思考与写作gwern.net编辑精选
1990 年代以来生活质量的改善
Life Improvements Since the 1990s
2020 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章是 Gwern 对 1990 年代以来生活各方面改善的清单式梳理，涵盖技术、健康、环境、便利性等，并回应“过去更好”的怀旧叙事。它试图用具体变化说明许多进步已经融入日常、不易察觉。
为什么经久不衰：它把散落在日常中的长期改善集中呈现，同时保留可讨论的争议与反例，今天仍适合用来校准我们对进步的判断。
HN 评论精选
现代通信技术让专业设计/工程渗透到更多产品，整体产品优化被低估。
我认为他有点忽略了现代通信技术这头大象：它降低了专业服务的边际成本，使得几乎每一件在办公室设计、在工厂制造的产品都能受益于更广泛的工程与设计专业人士和方法。今天普通经济参与者接触的产品和服务，其设计和优化程度远高于历史上。
throwaway0a5e查看英文原文
I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies. The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to a far greater degree today than they were historically. Look at the bottle of Elmers glue on the table. Today the glue probably works better (barring regulation that forces compromises to product efficacy) and comes in a bottle that uses half as much plastic. Something like a bottle revision that would have formerly required expensive salaried employees to come up with multiple options, send them to the supplier, supplier has to respond to each with details and quotes, etc, can now be accomplished in a fraction of the man hours thanks to email and CAD being ubiquitous in the entire supply chain from marketing, to engineering, to the vendor's contractor who will actually design the tooling. Sign off might take days instead of weeks. This sort of efficiency improvement allows more engineering, design work, or other optimization to be done to every good and service in our economy allowing it to penetrate into even the most thin margin use cases. From farming to high finance products and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy is how lawnmowers and A/C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still make a profit. (yes I know that example isn't perfect but you get the point).
用版权到期判断公共领域扩大是误导，网络私有化和集中化更值得关注。
这让我想起黄金时代的博客文章，清单原来是被低估的文学装置。这里有些有趣可争议的点：用版权到期判断公共领域扩大可能是误导。更广义看，公共领域并未更丰富；1999年的网络小得多但更公共，今天的网络更集中、受控、私有化，内容、连接和信号都成了专有财产。版权到期只是很小可识别的一部分。
dalbasal查看英文原文
This reminds me of a golden age blog post, when lists turned out to be an understudied literary device. I'm a fan of "dumps." Some interestingly debatable ones here: "Intellectual Property Maximalism rollback: copyright terms have not and probably will not be indefinitely extended again to eternity to protect Mickey Mouse, and in 2019, for the first time since 1998, works entered the public domain" I think the easy indicator may be the wrong one here. Defined more broadly, the public domain is not being enriched. For example, the web was a lot smaller in 1999, but it was a much more public domain. Today's web and post web internet is more centralised, controlled and therefore private property. Google could crawl pages, links, forums, because they were public, and use that access to create a search engine. Content, connections and signal are, today, proprietary. You can't order the world's information if that information is facebook's, only facebook can. Or patents, more stuff of the last generation is patented than the previous'. Does that mean we invented more or we patented more? What happens to stuff that doesn't get patented? It's public. Old copyright expiry deadlines might be a symbolic lead indicator, but they're determining the location of a fence post in county scale land dispute. A tiny, legible, part of the whole. In real terms, Disney's copyright portfolio is worth more, not less.
环境改善部分是把污染外包给发展中国家，不能简单归功技术进步。
环境：大多数地方空气质量持续改善（考虑到空气污染危害证据增多，这可能是整页最重要的一项），森林面积增加，更多河流可安全钓鱼。因为几乎所有污染水和大气的工业生产都转移到第三世界，那里的人承受污染。垃圾也被运到中国、印度、印尼“回收”，实则焚烧或扔进海洋。我不认为这算技术进步带来的改善。
anticodon查看英文原文
Environment: air quality in most places has continued to improve (and considering the growing evidence on the harms of air pollution, this may well be the single most important item on this whole page), forest area has increased , and more rivers are safe to fish in Because almost all the industrial production that pollutes water and air moved to third-world countries, where people suffer from pollution. Same for thrash that is taken to China, India, Indonesia for "recycling", but is actually burned in fires or thrown into the ocean. I wouldn't consider it an improvement due to advances in technology.
客观改善不等于主观幸福，便利和数字化带来新的焦虑与代价。
一个可能引起共鸣的反驳：我感觉比1990年代更没希望。那时很多重要领域似乎正朝正确方向走；现在我严重焦虑孩子30年内会不会生活在反乌托邦。许多改善减少麻烦却增加焦虑；1995年我完全不担心身份被盗，过去10年我被盗3次，带来大量焦虑和麻烦。很多便利改善像是糟糕交易，信息和服务一键可得几乎成了负担，一切都要即时，这对我的心理是负面的。
chasingthewind查看英文原文
A counterpoint to this that may resonate with some: * I _feel_ significantly less hopeful than I did in the 1990s. Things _seemed_ to be heading in the right direction in lots of important areas then. Now I feel significant anxiety about whether my kids will live in a dystopia within the next 30 years * Many of the improvements listed reduce hassle and stress in some ways, and markedly increase stress and anxiety in other ways. I had ZERO concern about my identity being stolen in 1995. My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years and caused significant anxiety and hassle. * Many of the improvements to convenience feel like a bad trade. Having information and services a click away has begun to feel almost like a burden. Everything has to happen instantly now. This has been a negative from a psychological perspective for me. ---- I know some of this is just that I'm 25 years older and I'm trying to subtract that out. I understand that objectively this is a good time to be alive in many, many ways but I feel significantly worse than I did then. If I could return to the 1990s at my current age I would do so in a heartbeat.
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