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Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

nytimes.com

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Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#111

Post by andrepd »

justicezyx wrote: post #90
ArchTypical wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Face the truth. If you want no killing, Your enemy isn’t Google, it’s your neighbour. > it's not Google's fault either. Starting from a false truth, you can come to any conclusion. Google is responsible for choosing to enable immoral acts and pretending there are no fault actors is one of your faults.

I said it before: - If you continue this line of thinking, your only option probably is to extinguish all human being.

Absolutely. There can be no protesting ANY immoral actions, because that means you must advocate for ending humanity /s.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#112

Post by darawk »

Tyrek wrote: post #71
darawk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's your belief that not taking action would be better?

Are you certain that every drone strike that's ever been made has had a positive impact on the world?

No. But we've elected and appointed people who's job it is to:

a) be aware of all the information relevant to each operation

b) make a judgment as to whether each individual operation is worthwhile

Now, i'm not saying that makes them infallible. It certainly doesn't. There's a long history of people in such positions making poor choices. But if you're implying that they are, i'd like to see some evidence. Because what I see is a lot of "civilians died, therefore it was bad", but very little consideration of the objective of the mission, and whether or not the possibility of collateral damage was justified. What we do know is that smart people in positions of power believed that it was, and i'm happy to second-guess those beliefs if given good reason, but thus far i've never seen anyone give good reason in the case of these drone strikes.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#113

Post by darawk »

Forbo wrote: post #81
Tyrek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you certain that every drone strike that's ever been made has had a positive impact on the world?

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Perhaps the inclusion of the absolutist "every drone strike... ever". But this raises a valid concern. Is drone striking weddings really winning the hearts and minds of people, or is it just setting up the next generation of (IMO, justified) hate toward the US? [0] [1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Has…

Do you believe that those outcomes were the intent of the person that authorized these missions?

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#115

Post by virmundi »

discoball wrote: post #12
Kurtz79 wrote: post #7

To put the title into context: "Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck you when you arrived here?" "There’s still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve h…

> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people and China to be more oppressive until its workers protested. So he's right about humanity having to solve its problems but he's forgetting that Google, the corporation, is opting to make it harder for humanity to solve its problems by enabling those who do not have humanity's best interest in their heart.

You're making an assumption about best. What is best?

Is it personal liberty within the confines of enough law to provide some semblance of stability? The US is straining with that and it is arguably the most free of the Western Nations. Before the EU apologists jump on, keep in mind the EU Human Rights Court ruled that no one is allowed to speak against Mohamed (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/european-court-ind...). Gun violence appears to be leaving the ghettos and moving into more civilized neighborhoods.

Is it an authoritarian power that feeds, houses, and medicates its population? China does a lot of this. Hunger is down dramatically. People are still largely free to go about their daily lives.

Is it in-between? I don't know. The EU is starting to fray there. Nationalist movements are seeing that countries have to give up their current individual identities to conform with a Brussels/German worldview. Is this wrong? How are you to say?

My whole point in all this is that you've alluded to some truth claim as an attack on Google. Can you a) clearly define your truth claim, at least to yourself, and b) say why it's more true than the Chinese view that people are sheep and need a shepard? The Left in the US holds this view to varying degrees. That's why we need all this regulation. No one should be free to buy plastic straws.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#116

Post by andrepd »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #40

Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is…

>Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production.

>It's part of the same system to maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires.

Maybe we should organise our production, decision-making, control and incentives structures differently then, rather than sticking to an old, disastrously inefficient, enormously wasteful and unfair model. Maybe some democratic, social system, if I do make myself clear...

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#117

Post by dumbfoundded »

craftyguy wrote: post #74
dumbfoundded wrote: post #40

Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is…

> There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. Technology has failed over and over to provide an accountable, verifiable, and secure election process.

No it hasn't. Paper works great. So great in fact, many security experts recommend returning to a paper backup system (1). The reason we don't have a secure election process is because no one with the power to do anything has any incentive to fix it (a bit of an over-generalization).

(1) https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/opinions/to-keep-our-votes-sa...

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#118

Post by lordnacho »

I disagree. Technology is the very solution to our problems, the driver of social change.

Why? Because our social instincts don't change terribly fast, being coded in DNA. Our hardware/OS is more or less what it was when the last ice age ended. Nobody has extra arms or hearts. People still use "look each other in the eye" and other old school tropes to decide if they are comfortable with a new person.

The only thing that changes us is when some guy figures out you can melt certain ores and turn them into sharp tools. Or when some lady finds out the seeds she harvested from a certain grass can be nurtured into new plants.

Innovations like this change the economy and allow us to organize society differently. People no longer need to spend a large part of the day washing clothes. These days you don't even need to know how to farm or hunt. That means you can do other stuff while still having your needs met.

The only way to solve our social problems is to try to think of better ways use the planet. That's technology.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#119

Post by openfuture »

ucaetano wrote: post #54
danharaj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet bombing? No one was ever going to carpet bomb a wedding.

> No one was ever going to carpet bomb a wedding. Not a wedding, indeed, an entire town, with possibly dozens of weddings happening at the same time. Plus hospitals, schools, etc. If you had to pick between carpet bombing and smart bombs, which one would you pick? (And consider you don't have a choice, like the trolley problem, you NEED to pick one).

Okay let's just assume I figured out a clever way around your constraints while still avoiding the answer you want us to give. Are you just going to add another constraint to hide from the truth?

Can you at least accept that the burden of proof is on the guy who wants to go bomb random people not on the pacifists.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

voidhorse wrote: post #50
dumbfoundded wrote: post #40

Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and ethical food production. Technology is…

You're certainly correct that the major problem is social, economic, and structural, but I do think there are some technologies that are inherently tricky to justify regardless of the economic structures they arise in. The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself. You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a p…

> You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.

Well, we know why it was invented in the first place, so it's justification is based on what you think of the II World War, and United States' involvement in it.

As for direct beneficial applications, those are after-the-fact, but two comes to mind:

1) Nuclear propulsion as currently the only feasible way we know of to move large masses through interplanetary space in reasonable timeframes.

2) Russians did some experiments with large-scale landscaping using nuclear bombs. Not sure what's the opinion of specialists in earth sciences, but it looks like a pretty useful tool to have.

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