9 ms·

Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love with Their Principal Doomsayer

71 points by tysone 8y ago

alexnewman 8y ago
Standard human behavior.
darawk 8y ago
Why is this puzzling to people? Isn't this behavior exactly what we'd want out of intelligent, thoughtful people in high places? The ability to countenance and enjoy interesting and thought-provoking ideas that are contrary to their own immediate interests?
- trevyn 8y ago
  IMO, most critiques are poorly-thought-out and therefore quickly dismissed, so when a well-thought-out critique appears and captures interest, this is surface-level puzzling. Especially to those who are poorly able to evaluate the quality of an argument themselves.
- smhost 8y ago
  > It made him sad, he told me, to see people build things that destroy their own societies > “If you make people start thinking far more deeply and seriously about these issues,” he told me, sounding weary, “some of the things they will think about might not be what you want them to think about.” It's not puzzling, it's troubling. To see these people who are actively destroying society be so fascinated by their own powers of destruction.
  - darawk 8y ago
    You think that all tech is doing is destroying society?
    - sverige 8y ago
      Yes, actually.
      - darawk 8y ago
        You think that Google search is destroying the world? How, exactly?
    - lovich 8y ago
      Ad tech and it's supporting industries? Yes
      - darawk 8y ago
        How, exactly? Explain the physics of that to me. How is ad tech destroying the world?
        lovich 8y ago
        Oh you're being a literalist. I can go into Bitcoin for global warming if you want that, but when people say "destroying the world" in the thread they are talking about destroying the set of values and institutions that make up our current culture/society. To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of it's psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done before
        darawk 8y ago
        > Oh you're being a literalist. Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to. > To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of it's psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done before I see very little evidence that ad tech is doing any of that. I think you could make a much better case that social media is doing that. But it's not the ads that are toxic - it's the primary content. The ads are really no worse than they've ever been on television or otherwise. There's certainly a case to be made that social media, a small corner of the tech universe, is harming certain social institutions and values. But it's a far cry from destroying the world, especially in light of how much tech has given the world that has been good.
        lovich 8y ago
        Social media and ad tech are currently intertwined. Facebook and Twitter are both two large players who are both ad tech and social media based. Google was until recently, and that was after years of failure, which they committed to because social media is such a force multiplier for adtech. Can you name another large social media company who doesn't make money off of ad tech? Snap Chat is the only other major social media company I can think of at the moment, and they also make their revenue off of ads. As for >Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to. You were responding to the well known phrase "destroying the world" as if it was physically tearing the earth apart, when it's been a phrase for destroying the currently accepted social norms since at least the 90s when I first heard it in popular media. If you want to have a discussion stop being disengenous about your arguments Edit: I went and reviewed the thread. You asked "You think that all tech is doing is destroying society?". When I said "Yes", you asked for the physics of how it was destroying the world. Please stop moving the goal posts
  - quadcore 8y ago
    Why do you guys assume your fathers haven't those issued covered? You think they are new issues? When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It's covered. We have decentralisation, scrutiny and from that comes the ability to secede. No machine nor algorithm nor class is gonna take over and remove your right to pursue happiness. At least not permanently. The point being, let's not make a reality of a possible future. Whatever future comes, we have it covered.
    - smhost 8y ago
      the declaration of independence has no legal authority. that's just a tactic politicians use to make their voters feel safe about their rights being violated.
