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Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

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Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#51

Post by forthefuture »

thathonkey wrote: post #46
lmg643 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main concern with Peter Thiel praising monopolies is that the nuance of the message will get lost - "earning monopoly through radical innovation" - but the core message remains - monopoly = profit. People will start to pat themselves on the back for acquiring all their competitors, skewing regulations in their favor, and a variety of other sleazy business tactics. I suspect most large business CEOs already underst…

So the argument is that monopolies are ok so long as they are won fair and square? Umm... ok.

The irony is that any company that is legitimately better than their competitors has no choice but to become a monopoly.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#52

Post by oscargrouch »

seanflyon wrote: post #2

tl;dr: We don't need moon shots to inspire us, we need to believe in progress, believe that the present is better than the past.

This is Comte's Positivim, we need to turn that page, cause the phylosophical roots of this come from two centuries ago(not that the age matters but in the sense we are "stuck" here); While it was essencial to science and progress in the XX century; We need to see we also did a lot of harm in our frenetic pursue for progress; So we need to see thats not always for the better, also bad things can come with it and we need to be more clever, giving we have more educational resources than past humans, and figure out how to avoid advance without the destructive side effects

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#53

Post by foobarqux »

refurb wrote: post #47
foobarqux wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle class income has been flat since the 70s and discretionary income has decreased.

Do you have a source? It's true that household income has been flat since the 1970's, but the nature of households has changed, there are a lot more single parents where there used to be two income earners. If you look at income on a per person basis, we're much higher (in inflation adjusted terms) than we were in the 1970s.

The reverse is true: there a more two income earners now but household income hasn't increased as much. Per person is flat.

http://youtu.be/akVL7QY0S8A?t=9m2s

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#54

Post by ianferrel »

eropple wrote: post #18
ianferrel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point is that we focus too much on the downside. We should be happy that there's lower demand for blood transfusions due to improved medical techniques, but we're just lamenting the lost jobs in the industry. Just like we should be happy that self-driving cars are going to mean more leisure time, safer streets, and lower transportation costs, but we spent a lot of time worrying about people who currently driv…

How much of that is the precondition for that progress (which, mind you, I'm 100% behind) being economic harm to other people? My guess is that with a stronger social net you'd see fewer doom-and-gloom articles about this sort of progress.

I think that's probably true.

I also think that there will be more political will for a stronger safety net as technology displaces more jobs. And there'll be more wealth to support it.

It'll be rough for a while, but things will turn out ok.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#55

Post by Spooky23 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #24
acgourley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…

All of those were government projects. And two were either completely or largely secret at that, because they were intended to address an "existential threat" on the horizon. Good luck getting the government behind anything like that anymore. Unless we have some otherworldly threat or something that MIGHT challenge US dominance in short order I don't see any big projects coming out of the U.S. government.

The 21st century Manhattan project is pervasive surveillance. And just like the Manhattan project or Apollo, we'll all be getting something out of that for many years to come.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#56

Post by foobarqux »

danieltillett wrote: post #42
ForHackernews wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to know why they think a particular date. What analysis have they done to reach their conclusion? Kurzweil is terrified of his own mortality and counting on "The Singularity" to allow him to upload his immortal ~soul~ consciousness into a computer. That's why he's predicting a date within his lifespan.

This may well be true, but what analysis has he done to support this. The only detailed analysis I have seen from anyone is from Moravec. I have been through his analysis and I can’t find any flaw with it.

Where can I find this analysis? It is impossible that there is no reasonable criticism to be made.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#57

Post by goodgoblin »

Did anyone else see the headline at the bottom of the page claiming that 'Amazon Workers are Today's Coal Miners'?

I haven't read the article, but given the amount of death and human suffering coal miners overcame, I can only assume it is consciously sensationalist.

It is almost as if certain villainous categories are built into our collective minds and we are looking for actors to play the parts.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#58

Post by oculus42 »

goodgoblin wrote: post #57

Did anyone else see the headline at the bottom of the page claiming that 'Amazon Workers are Today's Coal Miners'? I haven't read the article, but given the amount of death and human suffering coal miners overcame, I can only assume it is consciously sensationalist. It is almost as if certain villainous categories are built into our collective minds and we are looking for actors to play the parts.

There are some very disturbing stories about extreme conditions in the warehouse.

There's a good NYT article about it (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very...)

This is the piece I heard about:

So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. About 15 people were taken to hospitals, while 20 or 30 more were treated right there, the ambulance chief told The Call.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#59

Post by skybrian »

acgourley wrote: post #5
rqebmm wrote: post #4

This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.

The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…

It's not a great argument. The Manhattan Project wasn't incremental but it was a reaction to scientific advance. It started after Einstein's letter to Roosevelt warning that an atomic bomb was possible [1], not someone saying "hey, let's build a really big bomb because optimism."

The Apollo program was built on incremental advances in rocketry going back to von Braun (at least), mostly funded due to military competition.

The Hoover Dam was a high point in a long history of dam construction that was very much incremental.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_l...

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#60

Post by danieltillett »

foobarqux wrote: post #56
danieltillett wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may well be true, but what analysis has he done to support this. The only detailed analysis I have seen from anyone is from Moravec. I have been through his analysis and I can’t find any flaw with it.

Where can I find this analysis? It is impossible that there is no reasonable criticism to be made.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rise-of-the-robots...
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