5 ms·

In retrospect, Thiel was, and is right. We are facing a global crisis because we brushed away our most important problems and chose to profit from digital cats

In retrospect, Thiel was, and is right. We are facing a global crisis because we brushed away our most important problems and chose to profit from digital cats and emojis. Time does not forgive those who lag behind, and we are now facing a crisis similar to a global war. Science and tech has institutionally been failing for decades, knows it 's been failing and has generally brushed away those concerns. Our weapons are now ancient, containment is a tool from the 1920s. (I know people are offended by this, i was hoping a global pandemic would be a wake up call)

thundergolfer 7y ago
Which global crisis you are referring to? It can’t be Climate Change because that isn’t a technology problem it’s a political and economic problem. Is it Covid-19?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Given it says "containment is a tool from the 1920s" I would assume it's the coronavirus.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    How old a tool is has nothing to do with how good it is - we use simple machines and screws and wheels and multi decade old technologies like the internet all the time. Just pick the right tool for the job and keep inventing new ones to expand the opportunity set.
    - buboard 7y ago
      containment is a very ineffective tool, as is the wooden cart wheel. The fact that we don't have a more effective response other than containment should be extremely worrying. What if this was a more dangerous terrorist bioattack? These questions will rise up soon after this initial shock has passed. Unfortunately, fear seems to work better as a motivation for scientific progress
      - andrekandre 7y ago
        what should we be doing instead? we can’t just magic wand our way to a cure/vaccine, so i’m genuinely curious what else we can do...
- api 7y ago
  I strongly disagree about climate change. It's nothing but a technology problem. The people addressing it are people like Gates with his funding of advanced nuclear and Musk with his driving of EVs, solar power, and grid scale storage. One of the major reasons we've failed at tackling climate change to date is that we've been treating it as a political, economic, or ultimately moral problem and trying to solve it by moralizing. I call this approach "abstinence based environmentalism," making a direct analogy to abstinence based sex-ed. It works about as well. Trying to shame people into using less energy or pursuing less economic activity is going to be about as successful as shaming teens into not having sex. If we try to push abstinence based environmentalism really really hard by legislating it and trying to force people to down-size, we'll get a populist counter-reaction and we'll see the election of explicitly anti-environmentalist candidates. That's worse than nothing. That's going backward. We've already seen some of this. We've been approaching environmental problems as moral and political issues for decades and what do we have to show for it? https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2019-05/processed/017-carbon-ppm-415-co2_1024.jpg https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2019-05/processed/017-ca... Total, absolute failure. To stop CO2 and methane emissions, replace fossil fuels. To stop STDs and unwanted pregnancies, give teens contraceptive pills and rubbers.
  - goldenbikeshed 7y ago
    Fossil fuels only account for about 70% of global CO2 emissions. Replacing all of them with renewable energy sources will lower emissions but also bring more emissions (e.g. from cement needed to build those power plants). Our current global economic system is pretty much single mindedly focused on exponential GDP growth. As long as this system persists, all that new clean energy will be used to produce more useless disposable gadgets, driving up more emissions from methane (from all the new trash produced with all that energy). What we need to stop climate change is to lower consumption and to lower production. This is very much possible while also increasing quality of life. Technology can help with getting that into people's head, but a political will has to be there first, and that won't be possible without challenging the current economic system.
    - api 7y ago
- look_lookatme 7y ago
  Strange to make a distinction between the two. Saving us from the effects of climate change is only a technology problem at this point, but it's hard and tedious and disincentivized because it's easier to make money right now in the consumer world or, even worse, in the world of quantitative finance and many good minds have drifted to those fields.
  - fulafel 7y ago
    Saving us from the effects of climate change if we let it progress far would be a (very difficult) technology problem, but fighting climate change is an economic and political problem.

thundergolfer 7y ago

Which global crisis you are referring to? It can’t be Climate Change because that isn’t a technology problem it’s a political and economic problem. Is it Covid-19?

mehrdadn 7y ago
Given it says "containment is a tool from the 1920s" I would assume it's the coronavirus.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  How old a tool is has nothing to do with how good it is - we use simple machines and screws and wheels and multi decade old technologies like the internet all the time. Just pick the right tool for the job and keep inventing new ones to expand the opportunity set.
  - buboard 7y ago
    containment is a very ineffective tool, as is the wooden cart wheel. The fact that we don't have a more effective response other than containment should be extremely worrying. What if this was a more dangerous terrorist bioattack? These questions will rise up soon after this initial shock has passed. Unfortunately, fear seems to work better as a motivation for scientific progress
    - andrekandre 7y ago
      what should we be doing instead? we can’t just magic wand our way to a cure/vaccine, so i’m genuinely curious what else we can do...
api 7y ago
I strongly disagree about climate change. It's nothing but a technology problem. The people addressing it are people like Gates with his funding of advanced nuclear and Musk with his driving of EVs, solar power, and grid scale storage. One of the major reasons we've failed at tackling climate change to date is that we've been treating it as a political, economic, or ultimately moral problem and trying to solve it by moralizing. I call this approach "abstinence based environmentalism," making a direct analogy to abstinence based sex-ed. It works about as well. Trying to shame people into using less energy or pursuing less economic activity is going to be about as successful as shaming teens into not having sex. If we try to push abstinence based environmentalism really really hard by legislating it and trying to force people to down-size, we'll get a populist counter-reaction and we'll see the election of explicitly anti-environmentalist candidates. That's worse than nothing. That's going backward. We've already seen some of this. We've been approaching environmental problems as moral and political issues for decades and what do we have to show for it? https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2019-05/processed/017-carbon-ppm-415-co2_1024.jpg https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2019-05/processed/017-ca... Total, absolute failure. To stop CO2 and methane emissions, replace fossil fuels. To stop STDs and unwanted pregnancies, give teens contraceptive pills and rubbers.
- goldenbikeshed 7y ago
  Fossil fuels only account for about 70% of global CO2 emissions. Replacing all of them with renewable energy sources will lower emissions but also bring more emissions (e.g. from cement needed to build those power plants). Our current global economic system is pretty much single mindedly focused on exponential GDP growth. As long as this system persists, all that new clean energy will be used to produce more useless disposable gadgets, driving up more emissions from methane (from all the new trash produced with all that energy). What we need to stop climate change is to lower consumption and to lower production. This is very much possible while also increasing quality of life. Technology can help with getting that into people's head, but a political will has to be there first, and that won't be possible without challenging the current economic system.
  - api 7y ago
look_lookatme 7y ago
Strange to make a distinction between the two. Saving us from the effects of climate change is only a technology problem at this point, but it's hard and tedious and disincentivized because it's easier to make money right now in the consumer world or, even worse, in the world of quantitative finance and many good minds have drifted to those fields.
- fulafel 7y ago
  Saving us from the effects of climate change if we let it progress far would be a (very difficult) technology problem, but fighting climate change is an economic and political problem.