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Imagine you are the leader of a country with a large military budget, strong central control over domestic media and policy, but little influence over global te

Imagine you are the leader of a country with a large military budget, strong central control over domestic media and policy, but little influence over global technical standards or device manufacturing. Game theoretically, it would seem that a tempting strategy would be to spend money on influencing the debate in other countries to make them mistrustful of new technology, to slow their economy and relative growth. If the influence campaign isn't completely successful, then you get the additional benefit of having the populace divided amongst itself, and not trusting its own institutions, which further weakens their ability to work together and project power internationally. Surprisingly, this strategy also works against old technology too. Imagine if you wanted to cause health crises in other countries by convincing enough of the population to be afraid of vaccines that herd immunity is lost. I know this sounds like its own conspiracy theory, but it would explain a lot about some of the weird fringe views that seem to be popular on the internet right now.

H8crilA 7y ago
Fake news and unfounded beliefs are as old as humanity. Blood-letting, female hysteria, witch hunting, even the Y2K problem. People still read and believe the Bible, thousands of years later. There's nothing new on this front.
reggieband 7y ago
I know you're getting downvoted for this controversial insinuation ... but I must admit my mind went there while I was reading these comments. The amount of FUD in this comment section, especially at the top, is almost suspicious. I get it that 5G doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is high, alternatives like improving 4G coverage and back-haul from towers are available, there are hints of problems with saturating the air in such high-powered/high-spectrum radiation etc. But how a group of supposedly tech savvy, future thinking, entrepreneurial types seem single-mindedly focused on the negative aspects of a technology seems to not match the normal crowd on hacker news. 5G isn't revolutionary but it is the exact kind of incremental improvement I expect to see in tech. It has some benefits (higher speeds, lower latency) and some drawbacks (proximity to towers, interference from large objects, cost to rollout). The discussion here seems to be entirely limited to maximizing the drawbacks and to limiting the benefits. In my experience with tech, increasing speed and decreasing latency has always netted noticeable benefits. From CPUs, GPUs, memory access and network access - even small improvements in speed/latency have enabled major improvements in features. In addition, rolling out 5G is going to force the rollout of infrastructure enabling 5G, e.g. the fibre lines needed to supply all of those new base stations. For those reasons I am excited about 5G.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  That's not what the top comments are saying, though. They're all saying "5G is overhyped and not worth the investment".
  - reggieband 7y ago
    The first sentence of my second paragraph is literally: "I get it that 5G doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is high, ..." And the "5G overhyped, too expensive, not worth it" meme is what I am talking about as being suspicious. It's curious, the last time I commented on this very issue the responses were all that same meme. One can say "I hear the meme but have an alternative opinion" and the response is always "yes, but meme". When several voices are parroting a meme and somehow that saturates almost all of the top comments ... I get suspicious.
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      I mean, I haven't been paid off by anyone but that's exactly how I feel about it too. HN has a lot of memes -- you probably just agree with most of them and don't notice.

H8crilA 7y ago

Fake news and unfounded beliefs are as old as humanity. Blood-letting, female hysteria, witch hunting, even the Y2K problem. People still read and believe the Bible, thousands of years later. There's nothing new on this front.

reggieband 7y ago

I know you're getting downvoted for this controversial insinuation ... but I must admit my mind went there while I was reading these comments. The amount of FUD in this comment section, especially at the top, is almost suspicious. I get it that 5G doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is high, alternatives like improving 4G coverage and back-haul from towers are available, there are hints of problems with saturating the air in such high-powered/high-spectrum radiation etc. But how a group of supposedly tech savvy, future thinking, entrepreneurial types seem single-mindedly focused on the negative aspects of a technology seems to not match the normal crowd on hacker news. 5G isn't revolutionary but it is the exact kind of incremental improvement I expect to see in tech. It has some benefits (higher speeds, lower latency) and some drawbacks (proximity to towers, interference from large objects, cost to rollout). The discussion here seems to be entirely limited to maximizing the drawbacks and to limiting the benefits. In my experience with tech, increasing speed and decreasing latency has always netted noticeable benefits. From CPUs, GPUs, memory access and network access - even small improvements in speed/latency have enabled major improvements in features. In addition, rolling out 5G is going to force the rollout of infrastructure enabling 5G, e.g. the fibre lines needed to supply all of those new base stations. For those reasons I am excited about 5G.

nerdponx 7y ago
That's not what the top comments are saying, though. They're all saying "5G is overhyped and not worth the investment".
- reggieband 7y ago
  The first sentence of my second paragraph is literally: "I get it that 5G doesn't exactly match the hype, that the cost of rollout is high, ..." And the "5G overhyped, too expensive, not worth it" meme is what I am talking about as being suspicious. It's curious, the last time I commented on this very issue the responses were all that same meme. One can say "I hear the meme but have an alternative opinion" and the response is always "yes, but meme". When several voices are parroting a meme and somehow that saturates almost all of the top comments ... I get suspicious.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    I mean, I haven't been paid off by anyone but that's exactly how I feel about it too. HN has a lot of memes -- you probably just agree with most of them and don't notice.