Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love with Their Principal Doomsayer

Occam's Razor tells me it's because they are being painted as capable of subverting seemingly larger-than-life systems and institutions. I imagine it's an ego boost to a lot of these tech CEOs.

They see themselves as members of the ruling class that will outlive the useless class and subvert existing democratic institutions.

Of course they love his message, in it they win.

Why is this puzzling to people? Isn't this behavior exactly what we'd want out of intelligent, thoughtful people in high places? The ability to countenance and enjoy interesting and thought-provoking ideas that are contrary to their own immediate interests?

I actually think that well before the useless class becomes useless for economic productivity, they will be put to use for another purpose — mass violence.

The elites will simply put guns and bombs in the hands of the unemployable masses and use them to take what they can’t win in the market place.

You can already see sustained and successful efforts to radicalize people online and it’s only going to get worse.

Asymmetric warfare is always going to work and no matter how many drones and missions you have, enough armed radicals will eventually bring anyone to their knees.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a global spasm of violence but I think we’ve been inching closer and closer towards it, year by year since 9/11.

It reminds me of The Boondocks. Huey Freeman dreams of inciting white people to riot by shattering their most cherished beliefs, but he discovers that the wealthy, white people of his neighbourhood aren't bothered by his revelations in the slightest.

Huey: And all I'm saying is, Ronald Reagan was the devil.

Rich Man: You are such an articulate young man.

Huey: I'm trying to explain to you that Ronald Reagan was the devil! Ronald Wilson Reagan? Each of his names have six letters? 666? Man, doesn't that offend you?

Rich Man: I love this kid!

....

Huey: (to Granddad) These people aren't worried about us. They're not worried about anything. They're rich. No matter what happens, these people will just keep applaudin'.

I can't recommend his books highly enough. It's human nature explained in a single book! And although I've read hundreds of other books on various aspects of human nature, Harari's non-judgemental synthesis from a consistent point of view clarified my thinking significantly.

I'm not a Silicon Valley CEO, but I like hearing this sort of thing because I don't think my work is going away even if the social impact of the industry is known and controlled.

As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either.

His predictions don't sound that far off from something Ray Kurzweil would predict. They're both predicting a utopia and the beginning of a new form of intelligence. The difference is that Yuval Hariri is a little more explicit about the fact that not everyone might make it to the rapture.

Quick reminder: doesn't matter how exclusive you make heaven. People have a tendency to believe that they'll be one of the lucky ones.

More importantly, they don't really leave a lot of room for avoiding something that feels inevitable to a lot of people. Well, a lot of people in the audience anyway. The people you encounter at lunch would probably find the notion of God-like humans to be kind of crazy.

Mr. Harari worries and is anxious, but by the end of the article, his superpower is detachment?

An interesting read, and I don't see why he'd be confused. In my experience and personally a lot of intelligent people, particular ambitious startup types, like to be challenged (in an intelligent way). They like "intellectual combat", vigorous debate. They may defend themselves vociferously (they're also the type to have extensively thought about and researched their positions already, so they're not lightly held) but it's exciting to encounter opposed views argued beautifully, where there is strong disagreement but damn if they don't have a point. I think some people confuse people dismissing what they consider mediocre arguments with no interest in any challenge at all. As always implementation matters a lot. I mean, that's why a lot of us are right here on HN right? To gain information from those smarter then we are.

I think his interpretation of UBI is an oversimplification however that does not fully encompass many practical or positive moral considerations in support of it:

>'This, Mr. Harari told me later, is why Silicon Valley is so excited about the concept of universal basic income, or stipends paid to people regardless of whether they work. The message is: “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.”'

There are at least a few parts to this. To get the most simple and pragmatic out of the way first, some people are interested in UBI and base level resource/shelter/information access purely (or at least heavily) from a coldly rational efficiency point of view. They see it as a better system all around vs an unorganized hodgepodge of defined bespoke benefits, and simply figure "well if something needs to be kept around let's make it better" and go no farther then that. This also does in fact have at least some real world support as well as theoretical. Simply giving money directly to people in the developing world has yielded promising results in some initial trials I read vs trying to distribute goods. It can be made more resistant to corruption, more decentralized, and many of the efficiencies of a market economy work just as well if the economic input is external.

Practical considerations also encompass an expression of humility: even if someone cared only about the "valuable" humans, we don't actually have any clear idea how that comes about beyond the roughest figures. But we do know that bad nutrition and lack of even basic opportunity can destroy potential for good. I'm positive, just on a pure statistical level, that we have had world changing genius level intellects in the dozens to hundreds that have been born in slums, into starvation and threats and lack of any sort of serious upward potential and have thus been utterly wasted. Enormous amounts of valuable human potential has been actively pissed away for no good end at all, in fact for negative value since that directly correlates to crime/prison. The poor are not some lesser race, but that's how policy has effectively treated them.

Both those lead into and inform a moral angle, which is that I think direct income (and in turn UBI) can also come from a much more fundamental position of respect for individual humans, not merely "but we are nice". This may be easiest to come at by looking at the charity example: if you dig down, a lot of current schemes fundamentally come from a view of poverty being a moral failing. The view is that the poor and desperate are that way because they're stupid, inferior beings, and in turn they must be given the goods they need (decided by their betters) directly because otherwise "of course" they'd fritter the money all away on booze/drugs/junk/[thing giver considers a bad idea].

It turns out though that while sure there are hard cases there are also plenty of smart, decent people who are nonetheless very badly off due to essentially bad luck and an inability to muster the capital to bootstrap. If given a stipend they will not just spend it frivolously, but rather intelligently use it for their needs, save, invest and all the other things anyone else would do. They can be taught some basic financial literacy and offered education/metaeducation as well with basic needs satisfied, just as others would get naturally growing up, and do even better. Offering someone badly off money rather then food/goods of the exact same monetary "value" is in many ways an expression of trust and respect: that they are capable of figuring out their needs more intelligently then the giver is, and the giver is just trying to achieve the goal of supporting another human at some level and not just to indulge in some righteousness

Mr. Harari seems to take the negative spin of "we don't need you", but that itself seems to implicitly take as given "a human's worth is wholly defined by their capacity to work and the need for them." But UBI also makes sense if someone as an ideological stance wishes to make a world where any human has a base level of worth at birth by definition that doesn't need to be justified. Other worth beyond that may then be found in other ways, but it should never be zero. Work has often been a proxy for that and necessary in and of itself, but if that changes down the road then a new value system will have to be created. It doesn't have to just be about "nice".

> An Alphabet media relations manager later reached out to Mr. Harari’s team to tell him to tell me that the visit to X was not allowed to be part of this story.

Did Alphabet have him sign an agreement before presenting?

"And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited."

I'm going to be unpleasant and venture a guess.

A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves consuming pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots.

The cheap worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of "secrets" in From Zero To One as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts.

It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion.

If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.

That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.

Standard human behavior.

This guy is a hack