The Techno-Optimist Manifesto • Hacker News Board

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#91

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #75

Balladeer wrote: post #19

> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon'…

> I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos No, it's an anonymous Twitter account, you read the name wrong, "Beff Jezos" (sic), not "Jeff Bezos". Also if you look at the purest form of markets, which is probably high frequency trading, there are no monopolies and no cartels. It's an intensely competitive industry with relatively small profits given their transaction volume.

If that's "the purest form" of something, give me the dirty version any day.

An utterly useless human activity, that does nothing for actual humanity but simply serves as a wealth redistribution technique shared among a tiny number of highly-self-interested individuals ... it might be "pure" but it's not "pure" in any way.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#92

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

Okay one thing I had to laugh out loud about in this piece is the "Techno Capital Machine" section:

"Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine[...] We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us"

Mark might find it fashionable to quote Land but I'm unsure if he's actually read him. Here's what Land had to say on the techno-capital machine working for us, from Fanged Noumena:

“Machinic desire can seem a little inhuman, as it rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities, and hacks through security apparatuses, tracking a soulless tropism to zero control. This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources.”

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#93

Post by panic » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

volleygman180 wrote: post #86

Someone should hand Marc Andreessen a copy of “The Technological Society” by Jacques Ellul

Ursula Franklin’s “The Real World of Technology” as well.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#94

Post by tootie » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

laidoffamazon wrote: post #47

There's a lot of this that I agree with wholeheartedly and aggressively . One of the worst modern impulses is techno-pessimism in my opinion, but some of it is somewhere between strange and frankly downright stupid. Take the "patron saints of techno-optimism". It includes "BasedBeffJezos", a pseudonymous Twitter account that subscribes to NRx ideology, and Nick Land, the progenitor of elitist, bigoted NRx ideology. H…

It's the very definition of sophomoric. A lot of half-baked intellectualism from someone who doesn't actually understand (or pretends not to) any of the actual principles. Surely any Econ 101 student could tell you that Economics isn't the study of capital markets. Things like a clean environment, a vote or personal safety follows the laws of scarcity economics. Addressing the environmental costs of industrialization is absolutely part and parcel of free market economics and the agitators for a clean environment are just trying to get those costs priced in. Declaring them as being opposed to growth because they oppose technological advancement is facile at best and a deliberate straw man at worst.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#95

Post by throwaway38475 » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #75

Balladeer wrote: post #19

> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon'…

> I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos No, it's an anonymous Twitter account, you read the name wrong, "Beff Jezos" (sic), not "Jeff Bezos". Also if you look at the purest form of markets, which is probably high frequency trading, there are no monopolies and no cartels. It's an intensely competitive industry with relatively small profits given their transaction volume.

I don't think that's correct. Access to the fiber links or colocation in a facility is not only ridiculously expensive you have to know the right people (the cartel) to get it done.

I can't just offer a crazy amount of money and get access, the other major players have to let me play.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#96

Post by theyinwhy » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

... that reads like a conspiracy theory.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#97

Post by noneeeed » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

This isn't a techno-optimist manifesto.

This is a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist manifesto with a sprinkling of 1960 tech boosterism so that they can point at people who disagree and call them luddites.

I'm a massive techno-optimist. I think science and technology has self-evidently bought vast improvements to the human experience. I think it's an absolutely essential part of solving many of the problems that plague the world right now, and will do so in the future. But I whole-heartedly reject sizeable chunks of this teenage-political-science-student level manifesto.

If that somehow makes me a luddite, then pass me an iron bar and point me towards the nearest cropping frame, because apprently I have some wrecking to do?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#98

Post by greenie_beans » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

botswana99 wrote: post #31

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh Go to the source materials. - Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley - The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker - Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg - the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg - Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann - Factfulness. Hans rosling Or, just look at the data http://ourwor…

> the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world

pretty crazy they'd put a fallacy in the title of their book

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#99

Post by tootie » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

Very poorly reasoned. How is advocating for quality of life in terms of environmental or social responsibility anti-growth, anti-development or anti-technology? It's none of those things. It's anti-greed. It's against GDP as a proxy for prosperity. It's the true essence of free market economics that hasn't been captured by narrow-minded capitalists. And his entire opening statement is straw man after straw man. "They told us" a whole load of things that represent the opinion of a handful of people through the lens of a person who personally dislikes them.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#100

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Oct 16, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

What makes that post necessary is the sentiment has been largely anonymous so far and there hasn't been any way of connecting people who share these ideas to each other. I admire their enthusiasm. Have fun storming the cathedral!