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Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#321

Post by Nasrudith »

domador wrote: post #222
EdgarVerona wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. It is also easy to be so wrapped up in the trappings of what you're doing and the pleasure/sense of duty/sense of fulfillment you're getting from the actual act of your work and the compensation around it that you stop thinking about the consequences of your actions. This sounds terrible, but it's really just a small variant on the banality of evil. Solving problems, working on tight deadlines, and getting…

Sounds like engineers (and people in general) are good at optimizing locally (achieving what's good for me) and stink at optimizing globally (achieving what's good for everyone in society).

Not to be a smartass but what group of people are actually good at optimizing globally? Tragedy of the commons and sociopathic exploiters make such a thing seem impossible to do - the best you can do is leave something with a positive legacy which is very different from optimizing and far more prone to backfire than local optimization. By definition less is known about the global - let alone the chaotic divergence over time which makes weather models diverge quickly even with massive processing power

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#322

Post by ubernostrum »

stcredzero wrote: post #311
ubernostrum wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Democracy Overnight: Why is this desirable, outside of theory? The whole of history indicates to us that collectivism works either on small scales, or as a disguised totalitarianism. Here we observe the not-so-subtle attempt to shift the debate from "social democracy" to "collectivism", as if the two terms are synonyms. We also see a denial that mixed economies with strong social safety nets can ever work on,…

Here we observe the not-so-subtle attempt to shift the debate from "social democracy" to "collectivism", as if the two terms are synonyms. Exactly what is the difference between "social democracy" and "socialism?" In particular, how is there a system of checks and balances to keep the voters from appropriating everything, thus handing all of the power to the central government and thus initiating totalitarianism? We…

how is there a system of checks and balances to keep the voters from appropriating everything

The US doesn't have one of those.

Literally. The people of the United States can, without consent of Congress or the President or the Supreme Court, do everything you just said, via the amendment-convention process (Congress does not have the option to deny a convention when at least 2/3 of states call for it). Once the convention's underway, even state legislatures can be bypassed by conventions in the states.

Thus it's possible to get amendments into the US Constitution without them ever having been voted on or even considered by Congress or the state legislatures. And if you're worried about a populist wave "appropriating everything" in other countries, why not worry about it in the US? It's just as possible.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#323

Post by Nasrudith »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #203

Unfortunately, the core business of Facebook, Twitter, and Google (driving engagement) is probably contributing to tearing the US apart politically. It's not just individual projects, it's at the very core of what they are. I don't see a happy ending here. I assume that the same thing is happening in other countries.

That is more an information company thing really and so not old - look at newspapers for one. And the cure is worse than the disease. Besides, say what you will about Google and social media but they haven't started multiple major wars.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#324

Post by Nasrudith »

manfredo wrote: post #271
jimmy1 wrote: post #133

Unpopular opinion: this is why the "dudebros" and their like keep getting hired. They are more than happy to do their work, accept their salary, and move on, and not have to turn everything into "changing the world"

What exactly makes one a "dudebro"? The overwhelming majority of usages of this kind of terminology (and related words like "brogrammer") seem to fall into either of two categories: slights against co-workers that work out, play sports, and engage in other kinds of physical "dude" activities - usually motivated by attempts to justify the unhealthy lifestyles of the words' users. Or as a derogatory term for men that d…

It is about as meaningful as SJW essentially in that it means what the user wants it to. It could mean everything that you said. Or it could mean someone who is a crass overgrown fratboy stereotype with no interests beyond money, alcohol, and sex and someone who works out and enjoys beer but can moderate themselves and have serious interests isn't one. It could be a flat out term of prejudice or cognitive armor to avoid listening to someone because they are too masculine.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#325

Post by Nasrudith »

balt_s wrote: post #161
closeparen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If subsistence farming is preferable to being a cog in a market economy, why aren’t people switching in the opposite direction?

Assume you live in a "first-world" nation, how do you propose to become a subsistence farmer?

Buy cheap land out in the middle of nowhere and start farming enough to provide food for yourself and some excess to pay expenses. There is a reason people don't do that.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#326

Post by DoreenMichele »

manfredo wrote: post #278
wazoox wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we measure a "decreasing poverty" is extremely laden politically (like most things that are supposedly "neutrally evaluated" are supposed to be, just because they're represented as spreadsheets of numbers). We consider that a villager living from subsistence farming and therefore having almost no use for money to be part of the very poor, less than 1$/day crowd. Take this same peasant and send it working for…

The thing is, being a cog in the capitalist wheel really _is_ preferable to subsistence farming. The reality of subsistence farming is that you're living with no access to healthcare, education, often subject to food insecurity, and often lacking in basic utilities like electricity and clean water. Subsistence farming isn't all hunky dory like the Hobbits in the Shire. There's a reason people choose to escape it when…

I have no idea how to find it again, but I read an article about indigenous peoples being forced off their land and into the city. They went from hunting, gathering and fishing and a life they loved to terrible slum conditions and racially motivated violence against them, up to and including murder.

They weren't actually subsistence farmers, but they did live without money before this was done to them. They were incredibly bitter.

And people forced to become cogs don't automatically gain meaningful access to things like healthcare and education, plus the education of the city people can involve horrible prejudice that is actively harmful to them for various reasons.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#327

Post by [deleted] »

hasbroslasher wrote: post #210

It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of mode…

[deleted]

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#328

Post by philwelch »

ryandrake wrote: post #163
philwelch wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most "techies going to work for google" or any other tech firm, are not going to get rich, in the Bill Gates or Larry Ellison sense. You're describing 2 of the 10 richest billionaires in the world. Most people in general are not going to get that rich, most rich people are not going to get that rich, and nobody is going to get that rich by joining a company that has 100 or more employees already. Gates, Ellison, Al…

We can agree that a successful conversation on this topic requires a shared definition of “rich”. I just don’t think the fleeting wealth that comes with able-bodied employment counts. Rich implies some level of financial independence. One is rich if they can stop working immediately and maintain their existing standard of living indefinitely. This definition includes many more than just the top 0.01% but does not inc…

Financial independence at an annual living rate of $100,000 is “rich”—you can live off more money a year than most people make, and you don’t even work. At a conservative 3% withdrawal rate, a lump sum of $3.33 MM can provide that income in perpetuity, assuming an otherwise functioning world economy. It wasn’t hard to get $3-5MM of stock as an early employee of a successful IPO tech company.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#329

Post by julienreszka »

hasbroslasher wrote: post #210

It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of mode…

It's just your lack of imagination

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#330

Post by intended »

johnny22 wrote: post #309
intended wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. Profit is achieved primarily by selling people goods. people want cheap meat, coffee and toys. We found ways to give people that. There are other effects where corporations cheat the laws, corrupt government, and pillage the environment - true. But the system has always been about you and me getting more choice and more options at better prices. Your toothpastes offer different flavors, and come in a magic…

You're making too many assumptions in almost every statement here. If you're going to continue with this line of thinking then please back it up with evidence.

Well yeah, if someone is going to try and simplify how the world economy works in one paragraph, I would expect large amounts of simplification.
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