Yes (especially drawing from the invention of the numbers 0 and 1), yes (i.e. dotcom bubble), yes (probably people who were writing COBOL up until then), yes (please shut down all your devices), yes, yes.
No, the word and its meaning both point to the fact that there’s no exclusive ownership of a commons. This is importantl, since ownership is associated with bearing the cost of usage (i.e., deprecation) which would lead an owner to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Ownership is regularly the solution to the tragedy (socialism didn’t work).
The behavior that you warn against is that of a free rider that make use of a positive externality of GitHub’s offering.
That is one meaning of “commons”, but not all of them, and you might be mistaking which one the phrase ‘tragedy of the commons’ is using.
“Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.”
The actual mechanism by which ownership resolves tragedy of the commons scenarios is by making the resource non-free, by either charging, regulating, or limiting access. The effect still occurs when something is owned but free, and its name is still ‘tragedy of the commons’, even when the resource in question is owned by private interests.
Ownership, I guess. The 2 parent comments are claiming that “tragedy of the commons” doesn’t apply to privately owned things. I’m suggesting that it does.
Edit: oh, I do see what you mean, and yes I misunderstood the quote I pulled from WP - it’s talking about non-ownership. I could pick a better example, but I think that’s distracting from the fact that ‘tragedy of the commons’ is a term that today doesn’t depend on the definition of the word ‘commons’. It’s my mistake to have gotten into any debate about what “commons” means, I’m only saying today’s usage and meaning of the phrase doesn’t depend on that definition, it’s a broader economic concept.
What’s not what? Care to back up your argument with any links? I already pointed out that examples in the WP article for ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ use private property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Digital... Are you contradicting the Wikipedia article? Why, and on what basis?
I'm contradicting your interpretation of the Wikipedia article. It does not support your initial statement that a) Github's (or any other company's) free tier constitutes a commons and/or b) the "overuse" of said free tiers by free riders could be the base of a tragedy of the commons (ToC). The idea is absurd, since there is no commons and also no tragedy. To the contrary. Commons have an external or natural limit to how much they can provide in a given time without incurring cost in the form of depreciation. But there is no external or natural limit to the free tier. The free tier is the result of the incentives under which the Github management operates and it is fully at their discretion, so the limits are purely internal. Other than in the case of commons, more usage can actually increase the amount of resources provided by the company for the users of the free tier, because a) network effects and b) economies of scale (more users bring more other users; more users cost less per user).
If Github realizes that the free tier is too generous, they can cut it anytime without it being in any way a "tragedy" for anybody involved - having to pay for stuff or service you want to consume is not the "T" in ToC! The T is that there are no incentives to pay (or use less) without increasing the incentives for everyone else to just increase their relative use! You not using the github free tier doesn't increase the usage of Github for anybody else - if it has any effect at all, it might actually decrease the usage of Github because you might not publish something that might in turn attract other users to interact.
Wikipedia does use Wikipedia, a privately owned organization, as an example of a digital commons.
The ‘tragedy’ that the top comment referred to is losing unlimited access to some of GitHub’s features, as described in the article (shallow clones, CPU limits, API rate limits, etc.). The finiteness, or natural limit, does exist in the form of bandwidth, storage capacity, server CPU capacity, etc.. The Wikipedia article goes through that, so I’m left with the impression you didn’t understand it.
> Wikipedia does use Wikipedia, a privately owned organization
The Wikimedia organization does not actually own wikipedia. They do not control editorial policy nor own the copyright of any of the contents. They do not pay any of the editors.
It is really annoying that you're shifting the goal post by bringing up Wikipedia (as an example, not the article), which is very much different from Github in many ways. Still, Wikipedia is not a common good in my book, but at least in the case of Wikipedia I can understand the reasoning and it's a much more interesting case.
But let's stick with Github. On which of the following statements can we agree?
Z1) A "Commons" is a system of interacting market participants, governed by shared interests and incentives (and sometimes shared ownership). Github, a multi billion subsidiary of the multi trillion dollar company Microsoft, and I, their customer, are not members of the same commons; we don't share many interests, we have vastly different incentives, and we certainly do not share any ownership. We have a legally binding contract that each side can cancel within the boundaries of said contract under the applicable law.
Z2) A tragedy in the sense of the Tragedy of the Commons is that something bad happens even though everyone can have the best intentions, because the system lacks a mechanism would allow to a) coordinate interests and incentives across time, and b) to reward sustainable behavior instead of punishing it.
