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Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

nytimes.com

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Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#281

Post by darawk »

ameister14 wrote: post #278
darawk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first one, because he was a young boy He was a 16 year old Al Qaeda member who was the son of a leader of the group. > The second, because the president using his sole authority to order the assassination of someone shouldn't happen. Ever? > Regardless, not taking action at that time would likely have been better. They were US citizens, their rights were abrogated and they were killed illegally. Agree that beca…

>Ever? Yes. You could make the argument that targeted strikes authorized by a single person are acceptable in a state of war (which we are not in), but even with that an assassination should have checks on it, always.

I would certainly like assassination to have checks on it, all else equal. But do you really think that's practical?

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#282

Post by samontar »

dta5003 wrote: post #144
samontar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you fund the killing with your taxes. You know they kill, you know they need money to build the killing machines, you give them money.

Have an option for me to withhold those taxes that doesn't involve more killing? Sign me up.

Both you and Google are helping with the killing because it helps you make money. That’s okay. We all do terrible things for money.

You can withhold taxes by dropping your income below the minimum threshold.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#283

Post by samontar »

kazen44 wrote: post #167
samontar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you fund the killing with your taxes. You know they kill, you know they need money to build the killing machines, you give them money.

yes, but you cannot deny paying these taxes because you live at the wims of the tyranny of the majority. You could ofcourse proclaim not wanting to take part in said nation anymore and not pay the taxes, but then you would also loose out of well, the rest of society basically.

All you have to do is live unemployed and take money from the government, thus draining it of killing money.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#284

Post by natalyarostova »

crwalker wrote: post #72
natalyarostova wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the most dogmatic pacifists in the US still maintain that the US entering WWII was the wrong choice. Yet the US literally incinerated hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians through carpet fire-bombings. Thankfully, we seem to have left the world of total war. Whether nuclear weapons and targeted drone strikes made the world in some broad strokes more peaceful on purpose, well, probably not. Nonetheless, we…

> Thankfully, we seem to have left the world of total war. Deaths in armed conflict form a fat-tailed distribution. Extreme events dominate, and the absence of any world wars for several decades is not evidence that humanity has gotten more peaceful if world wars happen roughly every couple hundred years. See Taleb, who is much more clear. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pdf

I'm familiar with Taleb's argument on this point, and it's a fair point. A massive nuclear war in 70 years would change any current conclusions that nuclear weapons make us safer.

On the other hand, I'd personally rather take a 1% chance of obscene nuclear war and otherwise peace, than a (let's say) 40% chance of ongoing infantry warfare.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#285

Post by chr1 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #233
robax wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yuval Noah Harari has a different argument in his book Sapiens. He says that we’re living in the most peaceful period of human existence ever and it’s caused by a few factors. #1 the stakes are too high because of nuclear weapons and #2 now more than ever a country’s resources are the brains of its inhabitants, which can’t exactly be conquered. I think we’re definitely seeing the landscape of war changing. I really h…

#2 seems obviously wrong; minds can be conquered (that's what propaganda is about), if you conquer minds you don't need to fire a shot to conquer, and—except perhaps for a handful of the most totalitarian regimes as targets—its never been easier for a hostile power to deliver propaganda to the citizenry of a target state, especially if the target is a developed democracy. So, yeah, the importance of minds as resource…

Hararis argument is that when the main resource of the country is brains, conquering that country with army wouldn't give you anything useful, and you need other methods to conquer like the propaganda you ention.

And because the propaganda tends to kill less than bombs, the conflicts do not end up as wars.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#286

Post by discoball »

darawk wrote: post #279
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fucking bullshit. Even the phrasing grates at me. Killing a bunch of innocent people in another country is just a "risk" to some moron with a drone. If all of a sudden that moron was piloting a drone IN THE US and blew up a church/school on accident, I guarantee you wouldn't be so comfortable abstracting away lives as "risk". By the way, if we count all the innocent people killed by the US as "mistakes", it is certai…

I would absolutely say the same thing about people in the US, provided it was in service of an important, higher purpose, as it is here.

