Great. Now I only need something to make the right choices.
Today, older generations of folks often marvel at (both the positives and negatives of) the way that younger generations depend on connectivity, made possible by their phones, to navigate their lives. My major prediction for the future is that my generation, once we're old, will marvel at (the positives and negatives of) the number and magnitude of decisions that younger generations will let their technology make for them. When to leave the house; what's on the grocery list; what colleges to apply to; where to buy a house; who to pursue a relationship with - people will be guided to answers to these questions the way that our maps apps guide us to our destinations today, and many people will simply follow those guides without thinking about it too much.
The effects on broader society could be interesting. If everyone knows about some secluded beach that's cheap and great, that would quickly change... I wonder if we'll see a "smoothing out" of everything so that the big outlier advantages and disadvantages will go away, because everything is known by everyone('s LLM).
I hope the future doesn't look like the lovechild of Brave New World and Flowers for Algernon, but I have a feeling that it may...
If capitalism keeps taking the time gains from technology advancements and adding more work into that time instead of giving it back to us, we simply won't have much time to think. That creates a great environment for high-pressure sales tactics.
The only reason people rely on technology for 'order' is because they have been cut off from mapping out the Truth.
It is only through technology that you can destroy/disrupt so much past value in a short period of time and call it progress.
It is deeply sad to watch many thousands of bright lives wasted on maintaining wealth for the status quo. Getting camels through needle eyes, is only a small part of life.
Oh how true. I've spent much of my life as a technologist and occasionally I've been at its cutting edge. Yet there are few tech things that have truly improved my life. Most modern tech simply adds irrecoverable overhead to one's life—and one's life speeds up just through maintaining it.
Some tech has had great potential to offer advantages but has fallen short in delivery though greed, lack of agreement on standards, planned obsolescence and indifference and abuse from users. Combined, synergies have rendered much tech disappointing and very suboptimal.
I look at the many thousands of irrecoverable hours I've wasted on trying to make computers do what they're supposed to do and make software like Windows just simply work as expected—which it could have easily done if it were not for the greed and intransigence of Microsoft. And nowadays printers have evil intent thanks to the proprietary actions of Canon, Epson and others. These monstrous contraptions are so only because manufacturers spend so much time and effort at optimizing their profit, and it's users who foot the expence. Similarly, technology is too often used to abuse and inconvenience people. The article's photo of the Transport for London card only sign with the caption “You can use any shade of payment, as long as its digital" is nothing other than an abuse of technology, it's the sort of brazen technocratic instruction that would make me want to jump the barrier and say 'fuck you'.
Yes, it's deeply sad to see wealth misused, especially so by the powerful.
It's also terribly sad to read the words of younger generations and to know there's no way of putting wisdom onto young shoulders. It's through no fault of their own that imparting experience and wisdom to them is akin to explaining color to someone who's been blind from birth. Unfortunately, it's a terrible tragedy of the human condition that knowledge of this kind can only be bought with time.
Is the sad thing reality itself, or is the sad thing that one can envision a better reality which will never materialize?
It's a complex matter and there's no way I could provide a comprehensive summary here (and my history is very rusty), but some things stand out. At the height of the Industrial Revolution (say around 150 years ago) not all but a large percentage of capitalists were very proud of the products that their companies produced, for the era their quality was excellent and they lasted. Work conditions were pretty rotten but workers nevertheless turned out good high quality products and their guilds encouraged and maintained high standards of craft and workmanship.
Now look back over the last 40—50 years and see how this has changed, production now favors profit over quality and product is essentially a means to an end.
Yes, that's a pretty simplistic summary and no doubt historians will be shouting 'gross oversimplification' but I'll provide an illustration anyway. Not far from where I live there's a two-track railway viaduct built going on 150 years ago that's still in use. It's in two sections separated by land in the middle and in total it's over several miles long, and it's built entirely of standard bricks. The ground it traverses is mostly parklands so is easy to get up close and in parts one's able to stand under its arches. Over the years I've walked its entire length many times. What struck me years ago was the remarkable condition of the brickwork in that I could see there were no cracks anywhere and that included the mortar which is still in excellent condition, that's remarkable given that there must be millions of bricks. So I set myself a challenge of finding any cracks every time I walk there and to date I've found none.
Now between the viaduct and my home there's been new low-rise developments in the last 30 years, new semi-detached, two-storey and similar which I walk past on my way to the parklands. Almost every one of these new dwellings has cracked brickwork and some of the brick fences have vertical cracks that don't zigzag along the mortar but rather have sheered completely through the bricks from top to bottom.
What I've described here isn't an uncommon scenario, I've seen similar instances elsewhere. The question is why were Victorian bricklayers consistently able to build brick structures that remain faultless after 150 years whereas today's builders seemingly can't or won't. I'm not going to attempt to answer that except to say it's more than just capitalism at work, it's also has to do with changed ethics, different worldviews and changes in the movement of capital (and that's just hardly scratching the surface).
(Incidentally, I've always taken an interest in how things were built. Several decades ago, before bans were in place to stop people walking over it (it's very dangerous), I spent many hours studying the masonry on the Roman Ponte du Gard viaduct. They say it was built mostly by slaves nevertheless the workmanship is just impeccable, I was simply awestruck by their craftsmanship.)
We will find ourselves using iphones across millions of people to identify "the right choices" over millions of lives - behavioural empidemology
> Libertarian paternalism is similar to asymmetric paternalism, which refers to policies designed to help people who behave irrationally and so are not advancing their own interests, while interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally.
I think that the article posted is people acting rationally based on the incentives and markets in their life. Though it sounds like that’s not the same conclusion you came to. Maybe you can say more.
> interfering only minimally with people who behave rationally.
The problem I have with this is most bad actors are quite rational, and the most successful not only play within the rules, they shape them (regulatory capture).
The position is that many people do _not_ act rationally. So the argument is make the choices that are best for most the default, but at the same time don't force that choice, for those that would pick an alternative.
It does set up an incentive to influence that choice, but often that is the case we already have today. Making the choice of a default explicitly part of how both public and private services are delivered, including both the data-driven analysis of better outcomes and the UX work expose the default seems to be worth it. The alternative is a choice still getting made, but getting made either arbitrarily or with more nefarious influence.
It's like, you can choose to sign up for adverts on facebook and youtube but they should be off by default (ok maybe that's my paternalism).
I have mentored people who made the most of my time contribution, and people who fucked off and wasted my time. My time is non renewable, every hour spent is an hour gone forever, and I want to provide as much value as possible with the time I have left (hence my position).
(btw hackernews is a waste of all our time)
"Too Much to Do, Not Enough Time"