[HN Gopher] The Case for Optimism
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The Case for Optimism
Author : razin
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-08-15 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.warpnews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.warpnews.org)
| toss1 wrote:
| I love optimism, and have often been accused of adhering to it
| myself. To some extent, it is a requirement for civilization and
| even life, the basis of hope.
|
| But I've observed from decades ago that when we look at progress
| in science and technology, the future looks unimaginably bright,
| but when we look at politics and governance, it is incredibly
| dark. This contrast became massively magnified since 2015.
|
| Yet, even with the ascent of anti-democratic (small-'d') forces
| coordinating with transnational criminal gangs masquerading as
| government, I have some optimism that resistance to those forces
| are organizing. My main question is time -- will it happen in
| time, or will democracy fail? If so, it'll be some very dark
| centuries before it rises again. But I'm still hopeful, perhaps
| best to refer to it as "white-knuckled optimism".
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >But I've observed from decades ago that when we look at
| progress in science and technology, the future looks
| unimaginably bright, but when we look at politics and
| governance, it is incredibly dark.
|
| I don't really see these as particularly different things. Our
| era has seen value financialized at almost every level of
| society by the deployment of transnational technology and
| institutions, resulting in the inability of national
| governments to hamper the global flow of anti-social or
| otherwise criminal resources and money. Some social ills and
| some policy adjustments simply aren't possible for governments
| to deal with, either as a result of the ambit of their power,
| the need for transnational alignment, or the time-sensitive
| nature for precise solutions to complex problems.
|
| Governments are in an arms race against increasing complexity
| in social problems. The development of additional command and
| control technologies, the deployment of extensive surveillance,
| and the weaponization of that surveillance against populations
| is directly tied to the intersection between power and
| technology.
|
| Technology enables power. We can design some technology to
| specifically disrupt current power structures, but overall
| technological development creates larger and larger
| capabilities on the part of those with power; better weapons,
| better intelligence, more resources, etc.
|
| So we have technology working at both ends, pulling at both
| sides. It isn't enough that technology allows us to do more;
| it's the balance between whether or not research tips the scale
| between the haves and have nots.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Everything he says is equally applicable to belief in religion or
| an afterlife. The case for believing that the future will be good
| is that it makes you feel better. So pick whatever explanation
| you can swallow for this wonderful future - God, the singularity,
| the essential goodness of human nature, etc - and believe in it
| as strongly as you can.
| legrande wrote:
| > To be a good ancestor one must assume that good things can be
| forwarded.
|
| Many of the old ways are being forgotten, and `Grandma's brain`
| is not so readily picked anymore since people value their
| Internet & the hive mind of social media more than the wisdom of
| their elders.
|
| Also the old way of passing down teachings orally, like in the
| case of Buddhism and some other religions, is declining. Now it
| has to be perfectly preserved on the Internet so that people can
| refer back to it.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >`Grandma's brain` is not so readily picked anymore since
| people value their Internet & the hive mind of social media
| more than the wisdom of their elders.
|
| Grandma's brain is racist and when I tried to explain to her
| that what she sees at Facebook and WhatsApp groups might not be
| true her brain tilted.
| throwaway_4253 wrote:
| Aw, come on, way to miss the point. Even African American
| Grandmas were glued to their televisions during the Cuban
| Missile Crisis. They lived through the Vietnam protests, the
| 70's oil shock, Nixon's resignation and stagflation, and then
| saw the Berlin Wall fall in the 80's. As someone born in the
| 80's, I can only imagine the difference between what they
| thought and felt during 9/11 compared to me.
|
| They (usually) have something which younger generations will
| always struggle with (simply by the nature of not being
| there), which is _perspective_ on which things are important
| at what scales. That isn't to say they're always (or even
| usually) right about everything, but their opinion should at
| least be valued as part of the conversation.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Isn't it relatively likely that there are more people learning
| Buddhism orally now than there ever have been before?
| viach wrote:
| > We've encountered nothing we can't potentially improve
|
| This statement is a bit exaggerated, saying optimistically.
| jhayward wrote:
| It is a nice example of survivor bias.
| dbish wrote:
| We do need optimists if we are going to dream and build a great
| future. Techno-optimism has become almost a taboo, sometimes even
| within the groups that actually work on cutting edge tech (at
| least on the computing side of things). We shouldn't be naive and
| ignore potential negatives of course, but more optimism and
| dreaming of a great future we can build towards should be
| encouraged.
