Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by Kalium » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #314

Kalium wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true. It's impossible to take seriously every warning. Every potentially catastrophic situation has to be evaluated on the risks and benefits. And, well, sometimes the people making those choices are wrong. Or shortsighted. Or egotistical. Or afraid for their own comfort, power, and privilege. At the same time, I still don't take the warnings of the flat-earthers particularly seriously, so perhaps not all warnin…

Your comments are a beautiful example of how to dialogue and disagree constructively. I need to learn this skill :)

Thank you.

I read How To Make Friends And Influence People. Then I threw out all the fluff about genuine connection, and realized that people only actually care that you make them feel like they've been understood. This is the implicit thesis of the book, once you realize that a decades-dead author cannot possibly have a genuine two-way emotional connection with you.

In practice, this tends to mean telling people they're right a lot. Then you imply they have the wonderful, glorious opportunity to become more right. Then you remind them of how right they are. If this sounds exhausting, well, it is. But it also matches the structure of my previous comment.

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

#342

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #322

stcredzero wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conv…

The US doesn't have one of those.

Another way of saying it, the only check and balance is political.

After the founding, there was another check and balance, in that the voting public, comprised solely of landowners, would never have voted for socialism.

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

#343

Post by aaron_m04 » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #176

pacala wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google had a very reasonable money printing machine as its core business model: Search Ads. * You tell Google what you are looking for. * Google returns a handful of ads, alongside world-class organic search results. * Merchants bid to have their ads returned for specific search intents. None of this requires the 24/7 surveillance machine Google has ended up building.

Not true. Ad words is bigger. And to do that, they need to know as much about what you want or what you could want in order to deliver a nice juicy targeted ad. Advertisers can now target not just classes of people, but in fact target specific people, and they'll pay a premium for that.

That sounds like the original product has morphed into something more invasive than it was in Google's early years.

Could Google have kept making enough profit if they had stuck to the original plan?

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

#344

Post by hasbroslasher » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

uhtred wrote: post #238

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…

I wonder if socialism done right (if that's possible, as no one has yet proven it is) would lead to smart people working on the kinds of things you listed. In theory it would, as there'd be no need for adtech, ecommerce, Wall Street, etc.

I'm not necessarily advocating for socialism, I'm just suggesting that the USA government spends more on incentivizing technological innovation in areas that have real payouts for humanity. It's almost a tautology that if you started offering government jobs at $100k a year and funding to work on interesting, novel problems, you'd attract a whole lot of people who are bored and disenfranchised with adtech or high finance.

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

#345

Post by camjohnson26 » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #259

illumin8 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can work on blockchain projects that might have the potential to bring financial services to the unbanked and poor in 3rd world countries, but, oh wait a minute, the technology will probably just be used to create predatory financial products for payday lenders to expand their market... The best way to make sure you are working on ethical projects is to start and run your own company. Any technology can be used f…

Even aside from the financial scams, any proof-of-work blockchain project is an ecological obscenity.

Any system that generates value will create an incentive to waste an equal amount to get it. In proof of work all of that wasted energy is on chain, since that's the most efficient way to get the benefit. Every other protocol provides the same incentive to waste work. Just look at how much work financial institutions spend to chase the money released by the US government in the form of debt.

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/

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

#346

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #345

ForHackernews wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even aside from the financial scams, any proof-of-work blockchain project is an ecological obscenity.

Any system that generates value will create an incentive to waste an equal amount to get it. In proof of work all of that wasted energy is on chain, since that's the most efficient way to get the benefit. Every other protocol provides the same incentive to waste work. Just look at how much work financial institutions spend to chase the money released by the US government in the form of debt. http://www.truthcoin.info…

No. You are tragically misinformed. Most systems that generate value incentivize generating as little waste as possible.

There is nothing "efficient" about proof-of-work -- in fact, it's deliberately inefficient because it's a zero-sum game and all the miners have to waste as much electricity as possible to compete with the other miners.

The wasted energy is not "on the chain". It's gone, converted into CO2 poisoning the planet.

Banks may do stupid or damaging things, but they aren't in the business of wasting energy just to prove they wasted it.

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

#347

Post by imranq » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #190

imranq wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an amazing story. Do you mind sharing the name of the library?

pyglobus: http://toolkit.globus.org/toolkit/docs/4.2/4.2.0/common/pygl... it was a grid computing library that made it easy to FTP large files at high performance and do automated job management.

Thanks!

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

#348

Post by drb91 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

jimktrains2 wrote: post #145

drb91 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions we make in life, and our difficulty making them, defines us. I can’t help you define your morality here.

You're still begging the question and acting like there is a fixed morality.

Now that I understand the confusion....

A) I do not hold a firm position on moral absolutism.

B) All I am saying is that there are so many variables that go into employment that you need to make this moral calculus yourself.... but simply having a family should not be an excuse to avoid the moral calculus completely. You often still have choice.

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

#349

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 4:02 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #342

ubernostrum wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conv…

The US doesn't have one of those. Another way of saying it, the only check and balance is political. After the founding, there was another check and balance, in that the voting public, comprised solely of landowners, would never have voted for socialism.

Ask the Roman Republic how the "wisdom" of governance by the landed gentry worked out.

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

#350

Post by camjohnson26 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #346

camjohnson26 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any system that generates value will create an incentive to waste an equal amount to get it. In proof of work all of that wasted energy is on chain, since that's the most efficient way to get the benefit. Every other protocol provides the same incentive to waste work. Just look at how much work financial institutions spend to chase the money released by the US government in the form of debt. http://www.truthcoin.info…

No. You are tragically misinformed. Most systems that generate value incentivize generating as little waste as possible. There is nothing "efficient" about proof-of-work -- in fact, it's deliberately inefficient because it's a zero-sum game and all the miners have to waste as much electricity as possible to compete with the other miners. The wasted energy is not "on the chain". It's gone, converted into CO2 poisoning…

Every system of currency creation is a “zero sum game” because someone ends up with the unit of currency and everyone else doesn’t. The wasted energy is on the chain as hashes which are difficult to recreate. These are the basics. Do you seriously think people aren’t wasting energy trying to get their hands on created dollars? And they’re incentivized to waste up to a dollar to receive a dollar.