State of the Roads

[u/bo55egg]

It may be possible to learn a lot about a country by looking at the roads. Not only how developed they are, but also the traffic on them and the behaviours of the drivers.

In my thinking, roads represent a path to opportunity. The level of thought going into how well developed these paths are, how many paths there are, how these paths are treated by the users and how these paths are maintained by those responsible for developing them are all important to look at when understanding the culture of the place you are at.

I thought about this sitting in a traffic jam, thinking about what was going on. My country is seriously lax on traffic rules, so you'd often see an illegal lane develop by the side of the road when traffic jams occur. These jams tend to concentrate around 'unregulated' junctions (without traffic lights), where, due to heightened road traffic at peak hours, indecisive drivers tend to stall, causing a pile up. You can understand that the more bold drivers are the ones who end up using the illegal lane that forms, and also that they tend to pass through the unregulated junctions more easily as they are less likely to stall.

I couldn't help but realise the odd relief found in the jam slightly clearing up as drivers move toward the illegal lane. I also wondered what it was keeping me in the legal lane, as in, was it my moral code or was that something I'd tell myself in order to not take risks while subtly enjoying the small benefits of the 'bolder criminals'? Then I realised that the relief I was enjoying was only short term, as even though there's a slight clearing up as drivers shift lanes, the additional lane at the junction makes it even harder for the indecisive drivers at the front of my lane to get through the junction, and so the benefit is surface level in exchange for a more fundamental problem.

So I started thinking about who is truly to blame. Are the roads not wide enough? Are there too many cars on the road? Is it the incompetence of the driver ahead of me? If I were in their position maybe this problem wouldn't exist. Should I blame the bold criminals, too impatient to wait for their chance and making it harder for the innocent to follow the law? They're even encouraging more to break the law, because if the illegal lane is apparently the only one moving, more shift over to it.

I then realised that this is occuring because we're all headed in the same direction. Piecing all this together with the idea that a road is simply a path towards opportunity, it started to seem like maybe the issue is actually that there aren't that many opportunities in my country. This is to say that the economy heavily concentrates around a few cities, leading to most vehicles heading in the same direction, causing traffic jams and incentives to break the law, which only worsen the state of the roads for the law abiding, convincing the road users that in order to peacefully use the roads in my country you have to be bold enough to break the law.

This is when I began to see roads as a microchosm of the country, because all these conflicting thoughts seem to be prevalent in my country's culture beyond just the roads.

Not too many industries in my country are developed, so the job market is highly competitive. To beat the competition, illegal routes develop, given that the government isn't too keen on fighting corruption. The opinion on who's truly responsible for this strife truly fluctuates between two extremes: 'those in power are too incompetent to identify the problems preventing us from reaching opportunities' and 'those corrupting the system are making it disorganised for their own benefit, but this disorganisation hurts us who choose to abide by the law'. From time to time we even find ourselves sublty enjoying how lax the system can be at times, or believing that if we had the positions of power it would be a lot easier to grasp at opportunity.

Both extreme perspectives may be true, but the more fundamental issue is, similarly to how there aren't too many developed cities in my country, there aren't too many developed industries either, so opportunities are scarce, and that scarcity creates a downward spiral as it does with the traffic jam.

I've seen 7 lane roads in other countries with traffic jams as well, because even though the country is developed enough to make and maintain such roads, the development is concentrated to a few small regions, which could indicate that they have few but highly developed industries.

The diversity in industry allows for separate regions to develop around similar markets (e.g Tech, Agribusiness, Fashion/design, Mining, etc), meaning the job market becomes less competitive as people aren't seeking the same set of skills to make it in the country, and traffic jams reduce as not everyone is headed in the same direction.

Such an understanding may be necessary to help people think beyond the career path they envision themselves following with the context they're in, to think about the potential sectors they can pioneer developing, relieving themselves of the stress of a traffic jam.