| moosey wrote:
| I'm optimistic... That a complete reorganization of our economy
| and society that leads to happiness and ecological stability is
| possible.
|
| I am not optimistic that humans can develop the emotional
| fortitude needed for this reorganization in the time required.
| eropple wrote:
| I don't see optimism towards technology being a "taboo" at all.
| I see a lot of people wanting questions answered before world-
| changing stuff is put into place.
|
| "Ready, aim, fire" is in that order for a reason, yeah?
| dbish wrote:
| There are too many people who think their questions are the
| important ones to be addressed before we are allowed to make
| progress. The more gates/approvers you add before changes can
| be made or new ideas tried out, the less likely you are to
| build great things and build fast. Instead you get slow,
| bureaucratic, design by committee solutions and the more
| unique technological directions get shelved. One of my
| favorite Bezos quotes is about this "even well-meaning
| gatekeepers slow innovation".
| eropple wrote:
| This reads as "ready, fire, aim, fire again" being a
| virtue.
|
| It's not, at mega-human scales.
| dbish wrote:
| So who makes the choices then? Who is the group that
| validates we are ready to try out a new idea?
| Fricken wrote:
| "you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail
| in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time,
| have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your
| current reality, whatever they might be."
|
| -Jim Stockdale, describing the Stockdale paradox.
|
| For me to be remotely optimistic, I would need to see more people
| confronting those brutal facts. They are truly and properly
| brutal. Too brutal for the Kevin Kelly types.
| JackFr wrote:
| With respect to climate change, there is a complete disconnect
| between the predictions of doom and the proposed solutions.
| Electric cars ain't gonna do it. Massive disruption and
| reordering if the economic order and a real reduction in global
| well-being are the price to be paid if we're really serious.
|
| I just don't see intellectual honesty among people who claim
| that climate change is an existential threat.
| Fricken wrote:
| There will be a reduction in global well being no matter
| what.
|
| The lesser of 2 evils is something we can choose. The greater
| is what we'll get if we don't make a choice.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I think they are honest - they really believe that their
| proposals are solutions - but also that they are hopelessly
| innumerate, and ignorant of the time and effort involved in
| scaling anything up to global scale.
|
| For myself, existential is going way too far. It will
| transform civilization, yes. One way or another, that's
| coming. Extinguish every human? No. Not unless we get weeks-
| long global thermonuclear war - 3700 weeks on the top 10
| existential threats chart, and _still_ number 1.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| It would take an absolutely apocalyptic event (or more
| likely, series of events) to make the human race go extinct
| but it wouldn't take much more than a prolonged, widespread
| power failure to push civil society to collapse.
| courtf wrote:
| This is how I feel as well. I am a pessimist in the sense that
| without more progress on certain issues, I think life will get
| worse for future generations. This isn't ignoring the
| historical arc of progress, and I would argue that pessimists
| get an undeserved bad rap for pointing out problems when that
| is exactly how progress happens. Find problems and try to fix
| them.
|
| Pessimists aren't just people who assume everything will
| collapse no matter what is done. I believe humanity is capable
| of overcoming the challenges set before us, but optimism often
| seems to be naive, or merely a way of ignoring problems in the
| short term so that we don't experience unpleasant emotions. If
| we work on solving problems rather than ignoring them, then I
| don't care if you are a pessimist or an optimist because we are
| on the same team regardless of disposition.
| oogabadooga wrote:
| I read that article and some other things on sites as
| defining optimism as NOT avoiding problems. That one site in
| particular says the goal is to get more people thinking about
| the possibilities while specifically acknowledging there are
| problems. My way of thinking is optimism is about getting a
| deep understanding of the issues, why they exist, and how
| humanity has shown time and again we can innovate and come
| together to solve them. Human progress can accelerate if we
| come together to do so. It's good debate, and i like that
| warp and others like them appears to be presenting that side
| of things. It's an interesting paring with Kevin Kelly, hope
| to support it more.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I have no idea why you were downvoted, but I have upvoted.
|
| "If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the
| worst." -- Thomas Hardy.
|
| Unthinking optimism is magical thinking. I blame a steady
| diet of Disney productions in people's childhoods for this
| mindset.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is
| because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every
| start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k
| into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require
| believing in the future.
|
| The problem is that everything we have today depends on
| everything being _better_ tomorrow. Optimism isn 't just a nice
| feeling it's a core ideology that is necessary to keep the whole
| machine moving forward. If people en masse started to believe
| tomorrow might not be better than today, and that in the day
| after tomorrow might be even worse... the faith in our entire
| system starts to collapse.
