• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    217
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 months ago

    I am so tired of people, especially people who pretend to be computer experts online, completely failing to understand what Moore’s Law is.

    Moore’s Law != “Technology improves over time”

    It’s an observation that semiconductor transistor density roughly doubles every ~2 years. That’s it. It doesn’t apply to anything else.

    And also for the record, Moore’s Law has been dead for a long time now. Getting large transistor density improvements is hard.

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      I’m gonna go on “no stupid question” and ask why my old hard drives aren’t doubling in size.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        3 months ago

        You need to properly feed, water and fertilize them. If you don’t do this, your old hard drives will just waste away until they’re just a few megabytes, not flourish into giant petabyte trees.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 months ago

          You have to walk around in the right environment otherwise they’re all going to turn into generic eevees, and you don’t want that

        • Jolteon@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          It might be from a brand that doesn’t evolve, or only has one evolution instead of two.

    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 months ago

      Also the improvements in computer speed from Moore’s law were from Denard Scaling, which says with transistors 2x smaller, you can run things 2x faster but produce 2x as much heat.

      Heat dissipation has been the bottleneck for a long time now.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      37
      ·
      3 months ago

      Sure, but also no.

      More’s law is at the most fundamental level a observation about the exponential curve of technological progress.

      It was originally about semiconductor transistors and that is what Moore was specifically looking at but the observed pattern does 100% apply to other things.

      In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

      • LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        3 months ago

        In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

        So we should start calling monitors computers, desktop towers modems (or CPUs (or hard drives)), wifi as internet, browsers as search engines and search engines as browsers. None of this is incorrect, according to the average person.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        More’s law is at the most fundamental level a observation about the exponential curve of technological progress.

        No. Let me reiterate:

        Moore’s Law was an observation that semiconductor transistor density roughly doubles every ~2 years.

        It is not about technological progress in general. That’s just how the term gets incorrectly applied by a small subsect of people online who want to sound like they’re being technical.

        Moore’s Law is what I described above. It is not “technology gets better”.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          I meant that sentence quite literally, semiconductor is technology. My perspective is that original “moors law” is only a single example of what many people will understand when they hear the term in a modern context.

          At some point where debating semantics and those are subjective, local and sometimes cultural. Preferable i avoid spending energy on fighting about such.

          Instead il provide my own line of thinking towards a fo me valid reason of the term outside semiconductors. I am open to suggestions if there is better language.

          From my own understanding i observe a pattern where technology (mostly digital technology but this could be exposure bias) gets improving at an increasingly fast rate. The mathematical term is exponential.

          To me seeing such pattern is vital to understand whats going on. Humans are not designed to extrapolate exponential curves. A good example is AI, which large still sucks today but the history numbers don’t lie on the potential.

          I have a rather convoluted way of speaking, its very unpractical.

          Language,at best, should just get the message across. In an effective manner.

          I envoke (reference) moores law to refer to the observation of exponential progress. Usually this gets my point across very effectively (not like such comes up often in my everyday life)

          To me, moors law in semiconductors is the first and original example of the pattern. The fact that this interpretation is subjective has never been relevant to getting my point across.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        3 months ago

        In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

        This is technically correct but misleading in this context, given that it falsely implies that the original meaning (doubling transistor density every 2y) became obsolete. It did not. Please take context into account. Please.

        Furthermore you’re missing the point. The other comment is not just picking on words, but highlighting that people bring “it’s Moore’s Law” to babble inane predictions about the future. That’s doubly true when people assume (i.e. make shit up) that “doubling every 2y” applies to other things, and/or that it’s predictive in nature instead of just o9bservational. Cue to the OP.

        • udon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          3 months ago

          Please take context into account. Please.

          (this is a lil’ lemmy thread and I think everyone understands what OP had in mind)

      • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        but the observed pattern does 100% apply to other things.

        Sure, if you retroactively go back and look for patterns where it matches something but that isn’t a very useful exercise.