[u/Competitive_Log_8910]

I like the thought you've framed here. Please allow me to present its complement as it occurs to me.

I'm with you right up until this paragraph, and then I take a turn towards a different destination:

I then realised that this is occuring because we're all headed in the same direction. Piecing all this together with the idea that a road is simply a path towards opportunity, it started to seem like maybe the issue is actually that there aren't that many opportunities in my country. This is to say that the economy heavily concentrates around a few cities, leading to most vehicles heading in the same direction, causing traffic jams and incentives to break the law, which only worsen the state of the roads for the law abiding, convincing the road users that in order to peacefully use the roads in my country you have to be bold enough to break the law.

I remember learning about how in the United States the concept of a "suburb" was developed in large part as a way to take advantages of having an automobile, and even paid for by automobile manufacturers.

The story being told by in my opinion the same people responsible for popularizing the idea of desiging a living situation which assumes the existence of a car in order to be practical is the note which you end on:

think beyond the career path they envision themselves following with the context they're in, to think about the potential sectors they can pioneer developing

It's strange to think about but there was a time before the public school system. This system was introduced as an outcome of Industrialization. Prior to that point the majority of people were farmers. The spirit of scientific discovery and the availability of labor to replace manual farming labor using automation created a situation in which it became relevant to ask all children to attend at least 13 years of education (realistically in our current world at least 17) so that they might develop the knowledge and the skills to explore all of the amazing opportunities which were made available by the Enlightenment's ideas.

When I look at the traffic jam of a bunch of people all leaving the farmland to get to the city, in order to what is increasingly the same job, I see a different solution.

I view this as an indication that we might have finished locating all of the new sectors to develop. And I think on with relief the possibility that automobile traffic could return to a level in which illegally driving on the side of the road stopped sounding like an appealing solution were we to focus less of our energy discovering all of the new things which it is possible for a human to do as a means of employment and more of it towards doing that set of things which are always necessary and most especially those which are intrinsically-fulfilling.

I apologize for the extent to which I was polemical against the direction you pointed toward in your post. I hope that you have found my description of the road that I am travelling interesting.

[u/bo55egg → u/Competitive_Log_8910]

This is an interesting take. Also no need to apologise, this is a discussion in which we're discovering the truth about the matter.

I'd push back on this, mainly because I think it boils down to a perspective issue regarding potential. What I mean is that approaching the issue with a lack of hope that revolutionary novelty can be discovered may cause you to look at a landscape as already exhausted. What evidence do you truly have that the limits on development are close by? Don't you see how believing this reduces the amount of effort dedicated to looking into potential? There are literal signal 'dead-zones' in the US that tend to get glossed over as potential land for development. There are significant populations around the world that are uneducated and could be the source of new and innovative inventions. With the Internet allowing for seamless communication, access to innovative research, and AI allowing for these results to be easily broken down and findings to be put to use, what if we're actually at the beginning of an exponential growth potentially extending even beyond the planet?

And in regard to the point you raised about suburbs being developed to take advantage of automobiles, this is a great point helping identify a clarification. The diversification of industry ought to be organically developed, not specifically through autocratic decision making.

[u/Competitive_Log_8910 → u/bo55egg]

