[HN Gopher] We don't know how bad most things are nor precisely ...
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We don't know how bad most things are nor precisely how they're bad
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-08-21 15:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I showed my wife (who runs a riding academy) a picture of a
| pretty Chinese girl holding a horse somewhere near the mountains
| in the West of China and the first thing she noticed was that
| they'd put the halter on wrong.
|
| I was impressed with how AIs would draw individual stitches on
| clothes but a seamstress friend of mine shook her head and
| pointed out how they also got it wrong.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think with piano tuning, or anything that is historical and
| physical and analogue and has status, you're going to get lost in
| human psychology and so miss the real issue.
|
| A similar field that has always been digital is audio and video
| compression codecs.
|
| You see similar issues with say Apple advertising their
| compression as perfect, and devoted hobbyists slaving away to
| meet goals that the average person cannot even discern.
|
| The capitalist, rather than technical, reality is that advances
| will be used to deliver the same (or lower) quality at a cheaper
| rate. And if you measure progress by the number of people who can
| watch Fast and the Furious on their Android phone on a capped
| data plan in a third world country that is perhaps the best
| thing.
|
| And even if you care only for perfection, despite all the genius
| and effort applied, you could argue that most of the progress
| over decades has been the ability to throw more CPU at the
| problem.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| the Japanese seem to have a culture that appreciates the
| pursuit of perfection, at least in some domains.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is also a lot of bullshit about "quality" -- like the
| idea that you could get a significant quality improvement
| sampling audio at 96k as opposed to 44.1k or 48k.
|
| For that matter I can't believe people's eyes don't glaze over
| when they see TV ads that say, for instance, that Dawn dish
| detergent is better than other brands even though Dawn really
| has a better package of surfactants than most competitors and,
| over time, P&G has invested a lot of research into improving
| it. (E.g. ultraconcentrated soaps were an advance in practical
| chemistry and you really can clean more with less soap)
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| All of this makes me think. I recently bought a car, and there
| seems to be quite a bit of audio difference. Or how pleasurable
| the audio sounds, how immersive, how the bass sounds.
|
| 1) Using Android Auto
|
| 2) Using Apple CarPlay
|
| 3) Which USB cables are used. Some seem to be better than
| others.
|
| 4) If it's over bluetooth - the worst experience with Android
| for me.
|
| 5) Car radio vs the above
|
| 6) Am I using YouTube Music or Spotify on Android Auto/Apple
| CarPlay
|
| It's almost like with some of these configuration it's
| frustrating, while it's really pleasurable with others, but I
| can't tell if I'm imagining it.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm having a hard time squaring the "don't put this guy out of
| business because it will become a lost art" with the very real
| practical goal of "release a digital piano tuner for $2 on the
| App Store that will make every piano not tuned by this guy-- the
| ones in school theaters, churches, or sitting rooms, sound
| _better_.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Befrend anyone that is working full-time in one of the skilled
| trades (welding, plumbing, masonry, roofer, etc.) and they will
| tell you precisely how bad the thing is.
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(page generated 2024-08-22 17:00 UTC)