[HN Gopher] Why Tech Inevitability is Self-Defeating
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Why Tech Inevitability is Self-Defeating
        
       Author : top256
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2025-10-01 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (deviantabstraction.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (deviantabstraction.com)
        
       | top256 wrote:
       | I wrote an essay critiquing Silicon Valley's obsession with
       | calling technologies "inevitable." I argue that inevitability
       | isn't a fact but a rhetorical move that erases agency and
       | responsibility. What if we treated predictions not as destiny,
       | but as challenges?
        
         | palmotea wrote:
         | > I wrote an essay critiquing Silicon Valley's obsession with
         | calling technologies "inevitable." I argue that inevitability
         | isn't a fact but a rhetorical move that erases agency and
         | responsibility. What if we treated predictions not as destiny,
         | but as challenges?
         | 
         | This essay?
         | 
         | You are right. And I'd bet Silicon Valley is aping this bit of
         | neoliberal rhetoric:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative.
         | 
         | > TINA (as characterized by explicit use of "there is no
         | alternative" and declarations of necessity, inevitability, and
         | irrefutability of certain policies) can be considered a
         | political strategy in both democratic and autocratic regimes.
         | Its rhetoric allows politicians to reduce the scope of
         | available policy choices, limiting the expectations of their
         | electorate and avoiding the blame for bad, but "unescapable"
         | policies.
         | 
         | > TINA allows decisions to appear not as a political choice,
         | but as a matter of adherence to universal truth and common
         | sense. Due to the switch from public deliberations to following
         | the expert opinions, debates are shortened, and therefore input
         | of an individual voter is diminished, so TINA is politically
         | paternalistic.
         | 
         | Tech salesmen want you to think you have no choice but buy what
         | they are selling and that you cannot resist a world where they
         | sell more.
        
         | tolciho wrote:
         | Manifestations of the inevitable are older than what
         | sillyvalley is cooking with (or coked up on), even older than
         | the Manifest Destiny. Some pin it to the Renaissance, as
         | opposed to the "dark ages" prior. Tagging the prior age dark
         | (dark... that must be bad, right? We don't want to be on the
         | bad team, right?) of course is a rhetorical move.
        
       | RaAsC wrote:
       | good read!
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | thanks!
        
       | Joker_vD wrote:
       | > You'll say, "They got lucky, it had to happen, if not them
       | someone else.
       | 
       | Well. If you look at the previous examples of sudden
       | technological breakthroughs, it's kind of amazing how many things
       | were suddenly invented almost simultaneously yet independently.
       | 
       | But then, of course, some things just straight up failed to be
       | invented e.g. Chinese-style wheelbarrow in the West.
        
         | philipkglass wrote:
         | _But then, of course, some things just straight up failed to be
         | invented e.g. Chinese-style wheelbarrow in the West._
         | 
         | Thanks for this remark. This was really interesting: "How to
         | Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow"
         | 
         | https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-...
        
           | korse wrote:
           | Excellent link! Thank you.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | Yes. The probability of people inventing something seems to
         | vary widely from "everybody can sustain that problem for
         | centuries until somebody has a good idea" to "the moment people
         | know the requirements, everybody will invent this".
         | 
         | And it's very unlikely that we can know where any invention
         | falls on that distribution before it's made. We may not even be
         | certain about some after they are made.
         | 
         | Anybody talking about tech inevitability or some universal
         | version of the Great Men theory (in support or rejection) is
         | wrong.
        
       | avelis wrote:
       | This reminds me of a similar article that might have been posted
       | on here about tech now focusing on hype as the product.
       | 
       | https://rys.io/en/180.html#hype-is-the-product
       | 
       | > In fact, increasingly, hype is the only thing that counts, as
       | larger and larger chunk of investment money is chasing it - to
       | the detriment of everything else that happens not to bolt the
       | hyped tech onto its unrelated but otherwise solid product or
       | service.
       | 
       | > The bubble grows. The line goes up.
       | 
       | > Because the hype is the product.
        
