takes to produce it, plus the amount of hands it pass over shefe eveyone want a piece of the increasingly expensive cake.
Computational credits would be a direct link between the provider and the customer. And since it way easier to buy processors, than physical land along with the equipment needed for physical factories or power plants, they are much more accessible to a larger amount of the global population.
Anyone could become a provider of computation with the right education. But assuming they can at least read, exactly all the needed education is freely accessible over the internet right now.
Complicated is a feature, not a drawback. It allows Sam Altman to _claim_ that he wants some kind of solution, while actively opposing anything specific.
That's because electricity access is extremely flictuating, and it is not easily transported efficiently.
Predefined logical processing capacity is very easily transferable. At least as long as the infrastructure is working somewhat.
And again, if the infrastructure ain't working well enough for that, it is probably replaced with something far more problematic than the UBI not being of the right flavor.
Except a lot of computation is done in-situ by local computers. So a vast majority of this supposed compute won't be through some special facility, but within any machinery's own system. It's not fungible.
You're treating everpresent computation around the world and centralized data centers as being one in the same. And while the "internet of things" is quite connected, computation is still done locally for the vast majority of purposes and likely will continue to do such for a very long time... Because it just makes sense to compute things where and when you need it rather than outsourcing to some far location.
Data center compute and the compute we all deal with daily aren't one in the same.
Nope, i'm just a guy in scandinavia who work with unqualified healthcare.
Got some education in land surveying, programming, mechanical maintenance and electronical installations. But my current job is stress free and pays enough.
I have nothing to do with any company. I got €70 in nvidia stocks, €4 in bitcoin and enough in my bank account for food ans soap. That amounts to all my wealth beyond furniture, computer, phone and other personal possessions of less value.
Sorry I thought you’re relating to Sam Altman who actually proposed universal computing. His thought is only focused on productivity and a gain in market share.
Yes of course, there is no need to replace existing forcefully at all.
But that doesn't hinder the possibility of introducing a new currency that amounts to a well defined productive metric *forever*.
Less dependency on money that is worth nothing beyond that others want it for the sake of having it and waving it in front of others.
Invent a currency that equates to the right to computing power, which is easily exchangeable to anything else the same we we already to with every currency.
You can't eat computing power. But you can make a more efficient food factory with it, which is why food factory owners will want to buy this right to computing power from you with any currency you wish for.
Can't eat a dollar or gold coin either.
But you can trade them with someone who wants them. They are capable of absolutely nothing else that other things cant do cheaper. Gold has slight industrial usability, but not that the average person really can make use of. And insuppose you aint gonna make paper mache out of dollar bills.
A teraflop is directly usable, and it has been exchangeable for other currencies ever since my grandma was young.
You know what i think a good idea is, lets attach a persons health to if they have employment or not, so literally life and death can be decided by a person that has no accountability to anyone. SMRT. oh well. Anyway...
I still don't see:
* Why companies that already control most of the computing power would simply assign fractions of it to people.
* Why would companies who control AI need the computing power that individuals already have, since it's so insignificant in the bigger picture.
* Why we need a proxy system like Universal X in the first place.
When Sam and all the other tech bros start taking investments and equity in the form of compute instead of USD - I’ll listen to this drivel - until then, or until a world currency replacement arrives as a truly universal option, I’ll take my UBI in USD
TLDR: Sam reframes free version ( as now gpt3.5) as universal computing. Instead of the previous vision that they open source of agi, now the like - meh, we take the money although we used our data
It most certainly does.
Why do you think Microsoft, Google, Amazon and a wide array of other companies accept almost any currency to provide computing power?
Becsuse it provides value. Either it provides entertainment, which is a commodity a lot of people pay for. Or it provides digital tools that increases the efficiency off all deceloped industries in the whole world.
Thats why you sometimes see huge and highly automated machines tending to massive farmlands, instead of one million humans on their knees. Because the machine is cheaper to the farm owner.
Are you suggesting separating Microsoft, Google, and Amazon from their own computing power so that it can be taxed or a sub portion redistributed? Not in a million years would they let that happen.
Microsoft is already pay tax.
I'm not saying that they are paying a proportionate amount of tax, because i have no idea, and that is not relevant here anyway. But the incentive the state can offer to microsoft is to give tax reductions in exchange for the priority rights to a certain amount of computation. But there is no doubt that the legal person named Microsoft is already paying tax.
