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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?

#271

Post by isolli »

fabianhjr wrote: post #113

Regarding the first paragraphs where luddism is mentioned several times; Lord Byron, father to Ada Lovelace the first programmer, was one of the few on the House of Lords to defend the Luddites: > But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of poverty; men, who had been nefariously gui…

This reminds me of the "lump-of-labor fallacy" fallacy [0]:

>

[0] http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2016/01/sandwichmans-lump-of-...

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

#272

Post by kebman »

fabianhjr wrote: post #206
simonh wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't defending destroying the frames though, he was commiserating with the plight of the workers. In modern developed countries we have social security benefits, health care and such, to varying degrees depending on the country, to try and make sure people don't starve like that.

> He wasn't defending destroying the frames though Agreed > In modern developed countries we have social security benefits, health care and such, to varying degrees depending on the country, to try and make sure people don't starve like that. And the country with the highest GDP lacks anything other than the bare minimum social security and the article is very-USA centric. (Both China and Europe have a more stable so…

I don't want to be a stickler, but Europe isn't a country. It is simply inaccurate to claim that "Europe have a more stable society compared to the USA." There are countries within Europe that has extreme wealth, and extreme poverty, while most countries in Europe are still far better developed than, say, most countries in Africa. With that said, the best developed countries in Europe do seem to have a better social security system than the USA, but at a high cost.

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

#273

Post by tremon »

dingaling wrote: post #251
swarnie_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

> Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs? Second-wave strategic targets ( surviving silos, airfields, ports and C3 facilities ) Tactical targets ( tank formations , POL depots, troop assembly areas, aviation FOBs ) Naval targets ( submarines, surface vessels, sonar installations ) Mobility targets ( bridges, valleys, tunnels ) Plus accounting for failed weapons, losses en route, missed targets...

If you have made so many enemies that you need 18,000 nuclear bombs to feel safe, I question your attitude to life.

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

#274

Post by ajmadesc »

jb_gericke wrote: post #164
rramadass wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“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"…

Actually the global poverty line has been on a steady decline over the last three decades ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty ). We have made untold advances in the medical sciences (hello MRNA vaccines), we are rapidly divorcing ourselves from our reliance on fossil fuels, and we are living in a time when there is an unprecedented level of awareness for basal human rights (well, primarily in the West a…

The irony of this comment is you say

> The global poverty line has been on steady decline

That's about right. We measure poverty as less than $2 per day. It's an arbitrary number. It would need to be $7.50 to prevent malnutrition and lower than 50% mortality. If we use the 7.50 mark the number of people in poverty has increased dramatically since the 80s.

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

#275

Post by TeMPOraL »

yesenadam wrote: post #231
lwhi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doctrine was M.A.D. .. or mutually assured distruction[1]. I believe the (arguably crazy) idea was that the weapons wouldn't ever be used. The fact that each nuclear superpower has a similar amount of weapons assured that the equalibrium would stop the worst from happening. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

That page says "Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the MAD doctrine continues to be applied." I get the feeling that's not generally known. Isn't that kind of extremely weird? I've never seen discussion of it on HN, for example, or maybe what to do about the prospect of living indefinitely under the threat of MAD. With more countries with nuclear weapons all the time. Well, you read here about people not…

It's not generally known, particularly by the generation that was born at the tail end of the Cold War (like myself), and by people born later. We grew up without the fear of that particular flavor of Armageddon.

But MAD is still what keeps the world relatively peaceful. It also gives rise to certain paradoxes - like any attempt to create a better defense against nuclear weapons is also the biggest threat to mankind, because it risks breaking the MAD doctrine and thus inviting a nuclear first strike. For MAD to work, countries in their equivalence class (e.g. US, Russia and China are one class) need to be in lock step with their capabilities, so that no one can be struck without the attacker risking annihilation.

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

#276

Post by croes »

JamisonM wrote: post #170

There are a lot of frustratingly silly responses to this article supporting Sale's side of this bet. This is utter madness, Sale wasn't even close! By virtually every material measure society has improved in the intervening time, in spite of the horrendous response to the financial crisis of 2008 and even the bungled response to SARS-COV-2. Lots silly self-indulgent stuff that is really indirectly about alienation an…

Climate change is still not solved, and if you think the response to the financial crisis of 2008 was horrendous an response to SARS-COV-2 was bungled, wait for the hard hits of climate change. "Not even close" could be premature.

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

#277

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

XorNot wrote: post #261
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and we need to avoid the nirvana fallacy. I live in a country with public health care and every so ofter people are sent home to die from scheduled surgery because there aren't doctors or other staff available. My dad had 99% clogged heart arteries before he got treatment. My brother works in the US and prefer their system, but then he's got a good job - still a data point for the discussion.

So, how rich is your dad? Because unless it was "can drop quarter of a million dollars or more" rich, then no, in the US he would've just been sent home to die. The existence of a public healthcare system running at capacity is not evidence the US system "doesn't have this problem". Being denied treatment because you can't afford it is objectively worse then being denied treatment because the system is busy. One prob…

Well my point was to not compare with rainbows and unicorns but how it works in the real world. Also I'm not saying the US has a better system.

But just to entertain this discussion (big mistake), the problem is that you can't pay for surgery even if you're rich, which means that useful price signals for how to allocate resources are missing. You'll perhaps say: "Well it shouldn't be like that". I agree but there is a reason it ended up like this.

My brother doesn't need a serious health event to know (for a reasonable definition of "know") because he has a brain and people to talk to with direct and indirect experience of the system.

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

#278

Post by kitd »

konjin wrote: post #262
ascorbic wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know there's a difference between a computer and a computer program, right?

The funny thing is that your low effort zinger is factually wrong. Something you'd learn in second year compsci: >In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine that simulates an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the input to that machine from its own tape. ht…

Your "low effort" response proves that a computer program can be the same as a computer. Not what OP said.

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

#279

Post by imtringued »

daenz wrote: post #24
mseepgood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems of 2020 weren't rooted in tech, however.

They were severely exacerbated by tech. Let's argue about it and prove my point.

No, it's just the same thing happening over and over again.

Rich screw poor. Poor want to strike back.

In theory everyone could be happy. It's just that there is a lack of willingness for it to happen.

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

#280

Post by jessaustin »

swarnie_ wrote: post #218
yesenadam wrote: post #216

> Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World [0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a…

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs?

Every bomb must be purchased from the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society. The same who originally bamboozled Truman into damning our species. Your question is equivalent to "why do they want more money?"

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