Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
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Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
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I posted a few days ago revisiting the inflation versus deflation argument. I provided a very brief comment there on
Then yesterday Marc Andreessen asked on Twitter about the arguments linking computers to deflation. I am sure others have data on this but here are some of the different vectors that I see:
1. Moore’s law – this is the obvious one. We have had incredible progress in hardware that has driven down the price of computers and anything else that requires computation.
2. Automation – labor is historically an expensive input for many products. Computers have let us automate many processes and dramatically reduce the labor component thus making those products cheaper.
3. Pressure on labor – point #2 above means that the supply demand balance for labor has shifted. We now have a surplus of labor and that shows up in all the aggregate statistics, eg decline in percentage of the population that is employed, decline in real wages, decline in labor as percentage of GDP. This makes lots of products and services cheaper.
4. Sharing – we are increasing the utilization of existing assets including cars and homes which reduces the demand for new assets (and potentially also for services such as hotels) in two major parts of the economy
5. Zero price goods – many digital goods eventually clear at a zero price because of their non-rival nature - we are thus seeing more free educational resources, free entertainment, etc than ever before
6. Simulation – this may be a bit controversial but I am pretty convinced that the virtual consumption of goods is reducing the demand for real ones - if I can experience driving a crazy sports car for a few dollars at home (and in safely) why would I want to buy the real thing?
There may be more but these are the ones that come to mind right now. Taken together they provide a potent deflationary mix in the world as some of them work on increasing supply (lower cost) and others on reducing demand. I have put these factors into a little hackpad and would love for others to contribute more deflationary factors and links to statistics that support these (or go against them).
P.S. I am away this week, regular scheduled programming on Continuations will resume next week!
I posted a few days ago revisiting the inflation versus deflation argument. I provided a very brief comment there on
Then yesterday Marc Andreessen asked on Twitter about the arguments linking computers to deflation. I am sure others have data on this but here are some of the different vectors that I see:
1. Moore’s law – this is the obvious one. We have had incredible progress in hardware that has driven down the price of computers and anything else that requires computation.
2. Automation – labor is historically an expensive input for many products. Computers have let us automate many processes and dramatically reduce the labor component thus making those products cheaper.
3. Pressure on labor – point #2 above means that the supply demand balance for labor has shifted. We now have a surplus of labor and that shows up in all the aggregate statistics, eg decline in percentage of the population that is employed, decline in real wages, decline in labor as percentage of GDP. This makes lots of products and services cheaper.
4. Sharing – we are increasing the utilization of existing assets including cars and homes which reduces the demand for new assets (and potentially also for services such as hotels) in two major parts of the economy
5. Zero price goods – many digital goods eventually clear at a zero price because of their non-rival nature - we are thus seeing more free educational resources, free entertainment, etc than ever before
6. Simulation – this may be a bit controversial but I am pretty convinced that the virtual consumption of goods is reducing the demand for real ones - if I can experience driving a crazy sports car for a few dollars at home (and in safely) why would I want to buy the real thing?
There may be more but these are the ones that come to mind right now. Taken together they provide a potent deflationary mix in the world as some of them work on increasing supply (lower cost) and others on reducing demand. I have put these factors into a little hackpad and would love for others to contribute more deflationary factors and links to statistics that support these (or go against them).
P.S. I am away this week, regular scheduled programming on Continuations will resume next week!
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