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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#411

Post by malandrew »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #366
biztos wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly expect "smashing them to bits" (or setting them on fire) to be the response in France when self-driving cargo trucks are introduced. In America and a lot of other rich countries I can imagine a large workforce just sort of slowly dissipating as they are made redundant by the unstoppable force of technology, but at least a few places may strongly disagree about the unstoppability, and put it to the test.

Indeed, that is why I figured (on a trip to the country a few years ago) why self-service supermarkets checkouts haven't been rolled out in South Africa. That is a country of very high unemployment, so perhaps one could expect violence if overt technology to save labour costs were introduced.

self-service checkouts also work well in high trust societies. By themselves, they aren't good enough to prevent shrinkage enough that it is cheaper to use them.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#412

Post by wait_a_minute »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #348
wait_a_minute wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can't be war because the next World War would most likely make us extinct. We need another approach, one that puts us on a path to prosperity and sustained growth as a species. Everyone could have an amazing life, we really just need people to work on improving distribution of goods/services.

That's a pretty confident position to take. Really war could be all around us. If climate change continues unabated, large swaths of the earth will no longer be able to produce food. Hot temperatures will cause mass migration (we're already seeing this, see Syria). Billions of people, unable to be fed - desperation - war. > We need another approach, one that puts us on a path to prosperity and sustained growth as a s…

I am very confident in my views because I'm going all-in on them with all my time and my money. That means making sure that I have the best position possible on the subject, which means lots of reading and research. If I was not certain about this path, I would just have fun and live a simply free life. But I will work towards this instead.

But yes, large positive paradigm shifts are possible. They are also necessary, and we must begin the work. To decentralize production of goods/services as much as possible, to make food and energy plentiful and free for all, etc. We will accomplish these goals and more.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#413

Post by DanBC »

dragonwriter wrote: post #390
DanBC wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are not equivalent They are often used as equivalents. Descriptivism is better than prescriptivism if you want to understand language as it's actually used.

> They are often used as equivalents No, they are often (though very, very far from most often) used in reverse because people forget which is which. Even in that case they have very distinct intended meanings, and are not equivalents. > Descriptivism is better than prescriptivism if you want to understand language as it's actually used. Sure, but descriptivism isn't “words lose all distinct meaning if occasionally s…

> No, they are often (though very, very far from most often) used in reverse because people forget which is which. Even in that case they have very distinct intended meanings, and are not equivalents.

Isn't this just another way of saying they're equivalent as used? People don't know which is which, they often don't car,e and they pick one.

Prescriptivist "what should eg mean in this sentence?"

Descriptivist "what does Bob mean when he uses eg in this sentence?"

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#414

Post by simonh »

Daho0n wrote: post #293
simonh wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is just one country and we're talking about the future of humanity as a whole. Here in the UK we've eliminated more than half our carbon emissions from energy generation, and generally the US is lagging far behind a lot of other countries. Covid aside, economic and health improvement trends globally have been incredibly positive. Since 1995 about a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. That d…

>Since 1995 about a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty That is a great soundbite for the news but is it actually as great as it sounds? If we take it as fact that "one billion humans have been lifted out of extreme poverty" what about how many are in extreme poverty? Note that how many is outside extreme poverty doesn't say anything about the amount in extreme poverty, just that more are now above…

You're right to call that out. There are one billion fewer people in extreme poverty now than there were then. A bit over 500 million compared to over 1.5 billion, even taking into account the increase in the worlds population. Most of this increase has been in Asia where hundreds of millions of people have risen into the urban middle class. Industrial wages in China have increased almost 10x in the last 2 decades, and industrial employment has ballooned.

The situation in Africa isn't so good, but has substantially improved. Of course the cost of this has been stagnant wage growth and anaemic employment in the developed world, as hundreds of thousands of people in China and South East Asia joined the global labour pool.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#415

Post by s1artibartfast »

serpix wrote: post #256
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because silos are an important target for the attacking side? So you want to have many in order to reduce the risk of being left without arms in case your enemy attacks first?

Absolute madness, you and your enemy will be dead anyway from the fallout and nuclear winter.

Not necessarily. I think the nuclear winder risk for an asymmetrical strike is largely overblown. If a country successfully take the capability of the other to respond, they could see few repercussions.

