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I think it's interesting how one prediction that they made was that 1,000,000,000 would be starving. However, the massive reduction in extreme poverty[1] that t

I think it's interesting how one prediction that they made was that 1,000,000,000 would be starving. However, the massive reduction in extreme poverty[1] that the world has made, especially since 2000, is amazing and under-covered. That's one prediction that I am glad they got wrong. [1]https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

jkingsbery 6y ago
Agreed, although they aren't (necessarily) mutually exclusive - you can reduce the percentage in poverty while still having 1 billion. An interesting thing with these predictions is that they tend to focus on technology, when a lot of the reasons for problems like poverty aren't a tech issue, they are because we haven't figured out how to build functional institutions yet that overcome mismanagement and corruption, changing incentives to make education more common, ensuring supply chains that go through remote areas are safe.
- lihaciudaniel 6y ago
  Here's a food for thought: meanwhile 1,000,000,000 people starve and 1,000,000 starve emotionally (suicide) all in all 3 million children die every year from malnutrition.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  > when a lot of the reasons for problems like poverty aren't a tech issue, they are because we haven't figured out how to build functional institutions I would argue that is still mostly a technology issue. Just social technologies, instead of physical technologies. Democracy is a social technology. Gender equality is a social technology. Market economies are a social technology. And like regular technologies, social technologies are often simple in theory but deceptively difficult to implement well. Over time, we learn the pitfalls and improve the engineering. That lowers the cost, increases the quality, and widens the distribution. Liberal democracy is a 300-year old idea, but the percentage of the world's population living under it has drastically increased in just the past 30 years. Also over time, we learn which social technologies are dead-ends. Marxist-Leninism is clearly a horrendously destructive social technology.
  - IAmEveryone 6y ago
    You're just calling all sorts of things "technology". Yes, you can make that definition fit, somewhat hazharzously: maybe ideas, concepts, ideologies are, in a certain light, "tools" to use to get some result. But how does that help? You're just throwing away whatever nuance is captured by the existing terminology. Are people more likely to rationally use and improve liberal democracy if you frame it in technological terms? If you believe so go ask emacs users what they like best about vim...
    - igorkraw 6y ago
      I'd argue framing these things as technologies removes some of the mental blocks we have in them. Capitalism and socialism as ideologies can endlessly be argued about, but as technological solutions to the problem of control of the means of production that are stable and efficient you can evaluate their performance calmly. Moralistic thinking of how "people deserve their own world reward/a fair share" has it's place, but it's not a very tolerant one. A moral code that has some "higher" purpose is not something you can evaluate and discuss. A tool is evaluated only in the context it's in. This is a more flexible and pragmatic framing
      - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        Your "calm" performance metrics will be chosen subjectively, almost certainly on the basis of a moral code which guides your decisions but which you're not objectively aware of - because you consider it so correct it would never occur to you to question it. In fact we already do this with finance and economics. Neither are even remotely calm, unbiased, or objective. And if someone says that in fact you can evaluate moral codes on objective criteria - not least long-term species survivability and the dimensions of the collective predictive horizon and strategic IQ - how can you be sure that alternative criteria you might prefer are any better?
        philwelch 6y ago
        > Your "calm" performance metrics will be chosen subjectively, almost certainly on the basis of a moral code which guides your decisions but which you're not objectively aware of - because you consider it so correct it would never occur to you to question it. This is exactly what makes social and political systems a technology. People choose between different technologies based upon their personal judgments and preferences about acceptable trade-offs. Different people, and even different groups of people, will make different decisions because they have different preferences.
philwelch 6y ago
Yeah, a lot of the predictions gave me classic “I was promised flying cars!” feeling but that’s far more important.
hedora 6y ago
> Globally, there are 821.6 million people that are considered undernourished or starving. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-affected-by-hunger-in-the-world-according-to-world-hunger-index/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-af... Sorry to be a killjoy.
- aripickar 6y ago
  Undernourished != starving, and 821.6 million != 1 billion. While there is plenty of work to do left, theres a lot of progress that has been made so far and its important to recognize that.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Feel free to mentally substitute “has access to anything less than enough food” and round up slightly, but I don’t see much of a difference.
    - ccvannorman 6y ago
      "round up slightly" by >100 million humans? You don't see a difference? The point being made is that human civilization is making leaps and bounds globally because that number isn't a billion, and most importantly it has a strong, predictable trajectory downwards, towards zero. "I don't see a difference" is like saying "we were going 80 mph towards the wall, and we braked, but now we're going 50, and I don't see much difference, it's practically 80 if you just round up." Are you not interested in the fact that we're continuing to brake?
      - samoa42 6y ago
        thing is, you won't see much of a difference if you hit a wall with 80 or 50 (mph/kmph)
        virgilp 6y ago
        You absolutely will. In a modern car, at 50kmph you'll be largely ok. At 80kmph (50mph), not so much, but maybe you'll survive. At 80mph, you won't survive.
wayoutthere 6y ago
Just give it a few months; 2020 ain't over yet.
JeremyNT 6y ago
I think looking at the specific numbers in that prediction misses the bigger point. The first world countries would never altruistically provide their advanced technology to the third world, and so most of the technological breakthroughs envisioned in the piece remain inaccessible to huge portions of the world's population. > For Lanier, the most heartbreaking scenario is festering in the third world, where, he believes, the current generation of children— lacking food, lacking skills, lacking aid, lacking education— will be lost in the next techno-revolution.

