Why Tech Inevitability is Self-Defeating

Post by top256 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

efsavage wrote: post #47

top256 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the comment and engaging with my thinking. You're using hindsight to define inevitability, which is exactly the circular reasoning my essay critiques. "It happened widely, therefore it was inevitable" isn't a useful framework, it's survivorship bias. Using your IC example: they became cheap because of massive government investment in the space program and military procurement, not natural law. The Apoll…

I think the concepts are inevitable, not so much the specific implementations. PCs were an inevitable stop on the fairly standard adoption path from many workers to one machine (Mainframes), 1:1 (PCs), many machines to one worker (I have at least 10 computers within arms reach right now). IBM/Windows/Apple weren't inevitable, they were just manifestations of that. ICs weren't inevitable, but commoditized computer par…

That distinction is really useful. My critique is aimed at how often “inevitability talk” blurs those two levels together. It’s one thing to say “networks need a lingua franca,” it’s another to say “TCP/IP was inevitable.” When people collapse the concept into the specific implementation, that’s when the rhetoric becomes persuasive but misleading.

Post by Nevermark » Tue, Oct 07, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

top256 wrote: post #60

jasode wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Using your IC example: they became cheap because of massive government investment in the space program and military procurement, not natural law. There is an underlying natural law to IC's being cheap without any government involvement because printing out circuits with chemicals and light like a photocopier is inherently cheaper than the alternatives of vacuum tubes or discrete components mounted on a board. (For n…

I agree that physical and economic constraints matter, but the point I’m making is that cost curves themselves are contingent on human choices. ICs didn’t suddenly become cheap on their own; they became cheap because governments and corporations poured billions into scaling them. That’s not denying the underlying advantage, but showing how rhetoric of inevitability erases the political and economic decisions that act…

> ICs didn’t suddenly become cheap on their own; they became cheap because governments and corporations poured billions into scaling them.

That isn't insightful at all.

High returns on high scales of investment are MORE attractive. More "inevitable", even for mundane technologies.

The unbound economics of returns on intelligence without human limitations, and the downsides of being left behind (everything from lost employment to existential military threats), are the most convincing argument for technological investment ever.

The only thing not "inevitable" is how the returns will be distributed. With no end to the competition needed to stay relevant.

"Intelligence" is quite literally "THE" technology of technologies.

This is the most massive step in the form and capabilities of life on Earth, happening in real time, not a marginal improvement in user interfaces. Nothing living will be able to sit this out.

Re: Why Tech Inevitability is Self-Defeating

Re: Why Tech Inevitability is Self-Defeating