A) Github giving away stuff for free while covering the cost does not constitute a common good from...
1. a legal perspective
2. an ethical perspective
3. an economic perspective
B) If a free tier is successful, a profit maximizing company with a market penetration far from saturation will increase the resources provided in total, while there is no such mechanism or incentive for any participant in a market involving a common good, e.g. there will be no one providing additional pasture for free if an Allmende is already destroying the existing pasture through overgrazing.
C) If a free tier is unsuccessful because it costs more than it enables in new revenue, a company can simply shut it down – no tragedy involved. No server has been depreciated, no software destroyed, no user lost their share of a commonly owned good.
D) More users of a free tier reduce net loss / increase net earnings per free user for the provider, while more cattle grazing on a pasture decrease net earnings / increase net loss per cow.
E) If I use less of Github, you don't have any incentive to use more of it. This is the opposite of a commons, where one participant taking less of it puts out an incentive to everybody else to take their place and take more of it.
F) A service that you pay for with your data, your attention, your personal or company brand and reach (e.g. with public repositories), is not really free.
G) The tiny product samples that you can get for free in perfume shops do not constitute a common good, even though they are limited, "free" for the user, and presumably beneficial even for people not involved in the transaction. If you think they were a common good, what about Nestlé offering Cheerios with +25% more for free? Are those 20% a common good just because they are free? Where do you draw the line? Paying with data, attention, and brand + reach is fine, but paying for only 80% of the produce is not fine?
H) The concepts of "moral hazard" and "free riders" apply to all your examples, both Github and Wikipedia. The concept of a Commons (capital C) is neither necessary nor helpful in describing the problems that you want to describe wrt to free services provided by either Github of Wikipedia.
Nope, no goal posts were moved, Wikipedia and GitHub are both private entities that offer privately funded free services to everyone, and due to the widespread free access, both have been considered to be examples of digital commons by others. I didn’t make up the Wikipedia example, it’s in Wikipedia being offered as one of the canonical examples of digital commons, and unfortunately for you it pokes a hole in your argument. If your ‘book’ disagrees with the WP article, you’re free to fix it (since WP is a digital commons), and you’re also free to use it to re-evaluate whether your book needs updating.
You seem to be stuck on definitions of ‘commons’, and unfortunately that’s not a compelling argument for reasons I’ve already stated. Also unfortunate that there are fundamental terminology flaws, or made up definitions, or straw men arguments, or incorrect statements, or opinions in every single item you listed.
“Tragedy of the Commons” is a phrase that became an economic term of art a long time ago. It’s now an abstract concept, and gets used to mean (as well as defined by) any situation in which a community of people overusing shared resources causes any loss of access to those shared resources for anyone else in the community. “The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory claiming that individuals tend to exploit shared resources so that demand outweighs supply, and it becomes unavailable for the whole.” (Investopedia) I’ve already cited multiple sources that define it that way, and so far you’ve shared no evidence to the contrary.
There are also tons of examples online where the phrase has been used to refer to small, local, or privatized resources, I found a dozen in like one minute, so I already know it’s incorrect to claim that people don’t use the phrase in the way I’m suggesting.
Even though the phrase does not depend on any strict definition of commons (or of tragedy), none of your argument addresses the fact that what’s common in, say, Germany is not freely available to Iranians, for example. Land is often used in ‘tragedy of the commons’ examples. Hardin’s original example was sheep grazing on “public” land, and yet there is really no such thing as common land anywhere on this planet, all of it is claimed by subgroups, e.g., countries, and is private is some sense. The idea of commons, and even some of the alternate dictionary definitions, make explicit note that the word is relative to a specific community of people. Nothing you’ve said addresses that fact, and it means that ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ has always referred to resources that are not common in a global context. GitHub and Wikipedia are more common than “public” land in America in that global sense, because they’re used by and available to more people than US land is.
What I can agree with is that it’s common for people to mean things like land, air, and water, when using or referring to the phrase, and I agree those things count as commons.
You're confusing public goods with common goods. That's your personal tragedy of the commons.
> “The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory claiming that individuals tend to exploit shared resources so that demand outweighs supply, and it becomes unavailable for the whole.” (Investopedia)
EXACTLY. This is NOT what is happening in the case of Github. As explained plenty of times, Github has the incentive to INCREASE their supply, making MORE available for the whole, if the whole demands MORE. Also, they are a centralized, coordinated entity, that can change the rules for the whole flock, which is one of the famous coordination problems associated with common goods. They can also discriminate between their contractual partners and optimize for multi-period results for reducing moral hazards and free-riding. It must be stupidity to not see these fundamental difference on the systems level.
