This is all well and good and I agree with most of it, but at some point you need to ask does abundance doesn’t mean happiness or true satisfaction. Can A society they thrives off always pushing be truly content? And if not then what is the point?
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
371–380 of 414 posts
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#372What worries me most is that this guy is supposed to be the inspirational leader of many startup founders and technologists, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Reading this made me really sad. It's actually hard for me to conjure the strength to write and share an appropriate response, and explain why. Let me just mention one of many thoughts. Mark Andreessen cites a number of Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism, "In lieu…
The idea of someone unironicly promoting Marinetti (a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto) in 2023 is mind-blowing. I get the idea of wanting to be optimistic about technology, but Marinetti is a cautionary tale of how optimism about technology can morph into disdain for humanity. He’s an anti-role model, the thing we need to be careful not to become.
This is where the Overton window is shifting.
See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years ago.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea of someone unironicly promoting Marinetti (a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto) in 2023 is mind-blowing. I get the idea of wanting to be optimistic about technology, but Marinetti is a cautionary tale of how optimism about technology can morph into disdain for humanity. He’s an anti-role model, the thing we need to be careful not to become.
This is where the Overton window is shifting. See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years a…
I think the Canada thing was an honest oversight. The party in power isn’t even a right wing party. Pretty centrist. They don’t have any motivation to shift the overton window in the “maybe we’re okay with Nazis now?” direction.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#374Can't recall too many pieces of writing that fail this hard at what they're intended to do? I mean, if you've never read any other technology-related writing ever, there's some stuff in here I suppose. I think though, it best highlights what's missing from a lot of visible technological aspirations -- which is a sense of fun?
I think this will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of Silicon Valley when people woke up from a collective slumber and realized most people hailed as great "visionaries" and "technologists" actually had nothing whatsoever to offer in that department. It will be seen as hilariously ironic that those very people in fact had no idea what technology even is — a means to an end, not an end in itself, and that they had literally nothing to offer for what to do with all the technology they built. It's a conceptual dead end, sprinkled with badly digested sophomoric references. Truly embarrassing emperor has no clothes moment.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is where the Overton window is shifting. See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years a…
I think the Canada thing was an honest oversight. The party in power isn’t even a right wing party. Pretty centrist. They don’t have any motivation to shift the overton window in the “maybe we’re okay with Nazis now?” direction.
One can hope that every single one of the 200+ highly educated members of the elite ruling class of Canada made this “honest oversight”. At least they can claim it after some kind of apologies were made. Not so much for Zelensky who didn’t mention this incident at all, since honoring Nazis is business-as-usual in Ukraine.
Still, I can see how it can benefit the Canadian party too, because the original electorate would either not notice this or accept the apology and forget about it, thus not impacting the status quo, but now they also get the neo-Nazi vote after this wink and nod.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People live with long term treatable illness. None of what were treatable at the 1800. > People don't have basic necessities like shelter or food or water. In relative terms, almost none. I'm not sure how they compare in absolute terms, but just the answer not being obvious while the population increased by an order of magnitude already makes your claim quite bad. > People live with very little prospect of escaping…
As many have pointed out, technological advancement is pointless without social advancement. We have learnt how to treat diseases 10 times over at this point, and yet people still live with them. That is a failure at engineering our social system. Social change is the decisive factor. Technological change without social change is just giving the rich new ways to subjugate or ignore the poor.
This is total bullshit. Rich or poor, infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate have plunged. The rich do better than the poor, but you're not losing your firstborn to cholera and shit. We have antibiotics and post-natal care. Shit is good now. Forget 200 years ago like the OP said. Try just 1900: 9 out of every 1000 live births resulted in mum dying. Today? In the bottom quartile in my state of California? 18. Per. Hundred Thousand. That's right, two orders of magnitude, almost three.
Back then there were cities in the US where a third of newborns wouldn't see their first birthday. Look at us now! We stand like a colossus. Our children stand healthy. Strong.
You've created some fictional subjugation narrative that is nothing near the truth.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#377The level of lack of nuance (given how high profile the fund is) is eye popping.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#378I truly and thoroughly loved this essay, and am appalled (but not too surprised, unfortunately) by the pearl-clutching comments from a few apparent neoluddites in here.
Man, I'm really sad at the hundreds of depressed, idiotic, whiny rants dominating this comment section.
I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were THIS bad. People are this upset about anyone being optimistic about anything ever.
The future doesn't have to be a dreary march toward oblivion. Snap out of it, everyone!
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#379Is this missing an /s at the end?
I do believe in the power of technology to make a better world. That's why a venture capitalist using it for profit and then writing a manifesto about how virtuous it is, is the sort of disgusting corruption that makes me skeptic about technology.
But hackernews is the perfect venue to get some minor support from techbros that have grown accustomed to this rat race.
Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is where the Overton window is shifting. See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years a…
I think the Canada thing was an honest oversight. The party in power isn’t even a right wing party. Pretty centrist. They don’t have any motivation to shift the overton window in the “maybe we’re okay with Nazis now?” direction.
I know what you mean but I think there is more context that enables such an oversight to happen.
It feels like a product of the "we have always been at war with Russia" political fluidity when the applause was triggered by claims of fighting Russia in 1940. Today we funnel guns to units wearing SS unit patches with no scandal. There is no international effort for peace. There is no widely held principle that we must turn enemies into allies. Instead there is glee at every Russian death and disinterest, unless useful, in every Ukrainian death. To be anti-war gets you treated as a crank. It makes me feel sick.