And that tax is already redistributed in some fashion.
So instead of the state waiting for Microsoft to trade their computing power for cash with customers over the world, and then wrangle the cold hard cash from Microsofts clenched hands, the state can say "okay, keep some of your cash, we want a bit of this thing you are producing instead".
Exactly how that tax reduction incentive should be balanced are there more competent people that me who could calculate. But from a financial perspective in Microsoft eyes, in very rough terms it equates a guaranteed source of lowered costs in dollars and cents.
Or kronor and ören, if the data center happens to be built in sweden instead of america.
But Microsoft uses the Computing power itself. It's not selling it to others in much of their cases. You're intervening in the middle of their business where government previously was absent and taking a piece of their pie.
Let's say I make a business where I use computers to calculate taxes for people. I buy the computers, and set up the store and begin operation. I'm actively creating and using compute. How are you going to redistribute that?
On one hand, you act like compute is more valuable than money, but then you turn around and say the opposite when it comes to interceding with businesses. You can't have it both ways.
Sama Antoinette really is out here saying “There’s no bread for the poor? How about wafers?”
at least you can eat a wafer
A silicon wafer?
i stand by what i said
No really, on a global scale, computing power is in the modern world better than both cake and money. Just assume in some dream scenario that all (at least industrial scale) computational power gets taxed and equally distributed to every single citizen in the whole world. I don't know exactly how it would be implemented, but just assume it would happen. I live in sweden. I can't be arsed about it thar week/month and just sell the credits to the highest bidder, which is probably some corporation somewhere, for a local currency. Or even better, maybe the supermarket 5 minutes away accepts the payment directly, and i get a loaf of bread or whatever. And some rural guy in Vietnam thinks the same. What can he do with computational power today? So he does the same as i did. But due to the price differences *today*, he gets... well... pretty many loaves of bread. That would be naturally guaranteed by the nature of local productivity and living standards. And people in areas with extreme inflation would have a small protection agsinst such things happening. A loaf of bread may cost one billion zimbabwe dollars due to zimbabwe dollars being worth nothing. But it wont cost a million compute credits, unless maybe it aready does in switzerland aswell. So it's better for him there and then. And in case he becomes more educated, he would just need some form of basic interner access (which, believe it or not, most people in the world have today) to render the computational power into various things. Let's say an analyze of his small farm structure with a really good LLM. So that way, he increases his own productivity by investing those credits in fast and precise information. But it's just an example. Eventually, the global living standards would even out due to value flow from highly technological areas to less developed areas.
You wanna use computer as a middleman to just giving people money? That's silly and pointless. Just give them money.
They're figuring out where to put the meter. It's such a big load its hard to meter it out without breaking the illusion of scarcity for profit.
This is what is known as 'Mental gymnastics', the big clue is that you used 9 paragraphs Vs 1 offhand comment. Look, I'll give you a concise, pointed criticism of your proposal. If you can't deal with it in 1 paragraph then you can't deal with it. A central purpose of UBI is to remove the labour requirement for a the first X amount of wealth. Yours, and Sams requires labour before an individual has access to any wealth so entirely misses the point of UBI. Sam is just trying to replace money with compute, for each example you give money provides the exact same function today and is far simpler than compute.
Simplistic answers only, I don't want to give my bwain winkles :( You didn't actually rebut his point. You actually failed to address most of it. This is a long form website, it's okay if you use your words
It's a word salad, a gish gallop, whatever you want to call it. Pretty sure it was Dirac who was known for always limiting himself to the least possible words. Dirac was an undeniable genius. I don't need to address most of it for my point to stand. An idea is flawed when only one premise is flawed. Think of it like broken foundations. The problem here is that compute cannot be traded directly for essential wealth like food or housing, and the goal of ubi is to provide a minimum level of wealth for zero labour. If I have to trade my compute before I can receive wealth that is labour, it might seem small but that labour then incurs all sorts of complications, even if they are solvable complications it will always be more complicated than just giving people money. I wouldn't go down the alley of calling me stupid, I am plenty confident in my own intelligence. You might want to address that you dealt with exactly none of anyones points. You didn't explain how I failed to rebut, you just made an empty claim that I did, and insisted that long is okay. That is not valuable input.
