Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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Here's how I fear it would play out:

A good-hearted techie becomes a singular ruler of the country. By some luck they aren't immediately deposed due to their inability/unwillingness to play internal politics. Soon they discover that just keeping that country from getting invaded by neighbours, or economically sabotaged by others, requires getting ready for war and nurturing - or even employing - the ability to project force.

Say they think "fuck it" and through smarts and few surgical strikes, they take over the world. We have one government on the planet, with one ruler. But how long will that survive, given that there will be people sowing dissent? How long will it take before the governance either dies, or turns into a dystopian story straight from Black Mirror? What will happen when the Mars colony decides to declare independence (a tech person is in charge, there will be a Mars colony)?

Or another scenario - let's say multiple techies take over the world; how fast will the planet turn into a glass desert, forever testifying to the holy war between Emacs and Vim, or JavaScript versus basic sanity?

My point is, I don't believe techies are suited to rule humanity. I don't believe anyone is. And I have no idea if a civilization-scale governance that is stable, universally good, and that would survive more than few decades, is even possible.

Why is Javascript always trashed? Nobody forced you to use it, and there are plenty of alternatives out there...

Imo, it's (or at least was) a great simple language to get started in programming: you can get results fast, stay engaged, and enjoy the process of learning with it, while creating cool stuff.

I feel like sometimes people lose sight of the fact that languages are a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. If you love to write perfect lines of beautiful code in Rust and that's enough for you, that's great, but why do you need to bash people enjoying themselves with a tool they're comfortable with to create things?

</rant>

> why do you need to bash people enjoying themselves with a tool they're comfortable with to create things

Isn't that part of the theme of the post? Javascript doesn't care that it's being used for evil, but the things people create in Javascript often turn that way. They harvest personal data, drain battery life, and litter the internet with obtrusive advertisements. And that's when it doesn't just fail and break the website.

So go ahead. Create kind and beautiful things in Javascript. Just don't be surprised that people blame the language for the dreadful things it's brought us.

Many reasons, a lot of them related to its ecosystem.

But the thing is, you just fell for my bait, thus proving my point. If we were countries, we might just start exchanging stern diplomatic notes.

And then a third country with a strong opinion on the topic comes along and escalates.

;).

I was suspecting this was bait, but I just had to bite on this one, it really annoys me to see these "thought movements" go in motion where, in the end, people don't even know why they're saying what they're saying and it becomes fashionable to trash one side or another... (And this might not be you but since you baited me, you're the target of this argument now.)

So there's my diplomatic note for you. Who wants to escalate this?

> Nobody forced you to use it

Javascript is one of the very few languages that people are actually forced to use.

> Why is Javascript always trashed?

It's the combination of two adages:

-Build a tool that fool can use, and only fools will use it.

-Every time you make something fool proof, God invents a better fool.

These are mutually recursive.

>And I have no idea if a civilization-scale governance that is stable, universally good, and that would survive more than few decades, is even possible.

I would agree, insofar as the requirements for such a stable (and dare I say peaceful) government will require a letting-go of our basic nature to let Power corrupt us. It might work for a little while though as you say, which would be pretty good considering our track record...

I think the ultimate ideal that humans should strive to is to learn to live without a ruler. If that's impossible then learn to live under the rule of an automaton. I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to move away from our current thinking and consider the possibility of governance without an ultimate authority.

> If that's impossible then learn to live under the rule of an automaton.

I guess you mean some kind of computer/AI? Then who rules (programs) the AI, rules the world. This is definitely no anarchy. Ceding authority to a machine only serves to hide the real rulers.

Check This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, for a perspective on what kind of world this could lead to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Perfect_Day

Yes, I considered the problem of who programs the automaton. But I was hoping by the time we cede control to the machine, our species will be enlightened enough to come up with a set of rules that are "reasonable" enough. The important thing here is not the automaton but reaching that enlightened state.

This is actually the future I see: any smart and noble ruler would seek to reach this society and would enact systems that make them obsolete. A good CEO builds something without him there and I think the optimistic view of a singular ruler is that they would empower people enough over the period of their rule that distributed rule would be possible and we would no longer have bloated centralized governments.

The problem is, that singular noble ruler would have to survive long enough to implement their plan fully, probably facing organized opposition throughout it all.

(Related to Maciej's talk - I vaguely remember the Bible saying something about a good ruler dying, and his work being undone by a clueless son; I can't find the passage now, though.)

BTW. I see you implying that smart and noble ruler would implement a one-time solution that forever relieves us from the need of organized governance. That's very similar of what the Friendly-AI Problem crowd talks about - you get only one shot at this, and if you screw it up, you screw up everything, forever.

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