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This is a great reminder that it always helps to think deeply about a problem before spouting out a solution. I appreciate that Cory moves beyond the "protech"

This is a great reminder that it always helps to think deeply about a problem before spouting out a solution. I appreciate that Cory moves beyond the "protech" and "anti-tech" rhetoric and allows for us to be humans together on the same journey. However, I find it increasingly frustrating that there are many voices out there involved in this "techlash" yet there seems to be little thought given to the actual ethics and morality they continue to cite. Who gets to define what is right?

maxerickson 9y ago
Obviously video game journalists should be in charge.
roguecoder 9y ago
Well, there's a great tv show called "The Good Place"...
nerfhammer 9y ago
I don't know that he's thinking more deeply than willing to be a bit contrarian... he seems to loosely throw around concepts without seeming to care whether they make sense or could withstand scrutiny in context. He seems perfectly happy with half-baked thinking and poorly defined buzzwords as long as it sounds good for a moment. Example: "Reagan deregulated business and defanged anti-trust, and so newspapers were snapped up by private equity funds that slashed their newsrooms, centralized their ad sales, and weakened their product. When Craigslist came along, these businesses had been looted of all the cash they could have used to figure out their digital futures, and they started to die." He laments this as an example of a more tech-neutral but also "complicated" story but it's not just complicated it's also, you know, easy to poke holes in. It was merely the "deregulated environment", not craigslist. Right. I could spend half an hour on this but "neoliberal capitalism" means I have other stuff to do right now, so...
- news_to_me 9y ago
  > I could spend half an hour on this but "neoliberal capitalism" means I have other stuff to do right now, so... I wish you would. I agree with your complaint that the article leaves a lot of details to be desired, and I have the same complaint of your comment.
  - bsder 9y ago
    Well, I don't know anything about "neoliberal capitalism", but the big problem with the raiders in the 80's and 90's is that they were all about "maximum efficiency" of money. The problem is that "maximally efficient" is "minimally robust". Sure, you can buy that big company and section it into parts. That generally leaves you with 1 or 2 very profitable sections that are what you wanted. That also kills 10 bad sections that deserve to be killed. The problem is that you also kill a small number of sections that look like they are treading water. These are the sections that produce your next product or that save your company when the main products suddenly die for some reason. And, unfortunately, nobody can tell which of these is going to be successful and which are going to die a priori. Killing these sections is destroying the future in order to produce an extra couple of percentage points of profit in the present.
Y_Y 9y ago
Who gets to define what is right? Indeed this is the right question to be asking. I think moral relativism has a lot to offer here. As SSC put it, you have to think about whether people with different moral aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right, or know they're wrong but hope to profit (mistake vs. conflict). Too rarely does anyone consider that from where the other party stands, things might look different. You can have two good-faith actors with good (but not totally overlapping) information take up totally opposed positions because they don't see the same thing as being "right".
- gowld 9y ago
  You missed the most common answer: most people don't care if they are right or wrong, they just live their lives. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > you have to think about whether people with different moral aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right, or know they're wrong but hope to profit > You can have two good-faith actors with good (but not totally overlapping) information take up totally opposed positions because they don't see the same thing as being "right" (mistake vs. conflict) The second quote describes a conflict, but it doesn't describe a conflict where one side knows it's wrong but is hoping to get away with it anyway. It describes an intractable conflict, one where no one is wrong. The two choices you highlight in the first quote are a very small fraction of the possibilities, and are not a good reflexive thought to have, because if your first thought is "OK, it's one of these two options", you may not notice that you're going through life assuming, based on nothing, that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.
- xg15 9y ago
  Though if you want to take moral relativism seriously, you'd also have to consider if your own moral standards might be too lax and what it means if you overstep the boundaries of others. Just saying "well who knows what's right and what's wrong anyway?" and use that as an excuse to invalidate others' objections is cheap.

maxerickson 9y ago

Obviously video game journalists should be in charge.

roguecoder 9y ago

Well, there's a great tv show called "The Good Place"...

nerfhammer 9y ago

I don't know that he's thinking more deeply than willing to be a bit contrarian... he seems to loosely throw around concepts without seeming to care whether they make sense or could withstand scrutiny in context. He seems perfectly happy with half-baked thinking and poorly defined buzzwords as long as it sounds good for a moment. Example: "Reagan deregulated business and defanged anti-trust, and so newspapers were snapped up by private equity funds that slashed their newsrooms, centralized their ad sales, and weakened their product. When Craigslist came along, these businesses had been looted of all the cash they could have used to figure out their digital futures, and they started to die." He laments this as an example of a more tech-neutral but also "complicated" story but it's not just complicated it's also, you know, easy to poke holes in. It was merely the "deregulated environment", not craigslist. Right. I could spend half an hour on this but "neoliberal capitalism" means I have other stuff to do right now, so...

news_to_me 9y ago
> I could spend half an hour on this but "neoliberal capitalism" means I have other stuff to do right now, so... I wish you would. I agree with your complaint that the article leaves a lot of details to be desired, and I have the same complaint of your comment.
- bsder 9y ago
  Well, I don't know anything about "neoliberal capitalism", but the big problem with the raiders in the 80's and 90's is that they were all about "maximum efficiency" of money. The problem is that "maximally efficient" is "minimally robust". Sure, you can buy that big company and section it into parts. That generally leaves you with 1 or 2 very profitable sections that are what you wanted. That also kills 10 bad sections that deserve to be killed. The problem is that you also kill a small number of sections that look like they are treading water. These are the sections that produce your next product or that save your company when the main products suddenly die for some reason. And, unfortunately, nobody can tell which of these is going to be successful and which are going to die a priori. Killing these sections is destroying the future in order to produce an extra couple of percentage points of profit in the present.

Y_Y 9y ago

Who gets to define what is right? Indeed this is the right question to be asking. I think moral relativism has a lot to offer here. As SSC put it, you have to think about whether people with different moral aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right, or know they're wrong but hope to profit (mistake vs. conflict). Too rarely does anyone consider that from where the other party stands, things might look different. You can have two good-faith actors with good (but not totally overlapping) information take up totally opposed positions because they don't see the same thing as being "right".

gowld 9y ago
You missed the most common answer: most people don't care if they are right or wrong, they just live their lives. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> you have to think about whether people with different moral aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right, or know they're wrong but hope to profit > You can have two good-faith actors with good (but not totally overlapping) information take up totally opposed positions because they don't see the same thing as being "right" (mistake vs. conflict) The second quote describes a conflict, but it doesn't describe a conflict where one side knows it's wrong but is hoping to get away with it anyway. It describes an intractable conflict, one where no one is wrong. The two choices you highlight in the first quote are a very small fraction of the possibilities, and are not a good reflexive thought to have, because if your first thought is "OK, it's one of these two options", you may not notice that you're going through life assuming, based on nothing, that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.
xg15 9y ago
Though if you want to take moral relativism seriously, you'd also have to consider if your own moral standards might be too lax and what it means if you overstep the boundaries of others. Just saying "well who knows what's right and what's wrong anyway?" and use that as an excuse to invalidate others' objections is cheap.