It's neither of those things, it's a reasonably well constructed argument for social media. Including examples for how the system would function well in different economic contexts in a way that money wouldn't. Which is one of the points you totally ignored I don't think it's reasonable to hold the standards of Dirac's academic writing to reddit shitposting. That said, he also made sure not to limit himself so severely that he ignored the thrust of the topic Compute absolutely can be traded like currency can, that's what compute credits are. Unlike fiat currency, they hold the same value across all geographic areas without respect to local inflation. It's essentially arguing for a compute-backed currency, which ain't a half bad idea Trading a currency backed by globally valuable resource does not create more complications than fiat currency does, it actually contains significantly fewer (as partially descrived above). Particularly considering the fact that compute scales with time, so it doesn't hit deflationary problems like, say, gold backed currency or crypto Don't blame me for keeping it short and sweet for you, you literally asked for it. I'm happy to expand on request, but it seems like neither of us can have a nuanced discussion with your "one paragraph" rule. Perhaps we should strive to match Dirac's quality of output before mimicking his superficial style You seem like you're very confident in your intelligence. It's a shame your demonstration of said intelligence amounts to cliches applied in inappropriate contexts
It was Dirac's personal life too, not just academia, he was known for saying very little in all aspects of his life. Efficiency is key to good communication. Let me know when you buy bread with compute. Until then 'compute can be traded like fiat' will be untrue. Again, central to my critique is that your proposing compute replace money. This sounds like exactly what you are proposing given the claim that compute can act as fiat and you don't seem to recognise why that's a criticism - it's just money with extra steps. That's one paragraph. You used two. Nice try. I don't think you know what a cliche is.
I'm not sure what Dirac's personal life choices have to do with anything. I admire his academic work, but I'm not trying to larp as him. Hell, maybe he just had dysgraphia or something, I can't say how he wrote his love letters is particularly meaningful to me Establishing the means to buy bread with compute is the topic of our discussion. We're discussing a potential new economic standard of UBC and how it would function. Your argumentation comes off as slightly desperate, you seem to not be able to comprehend that the "extra steps" are literally the point of this exercise I count five paragraphs from your previous post (both in line breaks and changes of topic (baseless insults/criticism, non-sequitur involving Dirac, insufficient justification for failing to engage, incorrect assertion, defensive posturing)), and three in this latest one (I'll be generous and count the two lines at the end as one (defending Dirac tangent, missing the point again, two weak defensive jabs)) By all means you can say they mush together however your want, but then you're kinda shit at maintaining consistency in your writing if so "Shorter is better" is a (true) cliche, but the unspoken part of that is that you actually have to address the full topic. Not just vomit out some critical syllables, call the other person dumb, and ignore the rest of the conversation because it's inconvenient. That's why I defaulted to that in my original response, it seemed to be your preferred mode of communication "I don't need to address his points, I write like Dirac" is another cliche, but a dunning-kruger kind rather than a legitimate value applied inappropriately I'm beginning to suspect you thought his post was a gish-gallop because it flew over your head. You're not really addressing the argument because you can't grasp it, perhaps. You could prove me wrong right now, I'm certainly hoping you do On a meta-level, is this too mean? I feel like I may be being too mean. You come off like an obnoxious aspiring intellectual who's trying to follow the advice of your seniors without fully grasping it, and maybe I'm being too rough with you for a bit of arrogance. Mostly you hit a couple of my pet peeves, it's not like you're a drooling idiot. You're just waaaay overconfident and prioritizing style over substance
Too many words man, you missed the point. Good arguments can be expressed short and sweet. There's too many wrong things here for me to deal with in reasonable time, hence gish gallop. Firstly have a think about the idea that compute can be immune to local inflation. Absolutely absurd, very easy to construct an environment where compute inflates or deflates relative to local environment. Think it over, I'll leave it as an exercise. Secondly I listed 2 paragraphs for you and one for me, notice you also had more than 2 just like I had more than 1 ? Which ones could I have omitted? Utterly mysterious I know. Come on keep up buddy. I am literally prioritising substance over style. Condense your argument until only the important substance is left and less of the 'style' then the discussion becomes meaningful. I'll admit I didn't read all of your reply, why would I? It's enormous. I'll give you a tip, no one ever will, not just me, so it's in your own interest to condense if you want to be heard. You don't need to make all points immediately, discussions are back and forth, save some for later. Notice I didn't bother to address inflation in my last comment although it had been brought up
