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Underestimated? These "underestimations" seem very accurate to me, and without a 300-million-person hive-mind, I can't imagine anything different. Any single pe

Underestimated? These "underestimations" seem very accurate to me, and without a 300-million-person hive-mind, I can't imagine anything different. Any single person who isn't a politician, intelligence agent, etc., is meaningless today, and no single cause is capable of rallying enough popular support to have any impact in the first-past-the-post polls.

slededit 9y ago
You don't need an election to make your own way in life.
- mmirate 9y ago
  Well, there aren't any more unsolved problems that aren't touched by politics (n.b. this wasn't the case back when CS was a new field and better algorithms were being discovered left and right), and it's no easier to get into a royal family than to get the right person elected.
  - slededit 9y ago
    With respect I think that's a very myopic view. I don't think one should build their life around "problems" regardless but if you choose to do so there are two revolutions happening simultaneously. Self driving vehicles were Sci Fi just a few years ago, and Bitcoin is changing how we think of currency.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      If the SEC performs a particular action, Bitcoin can be deep-sixed, at least domestically, and since the US likes to export its laws (cf. copyright), probably worldwide in time. Self-driving vehicles' practicality as a mass product, iirc, is currently dependent on not-yet-achieved processor hardware (ops per second, ops per watt, etc.) and battery energy density, without which they have insufficient visual-processing capabilities and range, respectively. (Yes, those are hardware problems not political problems; still, not being an engineer in either of those fields I've no more agency over them than over political problems.) Even after that, they will still be dependent on having not too many regulatory bottlenecks (cf. what the FAA has done to avionics for the past few decades) or legally-mandated misfeatures (cf. Cory Doctorow's Car Wars).

slededit 9y ago

You don't need an election to make your own way in life.

mmirate 9y ago
Well, there aren't any more unsolved problems that aren't touched by politics (n.b. this wasn't the case back when CS was a new field and better algorithms were being discovered left and right), and it's no easier to get into a royal family than to get the right person elected.
- slededit 9y ago
  With respect I think that's a very myopic view. I don't think one should build their life around "problems" regardless but if you choose to do so there are two revolutions happening simultaneously. Self driving vehicles were Sci Fi just a few years ago, and Bitcoin is changing how we think of currency.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    If the SEC performs a particular action, Bitcoin can be deep-sixed, at least domestically, and since the US likes to export its laws (cf. copyright), probably worldwide in time. Self-driving vehicles' practicality as a mass product, iirc, is currently dependent on not-yet-achieved processor hardware (ops per second, ops per watt, etc.) and battery energy density, without which they have insufficient visual-processing capabilities and range, respectively. (Yes, those are hardware problems not political problems; still, not being an engineer in either of those fields I've no more agency over them than over political problems.) Even after that, they will still be dependent on having not too many regulatory bottlenecks (cf. what the FAA has done to avionics for the past few decades) or legally-mandated misfeatures (cf. Cory Doctorow's Car Wars).