|
| People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief
| in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the
| hordes of the non-believer. But true pessimism remains a radical
| belief, outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met
| anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. Even in
| academia the core works of most German philosophical pessimists
| remain untranslated!
|
| Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it
| itself dangerous (which should be the first clue that something
| is not quite right with the dominant optimist world view).
| Whereas in practice it is optimism that allows us to perpetuate
| horrors on every scale without question because "tomorrow it will
| be better!". Ecological disaster is permitted because we will
| solve this tomorrow and everything will be okay. Sweatshops,
| child labor and modern slavery are all permitted because this is
| just a step in peoples inevitable rises to a better life. The
| murder of countless civilians around the globe are all
| justifiable because tomorrow we will have a better world economy,
| and democracy will spread through the region, making everything
| better.
|
| Under optimism the shock from any horror is neutered and any
| atrocity can be trivially excused because the future is bright
| and we are heading in the right direction. We continue to burn
| every more fossil fuels because we are going to be fine, we'll
| figure it out, no reason for despair.
|
| As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes
| heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world
| around you starts to collapse.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on
| comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and
| pay attention to something interesting that is happening in
| this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this
| comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism
| as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists
| there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer" and
| "Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it
| itself dangerous". It's therefore interesting to me that
| baron_harkonnen's comment is getting downvoted literally out of
| the optimist majority's sight. That seems to go against HN's
| culture of welcoming and respecting debate so long as the
| viewpoint seems to be genuine, non-inflammatory, etc.
| baron_harkonnen is expressing some bleak ideas (as is fitting
| for a pessimist) but it appears to be a genuine, non-
| inflammatory perspective.
|
| [1] From HN guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting
| on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring
| reading."
| charbonneau wrote:
| > C'est l'histoire d'un homme qui tombe d'un immeuble de 50
| etages. Le mec, au fur et a mesure de sa chute, il se repete
| sans cesse pour se rassurer : << Jusqu'ici tout va bien...
| Jusqu'ici tout va bien... Jusqu'ici tout va bien. >> Mais
| l'important, c'est pas la chute. C'est l'atterrissage.
|
| > This is a story of a man who is falling from a 50 story
| building. He, gradually during his fall, continuously
| reassures himself "so far, so good... so far so good... so
| far so good." But what's important is not the fall. It's the
| landing.
| jjgreen wrote:
| The opening lines of _La Haine_ , if you haven't seen it,
| you should.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met
| anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. > As
| the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes
| heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world
| around you starts to collapse.
|
| I think these are related. It's very socially difficult to
| express serious pessimism about the world - I don't think the
| future is bright, I think it is miserable and you either
| shouldn't have kids or you should be preparing them for a very
| different life. I can't really bring myself to say that to all
| my friends who have or are having children.
| beefman wrote:
| Better to err on the side of optimism in each thing. Optimism in
| all things (the future of humanity) is different. There, we
| should strive to understand the dynamics of the progress that
| Kelly rightly admires. It's our golden gooose. It's prudent to
| understand and monitor its health; less so to blindly worship it.
| phenkdo wrote:
| Pessimists are usually right, and optimists usually make things
| happen.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Optimists downplay problems and are annoying to work with,
| especially if in charge. I rather work with pessimists any day.
| (As long as we are not talking about like, grumpy vs happy, but
| more in a technical sense).
| dbish wrote:
| Maybe it depends on where in the company they are, but it
| seems to me that most successful founders are pretty
| optimistic. I know I wouldn't want to work for a pessimist,
| but I agree that I wouldn't want to be led by a completely
| unrealistic optimist. There needs to be some awareness of
| reality, but at the same time the vision and 'reality
| distortion' can help drive big successes and rally teams imho
| mypalmike wrote:
| Perhaps the reason successful founders are optimists is
| that most founders are optimists. Unsuccessful founders are
| generally optimists too.
| leppr wrote:
| (Over)optimistim in founders is adapted to the current
| environment where the competition is over who can raise the
| biggest mountain of cash. I predict other qualities will
| become more desirable as the 20 years bull market starts to
| fade.
| dbish wrote:
| I'd say Bezos, Larry & Sergey, Jobs, even Zuck seemed
| pretty highly optimistic in their early days and
| leadership styles, and that has nothing to do with the
| current funding climate.
| lostcolony wrote:
| There's a mentality I've adopted that I find helpful that I
| call "hopeful pessimism". It's the descriptive form of "Hope
| for the best; prepare for the worst". You expect the worst
| outcome, but hope you're wrong.