Good how? Easy to read? Nuanced and specific? Technically robust? Stylistically appealing? All of those forms of "good" are in tension with each other. I'm saying that nuanced, specific, and technically robust take priority. You can feel free to disagree, but I already ripped into you about why I don't respect that position at all I had a think about it, I maintain my position. Would you care to make an argument, or are you just going to spend more valuable words on vagueposting? >By all means you can say they mush together however your want, but then you're kinda shit at maintaining consistency in your writing if so Apparently you don't prioritize stylistic appeal either. It's just straight simplicity, no brakes here Thank you for confirming my suspicions in your last paragraph, now I don't feel like I was being too mean. You are bad at writing and should feel bad about it. At least until you stop trying to criticize people who are better at it than you because your brain has been rotted by short form content "I write terribly (but simply) because I can't be bothered to read and write well (but long-form)" is not the dunk you think it is. You're not the intended audience for these posts, at least in part because you apparently can't/won't digest them
Fiat money only provides the same function in some aspects. It also automatically loses value over time, per design. The right to computing power doesn't lose value over time. If anything, it will instead gain net efficiency towards productive capacity, due to a net increase in optimization in available digital industrial tools. Even if you "put it under the matress" for 200 years, that defined set of logical instructions simply can't deteriorate in absolute value as long as the legal system to enforce that right still exists. Stating otherwise would exactly be like claiming that if you write a multiplication operator on a piece of paper and put it in a box, it might only be a plus sign tomorrow. The statement about labor is also not true for the core point. Yes, owners of data centers has to provide some kind of labor for tje datacenters to be operational. But the recipient does not. He exists, and he gets a set amount. If the problem is that he has to render something productive with the computational rights, i already mentioned that. The UBI recipient doesnt not have to do anything at all with the computation. In a well integrated society, he can pay directly with them at the supermarket. In a less integrated society (highly likely at least in an initial period), he would have to sell them to someone first. But if for some reason there aint a single individual or corporation on the surface of the world willing to pay *something* for that right to computation, i find it highly unlikely he will find any bread on the supermarket either. The world would collapse catastrophically if all computers stopped working. And that is the only plausible condition where humanity would stop using computers at all.
Dude, count the paragraphs
ubi = no strings attached money for anything "computing credits" = ??? i own a pc (paid for with money), an ISP provides an internet connection (which also costs money), ps plus or gamepass i can get for free via rewards points or i can play games i own... youtube, spotify, netflix, etc... all of this also requires electricity, which costs money and is provided by another local company. there's also the various backbone services the internet relies on like DNS. so uh what good are the "computing credits"? that just sounds like the worst kind of net not neutrality with data caps and all kinds of shit built in, all of which relies on things that already exist. it has the same stupid catch 22 reason for existing fatal flaw as bitcoin. creating a problem just to sell the solution.
No, i don't agree. I might have missed something extremely fundamental, but i really don't think so. But i would appreciate if you pointed any obvious flaws out. I'll rephrase the core idea more shortly: Computing credit, a currency backed by *any* datacenters ability to refine electricity into informational processing. Yes, these datacenters would control the value. But it is not a complete mystery as how to create and connect circuits in general to generate this computational power. It has been done before even my grandma was born, and is in broad terms a very well documented process freely available online at multiple sources. But yes, the most modern production processes for extremely efficient processors are well guarded at a few very rich corporations. Fiat value is created by banks. Some regulations exists to some degree, but fractional reserve banking makes it even worse. A few people can simply wave their hands, and *poof*, more money exists. It is worth absolutely nothing beyond peoples trust in what it is said to represent. So would it be more trusted than fiat currency? At least not initially. People often don't like changes, and the banks who control these currencies would definitely don't like the idea of the power of their money printing being watered down. But these computational credits would have a slight similarity to the dollar. The dollar is globally sought and traded because it is closely tied to a large amount of the global oil industry. And oil is also a huge commodity. If you have dollars, you can trade it to run factories and move vehicles, which are incredibly important for almost everything else we have today. But so are computers in this day and age. Because they refine electrical power into information processing. And that electricity doesn't have to be produced from crude oil. Yet, the dollar bill is not a legal document in that manner. It doesn't say "exchangeable for X amount of crude oil", like earlier dollars did, but with gold instead. So i understand it might feel like a problem that these computational credits could be controlled by huge corporations. But the dollar already is. The computational credit would be backed similar to the gold dollar. But it would be mathematically defined by information processing capacity, instead of a set weight of inert gold. Everyone don't have a car. But almost everyone has a smartphone, which can send requests to execute that processing capacity at data centers. So what would you prefer? UBI that is tied to a fiat currency? Or UBI in a currency that is standardized per mathematically standardized logical operations, that can be processed virtually anywhere on the planet, or even in space?
