Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter. Black live matter more than the next stupid tech trend to ride the Gartner hype cycle. Tech that doesn't include everyone shouldn't be built. Stop reading HN and get out into the streets and support your fellow human beings.
No tech in history has ever included everyone. All ideologies are lies, “buy low sell high” bullshit. Build any tech that makes the world a better place, and try to make it as inclusive as possible. My intuition is that for breakthroughs to occur, we need new technologies in creating markets for activities with high positive externalities. Look at education, for example. The budget on that seems mostly wasted, because there is not a good market to direct the spending to efficient solutions. If we look at MOOCs and KhanAcademy and similar projects, it’s clear that they are more or less worse versions of a traditional class. They could be so much more. We could have great interactive, multimedia textbooks with integrated teacher support that answer questions, and integrated exercises that auto-grade and tell you how to fix your mistakes. We could have platforms that measure and certify productivity of workers, so that the current credentialism and mad-high university prices crash down.
Our problems won’t be solved by religions. Religions have never worked. The only thing that can solve our problems is social innovation. We need better institutions that align incentives of decision-makers to their people, and create competition to drive progress. If you look at why first world countries are better than third world countries, you’ll see it’s because of better institutions, not religions. In fact, third world countries are much more keen on religion and virtue signaling. Religion thrives on poverty and corruption.