Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Typical 'idlewords :). Lots of good points intermingled with unwarranted jabs at Elon Musk, X-risk and anti-aging efforts. I suppose the latter are just signalling, but they do detract from the point he's making.

The points about tech running amok with the surveillance capitalism are spot on. I do have some doubts about other parts though; here are they in somewhat random order:

-- Problem solving.

I'm not buying this villifying of tech world for trying to avoid the "dirty political work". In fact, I believe it's a good approach. Turning a problem into a political issue pretty much guarantees that it won't be solved as people take sides and then invent arguments to rationalize their positions. Just look at the climate change - since it became politicized, it's close to impossible to do anything in the area (Trump's election in the US is not helping either). The only way to address it now is by ignoring the democratic process altogether - by doing research, developing new technologies, and hoping for the market forces to sort things out.

Moreover, why does the tech industry is always blamed for trying to avoid political work? Like, are there no human beings who don't work in tech industry that could try a different approach? Why is tech industry expected to do everything, and then at the same time gets called out for hubris?

Related, on tech and life extension efforts. I call the Comet King principle - "somebody has to and no one else will". Why is nobody else besides tech billionaires interested in putting serious resources into solving that problem?

-- Poland.

Is it an evil surveillance state now? I live there and I haven't noticed it.

-- Trump.

I'm starting to get a feeling that some people on anti-Trump side are just sore losers, and can't accept that he won democratic elections; no, it must be some conspiracy. I'm not endorsing what Trump is doing, but the facts on the ground are that many people did vote for him, and denying them agency makes it more difficult to notice the problems those people face in their lives.

"Lots of good points intermingled with unwarranted jabs at Elon Musk, X-risk and anti-aging efforts. I suppose the latter are just signalling, but they do detract from the point he's making."

They actually don't. These people are throwing billions of dollars at the wrong problems. There are problems solvable with a fraction of that affecting Americans across the board. If they want people to live longer, patent reform (eg reducing patent length) devaluing cancer drugs/equipment followed by buying them and non-profit manufacturing (i.e. low margin) would save lots of lives or improve those who otherwise would mortgage a house. Likewise, hitting both copyright and patent law in a way to allow clean-slate clones of software like Oracle would fight lock-in. They could fund use of the courts plus tech-assisted cooperation on so many local issues that happen all over the place like gerrymandering or water supplies being poisoned. They might even build a new Tier 1 or Tier 3 ISP as a public benefit company w/ privacy and net neutrality in its charter plus a range of services from gigabit for businesses to wireless mesh for poor areas built on consumer routers. Edit to add investment into those lego-like, pre-fab houses and apartments that are dirt cheap vs traditional homes might make it easier to get more people affordable homes or reduce homelessness.

All kinds of existing problems can be solved with focused efforts by millionaires or billionaires. Instead, they're going to Mars, trying to live forever, or some other stuff while worrying about fantasy problems.

> These people are throwing billions of dollars at the wrong problems.

That's your (and idlewords's) opinion, but other people may disagree. In particular, I don't understand the desire to pick on Elon's work on the Mars program, when it pushes forward an industry with huge knock-on effects that are very beneficial to society[0], while he's also one of the few people doing high-impact work in fighting climate change. Tell me that's a "wrong" problem to solve.

You mention a bunch of other problems, but the thing is, most of them are problems that should be solved by our democratic governments. Who is a SV billionaire to tell us how copyright law should work? Not to mention, some of those problems are such that those billionaires could put all their wealth into solving them and in the end have little to show for it. Take gerrymandering - this is not something you can solve by just throwing money at it; the money will get stolen by the same people who perpetuate the problem.

Also, if you want billionaires to work on problems you deem to be "right", you should encourage them instead of mocking each one that choses to do some good instead of buying a new yacht. Or, if you prefer a less consequentialist approach, let's focus on insulting all the other rich people, both within and outside of tech industry, who don't help solve social problems.

> They might even build a new Tier 1 or Tier 3 ISP as a public benefit company w/ privacy and net neutrality in its charter plus a range of services from gigabit for businesses to wireless mesh for poor areas built on consumer routers.

SpaceX is actually on its way to do that with their LEO Internet satellites program.

--

When I talk about "unwarranted jabs", I mean things like the whole "Irreality" chapter of the talk, which is one long mix of ad-hominems and mocking people that disagree with him. So Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are suddenly trying to cause "the collapse of representative government". OpenAI is a cult now[1]. And anti-aging is obviously meant to ensure "that our big idea men don’t expire before the world has been received the full measure of their genius".

This is stuff that I'd expect to hear from John Oliver, who's running a comedy show. Not from someone who attempts to discuss serious issues.

--

[0] - For starters, I'll refer you to WTFNasa, existence of GPS and the impact satellites have on global agriculture, healthcare, logistics and disease management.

[1] - his reasoning is explaioned more by his previous talk of AI; I'll leave discussing that particular talk to Scott Alexander - http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/01/g-k-chesterton-on-ai-ri....

"In particular, I don't understand the desire to pick on Elon's work on the Mars program, when it pushes forward an industry with huge knock-on effects that are very beneficial to society[0]"

So does fixing housing, media, universities, medical, copyright/patent law, and so on. They'll have immediate benefit to all kinds of people on a massive level. If anything, those ripple effects will likely be superior to a Mars project even creating more Elon Musks as opportunities and capabilities increase with critical costs decreasing.

Meanwhile, as technocrati screw around like they are, the real elites that own this country continue doing the reverse of what I suggest controlling more and more doing more and more damage to the benefit of the tiniest few. Those elites are focusing on all the critical areas with wide impact. Just with perverse incentives that lead to harm. The Elon Musks should do the same with more benevolent stance to act as a balance against them plus create opportunities instead of remove them. So, far the only large, tech companies lobbying Washington and working at those levels are the most harmful or selfish ones. The rest are just rich people parasiting on a system actual elites control. Too bad as the people need benevolent elites these days.

You completely lost me by calling a sizable majority of voters anti-democratic sore losers.

Majority, sure. But I wouldn't call 54% (the percentage of voters who voted for somebody other than Trump) a "sizeable majority".

I didn't call them that - you did, by asserting that the sore losers I identified actually form the majority of the voting population.

EDIT:

Also, "you lost me" kool kid dismissal is supposed to be used with things mentioned early in the piece of writing, not with literally the last two sentences of the post. You admitted that you read everything, so no points for style :P.

You very much did. Go reread your comment.

You lost me is me telling you that I was entertaining your argument up to the point where you called the majority who voted for someone else sore losers.

The 'kool kid' slur seems pretty unnecessary. What value does that add to your argument?

Let me quote directly from my comment:

"I'm starting to get a feeling that some people on anti-Trump side are just sore losers, and can't accept that he won democratic elections; no, it must be some conspiracy."

Note the key word "some" here. I didn't call the majority of voters (or even of those not voting for Trump) "sore losers". Most people who didn't want Trump to win are sad about the outcome - that's normal. But there's a huge difference between being sad your side lost, and going around talking all the time about how the other side could not possibly have won (and it must be some kind of evil conspiracy).

The "wrong" side won, but the real question isn't how, it's why. As for answering it, 'idlewords says it's a "bug in the operating system of our democracy, one of the many ways that slavery still casts its shadow over American politics". Personally, I disagree. I think this is democracy working as designed, and the whole situation should be a sad lesson about a) what you get when lots of people feel they are treated unfairly, and b) that general population is kind of dumb in aggregate, and nationalism is unfortunately the default state (in-group/out-group).

That, and c) what you get when you let media spin the "Muslim == terrorism" narrative ad nauseam for close to two decades now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com