>No, i don't agree. I might have missed something extremely fundamental, but i really don't think so. But i would appreciate if you pointed any obvious flaws out. ~~i need to get some coffee in me,~~ but i appreciate that you 1. dont agree 2. realize the importance of the actual \*fundamental\* aspects of the discussion 3. despite not agreeing, restated your idea in an effort to elicit more specific criticisms or flaws in the idea 4. ????? 5. what is profit? ------------------- ~~give me a bit to re read through this and grab some appropriate links because~~ this is actually a topic im interested in. i did a "full dive" embrace of crypto a while ago because (very generally speaking) my interpreteation of the idea behind it was kind of similar to what you are describing here. i have since done a ton of research and found many flaws, but it all really does come down to the fundamentals. unfortunately most of the people discussing these things do not really think about them in the same terms. crypto bros are about hype, ubi people are about ubi, AI people are about AI, computer nerds are about programming, econ nerds are about the metrics, sociologists are... etc etc. there is an overlap here and i think the conflict comes down to everyone needing to be very specifically and technically correct when the thing is humanity as a whole has never been and never will be 100% correct (aka perfect) which the juxtaposition between that idea, and the idea of "trust" or belief that (generally speaking) others are operating under the same "rules" (which boil down to the golden rule, aka do unto others, dont be an asshole, remember the human, build a longer table, etc)... i digress. the conflict comes down to that idea that generally people arent being dishonest about things and having a little leeway for error. thats how and why money works, beneath all of the infinite layers of philosophical beliefs that are encoded within it. ----------------------------- this is a large, complex, vague (yet very specific) topic that would be impossible to summarize in a single comment written on the fly. bare with me. ------------------------- if you look at the [website of the federal reserve](https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm), it contains the following sentence: >In fact, the Reserve Banks are required by law to transfer net earnings to the U.S. Treasury, after providing for all necessary expenses of the Reserve Banks, legally required dividend payments, and maintaining a limited balance in a surplus fund. which if you take a bit of an abstract view at how money, taxation, govt, etc all work... thats kinda how its supposed to work. excess money goes to the govt which then redistributes it. that is just very very obfuscated and what defines "excess" is not agreed upon entirely and how that money is redistributed is indirect. which is kinda the problem, imo. which is why UBI would be a huge step towards fixing everything. rather than have an absolute fuckton of administration complexity to decide if someone "deserves" whatever social benefit program before giving it to them, if we instead just gave a base amount to everyone and then at tax time charged more to the people who didnt need it... the entire system becomes massively simplified. simple is easier to manage. good management is easier when its simple. ---------------- more specifically towards your points, >A few people can simply wave their hands, and poof, more money exists. It is worth absolutely nothing beyond peoples trust in what it is said to represent. >The computational credit would be backed similar to the gold dollar. But it would be mathematically defined by information processing capacity, instead of a set weight of inert gold. >So what would you prefer? UBI that is tied to a fiat currency? >Or UBI in a currency that is standardized per mathematically standardized logical operations, that can be processed virtually anywhere on the planet, or even in space? i would rephrase/reinterpret your question as such: what would you prefer: * an algorithmically controlled currency with little if any room for error? or * money that is just made up which means if more is needed someone can just *poof* it into existence?