         | palmotea wrote:
         | > This reminds me of a similar article that might have been
         | posted on here about tech now focusing on hype as the product.
         | 
         | It kind of reminds me of the money-manking strategy where
         | someone buys a business with a good reputation, debases its
         | products, then profits from the (temporary) price premium it
         | can still charge due to is prior reputation.
         | 
         | These people are well on the way to ruining tech's reputation,
         | but they don't care because they hope to get rich(er) in the
         | process.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Technology is inevitable if a lot of people can independently do
       | it without huge resources, and the result is useful.
       | 
       | - Personal computing - inevitable. Once ICs became cheap, it
       | started happening, with no one effort dominating.
       | 
       | - Moon landing - not inevitable. Huge resource commitment
       | required, and not repeated since.
       | 
       | - Internal combustion engine - inevitable. Once fuels and steel
       | were available, it was possible to contain the explosion of an IC
       | engine, and many people started making them.
       | 
       | - Nuclear weapons - not inevitable. Uranium separation is so hard
       | that somebody had to spend billions to get it to work at all. It
       | wasn't clear that fission could be made to work.
       | 
       | - Radio - inevitable. Once something with gain and something that
       | rectifies were invented, radio was something many people could
       | work upon.
       | 
       | - Steel - interesting case. Steel is thousands of years old, but
       | mass production of steel only dates to 1880. It took considerable
       | metallurgical research to get it right, with about 10,000 tries
       | before the Bessemer converter worked reliably. No one had done
       | that before, and one person did it.
       | 
       | - "AI", via the machine learning route - inevitable. The concepts
       | date from the 1960s, but it took half a century of IC development
       | to make them feasible.
       | 
       | Looking at the issue in this way moves it from rhetoric to
       | reality.
       | 
       | Note that none of the inevitable technologies have a "moat".
        
         | ttoinou wrote:
         | - Nuclear weapons - not inevitable. Uranium separation is so
         | hard that somebody had to spend billions to get it to work at
         | all. It wasn't clear that fission could be made to work.
         | 
         | The mainstream explanation is that the threat that someone else
         | could be researching and investing is enough of push to try
         | yourself                 Looking at the issue in this way moves
         | it from rhetoric to reality.
         | 
         | I would say moving from rhetoric to a simple 3 parameters model
         | ("how many people can research this, how much resources it
         | takes, how useful the promised result it")
        
         | CGMthrowaway wrote:
         | >Note that none of the inevitable technologies have a "moat".
         | 
         | Ironically, despite not having a moat, the inevitable
         | technologies have been however far more lucrative.
         | 
         | With a few more examples I can make the point stronger.
         | 
         | Inevitable: printing press, vaccines, refrigeration, social
         | media Not inevitable: reusable rockets, CRISPR, GPS, high speed
         | rail
        
         | worldsayshi wrote:
         | > Internal combustion engine - inevitable
         | 
         | This fails to account for competing technologies. If batteries
         | were good enough at the time when we sought to build cars we
         | might've skipped ICE entirely and gone all in on electric cars.
         | 
         | At any point in time there are multiple possible outcomes. The
         | one that ends up being dominant seems so in retrospect because
         | it has been refined and we can follow all the events leading up
         | to it. But we don't see all the paths that failed selection
         | because they weren't competitive enough at that point in time
         | compared to the alternative.
        
           | WorkerBee28474 wrote:
           | You seem to link cars and ICEs, while ICEs predated cars by a
           | century.
        
             | worldsayshi wrote:
             | Ok sure but electric cars predated ice cars. That's what I
             | was thinking of. We could've skipped ice cars entirely if
             | other enabler technologies were mature enough at the time.
             | 
             | So the ice car wasn't inevitable. It was the car that we
             | could build at that time given the technology we had. So it
             | was only inevitable given the context. Change the context,
             | change the outcome.
        
