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Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#31

Post by steveBK123 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #29
steveBK123 wrote: post #3

I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. They just got uberrich and now worry more about the concerns of the uberrich than the concerns they had when they were normies. Rule of law, functioning government providing services, functioning public commons, free press, freedom of speech for all, any social safety net, etc don’t matter when they are so far removed from the public they can just go buy yourself…

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.

And many start with a personality disorder already so it only compounds

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#32

Post by brcmthrowaway »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #25

In 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.

There's a certain school of economics that achieved this brainwashing. I forget the name, but it's the one of Milton Friedman. But the trouble is, weren't they right during the Cold War?

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#33

Post by Avicebron »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #25

In 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.

We've let the government get bloated, inefficient and corrupt by allowing private enterprise to have an outsized effect on it. Private enterprise can hire people to live next to DC and spend every waking minute pushing their agenda on politicians. Private enterprise can funnel huge amounts of money into campaigns for their preferred candidates. It only benefits the corporations when we have ancient, technically illiterate politicians jockeying their favorite hobbyhorse policies while throwing up their hands at how "the other side" is blocking them. It's a designed deadlock.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#34

Post by yks »

ygjb wrote: post #17
jurgenburgen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rule of law, functioning government providing services Jokes on them, without rule of law and functioning government to enforce it there is no ownership.

Jokes on you. When there isn't a functional system of government there is nothing to stop rich psychopaths from paying poor psychopaths killing those who get in there way and declaring themselves dictators. In the absence of effective laws to align people in the direction of the society they want, and constant effort to realign in response to pressure, we will fall back to tribalism and all of the attendant forms of…

In societies like that, Silicon Valley’s rich nerds might discover that they’re not the ones with the real might, see Putin’s Russia, which many of them adore. Money is but one of the facets of power.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#35

Post by amberjack »

I don't know about the disruptive innovation history thing which seems interesting, but the stuff about science fiction, its role as knowledge especially related to politics, reading/misreading and so on just seems confused. Science fiction is primarily fiction and should be treated as such. Why exactly should I agree with the implied (or not) politics of a fictional world if I like the work? Why is it even necessary to take the works whole-sale and not just parts here and there as they seem reasonable? Straussian reading is also a possibility that is completely bypassed even with some big figures being into that, for good or ill.

The stuff about nation states and corporations taking over seems confused as well, since pretty much everywhere goverments, regulation and taxation are highest/largest they've ever been. Also, it is very strange taking the interest of some people in getting rid or moving beyond nation states as sinister since this has been a stated goal of democratic projects like the EU. Furthermore, in China technology is completely subservient to the state and they intentionally kneecapped the whole sector fairly recently since it grew too big.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#36

Post by Trasmatta »

I think some of them intentionally model themselves after the evil characters in fiction. I remember seeing Musk talk one time about how he loves the game Deus Ex. And there's an almost uncanny resemblance between his actions and Bob Page's.

The other canonical example of this is the naming of Palantir, of course.

In many cases I think it's less that they misread the fiction, and more that they intentionally model themselves after the villains in fiction.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#37

Post by jimbob45 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #29
steveBK123 wrote: post #3

I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. They just got uberrich and now worry more about the concerns of the uberrich than the concerns they had when they were normies. Rule of law, functioning government providing services, functioning public commons, free press, freedom of speech for all, any social safety net, etc don’t matter when they are so far removed from the public they can just go buy yourself…

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.

Same with D1 NCAAF athletes. They’re getting millions starting at age 18 from NIL. There’s just no way that’s healthy even if we all agree NIL was the morally correct path forward.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#39

Post by croes »

fallinghawks wrote: post #16
rightbyte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They take warnings in popular culture as instructions or inspiration.

Heck, we're living Idiocracy right now.

Camacho made the most intelligent man secretary of the interior, Trump would never do that.

So it’s kind of worse than Idiocracy

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#40

Post by gdulli »

lapcat wrote: post #23

I don't think there's anything deep here. Good fiction is entertainment. The author may or may not also intend to send a message or teach a lesson, but above all fiction has to be entertaining, or it won't get read. A sense of morality is obviously not required to be entertained. People like Musk are science fiction fans who also happen to be morally bankrupt. I believe those two factors are mostly unrelated. Space,…

Right, an individual viewing of an individual work can be only entertainment and there's no shame in that. Sci fi in its totality has greater meaning and subtext, and fully ignoring it or misunderstanding it is not ideal and does say something about how we got here.

There's an interesting and suddenly relevant connection between not engaging with media beyond its surface and the belief that media should be seen the same regardless of whether it's created by human or by algorithm. If you only see it as words, the extra subtext of its creation and intention really aren't relevant to you.

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