> I didn’t make up the Wikipedia example, it’s in Wikipedia being offered as one of the canonical examples of digital commons
Yeah, the example in the article is Wikipedia, not Github. That's your example. All my statements refer to 100% to Github and probably only 90% to Wikipedia. That said, there are true digital commons, e.g. the copper cables connecting the houses in your street. Unsufficient number of bands in old wifi standards.
Since Dunning-Kruger has entered the chat, I'm going to leave. Have a good day; you will have a hard time having serious conversations if you do not accept that it helps everyone to favor precise language over watering down the meaning of concepts, like some social scientists and journalists seem to prefer for self-marketing purposes.
> You’re confusing public goods with common goods.
Am I? Where did I do that? The distinction between common and public is defined as whether or not the thing can succumb to tragedy of the commons. If public goods are “non-rivalrous”, then land is not a public good, it’s a common good, right? And “common” land is owned by nation states, or by smaller geographic communities, is it not? Therefore, ownership is always involved and the land is not available for use by people from other nation states, right?
Above, you said “there’s no exclusive ownership of a commons”. But sheep grazing on “commons” land is generally land owned exclusively by a country, nation, state, province, city, etc.. I assume what you meant was that no one person or sub-group within the geographical community owns the commons.
> This is NOT what is happening in the case of GitHub.
That’s not true, the article we’re commenting on gave examples of at least three different specific things that GitHub has limited in response to overuse, and the comment that started this thread was reacting to that fact. If they have incentive to increase their supply, why didn’t they actually do it? Logic can’t override history.
> there are true digital commons, e.g. the copper cables connecting the houses in your street
That’s not true, that’s not a commons at all, and not what the phrase “digital commons” means. In the US, the cables are owned by the telcom providers that installed them, they are private property. Maybe there are public cables where you live, but in that case, it seems like maybe you are the one confusing public and common goods. The phrase ‘digital commons’ generally speaking refers to digital goods, not physical goods. (But there is some leakage into the physical world, which is why some digital commons are susceptible to the tragedy of the commons.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_commons (Do note that GitHub is listed there as an example of a digital commons.)
> It must be stupidity to not see these fundamental difference on the systems level
FWIW, you’ve flatly broken HN guidelines here, and this reflects extremely poorly on you and your argument. From my point of view, I can only interpret this lack of civility to mean you you’re frustrated about not being able to answer my questions or form a convincing argument.
I'm not sure i agree that the Wikipedia article supports your position.
Certainly private property is involved in tragedy of the commons. In the classic shared cattle ranching example, the individual cattle are private property, only the field is held in common.
I generally think that tragedy of the commons requires the commons, to, well, be held in common. If someone owns the thing that is the commons, its not a commons but just a bad product. (With of course some nit picking about how things can be de jure private property while being defacto common property)
In the microsoft example, windows becoming shitty software is not a tragedy of the commons, its just MS making a business decision because windows is not a commons. On the other hand, computing in general becoming shitty, because each individual app does attention grabbing dark patterns, as it helps the induvidual apps bottom line while hurting the ecosystem as a whole, would be a tragedy of the commons, as user attention is something all apps hold in common and none of them own.
One of the examples of digital commons in the article is Wikipedia itself, which is privately owned, so now you can be sure the Wikipedia article does backup my claim at least a little.
The Microsoft example in this subthread is GitHub, not Windows. Windows is not a digital commons, because it’s neither free nor finite. Github is (or was) both. That is the criteria that Wikipedia is using to apply the descriptor ‘commons’: something that is both freely available to the public, and comes in limited supply, e.g. bandwidth, storage, databases, compute, etc.
Wikipedia’s article seems to be careful to not discuss ownership nor define the tragedy of the commons in terms of ownership, presumably because the phrase describes something that can still happen when privately owned things are made freely available. I skimmed Investopedia’s article on Tragedy as well, and it seems similarly to not explicitly discuss ownership, and even brings up the complicated issue of lack of international commons. That’s an interesting point: whatever we call commons locally may not be a commons globally. That suggests that even the original classic notion of tragedy of the commons often involves a type of private ownership, i.e. overfishing a “public” lake is a lake owned by a specific country, cattle overusing a “public” pasture is land owned by a specific country, and these resources might not be truly common when considered globally.