|
| I think most of the devs I've enjoyed working with have
| similar perspectives, and often include a dark sense of humor
| with it. As when the hope runs out, all you're left with is
| something dark, and being able to laugh at the absurdity of
| it, to make light of it and minimize it that way, is a
| helpful coping mechanism, as well as one that can help bind a
| team together. And also helps avoid falling into despair
| along the way as the hits come; you can stay hopeful and
| focused on the desired outcome.
| aschan wrote:
| At Warp News, where the article is published, we talk about
| fact-based optimism. I'm explaining what it is here:
| https://www.warpnews.org/essays/the-case-for-fact-based-
| opti...
| peterlk wrote:
| According to this article, I think I rank as an optimist - I tend
| to trust people, feel that we can solve the problems before us,
| etc.
|
| But I'm listening to a book right now called The Ascent of
| Humanity, and it makes some interesting points about the
| philosophical axioms of the arguments presented in this article.
| Namely, the argument is that the technological approach -
| inventing our way out of problems - is doomed to failure over the
| long term because it creates an accelerating treadmill of
| required progress in order to solve the problems it creates. This
| is reflected in economics by the requirement that our output will
| continue to increase (otherwise debt doesn't work).
|
| I now look at articles like this a bit more skeptically because
| they assume that technological progress is necessarily good. For
| example, what argument could be made that painted longevity into
| one's 90s as a bad thing? Well, we spend an enormous amount of
| human effort keeping people alive for the last few months of
| life. At what point is it not worth it to keep people alive any
| more? Perhaps culturally, we need to become better at coping with
| and accepting death.
|
| I haven't made up my mind on this, because the case against
| technology leads to some pretty bizarre conclusions. But I find
| it worthwhile to consider.
| scottLobster wrote:
| To be fair a lot of those expenses in the last few months of
| life are hail-mary attempts at recovery, and in a minority of
| cases they work. Those options simply weren't available in the
| past.
|
| The notion that tech creates more and increasing problems is
| not necessarily true either. Viable Solar and Wind power wasn't
| a thing until recently, and it creates far fewer problems
| relative to Coal and Oil. Increasing efficiency is part of
| technological progress.
|
| Ultimately the case against technology leads to humanity
| stagnating in some state on this planet until we run out of
| resources or the sun finally explodes. I'd like to think we can
| do better over the long term.
| bspammer wrote:
| > longevity into one's 90s as a bad thing
|
| Absolutely agree. The only way it's worth it to increase
| lifespan is to increase healthspan at the same time. Currently,
| most medicine seems to focus on the former.
| danans wrote:
| > Today's widespread middle class living standard is the result
| of several one-time events for the planet, such as mass migration
| into cities, the movement of women into the formal working
| economy, and pervasive automation of labor.
|
| He forgot a big one: Massive use of fossil fuels, whose long term
| effects are, depending on where you live, threatening to
| undermine that very standard of living.
|
| The challenge of this generation will be trying to figure out how
| to improve and that standard of living while undoing it's fossil
| fuel dependency. That may in turn require redefining what a high
| standard of living is.
| EGreg wrote:
| Before I clicked, I thought this was going to be an article about
| Optimism, the new technology for opimistic rollups for Ethereum.
|
| I guess I should't have been so optimistic :)
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| I am so far down the pessimistic rabbit hole, that for each point
| he mentioned my mind goes towards what to me seems like the
| elephant in the room.
|
| "Total Urbanization" - What should we do with its impact on the
| environment ? How will total urbanization be sustainable (i.e.
| who will buy your waste now ?) ? Should we even think about this,
| or just try to build technology to leave this planet ?
|
| "Universal Connectivity" - How do we address rise in anxiety and
| other mental illnesses due to this rise of total connectivity.
|
| "Ubiquitous AI" - We all know the pitfalls here. Hint: We are not
| able to secure the "Ubiquitous Internet", how will we secure the
| "Ubiquitous AI" ? AI related hacking incidents will be
| astronomically more damaging (for ex. let's replace nurses with
| AI robots so that they can properly care for patients without
| getting tired, now this system gets deployed, obviously it will
| be connected to some kind of "knowledge base" (to
| train/retrain/get updates), what happens if this gets hacked,
| there would be direct impact on people's lives). This is the same
| argument as cloud connected self driving cars.