      - quadcore 8y ago
        You can secede.
        goliatone 8y ago
        I don’t think I would like to see that happening or even put to a test, but I really really doubt it would be as simple as you make it sound
        quadcore 8y ago
        You can always secede, but some systems make it harder. You won't find a better system than the one which clearly stipulate you have scrutiny and "easy" secession. So don't let fear makes you adopt for a lesser system. Fear is the strongest of our enemy. That's the position the declaration of independence let you in. How beautiful is that?
- marmot777 8y ago
  Yes, it is a good sign that people are listening to different perspectives. I’d be more concerned if tech leaders lived in sealed bubbles.
nperez 8y ago
I'm not a Silicon Valley CEO, but I like hearing this sort of thing because I don't think my work is going away even if the social impact of the industry is known and controlled. As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either.
- xoa 8y ago
  >As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either. Yeah, a lot of folks both at C-level and in the trenches may feel, even if they run an individual company, that they're a bit caught in mutual escalation and wouldn't actually mind some level of imposed disarmament. Ie., it wouldn't be bad if there were in fact some more consideration forced so long as that applied to everyone all at once, but that it's harder to do unilaterally on their own, particularly taking into account VC/investor/customer pressures. Having someone challenging the entire industry intelligently could actually help take things in a direction many wouldn't mind moving anyway. One example I think where this already happened was sales taxes. Yes there were some people ideologically opposed to all taxes even after the industry matured, or were seeking out some individual advantage, but I also know plenty of people who had no specific problem with taxes per se but just didn't want to be put at an active disadvantage vs competitors. Compared to other tech companies they didn't want them to have zero while they didn't, and compared to local retailers they didn't want any gotchas of getting screwed by hard to parse local composite tax numbers and figuring out where to send the money nationwide and all that with many states/counties have terrible scaling archaic systems. If there was just a database to consult and an orderly system to send to then no problem. So there was a win-win potential there as far as they were concerned and people challenging "nothing" weren't unwelcome, but it was still hard to do alone.
trevyn 8y ago
Mr. Harari worries and is anxious, but by the end of the article, his superpower is detachment?
saagarjha 8y ago
> An Alphabet media relations manager later reached out to Mr. Harari’s team to tell him to tell me that the visit to X was not allowed to be part of this story. Did Alphabet have him sign an agreement before presenting?
xoa 8y ago
An interesting read, and I don't see why he'd be confused. In my experience and personally a lot of intelligent people, particular ambitious startup types, like to be challenged (in an intelligent way). They like "intellectual combat", vigorous debate. They may defend themselves vociferously (they're also the type to have extensively thought about and researched their positions already, so they're not lightly held) but it's exciting to encounter opposed views argued beautifully, where there is strong disagreement but damn if they don't have a point. I think some people confuse people dismissing what they consider mediocre arguments with no interest in any challenge at all. As always implementation matters a lot. I mean, that's why a lot of us are right here on HN right? To gain information from those smarter then we are. I think his interpretation of UBI is an oversimplification however that does not fully encompass many practical or positive moral considerations in support of it: >'This, Mr. Harari told me later, is why Silicon Valley is so excited about the concept of universal basic income, or stipends paid to people regardless of whether they work. The message is: “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.”' There are at least a few parts to this. To get the most simple and pragmatic out of the way first, some people are interested in UBI and base level resource/shelter/information access purely (or at least heavily) from a coldly rational efficiency point of view. They see it as a better system all around vs an unorganized hodgepodge of defined bespoke