jkingsbery 6y ago

Agreed, although they aren't (necessarily) mutually exclusive - you can reduce the percentage in poverty while still having 1 billion. An interesting thing with these predictions is that they tend to focus on technology, when a lot of the reasons for problems like poverty aren't a tech issue, they are because we haven't figured out how to build functional institutions yet that overcome mismanagement and corruption, changing incentives to make education more common, ensuring supply chains that go through remote areas are safe.

lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Here's a food for thought: meanwhile 1,000,000,000 people starve and 1,000,000 starve emotionally (suicide) all in all 3 million children die every year from malnutrition.
dcolkitt 6y ago
> when a lot of the reasons for problems like poverty aren't a tech issue, they are because we haven't figured out how to build functional institutions I would argue that is still mostly a technology issue. Just social technologies, instead of physical technologies. Democracy is a social technology. Gender equality is a social technology. Market economies are a social technology. And like regular technologies, social technologies are often simple in theory but deceptively difficult to implement well. Over time, we learn the pitfalls and improve the engineering. That lowers the cost, increases the quality, and widens the distribution. Liberal democracy is a 300-year old idea, but the percentage of the world's population living under it has drastically increased in just the past 30 years. Also over time, we learn which social technologies are dead-ends. Marxist-Leninism is clearly a horrendously destructive social technology.
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  You're just calling all sorts of things "technology". Yes, you can make that definition fit, somewhat hazharzously: maybe ideas, concepts, ideologies are, in a certain light, "tools" to use to get some result. But how does that help? You're just throwing away whatever nuance is captured by the existing terminology. Are people more likely to rationally use and improve liberal democracy if you frame it in technological terms? If you believe so go ask emacs users what they like best about vim...
  - igorkraw 6y ago
    I'd argue framing these things as technologies removes some of the mental blocks we have in them. Capitalism and socialism as ideologies can endlessly be argued about, but as technological solutions to the problem of control of the means of production that are stable and efficient you can evaluate their performance calmly. Moralistic thinking of how "people deserve their own world reward/a fair share" has it's place, but it's not a very tolerant one. A moral code that has some "higher" purpose is not something you can evaluate and discuss. A tool is evaluated only in the context it's in. This is a more flexible and pragmatic framing
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Your "calm" performance metrics will be chosen subjectively, almost certainly on the basis of a moral code which guides your decisions but which you're not objectively aware of - because you consider it so correct it would never occur to you to question it. In fact we already do this with finance and economics. Neither are even remotely calm, unbiased, or objective. And if someone says that in fact you can evaluate moral codes on objective criteria - not least long-term species survivability and the dimensions of the collective predictive horizon and strategic IQ - how can you be sure that alternative criteria you might prefer are any better?
      - philwelch 6y ago
        > Your "calm" performance metrics will be chosen subjectively, almost certainly on the basis of a moral code which guides your decisions but which you're not objectively aware of - because you consider it so correct it would never occur to you to question it. This is exactly what makes social and political systems a technology. People choose between different technologies based upon their personal judgments and preferences about acceptable trade-offs. Different people, and even different groups of people, will make different decisions because they have different preferences.

philwelch 6y ago

Yeah, a lot of the predictions gave me classic “I was promised flying cars!” feeling but that’s far more important.

hedora 6y ago

> Globally, there are 821.6 million people that are considered undernourished or starving. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-affected-by-hunger-in-the-world-according-to-world-hunger-index/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-af... Sorry to be a killjoy.

aripickar 6y ago
Undernourished != starving, and 821.6 million != 1 billion. While there is plenty of work to do left, theres a lot of progress that has been made so far and its important to recognize that.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Feel free to mentally substitute “has access to anything less than enough food” and round up slightly, but I don’t see much of a difference.
  - ccvannorman 6y ago
    "round up slightly" by >100 million humans? You don't see a difference? The point being made is that human civilization is making leaps and bounds globally because that number isn't a billion, and most importantly it has a strong, predictable trajectory downwards, towards zero. "I don't see a difference" is like saying "we were going 80 mph towards the wall, and we braked, but now we're going 50, and I don't see much difference, it's practically 80 if you just round up." Are you not interested in the fact that we're continuing to brake?
    - samoa42 6y ago
      thing is, you won't see much of a difference if you hit a wall with 80 or 50 (mph/kmph)
      - virgilp 6y ago
        You absolutely will. In a modern car, at 50kmph you'll be largely ok. At 80kmph (50mph), not so much, but maybe you'll survive. At 80mph, you won't survive.

wayoutthere 6y ago

Just give it a few months; 2020 ain't over yet.

JeremyNT 6y ago

I think looking at the specific numbers in that prediction misses the bigger point. The first world countries would never altruistically provide their advanced technology to the third world, and so most of the technological breakthroughs envisioned in the piece remain inaccessible to huge portions of the world's population. > For Lanier, the most heartbreaking scenario is festering in the third world, where, he believes, the current generation of children— lacking food, lacking skills, lacking aid, lacking education— will be lost in the next techno-revolution.