This drives the need to be able to respond.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#416

Post by hawkice »

glenstein wrote: post #287
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but we are a far cry from a techno utopia. We really had two opposing world views, one where technology would help us achieve a better life, another where it would contribute to us falling off a precipice. Neither won. On the plus side we have a world where global poverty is falling and more people are developing middle class life styles, we have amazing technology like gene editing, incredible computational…

This isn't just "gee, technology sure comes with tradeoffs." It was literally claiming the dollar to be worthless, a global class war, and for most of the continent of Africa to be uninhabitable. It was claiming all three would happen. I feel like people come into these questions wanting to treat them like trick questions, and wanting to show off that they can't be tricked. And so, if a bet like this has an obvious a…

This seems like a reasonable guess as to what is going on. A close call would be something like, economic collapse reducing paper money to be worthless as a consequence of the global socialist revolution, but global warming only melted the icecaps and flooded major parts of the world while leaving most places just slightly warmer. Two out of three.

The modern world is extremely far away from being a close call on this. I can't wrap my head around people that say, "well, no global socialist revolution, but people dislike Wall Street, and that's the same, I guess".

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#417

Post by PeterisP »

adamcstephens wrote: post #352
simonh wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, He did not think the currency issue was close at all, "Not much contest here" and granted that one unequivocally to Kelly. On the others I don't agree with Patrick at all. On environment we are quite possibly heading towards a disaster, but it's s…

> Are we in a higher level of conflict between rich and poor now than in the past? I'd say no. I’d argue the drivers for the war are already here, but the only reason the war isn’t class based is the rich and powerful have convinced the lower classes to attack each other instead of them. They’ve successfully driven in dividing lines such as race and religion to distract us as the plunder to their hearts content.

The way I see it the bet was about the statement that the drivers for the war were already there in 1995 and that it would actually materialize in the 25 years before 2020 - which it (IMHO obviously) has not. The struggle is still there, but a society-shattering escalation of the conflict has not happened (yet?).

The observation that "the rich and powerful have convinced the lower classes to attack each other instead of them" seems like a reasonable tactic for the society (or the rich) to prevent such a war from occurring, and this might plausibly succeed for a prolonged time in the future - as you say, "successfully driven in dividing lines" that are long-lasting. I see Kirkpatrick Sale's position as essentially claiming that the tensions are stronger than the societal bonds that favor status quo and centralization, that these tensions can cause a society to collapse - and the last 25 years have shown the opposite, that an increase in these tensions is still tolerable and does not lead to a collapse.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#418

Post by PeterisP »

jessaustin wrote: post #280
swarnie_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population…

Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs? Every bomb must be purchased from the armaments manufacturers who actually control our society. The same who originally bamboozled Truman into damning our species. Your question is equivalent to "why do they want more money?"

That might explain the USA part of the arsenal, but it can't be the whole explanation because that would not work for USSR. And, since whatever was the reasons for USSR, it most likely also applied to USA as well, reducing the need to pin it all on commercial interests.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#419

Post by agumonkey »

Interesting to see how people made a bet 25 years ago. I wonder what other bets are being done right now.

Tech I don't blame, but the chase of more tech and bad tech is something I'm jaded about.

People commented here that the scientific/engineering miracle in their pocket is mostly used to swipe cat pics. Meanwhile bad management, weird economic structures, changes in social relationships.. all these going in the wrong direction.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#420

Post by PeterisP »

jl6 wrote: post #340
yesenadam wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That page says "Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the MAD doctrine continues to be applied." I get the feeling that's not generally known. Isn't that kind of extremely weird? I've never seen discussion of it on HN, for example, or maybe what to do about the prospect of living indefinitely under the threat of MAD. With more countries with nuclear weapons all the time. Well, you read here about people not…

The obvious - but incredibly difficult to implement - solution is to achieve world peace, through mutual respect, tolerance and trust amongst nations. A lot of people seem to have abandoned that as a goal, in favor of being contented with a perpetual uneasy standoff. It's a tough goal - perhaps the hardest there has ever been - but it's not impossible .

I would consider world peace "through mutual respect, tolerance and trust amongst nations" as inherently impossible for homo sapiens as we are.

A world peace might be plausible through a single world government that can enforce a world peace and resolution of diverging interests and conflicts without war, i.e. with some "policing" mechanism instead of relying on people not escalating through sheer goodwill. That is possible - world peace based on the expectation that any potential violators of that world peace would face retaliation and lose in that conflict. Si vis pacem, para bellum - that can work, if it can be established.

Or, alternatively, a world peace through mutual respect and tolerance may happen if at some time in future our civilization consists of substantially altered individuals - genetic alteration, chemical brainwashing, computerized circuits in brains, something that changes the way our motivation works on a fundamental level - but not for people as we are.

Otherwise, as long as any people and groups of people have unmet desires (not merely needs) and diverging interests, conflicts will happen, and as long as violence is a practical option for achieving goals (i.e. there's not a threat/expectation of successful powerful resistance to that violence) it will be considered and used if mere threat of that violence isn't sufficient.

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