benefits, and simply figure "well if something needs to be kept around let's make it better" and go no farther then that. This also does in fact have at least some real world support as well as theoretical. Simply giving money directly to people in the developing world has yielded promising results in some initial trials I read vs trying to distribute goods. It can be made more resistant to corruption, more decentralized, and many of the efficiencies of a market economy work just as well if the economic input is external. Practical considerations also encompass an expression of humility: even if someone cared only about the "valuable" humans, we don't actually have any clear idea how that comes about beyond the roughest figures. But we do know that bad nutrition and lack of even basic opportunity can destroy potential for good. I'm positive, just on a pure statistical level, that we have had world changing genius level intellects in the dozens to hundreds that have been born in slums, into starvation and threats and lack of any sort of serious upward potential and have thus been utterly wasted. Enormous amounts of valuable human potential has been actively pissed away for no good end at all, in fact for negative value since that directly correlates to crime/prison. The poor are not some lesser race, but that's how policy has effectively treated them. Both those lead into and inform a moral angle, which is that I think direct income (and in turn UBI) can also come from a much more fundamental position of respect for individual humans, not merely "but we are nice". This may be easiest to come at by looking at the charity example: if you dig down, a lot of current schemes fundamentally come from a view of poverty being a moral failing. The view is that the poor and desperate are that way because they're stupid, inferior beings, and in turn they must be given the goods they need (decided by their betters) directly because otherwise "of course" they'd fritter the money all away on booze/drugs/junk/[thing giver considers a bad idea]. It turns out though that while sure there are hard cases there are also plenty of smart, decent people who are nonetheless very badly off due to essentially bad luck and an inability to muster the capital to bootstrap. If given a stipend they will not just spend it frivolously, but rather intelligently use it for their needs, save, invest and all the other things anyone else would do. They can be taught some basic financial literacy and offered education/metaeducation as well with basic needs satisfied, just as others would get naturally growing up, and do even better. Offering someone badly off money rather then food/goods of the exact same monetary "value" is in many ways an expression of trust and respect: that they are capable of figuring out their needs more intelligently then the giver is, and the giver is just trying to achieve the goal of supporting another human at some level and not just to indulge in some righteousness Mr. Harari seems to take the negative spin of "we don't need you", but that itself seems to implicitly take as given "a human's worth is wholly defined by their capacity to work and the need for them." But UBI also makes sense if someone as an ideological stance wishes to make a world where any human has a base level of worth at birth by definition that doesn't need to be justified. Other worth beyond that may then be found in other ways, but it should never be zero. Work has often been a proxy for that and necessary in and of itself, but if that changes down the road then a new value system will have to be created. It doesn't have to just be about "nice".
lightyrs 8y ago
Occam's Razor tells me it's because they are being painted as capable of subverting seemingly larger-than-life systems and institutions. I imagine it's an ego boost to a lot of these tech CEOs.
- ohiovr 8y ago
  One day they will proudly say looking on at the ruins of our society “look at our accomplishments!”
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    Illustrated: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
- kyledrake 8y ago
  And it's arrogant to boot. Seriously believing machine learning is going to make everyone worthless/unemployed and end government is even crazy for Malthusian standards. This is the same age old debate over technology has been going on for centuries. There's nearly infinite things to work on out there, even if the latest steam engine makes a particular thing more efficient or require less workers. Those workers re-train and move on to other things. The key to minimizing the issues is to provide the education, tools, health care, etc. to help displaced workers with that.