What use of GitHub are you talking about? The use of GitHub by @c-linkage at the top of the thread was, in fact, based on GitHub being free to use. And GitHub’s basic services are free to use. I really don’t know what you mean.
Your oft-repeated customer vs product platitude doesn’t seem to apply to GitHub, at least not to it’s founding and core product offering. You are the customer, and GitHub doesn’t advertise. It’s a freemium model, the free access is just a sort of loss leader to entice paid upgrades by you, the customer.
It's an old saying. The ability for submarines to move through water has nothing to do with swimming, and AIs ability to do generate content has nothing to do with thinking.
The quote (from Dijkstra) is that asking whether machines think is as uninteresting as asking whether submarines swim. He's not saying machines don't think, he's saying it's a pointless thing to argue about - an opinion about whether AIs think is an opinion about word usage, not about AIs.
Could explain how a compound that's already on the market and has been patented for (some) medical use at least once in 2015 (expiring 2035) might make a good case for "Big Pharma gigabucks"? I thought one reason for a lack of research into "repurposablity" of existing small molecule drugs is the fact that new applications cannot be independently patented?
You absolutely can patent existing drugs. There's a whole scummy pharma industry that takes existing drugs that are widely used off-label and patents that off-label use.
I think it’s worth addressing this with more nuance.
Companies can get a METHOD-OF-USE PATENT (MOU) on an old drug for a new INDICATION.
This gives them the exclusive right to LABEL AND MARKET that drug for that indication for a period of time.
I however, doctors can prescribe and pharmacists can substitute generics for the new indication, regardless of the MOU.
For a company to profit off an MOU, they strategically need to create a new FORMULATION. This is a new dose or delivery mechanism (extended release, topical, etc). A new formulation can be protected with conventional patents that go beyond an MOU.
With an MOU + patent on a new formulation, the company has a brand where they are the only ones allowed to make the new formulation and the only ones with a product approved to be marketed for the new indication.
Getting FDA approval for the new brand is not the main hurdle for the company. To get insurers to pay the premium they want over the cost of existing treatment options, they have to show it’s safer or more effective than those existing options. Otherwise insurance will block it.
In principle, this means that repurposing should only enable companies to profitably repurpose off patent off label applications if they can provide a real patient benefit.
Whether this is the best or most efficient way to promote this kind of innovation, or whether it works as well in practice as it would seem in theory, is a separate question.
If you have a SOP, most of the decision logic can be encoded and strictly enforced. There is zero intelligence involved in this process, it’s just if/else. The key part is understanding the customer request and mapping it to the cases encoded in the SOP - and for that part, intelligence is absolutely required or your customers will not feel „supported“ at all, but be better off with a simple form.
What do you mean by "such a system"? One that uses AI to funnel your natural language request into their system of SOP? Or one that uses SOPs to handle cases in general? SOP are great, they drastically reduce errors, since the total error is the square root of the sum of squares of random error and bias – while bias still occurs, the random error can and should be reduced by SOPs, whenever possible. The problem is that SOPs can be really bad: "Wait, I will speak to my manager" -> probably bad SOP. "Wait, I will get my manager so that you can speak to them" -> might be a better SOP, depending on the circumstances.
It never works. You always just get the digital equivalent of a runaround and there simply isn't a human in the loop to take over when the AI botches it (again). So I gave up trying, this crap should not be deployed unless it works at least as good as a person. You can't force people to put up with junk implementations of otherwise good ideas in the hope that one day you'll get it right, customer service should be a service because on the other end of the line is someone with a very high probability of being already dissatisfied with your company and/or your product. For me this is not negotiable, if my time is less valuable to you, the company, than it is to actually put someone on to help then my money will go somewhere else.
1. law of diminishing returns - AI is already much, much faster at many tasks than humans, especially at spitting out text, so becoming even faster doesn’t always make that much of a difference.
2. theory of constraints - throughput of a system is mostly limited by the „weakest link“ or slowest part, which might not be the LLM, but some human-in-the-loop, which might be reduced only by smarter AI, not by faster AI.
3. Intelligence is an emergent property of a system, not a property of its parts - with other words: intelligent behaviour is created through interactions. More powerful LLMs enable new levels of interaction that are just not available with less capable models. You don’t want to bring a knife, not even the quickest one in town, to a massive war of nukes.
But wouldn’t this imply that optimizing the tanning bed properties for vitamin D production is worse than looking for as-close-to-sun-like sources of light?
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