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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#201

Post by rgmerk »

elihu wrote: post #154

> We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well. Let's not do that on Earth please. If you want to build a planet-sized…

The idea of increasing per-capita energy consumption to 1,000x current American levels is so ludicrous Andreesen should immediately be laughed out of town without any further consideration.

I did some back of the envelope calculations (and obviously made a few assumptions about what he meant), but, roughly, 1,000x current US per capita energy consumption is about enough to keep you airborne in a (fully occupied) corporate jet continuously with fuel synthesised from air and water.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#202

Post by TheLegace »

stevenhuang wrote: post #131
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's "the purest form" of something, give me the dirty version any day. An utterly useless human activity, that does nothing for actual humanity but simply serves as a wealth redistribution technique shared among a tiny number of highly-self-interested individuals ... it might be "pure" but it's not "pure" in any way.

You don't understand market making and it's not ok to pretend you do.

I don't know if you have been on the other side of what market makers do, but its not exactly a day at the beach. Once you gain enough insight to see whats going on the charts you just see it as a graveyard of traders positions, stop losses and their capital. This happens every minute the market is open at every timeframe.

Have you ever wonder why the markets appear so irrational? Great economic data and the worse drop in months or vice versa. These are the expectations, emotions and psychology of the masses that are liquidated by market makers. Have you also just had a gut instinct to buy or sell and market moves completely opposite beyond your psychological limit. Only for it to start moving into profit once you have closed at a huge loss. This is all market makers do all day.

In principle there is nothing immoral here. Participants are all taking risks voluntarily, no one is forcing you risk trading the stock market. But in practice market makers take positions at the stop losses 90% of market participants giving them significantly overwhelming supply of assets at the best prices, while everyone else sees consistent intractable losses.

This is a Darwinian environment where only the biggest, fiercest and most aggressive players will win by killing weaker, smaller and less knowledgeable players. The only way for a small fish to win is to understand the rules the market makers play by. Their strengths, desires, weaknesses, limitations and once you do you realize that this was someone's capital, but it's also capital not going to the market makers.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#203

Post by cratermoon »

uoaei wrote: post #176
cratermoon wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and he quotes neo-reactionary Nick Land

Not just neo-reactionary, actively accelerationist who seems to believe that heat death just can't come quick enough.

I wasn't sure if this audience would recognize the term ‘accelerationist', but yes. Of those on HN who do recognize the term, I wonder how many would consider that a good thing.

Back in the day we had another word for accelerationist groups: apocalyptic cults.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#204

Post by rgmerk »

hotnfresh wrote: post #168
elihu wrote: post #154

> We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well. Let's not do that on Earth please. If you want to build a planet-sized…

Assuming the CO2 stat is even true (that stood out to me, too, so I did a search, but couldn’t find a good source either way) I 100% guarantee it’s sophistry: carbon produced in the US per-capita is perhaps down—that’s not impossible, at least—but I’ll eat my hat if carbon released due to US consumption is down.

US embodied carbon imports are not nearly as large as is sometimes assumed, apparently in the order of 7% of total emissions:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-...

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#205

Post by simpaticoder »

Externalities of progress are very real, and the speed with which the modern age has arisen, and it's brevity, should give us pause every time we assert that it is all good or all evil. It is certainly both.

The great problem of our time is the unrestrained accumulation of wealth. Tech wealth is the product of both innovation and making that innovation artificially scarce. Without the former there is no demand, without the later there is no profit. The techno optimists always seem to forget that second component! Once you've earned Enough, either drop the artificial scarcity and share freely, or give someone else a turn to earn their own Enough. Don't keep hoarding it all for yourself and lying that your wealth is proportional to the value you created. No. Especially in tech. It's proportional to the value you captured with the 1-2 punch of innovation and artificial scarcity, and that itself required a functioning society to which you owe your success and your allegiance.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#208

Post by marcus_holmes »

Open question (I don't have an answer and I'm curious):

I have a friend who is an extremely talented musician. They get by, they're not starving or anything, but it's very hand-to-mouth. I have other friends who are massively less talented at other things, but those things are more commercially rewarded (selling, coding, management, etc).

Why does our system (and this manifesto) reward one set of talents and not the other so differently?

Related: are we really, as a society, going to push our most talented musicians/artists/creatives to do other things because of this? If you were born with a gift for music but could also write some software (not badly, but not at the same level) shouldn't we as a society push you to make great music rather than average code?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#209

Post by Animats »

The big problem is the "Markets" section. The author assumes that free markets just happen. But what we see today are monopolies or oligopolies. The end state seems to be 1-3 big players who tend not to compete on price. Price competition doesn't seem to happen until there are 4 or more roughly comparable players. Margins get much better as competition disappears, which produces a huge pressure towards consolidation.

Why this is is another discussion, but it's very clearly the case in the US.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#210

Post by leshow »

chrisco255 wrote: post #133
LindeBuzoGray wrote: post #53

> Markets > We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us > We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral There's many things off with this. The USSR from the 1920s to early 1950s had enormous economic growth - particularly in the 1930s when so-called free markets in the West had collapsed, by the 1…

If you design a system that can only really last for a single generation or two it's not really an appropriate model for a civilization is it? The USSR had 3 decades of solid growth? That's cute. The U.S. has been booming for hundreds of years at this point. The US economy is not centrally planned. Government expenditure is 37 percent of GDP, not even a majority. Even much of the government expenditures that do occur…

> The U.S. has been booming for hundreds of years at this point.

Glorifying the early US economic system is not doing much for your argument.

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