Cory Doctrorow is a smart guy, but his articles are an exercise in gish-gallup of cherry-picked examples to build anarrative for his preconceived conclusions.
Here’s one example:
The “productivity paradox” shows a rapid, persistent decline in American worker productivity, starting in the 1970s and continuing to this day:
His own source shows that this statement is flat out wrong. A decrease in productivity growth is not a decrease in productivity. Just as a decrease in your speed of movement doesn’t mean you’re farther away from your destination.
There have been tremendous gains in productivity from the 1970s till today, but people responsible for production have not seen an equivalent gain in compensation.
The AI bubble is deflating. But that doesn’t mean AI is useless. It just means it’s been oversold. Investors on average will not see the returns they hoped for, but they’re unlikely to see losses on their investments.
Reminds me of Steven Pinker’s essay on Malcolm Gladwell:
In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.
Thank you for your insight
