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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#141

Post by Bakary »

tjr225 wrote: post #133
Bakary wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median wage gives you a picture that is closer to the real value than just anecdotes. For most people on Earth, there has been a great increase in living standards. It just so happens that much of it took place outside of the West.

It sounded like the gp was referring to median wages in the US.

My bad. In any case, the principle still stands. Looking up some stats I get a figure of 0.17% of the population being homeless. A tragedy to be sure, but a tiny fraction of the whole. In other words, it makes more sense to look at the median wage than what you see in a given city as a single individual going on about their day, if your goal is to get a feel for the situation.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#142

Post by chromaton »

jacquesm wrote: post #74
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was close, in 2008. It was frighteningly close. Not before or since, but yeah, I'll give them "close" on that one. ("Worse than 1930" was part of the criterion. We didn't come close to that in terms of the final outcome, but we were, I think, within a very few days of getting there.)

There is a pretty good chance that the period of 2022-2035 or so will be a lot worse than the 2008-2015 one.

Let's bet.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#143

Post by Robotbeat »

Bakary wrote: post #131
sircastor wrote: post #119

I’m reminded of a long bet made a number of years ago between Joseph Romm and Greg Blencoe that 1% of car sales in the US would be Hydrogen Fuel cell vehicles by 2015. I’d done a report on this in college and completely forgot about it, probably because hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are near impossible to find on the consumer market. So Blencoe lost the bet and paid Romm the $1000 and wore a T-shirt. He posted a very s…

Ironically hydrogen is having a renaissance as we speak

Are you sure? It’s 5 years after that Million ‘Murican Hydrogen bet was lost, and we’re still 2 full orders of magnitude away. (In spite of massive subsidies for fuel cell in California.)

At least 8,890 FCEVs are on the road today, a far cry from the 53,000 the California Fuel Cell Partnership projected by the end of 2017. "I don't see a lot of automaker interest in hydrogen," DeShazo argued. "Most automakers are betting on battery electric vehicles for the passenger market and delivery trucks."Dec 12, 2020

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#144

Post by Bakary »

nicoffeine wrote: post #49

The world has undoubtedly changed but mostly for the better. Digital technology, however, is still in its infancy. Many users are brand new to the internet in the last ten years. I have learned to pace my time on the internet, but this is after 25 years of practice and burning out on the novelty of it. We are all figuring out that new does not mean progress. Case in point: I recently started back with the DVD side of…

>I think about what I want to watch twice a month, and when I have time, I don't have to deal with any ads or worry about a spotty night on a cable modem.

I don't get why you wouldn't be able to do this on a streaming service, unless the catalogue is somehow worse. The DVD part sounds like a superfluous and cumbersome extra layer

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#145

Post by rramadass »

wernst wrote: post #88
glenstein wrote: post #37

A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty,…

I agree, but I'm reminded of this quote from Ernest Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Massive change due to tech is always just waiting to happen. Here's to hoping it just changes society without destroying it.

>“How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Great quote! Gradually and unknowingly you approach a tipping point until some factor pushes you over the edge like the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back".

I believe Sale was/is broadly right. Some of Nassim Taleb's ideas also play into this viz. our inability to predict the future and the catastrophic effect of non-linear and "black swan" events. It is not "Technology" that is the problem but our stewardship of it. We simply are not taking a holistic system view of it which is absolutely necessary when our system (i.e. our planet) is "closed".

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#146

Post by jholman »

saghm wrote: post #127
lukedoolittle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this changes anything but I think the actual bet is described by the line >I bet you US$1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to the kind of disaster you describe—a convergence of three disasters: global currency collapse, significant warfare between rich and poor, and environmental disasters of some significant size. We won't even be close. I'll bet on my optimism. It seems like in the ac…

> I bet you US$1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to...a global currency collapse Why would anyone take this bet? If you're right, then $1000 USD probably won't be worth very much after the "global currency collapse", so you'd basically be saying "I'll give you $1000 in 2020 if it's worth anything"

To Kevin Kelly, today, $1000 is barely worth anything anyway. So he also stands to gain nothing. (And, indeed, he didn't even want the money, but asked for it to be sent to charity.)

So ask yourself the question again. Why would two public intellectuals make a public bet, when neither stands to gain any monetary benefit from it? My goodness, it's a mystery.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#147

Post by vegetablepotpie »

hawkice wrote: post #106
masterphilo wrote: post #99

Great read, and a close call! Like other people mentioned, the fact that Sale's predictions were even remotely close to what we're experiencing today should be hair-raising. What I took from Sale's argument was that "Technology" is not an absolute good, and without a framework of life on which most people on this planet can adopt to guide our use of tech, it will be the end. Hopefully, it will only be the end of this…

It wasn't close! Is there anyone who thinks we live in a society that almost had a socialist revolution? Where's the eco-collapse (not just damage, collapse, and multiple collapses as well -- this guy was basically saying there'd be no outdoors)? We can barely hit a 2% inflation target and you're saying dollars are close to worthless? Edit: The guy was saying all of civilization would collapse and the survivors would…

Not OP, but we are a far cry from a techno utopia. We really had two opposing world views, one where technology would help us achieve a better life, another where it would contribute to us falling off a precipice. Neither won. On the plus side we have a world where global poverty is falling and more people are developing middle class life styles, we have amazing technology like gene editing, incredible computational ability, and entertainment options. However, this same technology has pushed us dangerous close to climate disaster, has us in the middle of a mass extinction, and has enriched a very small number of people.

You could evaluate this bet on the technical measures, and that was probably prudent, but at the full picture, the situation looks very mixed.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#150

Post by danaliv »

Talanes wrote: post #80
dragonwriter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a native english speaker, "for example" and "that is" code as basically the same style of skip-over phrase: just there to lead into the important part. As a native English speaker, seriously, WTF? “That is” (for which two different latin-derived abbreviations are frequently used in English, i.e. and viz. ) leads into an equivalent alternative to what precedes, while “for example” (for which e.g. is a latin-deriv…

Where does using one over the other cause an actual change in information though? Not just sticking out as the wrong one if you know the proper distinction, but actually conveying different information? The comparison that follows is the important part, the abbreviation is a part of grammatical dressing that provides some flow and framing.

I read my daily updates on technology, i.e., HackerNews...

Totally different meaning if you replace i.e. with e.g.

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