  - dashwav 8y ago
    I think his argument has always been more along the lines of machine learning will give the people in charge the knowledge of what it is that the citizen wants to hear and what they will believe, which means that the owner of the data then has power not by way of voting or military might, but by way of manipulation of the masses - which is a sentiment that I find much easier to believe.
empath75 8y ago
I actually think that well before the useless class becomes useless for economic productivity, they will be put to use for another purpose — mass violence. The elites will simply put guns and bombs in the hands of the unemployable masses and use them to take what they can’t win in the market place. You can already see sustained and successful efforts to radicalize people online and it’s only going to get worse. Asymmetric warfare is always going to work and no matter how many drones and missions you have, enough armed radicals will eventually bring anyone to their knees. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a global spasm of violence but I think we’ve been inching closer and closer towards it, year by year since 9/11.
hnaccy 8y ago
They see themselves as members of the ruling class that will outlive the useless class and subvert existing democratic institutions. Of course they love his message, in it they win.
erwan 8y ago
I'm going to be unpleasant and venture a guess. A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves consuming pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots. The cheap worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of "secrets" in From Zero To One as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts. It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion. If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark. That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.
- hopefulengineer 8y ago
  yup, Silicon Valley is a hivemind of people patting themselves on the backs as being intellectual contrarians. If you want to see what happens when someone with actual contrarian thought voices their opinion, see James Damore or Peter thiel and how fast they were excommunicated for their heresy.
tlb 8y ago
I can't recommend his books highly enough. It's human nature explained in a single book! And although I've read hundreds of other books on various aspects of human nature, Harari's non-judgemental synthesis from a consistent point of view clarified my thinking significantly.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  Any books in particular you'd recommend over the others?
  - tlb 8y ago
    Start with either Sapiens, or 21 Lessons for the 21st century.
    - kashyapc 8y ago
      IMHO, starting with Sapiens is better—as that is the really core expertise of Harari, and it's a masterful distillation of human history into a single book.
xrd 8y ago
"And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited."
person_of_color 8y ago
This guy is a hack
- dang 8y ago
  Maybe so, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?
Bjorkbat 8y ago
His predictions don't sound that far off from something Ray Kurzweil would predict. They're both predicting a utopia and the beginning of a new form of intelligence. The difference is that Yuval Hariri is a little more explicit about the fact that not everyone might make it to the rapture. Quick reminder: doesn't matter how exclusive you make heaven. People have a tendency to believe that they'll be one of the lucky ones. More importantly, they don't really leave a lot of room for avoiding something that feels inevitable to a lot of people. Well, a lot of people in the audience anyway. The people you encounter at lunch would probably find the notion of God-like humans to be kind of crazy.
slavik81 8y ago
It reminds me of The Boondocks. Huey Freeman dreams of inciting white people to riot by shattering their most cherished beliefs, but he discovers that the wealthy, white people of his neighbourhood aren't bothered by his revelations in the slightest. Huey: And all I'm saying is, Ronald Reagan was the devil. Rich Man: You are such an articulate young man. Huey: I'm trying to explain to you that Ronald Reagan was the devil! Ronald Wilson Reagan? Each of his names have six letters? 666? Man, doesn't that offend you? Rich Man: I love this kid! .... Huey: (to Granddad) These people aren't worried about us. They're not worried about anything. They're rich. No matter what happens, these people will just keep applaudin'.