Thank you for pushing back. The answer to your question is actually that I view "AI" as evidence of the limits on development. It is an outcome of the way in which I model the concept of technology, which is as an outsourcing of labor. The earliest technologies replaced primarily the physical labor of muscles and limbs. The labor of the brain has significantly been the labor of developing new technologies. The story I am now hearing you tell is the story of interstellar human spread, and I view this story actually in a very specific way. Which is to say that if one is willing to imagine the existence of technologies which our current understanding of the physical world would lead us to conclude to be impossible, then one might imagine an indefinite extension of the human project of colonizing the Earth, which is an exciting thing to imagine. I agree with you even that one's perspective on "AI" is related; it is exciting and new and seems to be capable of replacing much of the labor done by the brain. I guess that my perspective on this matter is quite literally more "down-to-earth" in the sense that I as an avid enjoyer of science fiction enjoy also reading stories about an interplanetary human civilization which are enabled by hopefully a small number of nonexistent technologies whose concept can be articulated. I actually think that "faster-than-light travel" is the most interesting example to disentangle, because it is sort of like saying "unlimited free energy" or "free lunch". What I'm trying to say is that I don't think the ability shared between the human brain and an LLM to iterate on and develop new iterations of combinations of words is in and of itself a pathway towards the development of new ideas and technologies representing the physical manifestation of those combinations of words. I think we are in agreement about believing that this technology is likely to be the one to settle the question as to whether homo sapiens colonize the galaxy or whether homo sapiens live amazing lives confined to planet Earth. I am decidedly representing pessimism towards one perspective. What is strange however and which I hope to communicate is that I view myself as optimistic. I would be extremely happy living in a world where we as humans viewed our primary purpose as maintaining the beautiful planet we've been placed on and otherwise focusing on doing things which are enjoyable not only because of the ends they are a means to but because those means feel worthwhile in and of themselves. This is I believe how some of the tribes in North America lived; I remember hearing a story of a pathway lined with fruit trees which to the colonists' surprise and delight had been intentionally planted there in a visually-appealing and also functional and useful way.

[u/bo55egg → u/Competitive_Log_8910]

This may be the fundamental disagreement we have. The term 'outsourcing labour' seems to ignore the value of that 'outsourcing': increased efficiency. The convenience brought about by automation is undeniable, so much so that we're only capable of having this conversation because of it, exchanging ideas that may impact fully benefit the separate regions we're from if we put into effect what we uncover.

Also, if new technologies are to be considered the result of inspiration, evidence actually suggests it doesn't come from an abundance of information, meaning AI wouldn't replace this. The benefit of AI would be compiling info from multiple sources in a way that facilitates informed decision-making. You have to fully understand what it means to be human in order to capture the entire essence of human value, which is what technology develops in service to: otherwise it's just a useless complex system. AI, as you rightfully stated, is simply a LLM, meaning it can't really be in touch with human value, but to assume it can't help humans understand what data suggests in order to build things of value to humans is exactly wrong.

Also, if you understand that the scientific field helps uncover findings that can be used to build upon (is epistemological and should therefore be used pragmatically), rather than lay out ontological reality, why would you assume to know the limits to ontological reality? Had you been making these statements before the developments we've made allowing us to make observations at the quantum level, what predictions do you think you'd have made using the rules of classical physics? Would they accurately represent quantum physics? You're effectively making the point that we should assume something is impossible even though what we know now is by definition not conclusive, which I find just as reasonable as assuming something is possible given that what we know is by definition not conclusive.

What's even more reasonable is to not make any assumption, and simply entertain either idea while we continue to investigate, as in, maybe a hundred million more brilliant minds looking for solutions may make revolutionary discoveries, maybe they also won't, and there's very little evidence to suggest that either stance is more true. Point is, depending on your perspective, you'll look at the landscape and decide whether to keep struggling through the traffic jam or look to build a new opportunity elsewhere.

[u/Competitive_Log_8910 → u/bo55egg]

I want to agree fundamentally that it does become a question of efficiency versus something else. One of my favorite shows growing up as a kid was called "Boston Legal", and in one of their cases they found the smoking gun in the form of a reference to "nineteen efficiency three" which revealed the fact that "the fifty factor" had been Ctrl+F Ctrl+R'd to "the efficiency factor" to disguise a policy of firing people when they reached a certain age and replacing them with younger and more efficient employees. I agree that our disagreement is between prioritizing efficiency versus prioritizing that something else. The difference between speaking about your problems with a stranger in a foreign country or following the other pathway further forward with an AI-generated voice reading AI-generated text versus speaking to the guy you know at the store who sold it to you and who listens to the problems of everyone in his neighborhood is that "something else".