|
| I don't want to go further, I hate my pessimism, I WANT to be
| optimistic, I don't enjoy my pessimism, it gives me no joy. Even
| with so many academic disciplines, unfortunately we can only keep
| a bunch of them in our head to think about problems/ideas/etc and
| the ones which are left out, often that becomes the cause of my
| pessimism.
|
| For instance, when creating the "algorithm" for the social media,
| what are the chances that they had a psychologist or even a
| sociologist in their team (during the nascent stages). Even if
| they had, did they have the same decision making powers (as MBAs
| ?)
|
| Even if we consider "Long Termism", what have we borrowed from
| the ancient wisdom(s) in our modern world ? Obviously we have
| biologically evolved from them and we can establish a chain of
| information going back to the ancient civilizations. But even
| then, we have lost lot of our touch with this very Earth itself,
| we lost our respect for it, we have lost our respect for the
| stars, our quest for industrialisation (of course with its
| merits) has affectively wiped lots of our ancient wisdom. In this
| information age, we should have been starting where things were
| left, but it seems like we want to start our new "beginning"
| because now we are more "intelligent", now we know more laws and
| algorithms.
|
| If we assume asteroid impacts, on large scale cataclysmic events,
| what kind of "long termism" will exist ? Even now we are finding
| hints that there could have been lost civilisations on earth.
| Their information and wisdom is now completely lost.
|
| The issue I feel is that, we think the world revolves around us,
| we think the nature is there to provide us resources, provide us
| shelter, and that has lead us to completely ignore that this
| world, this universe was there before us and will exist after us.
| If we get wiped out, we get wiped out.
|
| The only source of optimism I have are completely selfish points.
| I am grateful I can see, hear, move, feel, eat, type. I am
| grateful that I can have impact on lives of others directly or
| indirectly. I am grateful that I have a convincing experiencing
| of free will. I am grateful that our capitalistic society has
| structures in it to provide healthcare to the ill. I am grateful
| to have a chance to witness this reality.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Thank you for writing all of this. I think undying optimism was
| okay when you really couldn't do _that much_ harm with your
| terrible decisions based on false optimism. That 's no longer
| the case. I also think, practically speaking, unfounded
| optimism will be the reason we fail to address Climate Change.
| It's time for realism now.
| richspuller wrote:
| Optimism and realism should go hand in hand. Proper optimism
| is not about dismissing the fact that real problems do exist,
| and are very serious, but in the realization that we are
| equipped and able to find solutions and implement them.
| Climate change for example, there is so much going on in the
| Green Tech sector, innovations and companies emerging
| everywhere to take steps toward solving this. Sadly,
| mainstream media doesn't cover these things. Warp News site
| that posted this Kevin Kelly article has a lot of great
| stories on the topic, among many others.
|
| https://www.warpnews.org/green-tech/
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I used to take Kelly seriously. Back in the 90s he was boosting a
| glorious connected utopia of free education, explosive creativity
| and endless opportunity.
|
| What we got was personal surveillance by huge monopolies, a toxic
| culture of disinformation and social media driven by
| "engagement", and the fathomless banality of an IT economy
| devoted largely to ad tech.
|
| And none of the real problems - climate change, wealth
| distribution, democratic stability - are any closer to being
| solved.
|
| I'm out of patience. He's always been a prophet of comforting
| nonsense, and this is another meaningless sermon from the top of
| Happy Clappy Mountain.
| lumost wrote:
| You know, I wonder how much ad tech stifles innovation in
| alternate models. If ad tech disappeared would we all be paying
| tiny fees for everything online? Would smaller businesses be
| more successful?
| mordae wrote:
| Yes.
| creamytaco wrote:
| People like Kelly (and there's loads of them) are so insulated
| from normality that one can't possibly see them as anything but
| useful idiots to the techonomic powers that be. Their
| delusional optimism acts as a constant counterweight to people
| beginning to ACT in the real world in order to effect change.
| bspammer wrote:
| > free education
|
| Many top universities release entire courses for free. YouTube
| is an incredible resource for learning. Khan academy,
| Wikipedia, sci-hub, library genesis, all free. I can
| confidently say I've learned more from the internet than I have
| from books and university combined.
|
| > explosive creativity
|
| The internet is nothing if not novel. That's precisely why it
| holds our attention so well - it's an endless source of
| creativity and new things.
|
| > endless opportunity
|
| Again, surely this has come to pass? My job certainly wouldn't
| be possible without the internet. There are tens of not
| hundreds of millions who make a living purely online.
|
| No doubt it has caused all the negative things in your comment
| too, but they're in addition to the positives not instead of
| them.