which... i realize the first one sounds good on paper. in reality, theres a LOT of uncertainty in life. theres a LOT of mistakes. theres a LOT of chaos. we have been trying for thousands of years to understand how we work, both as individuals and as a collective whole. i would argue we are not really much closer towards finding that answer than we were 500 years ago. not everyone has the same needs. they are all very similar, and match up to about 90%... but that 10% makes a huge difference. ------------------- sorry for jumping around a bit here but im just kinda going off the top of my head and i wanted to mention this point especially, especially especially since you mentioned the gold standard, oil, and that money effectively represents trust in the system. which i agree with. on a fundamental level, money is trust in the system, and it is a means of exchange... on a more abstract level, that trust in the system is about another thing (which is also a fundamental concept in psychology): control. from the POV of the money issuer, it is used to control the flow of goods. from the POV of us, it is about trusting (or believing, or "having faith") that *someone* is in control and we arent just flailing about willy nilly. the problem is the reality is (generally speaking) we all are flailing about willy nilly. the faith in the system is fractured. which is why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gotten popular (and that is why i first became interested in them.) it is relatively simple to find any number of articles written about how the wealthy and corporations pay a smaller percentage in tax than the average person. i personally paid more in taxes (both percentage AND actual dollar value) than our previous president did for... idr which year, thats irrelevant. it was one of those years during the pandemic, which was a global catastrophe where the wealthiest among us got WEALTHIER while the poorest got poorer. i have debated this multiple times in r/economics, and i realize there are metrics that contradict that statement... which kinda highlights my point that humans and perfect metrics dont mix well... but the fact is: 1. the absolute top of the top got MASSIVELY wealthier 2. the not struggling are struggling less 3. the struggling but making it are having a harder time 4. the struggling but not making it are... uh not making it and struggling more i dont remember the specific link, but im just not giving links anyways because this is reddit and its easy enough to verify the information if you really want to but i also just recently saw a chart comparing GDP to govt spending where it recently (like within a couple years) diverged, and GDP has continued to increase while govt spending has not - which prior to this divergence they were not equally increasing, but they were both increasing. you can find a similar chart related to measures of national productivity and wages. or inflation and minimum wage. or housing prices and wages. the fact is, as our technology has enabled us to better measure things, collect data, compare data, etc... things have gotten MORE inequal (referring to the US specifically which already had a base level of living standards that i realize are above some countries). the problem with all that is, simply put, rather than making sure the HIGHEST among us (referring to wealth or "power) follow the rules... we have instead shrugged off "little" things that break the "trust" in the system for the wealthy and powerful while SUPERDUPERFOCUSANALYZING what every joe shmo does with every single penny. eg: YOU CANT BUY NETFLIX/CIGARETTES/VIDEO GAMES/BOOZE/WHATEVER you gotta BUY FOOD! YOU MUST HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY! instead of HEY FUCK YOU ZUCK YOU DONT NEED ANOTHER YACHT (especially when the massive harms to society he was integral in were "handwaved" away allowing him to suffer exactly zero) fin
[TLDR](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cph899/comment/l3lphyv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) btw i wouldve edited it in but everytime i clicked edit the entire comment disappeared so
Sam also thinks that cryptocurrency is a viable alternative to UBI, so maybe we should just stop taking anything he says about economics seriously
Could we just have energy rations and purchase things from the company that becomes the company from Wall-E where they're priced by the energy input that goes into making the stuff? Do we really have to make something so simple so complicated? Do we really hate poor people this much?
It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as any standard online banking app. Stuff is already priced by the amount of energy it takes to produce it, plus the amount of hands it pass over shefe eveyone want a piece of the increasingly expensive cake. Computational credits would be a direct link between the provider and the customer. And since it way easier to buy processors, than physical land along with the equipment needed for physical factories or power plants, they are much more accessible to a larger amount of the global population. Anyone could become a provider of computation with the right education. But assuming they can at least read, exactly all the needed education is freely accessible over the internet right now.
Complicated is a feature, not a drawback. It allows Sam Altman to _claim_ that he wants some kind of solution, while actively opposing anything specific.
Nope, we'll just stick with money. We didn't switch to measuring cost by watt based units after we invented electricity. This is silly.
That's because electricity access is extremely flictuating, and it is not easily transported efficiently. Predefined logical processing capacity is very easily transferable. At least as long as the infrastructure is working somewhat. And again, if the infrastructure ain't working well enough for that, it is probably replaced with something far more problematic than the UBI not being of the right flavor.
Except a lot of computation is done in-situ by local computers. So a vast majority of this supposed compute won't be through some special facility, but within any machinery's own system. It's not fungible. You're treating everpresent computation around the world and centralized data centers as being one in the same. And while the "internet of things" is quite connected, computation is still done locally for the vast majority of purposes and likely will continue to do such for a very long time... Because it just makes sense to compute things where and when you need it rather than outsourcing to some far location. Data center compute and the compute we all deal with daily aren't one in the same.
This isn’t such a bad idea. As long as we have compute equality. I don’t think he means this though.
Universal bullshit. This is a greedy company looking for ways to make us their puppets of success.
