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Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
281–290 of 291 posts
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia is a country with a strong centralized government capable of enforcing laws whenever it wants. In the absence of effective laws, one of the biggest threats to rich people would be their own hired thugs. If the thugs decide that they don't respect you and they would make better rich assholes, they will kill you and take your property. Historically, societies like that were often ruled by the biggest and the mos…
Russian state is a final form of the thug-centric governance. The economic oligarchs maintain their riches at the behest of thugs, but they don’t have the power nor freedom.
that is the lesson of Khodorkovsky
you can be the boyar and punch down, but you get uppity and challenge the Tsar you end up in a cage
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what happens when you have VCs putting on hackathons at NorCal universities and scooping people off the campuses before they ever get their degrees. If you take a guy under the age of 25, give him millions of dollars, and tell him he's a genius, he's going to develop a personality disorder.
> This is what happens when you have VCs putting on hackathons at NorCal universities and scooping people off the campuses before they ever get their degrees. > If you take a guy under the age of 25, give him millions of dollars, and tell him he's a genius, he's going to develop a personality disorder. I think it is a little bit more complicated: I think there exists some very specific personality trait (my guess is…
why would you willingly look for a narcissist in a junior, albeit it sharp, coder? these people are terrible to work with and delusional af
you look for ambitious, maybe, but anti-social personality traits are a burned bridge waiting to happen.
the sociopaths, narcissistic or not, know to STFU and roll with it until there is a conflict of interest
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does it mean to be “smart”? I could list a ton of synonyms just to highlight not only the ambiguity of such a claim, but also its relative worthlessness: - Conniving - Autistic - Empathetic - Talented - Quick-witted - Well-read - Scheming - Obsessive - Compulsive - Nerdy - Geeky - Savvy - Wary - Weathered - Wise - Articulate - Quiet - Generous Or, here’s another question, who’s the smartest person in Las Vegas?…
We nevertheless have a concept of smartness and able to judge - imperfectly and subjectively - other people on this perceived dimension. Take, for example, Elon Musk in SpaceX. Elon knew enough of rocket science to assemble the early team and participate as a self-assigned chief designer. In many cases such actions would qualify a person as a smart one. Yes, it's hard to objectively measure - very hard perhaps. Yet w…
> Take, for example, Elon Musk in SpaceX. Elon knew enough of rocket science to assemble the early team and participate as a self-assigned chief designer. In many cases such actions would qualify a person as a smart one.
There’s so much mythologizing about this man and his companies that I can’t imagine taking anything at face value. He seems to frequently put it all on red and it’s worked out for him. Recently I learned a bit about a guy named H L Hunt and the similarities are a bit striking. But H L Hunt didn’t spend nearly as much money ensuring there was mythology around his character.
My point is, they’re smart, so what? What does that actually mean, and does that matter? I went to a top state university and was immediately humbled by people who were unimaginably smarter than me in so many capacities. I don’t particularly think I should go back to those peers and ask them if they think if democracy is a failed system or whatever the pet billionaire issue du jour is. I would imagine my Russian polylingual polymath lab partner that carried my ass through accelerated chemistry while getting elected to student government is quite a bit smarter than Musk as well, judging solely on how articulate the two are comparatively.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#285In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. Believing this axiom, people vote to hand over every possible service to private enterprise. Now we are in a situation where a handful of unelected business men have more power over our lives than the elected government.
Step 1: Start giving contracts to buddies that will become part of your oligarchy and start making them rich with government funds.
Step 2: Start hiring their crew members to government positions to later aid them in acquiring licenses for industries they want to monopolize.
Step 3: Pass some regulation that your buddies can easily comply with but nearly impossible for everyone else to comply with.
Result is a bloated government that spends a ton of money to seemingly achieve nothing, except serve your oligarchy.
Now blame the poor and welfare state. So you can keep more of the taxes.
Deregulate so your buddies who are now running monopolies can spend less.
Give more contracts to new buddies to share the spoils from aforementioned taxes you kept more of.