If it was your own family at a wedding? Seriously? You can tell us with honesty that you would classify the brutal murder of your own family as worthwhile because there was some resistance fighters in your country that happen to be in your area and a foreign power wanted to eradicate them with air to ground missiles? Hmm. It cannot possibly be true.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#287

Post by darawk »

discoball wrote: post #286
darawk wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely say the same thing about people in the US, provided it was in service of an important, higher purpose, as it is here.

If it was your own family at a wedding? Seriously? You can tell us with honesty that you would classify the brutal murder of your own family as worthwhile because there was some resistance fighters in your country that happen to be in your area and a foreign power wanted to eradicate them with air to ground missiles? Hmm. It cannot possibly be true.

> If it was your own family at a wedding? Seriously? You can tell us with honesty that you would classify the brutal murder of your own family as worthwhile because there was some resistance fighters in your country that happen to be in your area and a foreign power wanted to eradicate them with air to ground missiles? Hmm. It cannot possibly be true.

I wouldn't be happy about it. But these things are inevitable consequences of war. People get shot accidentally by the police, here, in the United States. We try our best to minimize it, but it happens. It is an inevitable consequence of law enforcement. If one of my family members were accidentally killed by a cop, I would be upset. I'd want to understand the specifics of the incident, and see if perhaps the cop was being negligent in some way. But, if they were not being negligent and the situation had warranted it, and it was just an unfortunate accident, then I would not be angry with the officer, or the department.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#288

Post by nickvanhoog »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #117
craftyguy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's pretty much no problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. Technology has failed over and over to provide an accountable, verifiable, and secure election process.

No it hasn't. Paper works great. So great in fact, many security experts recommend returning to a paper backup system (1). The reason we don't have a secure election process is because no one with the power to do anything has any incentive to fix it (a bit of an over-generalization). (1) https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/opinions/to-keep-our-votes-sa...

That's the point. How does technology solve that incentive problem?

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#289

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #249
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These might be empty words in Sundar Pichai's mouth, but the underlying idea is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy) It's time for Silicon Valley (I actually mean supporter's of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism actually) to learn what Classical Greeks discovered a long time ago.

Could you elaborate on the Pharmakon in this context or point me at any resources to get a better understanding of it?

What makes a remedy a _good_ thing isn't the thing itself but the way it is used. That's therapeutics. A badly used remedy can easily become poisonous. It's the same with _any_ technology, e.g the Internet, smartphones, IA…

I'd recommend reading Bernard Stiegler, a French philosopher whose work has yet to been translated to English though (as I just discovered). I think this English interview might be a good introduction: http://krisis.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/krisis-2011-1-05....

Note that he often gets political but it's really worth it though if you're interested in the way technology is being designed and adopted by mankind (he's also focused on the Anthropocene but that's another topic). His annual conferences at Pompidou Centre / IRI (specially the ones about IA – https://enmi-conf.org/wp/enmi18/, in French unfortunately). I'd recommend his seminaries on philosophy (via his School of philosophy http://pharmakon.fr/wordpress/le-projet/the-school-of-philos... and via the Ars Industrialis non-profit) but they aren't yet translated. Again, sorry for that.

Re: Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’

#290

Post by masonic »

throw2016 wrote: post #251
masonic wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conventional bombing killed far more on the Japanese mainland than both atomic bombs combined did.

You do not see the difference between conventional warfare between armies and dropping untested new weapons on mass destruction on civilian populations? This is a deliberate calculated war crime. Hundreds of thousands of people were burned, suffocated and boiled to death in seconds let alone the radiation for no good reason. No educated person is unaware of the horror of launching a nuclear bomb on a civilian populat…

   between armies
Conventional bombing was not limited to "armies" in WW2 at all, least of all by the Japanese.

Again, there were more Japanese civilian deaths by conventional bombing than by both atomic bombs combined.

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