         | conception wrote:
         | I would only note that having fuel available was not inevitable
         | and we just happen to be lucky that we have lots of plant
         | matter that got changed into easily accessible oil. This is one
         | of the reasons why humanity is kind of cooked if there is a
         | major war or collapse of civilization. That easy energy is gone
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | Thank you for the comment and engaging with my thinking.
         | 
         | You're using hindsight to define inevitability, which is
         | exactly the circular reasoning my essay critiques. "It happened
         | widely, therefore it was inevitable" isn't a useful framework,
         | it's survivorship bias.
         | 
         | Using your IC example: they became cheap because of massive
         | government investment in the space program and military
         | procurement, not natural law. The Apollo Guidance Computer
         | alone drove early IC demand. Different policy choices =
         | different outcome.
         | 
         | Personal computing almost died multiple times. Xerox PARC had
         | it all in 1973 but management killed it. IBM thought the market
         | was ~5 computers total. The Homebrew Computer Club was nearly
         | shut down for copyright infringement. Any of these inflection
         | points going differently changes history.
         | 
         | Your "no moat" observation is telling - you're really
         | describing business strategy (technologies that spread can't be
         | monopolized) not philosophical inevitability. But even that's
         | questionable: TCP/IP could have lost to OSI, the Web to Gopher
         | or AOL's walled garden.
         | 
         | The counterfactual test: if these were truly inevitable, we'd
         | see simultaneous independent invention everywhere. Instead we
         | see: singular inventors, path dependence, and technologies that
         | almost weren't (or actually weren't: where's our supersonic
         | passenger travel?).
         | 
         | Calling only successes "inevitable" while ignoring what didn't
         | happen or was actively prevented (nuclear proliferation, human
         | cloning, various chemicals/drugs) demonstrates the selection
         | bias in this thinking.
        
           | MengerSponge wrote:
           | An interesting counterpoint to the inevitability of ICs:
           | Consider East Germany's semiconductor industry. They had
           | state backing and proof of viability but they still couldn't
           | generate a competitive product.
           | 
           | Making things is _hard_, and embodied expertise is critical.
        
             | top256 wrote:
             | Great example. Thanks a lot! Can I add it my essay?
        
               | MengerSponge wrote:
               | Sure! I'd recommend you use a more reliable reference
               | than some dude online vaguely recalling a something he
               | read four+ years ago :)
        
           | BinaryIgor wrote:
           | You examples with human cloning and some chemicals/drugs plus
           | potentially nuclear energy being first favored then
           | disfavored (now seems to be getting back to favors) are
           | telling; it shows that outside the pure properties of
           | technology itself, a lot depends on a given
           | society/civilization value systems and who gets to decide
           | what's important and allowed and what's not
        
           | bluefirebrand wrote:
           | > The counterfactual test: if these were truly inevitable,
           | we'd see simultaneous independent invention everywhere
           | 
           | I don't think there is any reason to think that " a
           | technology was inevitable" implies that the technology would
           | be invented simultaneously in multiple places
        
           | naasking wrote:
           | > Personal computing almost died multiple times. Xerox PARC
           | had it all in 1973 but management killed it. IBM thought the
           | market was ~5 computers total. The Homebrew Computer Club was
           | nearly shut down for copyright infringement. Any of these
           | inflection points going differently changes history.
           | 
           | Yes, history would be different, but that doesn't mean ICs
           | and PCs weren't inevitable. As technology improves the
           | capital required to innovate drops. At some point hobbyists
           | can start making ICs at home. I think something like this
           | happened with 3D printing.
           | 
           | > The counterfactual test: if these were truly inevitable,
           | we'd see simultaneous independent invention everywhere.
           | Instead we see: singular inventors, path dependence, and
           | technologies that almost weren't (or actually weren't:
           | where's our supersonic passenger travel?).
           | 
           | I disagree. Inevitability means that something will manifest
           | at _some_ point on a long enough timeline, not that it will
           | necessarily manifest nearly concurrently on that timeline.
           | Concurrent invention happens a lot and is a strong argument
           | for inevitability, but isn 't strictly necessary for
           | inevitability.
           | 
           | For example, death is inevitable, even if we solve aging; we
           | know you won't involuntarily die of old age in such a world,
           | but you will die of something else, even if it's the heat
           | death of the universe.
        
