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Don’t look too closely or you might realize that your value system is not universal, and that it is an artificial construct and depends on all sorts of other artificial constructs such as a market system.

You can’t seriously believe that you can outperform 100,000 people, but that wasn’t my point. He has teams of people using among other things HPC to perform calculations that are both conceptually and computationally beyond an individual’s reach.

Just because you haven’t witnessed it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and doesn’t easily 100x your own value.

Bill Gates can have other billionaires over to his house. That is not true for your house. That in itself is worth many multiples of your functional viewpoint.



Oh goodness. I didn’t say that I could outperform 100,000 people. I said there are tasks where 100,000 people can’t make 100,000 times the result. Maybe an example would help?

When Bill Gates wants to have pizza for dinner, 100,000 people can’t deliver it in a fraction of a second. HA! Now, having typed that, I’m thinking of Bill Gates having… let’s say 1,000 chefs, who each night cook 1,000 meals, all so that there is a high probability that whatever he asks for will be ready the moment he asks for it.

To your point, of course there are tasks where 100k people can make a difference. But again, I didn’t say that wasn’t true.

I’m not sure why you think I can’t have billionaires over to my house? I’m pretty sure Warren Buffett has had Bill Gates over to his house, and Warren Buffett’s house is (comparatively) extremely modest.

Finally, of course I understand that my value system is unique. So is everyone’s. How does that change the fact that for the vast majority of people, if you ask them how well their smart phone works for them, they will not reply, “Well, my phone is okay I guess, but have you seen Bill Gates’s phone? That thing is amazing!”


Your specific point you seem to be hanging onto is why do the billionaires not have phones whose technology absolutely crushes your personal phone? I don’t understand why the question is interesting, but here is why they don’t:

What would they do with it that other people cannot do for them, faster and more cost effectively?

The limitation on personal productivity is not the pocket computer, it is access to computing resources. Right now the closest thing we have to a competent human, which can be easily had for $50k/year or $2M/working life, costs around 500 times that, lasts 1/10th as long, doesn’t work unless I’m talking to it, and isn’t nearly as capable.




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