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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#361

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

carapace wrote: post #254
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredibly good line.

It's beyond stupid. Literally we have families and children out of love. It's the foundation of everything else in human society.

You're wrong on the basics: many people on earth are arguably most of the western world until the 19th century had families out of a sense of pragmatic and religious obligation to continue their line.[1] This is not love. But worse, nobody has built a city out of love, or completed a major research project backed by love alone; these kinds of projects require an entirely different kind of force that scales.

Money and force are the blood of megaprojects.

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1260022.The_Ancient_City

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#362

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #240
llamaimperative wrote: post #130

I agree with the overall thrust of this, or should be easy to convince, but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” > Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’…

(a) indulge in abstract theories (b) engage in social engineering (c) disconnect from the real world (d) delude themselves (e) appoint themselves (f) play God with anyone else's life with total insulation from the consequences. That seems to describe developers, and this VC was one, Silicon Valley VC and/or SBF-types. Who the heck even comes close to (f) except Big Tech. With respect to (e), "unelected", does anyone…

We have seen how developers use the term "God-mode" in their software. (I will cite examples if requested.) From this end user's perspective such terminology suggests some strange if not comical delusions of grandeur.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#364

Post by shuckles »

davidw wrote: post #346
shuckles wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there is a tendency to become occupied with obligations as you age, regardless of exactly how the discretionary time / money is eaten up.

Oh, absolutely, but housing eats up the biggest share of most peoples' paychecks. The higher those costs are, the fewer people can afford to just go do something adventurous, new and interesting. I mean, think about the staggering amounts of VC money in the bay area that pretty much flows straight to landlords.

I am all for reducing rent seeking, including in this case literally. However, my point is that the hippies became squares in the same way the hackers became squares. It's not clear that housing costs are causal; they might just be incidental.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#365

Post by jddj »

ethanbond wrote: post #172
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” This feels a bit of an extreme reaction to me, I don't try and read into gotchas in writing and use them to "run away". Instead it makes me: 1. View the writing with skepticism 2. Try to understand what Andreessen thinks makes him not one of those ivory tower figures, because I certainly think of him as one. 2 seems the mor…

The “wanting to distance oneself” is an extremely pragmatic reaction: if you believe similar arguments need to be made, you have a legitimate interest in putting forth good versions of those arguments. He has a big platform and this will be portrayed as “the case” for techno-optimism, not to mention the attitude and tone. I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really see…

Hearing himself talk

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#366

Post by davidgerard »

zapw wrote: post #252

This was strange and disappointing thing to read. Why such a conspiratorial tone ("we are being lied to", "we have enemies", etc.)? Since this is written by Marc Andreessen, I did a search for "crypto" and "web 3", but no results came up. Isn't that strange coming from someone who was so prominent in promoting and advocating for a crypto-based future? I guess that one didn't pan out… "Our enemy is the ivory tower" is…

> Why such a conspiratorial tone

Marc has been meeting up with neoreactionaries, this is a normal viewpoint in SV VC circles. See how his article recommends the co-author of the Fascist Manifesto.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#368

Post by davidw »

shuckles wrote: post #364
davidw wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, absolutely, but housing eats up the biggest share of most peoples' paychecks. The higher those costs are, the fewer people can afford to just go do something adventurous, new and interesting. I mean, think about the staggering amounts of VC money in the bay area that pretty much flows straight to landlords.

I am all for reducing rent seeking, including in this case literally. However, my point is that the hippies became squares in the same way the hackers became squares. It's not clear that housing costs are causal; they might just be incidental.

I think it's one of those things where you'd want to look at it statistically, or 'at the margin'. Many - most - people will grow up and settle down some. But high housing costs kind of force the issue even more, and leave less room for people to have some more freedom to explore.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#369

Post by jabowery »

First of all, they aren't serious about the scientific method or they'd fund Hume's Guillotine (see github). Moreover, they aren't even serious about reforming sociology -- which is what is needed for them to make strong claims about their "beliefs" aka social theory. That "ivory tower" publication Nature is leading them to but a step or two from a new scientific revolution based on technology, but they refuse to drink. Over 200 ecologists were supplied with the same set of data and asked to make predictions. This was "the first study of its kind" according to Nature, but this is exactly the purpose of Hume's Guillotine with regard to social theories, such as theirs. Why blather endlessly about their "beliefs" about the scientific method as providing the keys to techne kingdom and ignore the opportunity to not only nuke the social pseudosciences, but perform what, in other initiatives with which they are familiar, would be called "due diligence" regarding their own social theory?

Second, if they aren't going to be serious about their own social theory, what business do they have thinking of themselves as "apex" anything?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#370

Post by heavyset_go »

semitones wrote: post #228
survirtual wrote: post #169

In a world where abundance reigns, the old structures and the leaders who champion them fade into obsolescence. The energy that once went into seeking more begins to flow into sharing, nurturing, and sustaining. In this transformed landscape, resource hoarding and centralized control are not just out of place; they become barriers to the collective human journey toward wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. When everyone'…

It seems that you are describing a utopia, where there are no more problems to solve, other than the purpose of our own existence, and the reconciliation of our mortality in our minds. Although I do think that we can get to a point where things are pretty damn good, perhaps even as good as you describe, I don't think that humans' desire for growth and appetite for problem solving will be quenched. Even if all of our…

One could call liberal democracy a utopia, when compared to feudalism that preceded it. There will always be problems to solve, what the OP is describing is not the absence of problems, but the evolution of social and economic relations in the same way capitalism was the evolution of social and economic relations from feudalism.
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