           | jasode wrote:
           | _> Using your IC example: they became cheap because of
           | massive government investment in the space program and
           | military procurement, not natural law. _
           | 
           | There is an underlying natural law to IC's being cheap
           | without any government involvement because _printing out
           | circuits with chemicals and light like a photocopier_ is
           | inherently cheaper than the alternatives of vacuum tubes or
           | discrete components mounted on a board. (For non-trivial
           | circuits where the count /complexity of components exceed the
           | capital cost of lithography etc equipment.)
           | 
           | The privately funded researchers of Texas Instruments and
           | Fairchild Semiconductor already knew integrated circuits
           | would be more cost-effective _before the inventions were
           | finally solved_. Eliminating the rising labor costs of wiring
           | up old-style discrete components was _the motivation to
           | invent integrated circuits_.
           | 
           | Therefore, it's not realistic to ponder an alternate history
           | where a government bureaucrat in charge of military spending
           | would have ignored the intrinsic physical properties of ICs
           | and kept choosing vacuum tubes for 1970s F-15 and F-16
           | fighter jets because he believed _" ICs are not inevitable
           | because I have agency to make them not inevitable"_. Every
           | other rational military on the globe would have chosen ICs
           | which would make American equipment uncompetitive.
           | 
           | What government military contracts did was take intrinsically
           | cheaper technology and fund more iterations to help make it
           | even cheaper.
        
           | efsavage wrote:
           | I think the concepts are inevitable, not so much the specific
           | implementations. PCs were an inevitable stop on the fairly
           | standard adoption path from many workers to one machine
           | (Mainframes), 1:1 (PCs), many machines to one worker (I have
           | at least 10 computers within arms reach right now).
           | IBM/Windows/Apple weren't inevitable, they were just
           | manifestations of that. ICs weren't inevitable, but
           | commoditized computer parts were. TCP wasn't inevitable, but
           | a lingua franca for networks was. LLMs weren't inevitable,
           | but AI is.
           | 
           | To your overall point though, and to the contrary of the type
           | of thinking you're critiquing, the _timing_ of these things
           | is not inevitable. Computers didn 't have to happen in the
           | 50s, they could easily have waited 50 or 100 years if we
           | didn't have things like wars or other technological
           | breakthroughs that enabled them. For AI we might be stuck on
           | incremental improvements on LLMs for a generation, or they
           | might be obsolete in 5 years. They will be replaced by
           | something better at some point, but confusing (intentionally
           | or not) inevitable with _soon_ is where the hype proves
           | itself hollow.
        
         | lesuorac wrote:
         | What's your definition of a moat?
         | 
         | There's a reason Norway makes a lot of money from oil while
         | Greenland doesn't. I'm not sure why the word moat doesn't apply
         | here?
         | 
         | Sure, with enough money you can overcome any moat but to me
         | that's the whole argument behind a moat. We have something
         | right now that a competitor would need to spend a lot to reach
         | and during that time we can just get ahead of them.
         | 
         | If you have an existing iron mine and coal, to me you have a
         | moat over generic competitor in creating steel because you
         | already have suppliers for your steel mill lined up. Although
         | some may argue that those are actually anchors and that you
         | could import both of them for cheaper and then supply your mill
         | that way.
        