71 points by tysone 8y ago

Standard human behavior.

Why is this puzzling to people? Isn't this behavior exactly what we'd want out of intelligent, thoughtful people in high places? The ability to countenance and enjoy interesting and thought-provoking ideas that are contrary to their own immediate interests?

trevyn 8y ago
IMO, most critiques are poorly-thought-out and therefore quickly dismissed, so when a well-thought-out critique appears and captures interest, this is surface-level puzzling. Especially to those who are poorly able to evaluate the quality of an argument themselves.
smhost 8y ago
> It made him sad, he told me, to see people build things that destroy their own societies > “If you make people start thinking far more deeply and seriously about these issues,” he told me, sounding weary, “some of the things they will think about might not be what you want them to think about.” It's not puzzling, it's troubling. To see these people who are actively destroying society be so fascinated by their own powers of destruction.
- darawk 8y ago
  You think that all tech is doing is destroying society?
  - sverige 8y ago
    Yes, actually.
    - darawk 8y ago
      You think that Google search is destroying the world? How, exactly?
  - lovich 8y ago
    Ad tech and it's supporting industries? Yes
    - darawk 8y ago
      How, exactly? Explain the physics of that to me. How is ad tech destroying the world?
      - lovich 8y ago
        Oh you're being a literalist. I can go into Bitcoin for global warming if you want that, but when people say "destroying the world" in the thread they are talking about destroying the set of values and institutions that make up our current culture/society. To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of it's psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done before
        darawk 8y ago
        > Oh you're being a literalist. Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to. > To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of it's psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done before I see very little evidence that ad tech is doing any of that. I think you could make a much better case that social media is doing that. But it's not the ads that are toxic - it's the primary content. The ads are really no worse than they've ever been on television or otherwise. There's certainly a case to be made that social media, a small corner of the tech universe, is harming certain social institutions and values. But it's a far cry from destroying the world, especially in light of how much tech has given the world that has been good.
        lovich 8y ago
        Social media and ad tech are currently intertwined. Facebook and Twitter are both two large players who are both ad tech and social media based. Google was until recently, and that was after years of failure, which they committed to because social media is such a force multiplier for adtech. Can you name another large social media company who doesn't make money off of ad tech? Snap Chat is the only other major social media company I can think of at the moment, and they also make their revenue off of ads. As for >Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to. You were responding to the well known phrase "destroying the world" as if it was physically tearing the earth apart, when it's been a phrase for destroying the currently accepted social norms since at least the 90s when I first heard it in popular media. If you want to have a discussion stop being disengenous about your arguments Edit: I went and reviewed the thread. You asked "You think that all tech is doing is destroying society?". When I said "Yes", you asked for the physics of how it was destroying the world. Please stop moving the goal posts
- quadcore 8y ago
  Why do you guys assume your fathers haven't those issued covered? You think they are new issues? When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It's covered. We have decentralisation, scrutiny and from that comes the ability to secede. No machine nor algorithm nor class is gonna take over and remove your right to pursue happiness. At least not permanently. The point being, let's not make a reality of a possible future. Whatever future comes, we have it covered.
  - smhost 8y ago
    the declaration of independence has no legal authority. that's just a tactic politicians use to make their voters feel safe about their rights being violated.
    - quadcore 8y ago
      You can secede.
      - goliatone 8y ago
        I don’t think I would like to see that happening or even put to a test, but I really really doubt it would be as simple as you make it sound
        quadcore 8y ago
        You can always secede, but some systems make it harder. You won't find a better system than the one which clearly stipulate you have scrutiny and "easy" secession. So don't let fear makes you adopt for a lesser system. Fear is the strongest of our enemy. That's the position the declaration of independence let you in. How beautiful is that?
marmot777 8y ago
Yes, it is a good sign that people are listening to different perspectives. I’d be more concerned if tech leaders lived in sealed bubbles.

nperez 8y ago

I'm not a Silicon Valley CEO, but I like hearing this sort of thing because I don't think my work is going away even if the social impact of the industry is known and controlled. As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either.

xoa 8y ago
>As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either. Yeah, a lot of folks both at C-level and in the trenches may feel, even if they run an individual company, that they're a bit caught in mutual escalation and wouldn't actually mind some level of imposed disarmament. Ie., it wouldn't be bad if there were in fact some more consideration forced so long as that applied to everyone all at once, but that it's harder to do unilaterally on their own, particularly taking into account VC/investor/customer pressures. Having someone challenging the entire industry intelligently could actually help take things in a direction many wouldn't mind moving anyway. One example I think where this already happened was sales taxes. Yes there were some people ideologically opposed to all taxes even after the industry matured, or were seeking out some individual advantage, but I also know plenty of people who had no specific problem with taxes per se but just didn't want to be put at an active disadvantage vs competitors. Compared to other tech companies they didn't want them to have zero while they didn't, and compared to local retailers they didn't want any gotchas of getting screwed by hard to parse local composite tax numbers and figuring out where to send the money nationwide and all that with many states/counties have terrible scaling archaic systems. If there was just a database to consult and an orderly system to send to then no problem. So there was a win-win potential there as far as they were concerned and people challenging "nothing" weren't unwelcome, but it was still hard to do alone.

trevyn 8y ago

Mr. Harari worries and is anxious, but by the end of the article, his superpower is detachment?

saagarjha 8y ago

> An Alphabet media relations manager later reached out to Mr. Harari’s team to tell him to tell me that the visit to X was not allowed to be part of this story. Did Alphabet have him sign an agreement before presenting?