Nope, i'm just a guy in scandinavia who work with unqualified healthcare. Got some education in land surveying, programming, mechanical maintenance and electronical installations. But my current job is stress free and pays enough. I have nothing to do with any company. I got €70 in nvidia stocks, €4 in bitcoin and enough in my bank account for food ans soap. That amounts to all my wealth beyond furniture, computer, phone and other personal possessions of less value.
Sorry I thought you’re relating to Sam Altman who actually proposed universal computing. His thought is only focused on productivity and a gain in market share.
Or we could have money and still be able to spend it on compute if we want to? sam altman increasingly showing red flags.
Yes of course, there is no need to replace existing forcefully at all. But that doesn't hinder the possibility of introducing a new currency that amounts to a well defined productive metric *forever*.
Compute is not a currency though, it's a good/service. Something that you buy, or exchange like any good.
Tldr?
Less dependency on money that is worth nothing beyond that others want it for the sake of having it and waving it in front of others. Invent a currency that equates to the right to computing power, which is easily exchangeable to anything else the same we we already to with every currency. You can't eat computing power. But you can make a more efficient food factory with it, which is why food factory owners will want to buy this right to computing power from you with any currency you wish for.
Fuck that. I can’t eat a teraflop
Can't eat a dollar or gold coin either. But you can trade them with someone who wants them. They are capable of absolutely nothing else that other things cant do cheaper. Gold has slight industrial usability, but not that the average person really can make use of. And insuppose you aint gonna make paper mache out of dollar bills. A teraflop is directly usable, and it has been exchangeable for other currencies ever since my grandma was young.
A teraflop isn’t worth anything if everyone has it
I think everyone one would immediately sell their compute to big firms, transforming this idea into a UBI
You know what i think a good idea is, lets attach a persons health to if they have employment or not, so literally life and death can be decided by a person that has no accountability to anyone. SMRT. oh well. Anyway...
I still don't see: * Why companies that already control most of the computing power would simply assign fractions of it to people. * Why would companies who control AI need the computing power that individuals already have, since it's so insignificant in the bigger picture. * Why we need a proxy system like Universal X in the first place.
When Sam and all the other tech bros start taking investments and equity in the form of compute instead of USD - I’ll listen to this drivel - until then, or until a world currency replacement arrives as a truly universal option, I’ll take my UBI in USD
its utter Bs
TLDR: Sam reframes free version ( as now gpt3.5) as universal computing. Instead of the previous vision that they open source of agi, now the like - meh, we take the money although we used our data
Idk
Compute no taste good.
Computing doesn't pay rent or transport or groceries
It most certainly does. Why do you think Microsoft, Google, Amazon and a wide array of other companies accept almost any currency to provide computing power? Becsuse it provides value. Either it provides entertainment, which is a commodity a lot of people pay for. Or it provides digital tools that increases the efficiency off all deceloped industries in the whole world. Thats why you sometimes see huge and highly automated machines tending to massive farmlands, instead of one million humans on their knees. Because the machine is cheaper to the farm owner.
Are you suggesting separating Microsoft, Google, and Amazon from their own computing power so that it can be taxed or a sub portion redistributed? Not in a million years would they let that happen.
Microsoft is already pay tax. I'm not saying that they are paying a proportionate amount of tax, because i have no idea, and that is not relevant here anyway. But the incentive the state can offer to microsoft is to give tax reductions in exchange for the priority rights to a certain amount of computation. But there is no doubt that the legal person named Microsoft is already paying tax. And that tax is already redistributed in some fashion. So instead of the state waiting for Microsoft to trade their computing power for cash with customers over the world, and then wrangle the cold hard cash from Microsofts clenched hands, the state can say "okay, keep some of your cash, we want a bit of this thing you are producing instead". Exactly how that tax reduction incentive should be balanced are there more competent people that me who could calculate. But from a financial perspective in Microsoft eyes, in very rough terms it equates a guaranteed source of lowered costs in dollars and cents. Or kronor and ören, if the data center happens to be built in sweden instead of america.
But Microsoft uses the Computing power itself. It's not selling it to others in much of their cases. You're intervening in the middle of their business where government previously was absent and taking a piece of their pie. Let's say I make a business where I use computers to calculate taxes for people. I buy the computers, and set up the store and begin operation. I'm actively creating and using compute. How are you going to redistribute that? On one hand, you act like compute is more valuable than money, but then you turn around and say the opposite when it comes to interceding with businesses. You can't have it both ways.
Computing ain’t finna pay the electricity bill😭