The article makes some good points but: "the liberation of humans from their unwanted jobs" shows him to be out of touch. There is a lot of manual repetitive labour that people enjoy and take pride in. And these jobs are often one of the only ways of ensuring distribution of wealth.
The Case for Optimism
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Re: The Case for Optimism
#22> I am talking about the state of the world and its future on average global terms.
There is little cause for optimism on global terms. The decentralization that Kevin Kelly, Thomas Friedman and others lauded has led to a predictable increase in global insecurity by almost every measure (See below). The self-organization and techno-utopianism Kelly predicted in "Out of Control" (A book I loved enough to read twice) hasn't materialized - quite the opposite in-fact.
International Peace Institute: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/cperry1848/viz/Intern...
World Bank Political Stability Rankings: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_political_stabi...
IMF Financial Stability: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/GFSR?page=1
Re: The Case for Optimism
#23I used to take Kelly seriously. Back in the 90s he was boosting a glorious connected utopia of free education, explosive creativity and endless opportunity.
What we got was personal surveillance by huge monopolies, a toxic culture of disinformation and social media driven by "engagement", and the fathomless banality of an IT economy devoted largely to ad tech.
And none of the real problems - climate change, wealth distribution, democratic stability - are any closer to being solved.
I'm out of patience. He's always been a prophet of comforting nonsense, and this is another meaningless sermon from the top of Happy Clappy Mountain.
Re: The Case for Optimism
#24Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require believing in the future. The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology th…
I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and pay attention to something interesting that is happening in this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer" and "Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it itself dangerous". It's therefore interesting to me that baron_harkonnen's comment is getting downvoted literally out of the optimist majority's sight. That seems to go against HN's culture of welcoming and respecting debate so long as the viewpoint seems to be genuine, non-inflammatory, etc. baron_harkonnen is expressing some bleak ideas (as is fitting for a pessimist) but it appears to be a genuine, non-inflammatory perspective.
[1] From HN guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
Re: The Case for Optimism
#25Better to err on the side of optimism in each thing. Optimism in all things (the future of humanity) is different. There, we should strive to understand the dynamics of the progress that Kelly rightly admires. It's our golden gooose. It's prudent to understand and monitor its health; less so to blindly worship it.
Re: The Case for Optimism
#26I used to take Kelly seriously. Back in the 90s he was boosting a glorious connected utopia of free education, explosive creativity and endless opportunity. What we got was personal surveillance by huge monopolies, a toxic culture of disinformation and social media driven by "engagement", and the fathomless banality of an IT economy devoted largely to ad tech. And none of the real problems - climate change, wealth di…
All we got was the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets, functionally for free.
I don’t like ad tech and I’m not dismissing that modern software has problems, but I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about.
On most metrics (infant mortality, poverty, violence) - things are massively better than they were thirty years ago.
Re: The Case for Optimism
#27> To be a good ancestor one must assume that good things can be forwarded. Many of the old ways are being forgotten, and `Grandma's brain` is not so readily picked anymore since people value their Internet & the hive mind of social media more than the wisdom of their elders. Also the old way of passing down teachings orally, like in the case of Buddhism and some other religions, is declining. Now it has to be perfect…
Isn't it relatively likely that there are more people learning Buddhism orally now than there ever have been before?
Re: The Case for Optimism
#28Before I clicked, I thought this was going to be an article about Optimism, the new technology for opimistic rollups for Ethereum.
I guess I should’t have been so optimistic :)
Re: The Case for Optimism
#29I am so far down the pessimistic rabbit hole, that for each point he mentioned my mind goes towards what to me seems like the elephant in the room. "Total Urbanization" - What should we do with its impact on the environment ? How will total urbanization be sustainable (i.e. who will buy your waste now ?) ? Should we even think about this, or just try to build technology to leave this planet ? "Universal Connectivity"…
Thank you for writing all of this. I think undying optimism was okay when you really couldn't do that much harm with your terrible decisions based on false optimism. That's no longer the case. I also think, practically speaking, unfounded optimism will be the reason we fail to address Climate Change. It's time for realism now.
Re: The Case for Optimism
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see optimism towards technology being a "taboo" at all. I see a lot of people wanting questions answered before world-changing stuff is put into place. "Ready, aim, fire" is in that order for a reason, yeah?
There are too many people who think their questions are the important ones to be addressed before we are allowed to make progress. The more gates/approvers you add before changes can be made or new ideas tried out, the less likely you are to build great things and build fast. Instead you get slow, bureaucratic, design by committee solutions and the more unique technological directions get shelved. One of my favorite…
This reads as "ready, fire, aim, fire again" being a virtue.
It's not, at mega-human scales.