xoa 8y ago

An interesting read, and I don't see why he'd be confused. In my experience and personally a lot of intelligent people, particular ambitious startup types, like to be challenged (in an intelligent way). They like "intellectual combat", vigorous debate. They may defend themselves vociferously (they're also the type to have extensively thought about and researched their positions already, so they're not lightly held) but it's exciting to encounter opposed views argued beautifully, where there is strong disagreement but damn if they don't have a point. I think some people confuse people dismissing what they consider mediocre arguments with no interest in any challenge at all. As always implementation matters a lot. I mean, that's why a lot of us are right here on HN right? To gain information from those smarter then we are. I think his interpretation of UBI is an oversimplification however that does not fully encompass many practical or positive moral considerations in support of it: >'This, Mr. Harari told me later, is why Silicon Valley is so excited about the concept of universal basic income, or stipends paid to people regardless of whether they work. The message is: “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.”' There are at least a few parts to this. To get the most simple and pragmatic out of the way first, some people are interested in UBI and base level resource/shelter/information access purely (or at least heavily) from a coldly rational efficiency point of view. They see it as a better system all around vs an unorganized hodgepodge of defined bespoke benefits, and simply figure "well if something needs to be kept around let's make it better" and go no farther then that. This also does in fact have at least some real world support as well as theoretical. Simply giving money directly to people in the developing world has yielded promising results in some initial trials I read vs trying to distribute goods. It can be made more resistant to corruption, more decentralized, and many of the efficiencies of a market economy work just as well if the economic input is external. Practical considerations also encompass an expression of humility: even if someone cared only about the "valuable" humans, we don't actually have any clear idea how that comes about beyond the roughest figures. But we do know that bad nutrition and lack of even basic opportunity can destroy potential for good. I'm positive, just on a pure statistical level, that we have had world changing genius level intellects in the dozens to hundreds that have been born in slums, into starvation and threats and lack of any sort of serious upward potential and have thus been utterly wasted. Enormous amounts of valuable human potential has been actively pissed away for no good end at all, in fact for negative value since that directly correlates to crime/prison. The poor are not some lesser race, but that's how policy has effectively treated them. Both those lead into and inform a moral angle, which is that I think direct income (and in turn UBI) can also come from a much more fundamental position of respect for individual humans, not merely "but we are nice". This may be easiest to come at by looking at the charity example: if you dig down, a lot of current schemes fundamentally come from a view of poverty being a moral failing. The view is that the poor and desperate are that way because they're stupid, inferior beings, and in turn they must be given the goods they need (decided by their betters) directly because otherwise "of course" they'd fritter the money all away on booze/drugs/junk/[thing giver considers a bad idea]. It turns out though that while sure there are hard cases there are also plenty of smart, decent people who are nonetheless very badly off due to essentially bad luck and an inability to muster the capital to bootstrap. If given a stipend they will not just spend it frivolously, but rather intelligently use it for their needs, save, invest and all the other things anyone else would do. They can be taught some basic financial literacy and offered education/metaeducation as well with basic needs satisfied, just as others would get naturally growing up, and do even better. Offering someone badly off money rather then food/goods of the exact same monetary "value" is in many ways an expression of trust and respect: that they are capable of figuring out their needs more intelligently then the giver is, and the giver is just trying to achieve the goal of supporting another human at some level and not just to indulge in some righteousness Mr. Harari seems to take the negative spin of "we don't need you", but that itself seems to implicitly take as given "a human's worth is wholly defined by their capacity to work and the need for them." But UBI also makes sense if someone as an ideological stance wishes to make a world where any human has a base level of worth at birth by definition that doesn't need to be justified. Other worth beyond that may then be found in other ways, but it should never be zero. Work has often been a proxy for that and necessary in and of itself, but if that changes down the road then a new value system will have to be created. It doesn't have to just be about "nice".

lightyrs 8y ago

Occam's Razor tells me it's because they are being painted as capable of subverting seemingly larger-than-life systems and institutions. I imagine it's an ego boost to a lot of these tech CEOs.

