It's time to have a 2020 Presidential Election thread

magnet · 2019-09-23T18:25:56.388Z

Wallapuctus:

they didn’t create anything.

Designed in Shenzhen, assembled in California!

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T19:12:26.831Z

Wallapuctus:

Capitalism leads to innovation. Central planning leads to stagnation.

Most corporations are ‘centrally’ planned, aren’t they?

Oghier · 2019-09-23T19:23:22.899Z

scottagibson:

Most corporations are ‘centrally’ planned, aren’t they?

Nope, not at all in the sense that the phrase “central economic planning” means.

legowarrior · 2019-09-23T19:54:01.712Z

Well, except maybe Apple. Which hasn’t made anything new in ages. So, I guess that fits the rules.

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T19:58:57.528Z

Oghier:

Nope, not at all in the sense that the phrase “central economic planning” means.

Yes, strictly speaking, but I’m thinking more about the fallacy that capitalism leads to innovation. Large corporations are only innovative by exception, not by rule, for largely the same reasons that governments are: because they are large and unwieldy organizations run autocratically from the top by people who are divorced from reality.

Wallapuctus · 2019-09-23T20:03:32.204Z

I feel filthy arguing in favor of capitalism I’m sorry.

Rock8man · 2019-09-23T20:13:07.348Z

Agreed that most innovation occurs not at the large corporation level, but at the small business level.

But small businesses thrive the most in the U.S. don’t they?

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T20:14:18.118Z

Rock8man:

But small businesses thrive the most in the U.S. don’t they?

Those ‘small businesses’ we’re so proud of don’t do innovation at all. They’re motels, or fast food restaurants, or garden shops. Most of them, anyway.

Timex · 2019-09-23T20:14:32.255Z

As an example of a giant corporation who produces immense mountains of innovation, you need go no further than IBM.

Feel free to check out their R&D journal.
https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/

This is basically a bunch of crazy science and technololgy which IBM’s decided they don’t want to bother patenting, but they’ve released out into the public sector so that no one else can patent it.

And it’s really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of IBM’s overall research.

en.wikipedia.org

IBM Research

IBM Research is IBM's research and development division. It is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with twelve labs on six continents. IBM employees have garnered six Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame, 19 National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and three Kavli Prizes. As of 2018, the company has generated more patents than any other business in each of 25 consecutive years, which is a record...

They’ve made computers which have beaten grandmasters at chess, and have competed on Jeopardy. IBM does crazy shit, every day.

Or Google… they do crazy shit every day, which everyone here probably uses constantly. Hell, they made a new freaking quantum computer recently, which apparently can basically do magic.

The Verge – 23 Sep 19

Google may have just ushered in an era of ‘quantum supremacy’

‘The first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor’

Google’s quantum computer was reportedly able to solve a calculation — proving the randomness of numbers produced by a random number generator — in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that would take the world’s fastest traditional supercomputer, Summit, around 10,000 years. This effectively means that the calculation cannot be performed by a traditional computer, making Google the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

CF_Kane · 2019-09-23T20:22:46.682Z

Bell Labs

Nokia Bell Labs (formerly named Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984)) is an industrial research and scientific development company owned by Finnish company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world. Bell Labs has its origins in the complex past of the Bell System. In the late 19th century, the laboratory began as the W...

Interestingly each of those companies with large R&D operations appear to have been market dominant during their periods of greatest innovation.

Rock8man · 2019-09-23T20:25:08.302Z

I was just about to say Bell Labs. Most of the advances in Astrophysics in the last 50 years came thanks to Bell Lab’s research into microwave detection.

dtolman · 2019-09-23T20:29:35.853Z

Rock8man:

Most of the advances in Astrology in the last 50 years came thanks to Bell Lab’s research into microwave detection.

Uh…

Wallapuctus · 2019-09-23T20:37:50.360Z

Timex:

Google’s quantum computer was reportedly able to solve a calculation — proving the randomness of numbers produced by a random number generator — in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that would take the world’s fastest traditional supercomputer, Summit, around 10,000 years. This effectively means that the calculation cannot be performed by a traditional computer, making Google the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

Cool I guess we can kiss secure communication goodbye! Brute force all the things.

Oghier · 2019-09-23T20:40:10.913Z

scottagibson:

Large corporations are only innovative by exception, not by rule, for largely the same reasons that governments are: because they are large and unwieldy organizations run autocratically from the top by people who are divorced from reality.

25 years of management consulting across a broad swathe of manufacturing concerns tells me you’re speaking from the heart, but without much actual knowledge of the US manufacturing landscape.

magnet · 2019-09-23T20:45:54.660Z

Timex:

They’ve made computers which have beaten grandmasters at chess

The guy primarily responsible for Deep Blue now works in … Beijing!

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T20:54:02.948Z

Oghier:

25 years of management consulting across a broad swathe of manufacturing concerns tells me you’re speaking from the heart, but without much actual knowledge of the US manufacturing landscape.

Maybe management consulting isn’t what you think it is.

Rock8man · 2019-09-23T21:05:39.076Z

Sorry to derail this derail, but I wonder if this news about Biden and the Ukraine will help or hurt him in the primaries as it continues to permeate the news on and off for the next few months?

Will democratic voters say “How dare Trump deflect his wrong doing onto Biden, Biden DOES deserve to be the nominee”, or will they say “Oh god, it’s like her emails, this is all we’re going to hear about, let’s nominate someone with less baggage”.

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T21:08:20.539Z

Rock8man:

Sorry to derail this derail, but I wonder if this news about Biden and the Ukraine will help or hurt him in the primaries as continues to permeate the news on and off for the next few months?

I think it will probably hurt him. If the media could report it properly — Trump and Giuliani have invented a lie about Biden to hurt his campaign — and if the Dems would themselves act against Trump in the House to highlight the sheer criminal nature of the whole scheme, then it would probably help Biden. But the media absolutely won’t, and the Dems probably won’t. The smear will stick.

playingwithknives · 2019-09-23T21:09:07.628Z

Timex:

Or Google… they do crazy shit every day, which everyone here probably uses constantly. Hell, they made a new freaking quantum computer recently, which apparently can basically do magic.

“We have unlimited computing power, what shall we do?”
“Lets use it to target PragerU adverts at trainee Nazis”

scottagibson · 2019-09-23T21:09:50.021Z

playingwithknives:

“We have unlimited computing power, what shall we do?”
“Lets use it to target PragerU adverts at trainee Nazis”

The perfect free market at work, that.