Just to clarify, I brought up the gaming industry to highlight the nuance of the discussion and am in no way advocating for bashing it.
As you have articulated, innovation tends to manifest when humans spend their attention on things that also further drive the demand for their attention.
The point being that the context here is significantly more gray than black / white.
You missed the giant gaping time sink that is the video game industry.
I also think including this in the discussion will, perhaps, emphasize the nuance of what I believe you're indirectly referencing -- the economics of how humans choose to spend their time (sometimes referred to as the "Attention Economy").
I believe literally optimizing for something such as GDP fails to take into account freedom / liberty which is likely something most on this website would agree is incredibly valuable in a society.
I think the difficulty is in creating a consensus around what is acceptable relative to the "Attention Economy". It might even be impossible given that this seems almost indistinguishable from culture -- and there will likely never be a single unified culture if and until something as paradigm-shifting as a multi-planetary species is realized.
Interesting perspective from someone who can legitimately compare the experience…
I disagree with how it is characterized that Americans are rationalizing healthcare costs as a result of being wrapped up in emotions. While emotions certainly influenced most decisions being made at the time, the costs didn’t feel even remotely in the realm of something that can be controlled. The nature of emergencies (such as the birth of a child in this context), the fact that the costs aren’t even communicated until months go by, and the fact that healthcare coverage is tethered to your employer (resulting in a spectrum of experiences) are all aspects that I believe serve to maintain the status quo.
For instance, with this pandemic… I was laid off, and while I was incredibly fortunate to be able to have multiple options for new employment, it caused unnecessary stress on ensuring health care coverage was continuous. It also played a role in how I ultimately chose which company I decided to work for despite the difficulty I have generally experienced in getting prospective employers to be forthcoming about their health insurance options. And some things just literally aren’t available such as whether your current doctors / specialists are considered “in-network” —- which really matters when in the context of a helping a premature child get “caught up” in life. Oh, and I don’t want to forget pointing out that changing employers also resets those deductibles and max out-of-pockets…
This hits home for me.. my son (now 4 years old) was born very premature at 29 weeks and some change. He spent 7 weeks and 4 days in the NICU. The total hospital bill that was charged to insurance (before settling it between themselves) was roughly 960_000$.
If you include the additional services and whatnot in the few months following being discharged from the hospital he was a million dollar baby.
Complete insanity frankly.. few things make my blood boil more than the sad state of health insurance in the US. Sure, it has gotten better since the ACA… but there is soo much more that needs to change.
The concept is rather intriguing in terms of having a compression algorithm that evolves towards an ideal optimization asymptote. I, for one, would be annoyed at the thought that the compression of an identical artifact might result in a different compression size output as it would seed doubt as to whether they actually had the same input.
While I share the sentiment of keeping large files out of source control, one use-case I believe warrants having large files in source control is game development.
As you have articulated, innovation tends to manifest when humans spend their attention on things that also further drive the demand for their attention.
The point being that the context here is significantly more gray than black / white.