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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 a

"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.

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.