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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#31

Post by botswana99 »

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh

Go to the source materials.

- Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley

- The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker

- Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg

- the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg

- Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann

- Factfulness. Hans rosling

Or, just look at the data

  http://ourworldindata.org/

  http://www.gapminder.org/

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#32

Post by next_xibalba »

chaps wrote: post #21

Not a single mention of "privacy", so I'm going to assume that this is a manifesto written by someone who just wants everyone's private data. Reminds me of the spirit of "Data for Good", which has become a whitewashed phrase to avoid ethical scrutiny (see: shotspotter, Wejo, palantir)

That’s one explanation. Another might be that for non-tech insiders (ie the majority of the world’s population), the formulation of privacy and its claimed harms that is so often championed(desired state)/decried (current state) here on HN is just a total non-issue. And thus, it goes unmentioned.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#34

Post by michaelleland »

> We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.

Interestingly, nearly every sentence begins with "we believe," a fundamentally religious statement.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#35

Post by caust1c »

riskable wrote: post #20

More like a Techno-Capitalist Fantasy. This part had me laughing out loud: > Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. No, markets naturally culminate into monopolies and cartels. That's just human nature. History has shown over and over again that monopolies and cartels are naturally occurring and that the only successful way to deal with them is to break them up via government intervention. Sure, some monopolies may…

Agreed. Not acknowledging regulation's role in enabling a sustainable free market economy is navel gazing.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#36

Post by renewiltord »

onion2k wrote: post #25

For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more. Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the firs…

I think that's wholesale falsehood. The wins in the last 200 years are so dramatic for the average person, especially in the West. Infant mortality rate and the chance of survival to adulthood alone are such glorious victories against Death that I would gladly vote for any system that would give us those wins and create a trillionaire.

All that wondrous science has come from this system. No. Evidence is evidence. This thing works, and works dramatically well. We live like Gods compared to people of the 1800s. My wife and I noticed this the other day. They fought wars back in the day for a fraction of the spices that I buy ethically today.

No retvrn. Forward only.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#38

Post by lambda_garden »

sph wrote: post #7
hemloc_io wrote: post #5

Really more of an e/acc manifesto. Interesting to see a twitter thing slowly leak into the mainstream one step at a time.

WTF is e/acc for people that don't live on Twitter?

Effective Altruism is a charity / social club / networking opportunity for young STEM types based on pretty extreme beliefs about Utilitarianism and recently AI. The most famous EA right now is probably SBF.

Accelerationism is the belief that we should race towards catastrophe so that we can rebuild society in a better way.

E / Acc is a (sometimes ironic) amalgam of the two.

You won't be surprised to learn that not many in these groups have studied history.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#39

Post by chaps »

next_xibalba wrote: post #32
chaps wrote: post #21

Not a single mention of "privacy", so I'm going to assume that this is a manifesto written by someone who just wants everyone's private data. Reminds me of the spirit of "Data for Good", which has become a whitewashed phrase to avoid ethical scrutiny (see: shotspotter, Wejo, palantir)

That’s one explanation. Another might be that for non-tech insiders (ie the majority of the world’s population), the formulation of privacy and its claimed harms that is so often championed(desired state)/decried (current state) here on HN is just a total non-issue. And thus, it goes unmentioned.

Ever see the movie Don't Look Up?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#40

Post by akprasad »

onion2k wrote: post #25

For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more. Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the firs…

The Luddites were not anti-technology per se. Rather, they were against an unequal distribution of that technology because it was destroying their community and livelihood, precisely because that technology concentrated power in the hands of the capital class [1]. Given the rest of your comment, it seems the Luddites are your natural allies.

Related HN discussion on [1] from 3 weeks ago: [2]

[1]: https://archive.ph/ZUiC7 ("Rethinking the Luddites," The New Yorker)

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37664682

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