| goatlover wrote:
| There's tons of free education, creativity and opportunity on
| the internet alongside the darker stuff. Being pessimistic
| means only seeing the problems and not the progress.
| fossuser wrote:
| All we got was the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets,
| functionally for free.
|
| I don't like ad tech and I'm not dismissing that modern
| software has problems, but I think there's a lot to be
| optimistic about.
|
| On most metrics (infant mortality, poverty, violence) - things
| are massively better than they were thirty years ago.
| holoduke wrote:
| Metrics metrics. The only metric I care about is happiness. I
| rather die when I am 50 than living in a cage till I am 80.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Wait till you are 50, see if you feel the same - assuming
| you aren't 50. There are other cages in life, family, job,
| spouse, expectations, that prevent all of us from being
| "free". Maybe you have a sick spouse or kid that needs
| constant care. I'm willing to be there for them even if I
| can't be free in the last third of my life.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I really don't think happiness is a good single metric to
| judge your life by. If pure happiness is all that matters,
| should you just quit everything and do heroin all day? You
| would feel really happy.
|
| Life is about many things, and happiness is only one part.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > should you just quit everything and do heroin all day?
| You would feel really happy.
|
| No he wouldn't. He would become addicted very fast and
| eventually live on the streets, Heroin addicts are as
| miserable as can be. If there was an actual happy pill
| that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it, there
| isn't one.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't
| see why we shouldn't take it
|
| Like the Soma from Brave New World. When I reread that
| book last year I realized how useful and good that drug
| would be.
| discreteevent wrote:
| The article makes some good points but: "the liberation of humans
| from their unwanted jobs" shows him to be out of touch. There is
| a lot of manual repetitive labour that people enjoy and take
| pride in. And these jobs are often one of the only ways of
| ensuring distribution of wealth.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > I am talking about the state of the world and its future on
| average global terms.
|
| There is little cause for optimism on global terms. The
| decentralization that Kevin Kelly, Thomas Friedman and others
| lauded has led to a predictable increase in global insecurity by
| almost every measure (See below). The self-organization and
| techno-utopianism Kelly predicted in "Out of Control" (A book I
| loved enough to read twice) hasn't materialized - quite the
| opposite in-fact.
|
| International Peace Institute:
| https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/cperry1848/viz/Intern...
|
| World Bank Political Stability Rankings:
| https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_political_stabi...
|
| IMF Financial Stability:
| https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/GFSR?page=1
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I'm a long term optimist. Humanity always gets better,
| eventually.
|
| The problem is we have short lifespans so small setbacks in
| humanity's history are significant to those of us alive at that
| point in time.
|
| I don't think things will be too bad though. Governments are
| becoming authoritarian but there's already enough resistance and
| protest, at least in some places.
|
| The future is looking bright. We'll figure out the global warming
| thing (probably with technology), there's no appetite for large
| scale war, in many ways the world is becoming closer (thanks to
| technology). The main obstacle now is inequality, the tyranny of
| oligarchs and government corruption.
| acituan wrote:
| > The problem is we have short lifespans so small setbacks in
| humanity's history are significant to those of us alive at that
| point in time.
|
| It is still a reason to be optimistic. Limited individual
| lifespan is like a regularization term; one particular human
| can get only so much wise and world-improving; while our
| optimization goal is multi-generational. Those setbacks might
| as well be necessary backtracking.
| specialist wrote:
| I categorically approve of optimism.
|
| Believing that we'll have a future worth fighting for is like
| Pascal's Wager. If we're wrong, we won't be around to care. And
| pessimism isn't very constructive. Or fun.
|
| Missing from his list is improvements is _governance_. It 's so
| weird that "technologists" rarely even think about collaborative
| decision making. When in fact it's one of our most important
| technologies.
|
| To cite one recent exciting example. Project Warp Speed betting
| on a portfolio of potential vaccines. Applying the smarts of NPV
| towards policy goals. Whereas other nations pre-picked winners,
| like most procurement is traditionally done.
|
| Such a high visibility success will lead to wider adoption of
| better risk management strategies.
|
| Adjacent is Musk's $100m X-Prize bet for carbon capture. So
| great. For future, some sizeable fraction of all R&D should be
| done like this.
|
| > _Optimism is not utopian. It's protopian -- a slow march toward
| incremental betterment._
|
| So much cringe. The jargon spewing technophilia of Mondo 2000,
| Wired, Kevin Kelly, Jaron Lanier, so many others was tired in the
| 1990s. (Remember "Tired vs Wired"? Gag.)
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