So on, so forth.
Oh, remember to keep telling the public about communism and how big governments are bloated and point at the one you designed as evidence that it’s inevitable.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is the Apple fandom strong enough to get Tim Cook his own private army of zealots when society breaks down? Society won't break down (in the chaos sense) and resources will still be allocated. Power abhors a vacuum as they say. It's just that resources and power will controlled and distributed in an openly feudal way. Technology's egalitarian objectives will be replaced by overtly oligarchic ones. Tech fandom will…
> access to real resources owned and controlled by the few. What’s an example of such a real resource?
Ability to purchase (legal) force. Whoever pays the Pinkertons owns the means of production.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really like this comment. Yes, it's the worst of both worlds: the right says that government is inefficient, I told you so; the left says it's the only solution to solve many social issues. Unfortunately they're both right and wrong. I'm very familiar with New York politics, and I watch in slow motion while enormous amounts of money disappear into government salaries and pensions, programs that go nowhere, and corr…
> building subway/metro infrastructure costs 3-4 times in New York what it costs in Tokyo, London or Paris. Why is that The NYC subway is one of the few (the only one?) to run 24/7, and it is one of the largest in the world. Construction is expensive because the operators choose to make it expensive. Digging giant new tunnels under existing skyscrapers also isn't exactly easy. Yeah there's corruption and waste, but n…
But then they do maintenance on weekends. No one works or uses the trains on the weekends, right? It's at 3 am weekdays that it should be running. Nevermind at that those hours it's infrequent and essentially a homeless shelter.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Land, housing, water, energy, food, medicines, healthcare, security, and proximity to influence. I'm sure I forgot a few.
> Land, housing, water, energy, food, medicines, healthcare, security, and proximity to influence. I'm sure I forgot a few. And you think the vast majority of people do not have access to the overwhelming majority of those things? The evidence suggests the opposite. The only item in your list I would agree with is "proximity to influence", but it is also the one thing that is totally different from the others in the…
> And you think the vast majority of people do not have access to the overwhelming majority of those things? The evidence suggests the opposite.
The comment I responded to asked:
> Is the Apple fandom strong enough to get Tim Cook his own private army of zealots when society breaks down?
I didn't say we are there now.
Responding to the parent's question about a dystopian future scenario, I said that those are the resources that will become controlled by the few if "society breaks down" due to technofeudalism.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is true for multiple topics too, like economics. It is almost worse off for people to take these 100 level classes without then taking 200 and 300 level continuations. They think they have extra knowledge in the subject because of the classes but it was really just a primer later to tell them why all that stuff sounds good at first but is completely wrong and useless.
A kindergarten science education person suggested their kids have a human right to understand their world then , rather than a lifetime (for them) later. So atoms, etc. I think that far far harder than they thought - "adapt later material for a younger audience" vs "wield lots and lots of research community domain expertise to craft largely novel content". But I've found it an interesting probe question: How would yo…
I always bring up the example of how the atomic nucleus is taught:
Elementary school: Stuff is actually made out of tiny little balls you can't see.
Middle school: Those tiny little balls are actually atoms, they consist of a positively charged core of protons/neutrons with negatively charged electrons flying around it. An atom is the smallest thing matter is made of. (Rutherford model)
High school: Those electrons don't just fly around, they actually orbit within specific energy levels. Also they're not really particles, but waves, but also particles, all at the same time. Also subatomic particles exist. (Bohr model)
University: "Electron orbits" are actually orbitals defined by the wavefunction of those electrons, like probability distributions. (Quantum Mechanics)
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
They started with nothing , in a garage! An unused three-car garage next to their parents' mansion. While living at home, without having to pay for basic things like food. And with a $100k loan from the other guy's parents. And with daddy's business contacts being the first customers, and being the angel investors. Absolutely nothing, all their own hard work!
This is a naive take. Sure they had wealth, but multiplying wealth to the scale some of those people do is no easy feat. I am not defending them, just trying to state a fact.
Were did bill gates mother work?