         | myfavoritetings wrote:
         | After reading "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" I came away with
         | the impression that development of nuclear bombs was 100%
         | inevitable after 1938 when the German scientists proved
         | splitting uranium isotope could sustain a chain reaction. All
         | of the top physicists in the world instantly knew this could be
         | used to create a super weapon. Every power in WWII had a
         | nuclear program but only 1 had the resources to execute on it.
         | Being the only country with a nuke is basically a checkmate on
         | the world order and game theory demands it be created once it
         | was known it was possible
        
       | ath3nd wrote:
       | There is also a great article about the same subject from Tom
       | Renner: https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/
       | 
       | Sam, Elon, Zuck are conmen, husks of people, empty inside and not
       | knowing what to do with themselves but hoard money. In their
       | pointless quest to become the proverbial dragon on a mountain of
       | gold, they are trying to control, bully and manipulate the world
       | to their vision of how it should be.
       | 
       | We know how this goes:
       | 
       | - Facebook contributed to multiple atrocities and genocides,
       | actively promoted warlords and dictators
       | 
       | - Twitter after being acquired from Musk is just an echo chamber
       | of fascism and white supremacy and misinformation
       | 
       | - Sam...is just..a slimy dude. He made a coup in something that
       | was supposed to be free and open, and made it ugly and about
       | money and profits, riding on the work of idealists and forgetting
       | all his pledges and manifestos just in the pursuit of money
       | 
       | Those people rising to power and prominence is not inevitable. If
       | only they had childhood validation, I think they might have
       | turned out to be normal people and done less harm to the world.
       | Sadly, they were probably neglected as children or dropped on
       | their head repeatedly. I blame the parents.
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | Thanks for the link to Tom Renner's article. I've read it and
         | agree with it.
         | 
         | I wrote this essay to convince "unbelievers" that's why I tried
         | to be as rigorous as I could
        
       | arscan wrote:
       | I'm not an expert on American history, but this attitude feels a
       | bit like a modern day adaptation of 'manifest destiny'.
        
       | GMoromisato wrote:
       | The premise of the article hinges on the fact that it's hard to
       | make predictions, especially about the future:
       | 
       | > ... it's impossible for us to know if a prediction is
       | inevitable or not.
       | 
       | But I think that ignores that some predictions are more likely to
       | happen than others. For example, here are two predictions:
       | 
       | 1. ASI will be achieved in the next ten years.
       | 
       | 2. LLMs will have a large impact on the economy in the next ten
       | years.
       | 
       | I'm sure it's debatable, but I think prediction #2 is very likely
       | to be true--I would say it's almost inevitable. But I don't think
       | #1 is inevitable.
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | You're absolutely right that predictions exist on a probability
         | spectrum. I focused on the binary for rhetorical clarity, but
         | you're correct that some predictions are more likely than
         | others.
         | 
         | That being said, it doesn't change my point about agency. Your
         | prediction #2 (LLMs impacting the economy) seems "almost
         | inevitable" precisely because thousands of people are actively
         | working to make it true. If everyone stopped tomorrow - if
         | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc., all pivoted to other projects
         | - would it still be inevitable?
         | 
         | The appearance of inevitability comes from observing massive
         | coordinated human effort toward a goal, then mistaking that
         | effort for natural law. It's like watching a thousand people
         | pushing a boulder uphill and concluding "that boulder
         | inevitably goes up."
        
