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This piece is amazing. It masquerades as a critique of science, but at bottom I would argue it is really just a very complicated smokescreen for Obama-hating an

This piece is amazing. It masquerades as a critique of science, but at bottom I would argue it is really just a very complicated smokescreen for Obama-hating and anti-Keynesianism. I bet this guy Thiel just wants lower taxes. Thiel admits that we could print money without fear if our future looked brighter. And the 20th century saw such amazing progress that we did just that successfully. But he says that things are different now. We cannot print money because growth will not support it unless we get sentient robots and nanotech red blood cells, FAST! We better support the Republicans because at least they talk tough and hate Keynes, but it doesn't matter who we support because shit will hit the fan anyway. But really, how much has technology failed us? Of course we must agree that the Jetson's world is not yet manifest. But the hardest problems that humanity faces are not technological. If anything, the 20th century's lesson was not that we need to get deeper into tech faster, it is that we need to approach the problems in a different way. We built airplanes as soon as we could, and Hitler turned them into blitzkreig. Einstein and Bohr pushed the limits of physics and we built A-bombs. Tesla gave us AC and Radio; and we built coal power plants to power Air Conditioned McDonalds advertised on TV via mass media. The reason we don't have undersea cities is not because we cannot build them. I believe that we have the technology. But if 100 rich people could live forever in an undersea bubble powered by green nanotech, would it really change the global situation? The real technological problem is bringing the billions of people who eke out a stone-age existence in tribal towns all over Asia and Africa into the modern world. And we are making progress every day at an accelerating rate. Tell Google that AI is a pipe dream. Urbanization, digitalization, communication; these are the things that are accelerating like electrons and oil were 100 years ago. Don't give up on Keynes just yet, HN. Of course it will not be easy for our species to survive another 100 years. But let's not give up on ourselves either.

apsec112 16y ago
"This piece is amazing. It masquerades as a critique of science, but at bottom I would argue it is really just a very complicated smokescreen for Obama-hating and anti-Keynesianism. I bet this guy Thiel just wants lower taxes." I personally discussed this topic with Peter in that same cafe several weeks ago, and I find that hard to believe. He didn't seem interested in discussing near-term politics at all, or near-term stuff in general. What's your evidence? "We built airplanes as soon as we could, and Hitler turned them into blitzkreig." If the airplane had been built fifty years later, is there some reason that it would not have been used to wage war more efficiently? "But if 100 rich people could live forever in an undersea bubble powered by green nanotech, would it really change the global situation?" Yes, because the technology that would need to be developed for that to happen would benefit everyone else. "The real technological problem is bringing the billions of people who eke out a stone-age existence in tribal towns all over Asia and Africa into the modern world." That's not a technological problem, it's a political problem. The example of China shows that a well-run country is perfectly capable of starting out from ancient-world level and catching up to the industrialized West within fifty years or so; there are no big technological barriers, just political ones.
- zoomzoom 16y ago
  I bet that Peter pretends not to care about taxes. But that is really besides the point. All I am trying to say is that tech is hardly failing us in the drastic way Peter supposes it is. My point is not to delay the invention of airplanes, but to focus on the political problems first. Technology and politics are connected - that is Keynesianism is all about and that is what Peter, and you (it seems), fail to understand. The problem with medicare and social security, for example, is not "too few robots" but actually probably too many MRIs and prescription drugs. Not that we shouldn't have MRIs. The political barriers are the hardest ones to jump over, because acts of individual genius are rarely meaningful in a political context. And try mass-producing smartphones (or solar panels) in a world where China and India are regressing towards chaos.

apsec112 16y ago

"This piece is amazing. It masquerades as a critique of science, but at bottom I would argue it is really just a very complicated smokescreen for Obama-hating and anti-Keynesianism. I bet this guy Thiel just wants lower taxes." I personally discussed this topic with Peter in that same cafe several weeks ago, and I find that hard to believe. He didn't seem interested in discussing near-term politics at all, or near-term stuff in general. What's your evidence? "We built airplanes as soon as we could, and Hitler turned them into blitzkreig." If the airplane had been built fifty years later, is there some reason that it would not have been used to wage war more efficiently? "But if 100 rich people could live forever in an undersea bubble powered by green nanotech, would it really change the global situation?" Yes, because the technology that would need to be developed for that to happen would benefit everyone else. "The real technological problem is bringing the billions of people who eke out a stone-age existence in tribal towns all over Asia and Africa into the modern world." That's not a technological problem, it's a political problem. The example of China shows that a well-run country is perfectly capable of starting out from ancient-world level and catching up to the industrialized West within fifty years or so; there are no big technological barriers, just political ones.

zoomzoom 16y ago
I bet that Peter pretends not to care about taxes. But that is really besides the point. All I am trying to say is that tech is hardly failing us in the drastic way Peter supposes it is. My point is not to delay the invention of airplanes, but to focus on the political problems first. Technology and politics are connected - that is Keynesianism is all about and that is what Peter, and you (it seems), fail to understand. The problem with medicare and social security, for example, is not "too few robots" but actually probably too many MRIs and prescription drugs. Not that we shouldn't have MRIs. The political barriers are the hardest ones to jump over, because acts of individual genius are rarely meaningful in a political context. And try mass-producing smartphones (or solar panels) in a world where China and India are regressing towards chaos.