ohiovr 8y ago
One day they will proudly say looking on at the ruins of our society “look at our accomplishments!”
- smacktoward 8y ago
  Illustrated: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
kyledrake 8y ago
And it's arrogant to boot. Seriously believing machine learning is going to make everyone worthless/unemployed and end government is even crazy for Malthusian standards. This is the same age old debate over technology has been going on for centuries. There's nearly infinite things to work on out there, even if the latest steam engine makes a particular thing more efficient or require less workers. Those workers re-train and move on to other things. The key to minimizing the issues is to provide the education, tools, health care, etc. to help displaced workers with that.
- dashwav 8y ago
  I think his argument has always been more along the lines of machine learning will give the people in charge the knowledge of what it is that the citizen wants to hear and what they will believe, which means that the owner of the data then has power not by way of voting or military might, but by way of manipulation of the masses - which is a sentiment that I find much easier to believe.

empath75 8y ago

I actually think that well before the useless class becomes useless for economic productivity, they will be put to use for another purpose — mass violence. The elites will simply put guns and bombs in the hands of the unemployable masses and use them to take what they can’t win in the market place. You can already see sustained and successful efforts to radicalize people online and it’s only going to get worse. Asymmetric warfare is always going to work and no matter how many drones and missions you have, enough armed radicals will eventually bring anyone to their knees. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a global spasm of violence but I think we’ve been inching closer and closer towards it, year by year since 9/11.

hnaccy 8y ago

They see themselves as members of the ruling class that will outlive the useless class and subvert existing democratic institutions. Of course they love his message, in it they win.

erwan 8y ago

I'm going to be unpleasant and venture a guess. A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves consuming pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots. The cheap worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of "secrets" in From Zero To One as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts. It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion. If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark. That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.

hopefulengineer 8y ago
yup, Silicon Valley is a hivemind of people patting themselves on the backs as being intellectual contrarians. If you want to see what happens when someone with actual contrarian thought voices their opinion, see James Damore or Peter thiel and how fast they were excommunicated for their heresy.

tlb 8y ago

I can't recommend his books highly enough. It's human nature explained in a single book! And although I've read hundreds of other books on various aspects of human nature, Harari's non-judgemental synthesis from a consistent point of view clarified my thinking significantly.

Judgmentality 8y ago
Any books in particular you'd recommend over the others?
- tlb 8y ago
  Start with either Sapiens, or 21 Lessons for the 21st century.
  - kashyapc 8y ago
    IMHO, starting with Sapiens is better—as that is the really core expertise of Harari, and it's a masterful distillation of human history into a single book.

xrd 8y ago

"And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited."

person_of_color 8y ago

This guy is a hack

dang 8y ago
Maybe so, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

Bjorkbat 8y ago

His predictions don't sound that far off from something Ray Kurzweil would predict. They're both predicting a utopia and the beginning of a new form of intelligence. The difference is that Yuval Hariri is a little more explicit about the fact that not everyone might make it to the rapture. Quick reminder: doesn't matter how exclusive you make heaven. People have a tendency to believe that they'll be one of the lucky ones. More importantly, they don't really leave a lot of room for avoiding something that feels inevitable to a lot of people. Well, a lot of people in the audience anyway. The people you encounter at lunch would probably find the notion of God-like humans to be kind of crazy.

slavik81 8y ago

It reminds me of The Boondocks. Huey Freeman dreams of inciting white people to riot by shattering their most cherished beliefs, but he discovers that the wealthy, white people of his neighbourhood aren't bothered by his revelations in the slightest. Huey: And all I'm saying is, Ronald Reagan was the devil. Rich Man: You are such an articulate young man. Huey: I'm trying to explain to you that Ronald Reagan was the devil! Ronald Wilson Reagan? Each of his names have six letters? 666? Man, doesn't that offend you? Rich Man: I love this kid! .... Huey: (to Granddad) These people aren't worried about us. They're not worried about anything. They're rich. No matter what happens, these people will just keep applaudin'.