           | GMoromisato wrote:
           | I get that--and it's a good point. But large groups of people
           | do tend to be predictable under certain situations. Is anyone
           | surprised that people hoard staples (toilet paper, etc.)
           | during a crisis?
           | 
           | It reminds me of the time a Scientific American columnist ran
           | a contest. The idea was to submit a number on a postcard. The
           | person who submitted the highest number would win $1 million
           | divided by the winning number.
           | 
           | The publishers almost nixed the contest. They didn't actually
           | have $1 million to give away and they were worried. But the
           | columnist assured them that there was no chance the prize
           | would be even one dollar. As you might expect, the winning
           | number was so ridiculously large that no money had to be
           | sent.
           | 
           | As for LLMs affecting the economy, I think my only
           | uncertainty is in how long it will take for them to be
           | integrated. I think we all agree that even in their current
           | state, they are valuable for certain tasks (e.g., language
           | translation). I'm pretty sure they are economically viable
           | for 90% of support calls. Are they going to displace software
           | developers? Lawyers? Doctors? Even if they don't, the effects
           | will still be large.
           | 
           | If we agree that they are economically viable, then I don't
           | see how they don't have an impact. If a technology saves
           | businesses money, it is going to get deployed. The only
           | wildcard would be regulatory blocks or legislative bans. But
           | you know China is not going to give up on the technology, so
           | any bans will be reversed or circumvented (we'll import
           | products/services from China).
           | 
           | Now, if you don't think LLMs in their current state are
           | economically viable/valuable, then none of that will happen.
           | But (a) that's a different argument, and (b) then people will
           | inevitably choose NOT to deploy LLMs.
           | 
           | I get the desire for agency. I certainly wish I had more
           | control over the course of the future. But people's behavior
           | (in large groups) is almost always downstream of external
           | events. Fukushima has an accident and Germany chooses to give
           | up nuclear power. Inflation in the US goes up and people vote
           | for Donald fraking Trump.
           | 
           | Maybe there will be some event--a Fukushima for AI--that
           | causes a mass change. But absent that, I think LLMs are here
           | to stay.
        
       | datadrivenangel wrote:
       | "Supersonic flight once looked inevitable until people stopped
       | it."
       | 
       | Things only happen if we make them happen. Game theory can make
       | it hard to keep everyone from taking some action, but we can
       | change the rules of the game to punish defectors more.
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | yes that's exactly what I was trying to convey. Technology is a
         | human byproduct so we are collectively in charge.
        
       | bonoboTP wrote:
       | This is shallow. Game theory and coordination is the answer.
       | Otherwise it's the same depth level as "if only the soldiers just
       | stopped shooting at each other, the war would end".
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | Thanks for engaging. I think you meant it's obvious rather than
         | shallow? If so, yes I agree but a lot of my friends disagree so
         | I wrote this as rigorously as possible to explain why this is
         | obvious.
         | 
         | That being said, regarding game theory and coordination: Wars
         | DO end when people change the game's parameters. WWI's
         | Christmas Truce happened despite every incentive against it.
         | Catalonia chose not to pursue independence despite having voted
         | for it. The Montreal Protocol solved ozone depletion despite
         | classic tragedy of the commons dynamics.
         | 
         | My point isn't that coordination is easy - it's that treating
         | it as impossible becomes self-fulfilling. When tech leaders
         | invoke inevitability via game theory, they're choosing to
         | accept those constraints rather than working to change them.
        
           | lbrandy wrote:
           | > My point isn't that coordination is easy - it's that
           | treating it as impossible becomes self-fulfilling.
           | 
           | While I see what you are getting at, and I think its super
           | important we come up with philosophical frameworks to push
           | back on the central idea in question (ie, the moral hazard of
           | "its gonna happen anyway so why not pour a little more into
           | the river").... I think your writing/responses miss the
           | central point.
           | 
           | As I see it, the fundamental issue with this essay, and your
           | responses, is you keep conflating impossible with probability
           | zero. People are saying "this is inevitable" to mean this has
           | probability 1 of occurring, with basic game theory reasoning
           | (its a giant iterative prisoners dilemna), and your response
           | "but it's possible". Yes, with measure zero.
           | 
           | Telling us that such a path surely exists isn't useful. If
           | you want to push back on "inevitability" you need to find a
           | credible path with probability > 0 (which is not the same as
           | impossible).
        
             | top256 wrote:
             | Thanks for your thoughtful response. I think there's a
             | misunderstanding (maybe my text wasn't clear. If so please
             | point out where so I can fix it).
             | 
             | We actually agree: even if the probability of successful
             | coordination is only 10%, accepting inevitability makes it
             | 0%. That difference matters enormously given the stakes. My
             | argument isn't "coordination is definitely possible" but
             | rather "believing it's impossible guarantees failure." When
             | tech leaders say "AGI is inevitable," they're not
             | describing reality; they're shaping it by discouraging
             | attempts to coordinate. Human cloning hasn't happened
             | because we maintain active resistance despite technical
             | feasibility.
             | 
             | You're asking for credible paths with P > 0. I'm saying:
             | knowing P with certainty is impossible, so accepting P = 1
             | narratives makes alternative paths invisible. The path
             | emerges through trial and error, not before it.
        
               | naasking wrote:
               | > When tech leaders say "AGI is inevitable," they're not
               | describing reality; they're shaping it by discouraging
               | attempts to coordinate.
               | 
               | No, they're describing reality. As I posted in another
               | comment, progress in technology drops capital
               | requirements for innovation. Even if there's global
               | coordination to stop AGI development right now, progress
               | in tech means that in 30 years someone in their basement
               | could do what OpenAI is doing right now but with
               | commodity hardware. Preventing this would require an
               | oppressive regime controlling basic information
               | technology and knowledge to an extent that isn't
               | palatable to anyone.
        
               | top256 wrote:
               | "They're describing reality" - No, they're making
               | predictions about the future. If AGI requires 30 years of
               | compute improvements as you say, then it's not reality,
               | it's a forecast contingent on those 30 years of
               | development continuing unimpeded.
               | 
               | As for "oppressive regime", we already do this for
               | nuclear and biotech, and most people find it quite
               | palatable! Nuclear materials are tightly controlled
               | globally. Cloning humans is illegal almost everywhere.
               | We've had the knowledge for both for decades, yet
               | basement nukes and basement human clones aren't
               | happening.
               | 
               | I'm not saying we should make it illegal, I'm just saying
               | there are more gray areas than what's generally accounted
               | for.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | If this were so, I've yet to see any explanation that
               | accounts for why human cloning has been so successfully
               | prevented, even though it's relatively inexpensive
               | technology, to the point that we have (had?) pet cloning
               | companies selling it as a consumer service.
        
               | naasking wrote:
               | 1. How do you know human cloning has been prevented?
               | Maybe you mean it's not provided as a commercial service,
               | but does that entail it's not happening at all?
               | 
               | 2. Preventing the manifestation of physical objects is a
               | lot easier than preventing the dissemination of pure
               | information. AIs are easy to copy, easy to run, and can
               | assist in their own creation, advancement and
               | proliferation, and it only gets easier over time. For an
               | apt analogy, consider a cloning lab where every clone
               | that escaped was compelled to create their own cloning
               | lab, and everything you needed could be bought at any
               | corner store.
               | 
               | 3. All cloning requires existing biological organisms to
               | participate at various stages. You need not only the
               | biologists on board, but also _the surrogate_ that has to
               | carry the fetus to term. What do you think will happen
               | when artificial wombs become available?
        
       | vin92997 wrote:
       | TL;DR: Think for yourself.
        
       | BinaryIgor wrote:
       | Interesting, beautifully written; I especially like the ending:
       | 
       |  _" Inevitability is rhetoric, not truth. Predictions aren't laws
       | of nature, they are acts of persuasion. And because no one can
       | ever know how much is determined and how much is open, the only
       | rational stance is to live as agents. Supersonic flight once
       | looked inevitable until people stopped it. You, too, have already
       | reshaped the world once; you can do it again. Don't give away
       | your power."_
        
         | top256 wrote:
         | thanks a lot! I appreciate it
        
       | cadamsdotcom wrote:
       | > "X is inevitable" - Stop trying to change it
       | 
       | This is the logic flaw that got my attention.
       | 
       | If you're told something's inevitable, ask who's claiming that
       | and why.
       | 
       | Are they trying to beat you to the punch?
       | 
       | Do they want you to give in and buy their thing?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-10-01 23:01 UTC)