7 ms·

No More Bold Visions of the Future

51 points by riverlong 6y ago

TrevorFSmith 6y ago
People being screwed by the current systems have bold visions. Listen to them. Lend them your privilege. Fund them.
- aklemm 6y ago
  Yes, exactly.
- riverlong 6y ago
  I'll assure you I am trying to do my best on that front. I spend a lot of time listening to people who are being screwed. Trying to move the needle on polarization and climate change. On one hand, those are important movements. On the other hand, this is fixing problems we've brought upon ourselves -- it's maintenance. Plugging leaks in a moving ship. It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations. Certainly the last few years have felt more like we've been running in neutral (both in terms of society/tech) than anything else.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    The world in general, and the US in particular, has accumulated too many problems to make meaningful forward progress. The ship is in credible fear of sinking. Leak plugging is going to distract from navigation, at least until we can be sure the next generation will have a ship to sail.
  - jacknews 6y ago
    I don't think plugging leaks is what is required. The entire basis of the current system is corrupt.
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    Didn't America's civil rights as well as communism fear/wars, population explosion fear, and nuclear holocaust fear, happen in a time absolutely brimming with technological marvels like nuclear power, space travel, and the first computers, not to mention general technological utopia thinking? I don't see why you can't have both. Maybe stop worrying about the politics and get more enthusiastic about Mars colonies or machine learning or whatever.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    We don't control the climate and we may never control it. It's amazing the downvotes I get from such an obvious statement. It's true. The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc. Before you click downvote, ask yourself how much you actually understand about the subject and go learn more if you care about it. Go deep. Stay skeptical.
    - orwin 6y ago
      > The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc It is funny how many phenomenas have an influence on the climate, and yet there is only one phenomena [0] that explain how the low troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling, and its not part of this list. Do you have a take on this too? And also orders of magnitudes are key here, but you have to go deep and stay skeptical to get that. [0] Actually two, but we are sure the second had no influence in the last 20 years at least.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Only one? You've made the claim. Now show the proof.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    > It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations. We never have and we never will. The two can be done in tandem, but not sequentially. When we went to the moon, there were plenty of leaks being plugged. It was a worse society and world back then. Violent crime was higher. Racism was worse. Public health was worse. Famines were a thing. Civil liberties overall was worse. Treatment of the out crowd (e.g. at work) was worse. There are plenty of leaks to plug, but this should not be a barrier to lofty goals.
- petr_tik 6y ago
  Can you please share how you’ve lent your privilege before, so I know what you mean by that? Also, if you have children and one of them secures an offer to study in Cambridge, MIT, your country’s equivalent of a prestigious university - will you tell them to turn that offer down to lend their privilege?
iambateman 6y ago
Where our culture used to dream of flying cars, we seem to be leaving our technocratic utopian bull run. In my opinion, we are entering a cultural period of “cementing” the gains from the switch to digital life. For example, over the last ten years we all got cameras in our pocket and over the next ten years we will figure out new ways to use the pictures. That same process is happening everywhere...how should companies use Slack? How do small companies measure digital ad effectiveness well? How do we limit phone addiction? As a result, innovation may be slower as we collectively optimize and distribute new technology. P.S. learning how to retrofit a US city away from car-culture and toward a city that works for everyone is simultaneously iterative and radical.
- riverlong 6y ago
  That being said, I'm not sure that we're actually leaving our bull run. We keep getting more efficient. Sure, we don't have flying cars, but for example, we've connected the entire world via the internet, and it's only getting better. The milestones of obvious tangible technological progress -- supersonic travel, life extension, etc. are different. We've had real progress, but in more abstract ways, along a different axis. Perhaps because we've been progressing mostly along that less visible axis, we've forgotten how to dream big in the tangible, physical world.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Flying cars are also an example of utopianism gone wrong; it turns out it's impractical for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to: - energy; it's going to take a lot more energy to get something and keep it in the air, than it does to just fight rolling resistance - safety; cars are dangerous enough, adding gravity as a potential additional vector in an accident sounds like even more of a disaster waiting to happen. transportation is already one of the biggest energy consuming sectors; in an age where we are trying to reduce fossil fuel use does throwing in more energy requirements make sense? - noise and visual pollution; people are going to be upset when their nice upper story bedroom now gets inundated with traffic
    - 6y ago
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I have a bold vision for the future. Using consensus algorithms, humans are able to build a bucket of knowledge verified by web-of-trust, free of interest corruption, and make society-wide decisions in matters of months and weeks rather than decades and years. We can go from "scientists discover X" to "scientists I personally know and trust have reviewed the paper and I now accept it as truth" to trustworthy consensus on the matter to action items with just consensus algorithms and humans voting on blocks of text.
- Invictus0 6y ago
  The idea that who a scientist is and what they stand for has any bearing on their work is a an affront to science itself. Let the papers speak for themselves; the authors need not even be mentioned.
  - gpm 6y ago
    This just isn't how science work. Papers don't stand on their own because it takes far too long for even a subject matter expert to evaluate one paper, and that's even assuming that the paper was written honestly and without fudging the results. Science works on reputation. That reputation is most evident in the form of peer review where trusted members of the community review papers and decide which ones are good enough to get published. It also works behind the scenes in people finding out what papers to read by word of mouth, and people setting there prior on how trustworthy it is by who the authors are. Reputation is built partially (largely even) on being able to reliably publish true and verifiable results, and doing this without ever playing any politics will quickly build a reputation (meanwhile building a reputation by playing politics is next to impossible), but it's still reputation based.
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      You could rely on the reputation of the reviewers, while concealing the identity of the authors from everyone. That may be what Invictus0 was suggesting, and it does sound workable. It raises one question—"How do we get the first reputable scientist to bother reviewing Mr. Anon's paper?" But as long as there wasn't a huge problem of outright spam, or of crackpot submissions that eat up too much time... or if serious submitters had to offer a monetary bounty (on the order of $100-$500) for the first or the first few reviewers, or if the bounty was more like a "security deposit" which would be given back if the paper was confirmed to be neither spam nor crackpot... There seem to be multiple plausible options.
mistermann 6y ago
> I spend much time thinking about solutions to existing problems – the incentive mismatch in mass media that is causing accelerating polarization, how to remedy the effects of climate change, and so on. But these are all fixes, reactions. It feels like I’m in the belly of the ship, frenetically plugging leaky holes, never even having the space of mind to think where the ship should go. Ostensibly, those decisions are made on the bridge of the ship, which, in October 2020, seems to be populated by well-intentioned individuals, but hamstrung in their ability to make good collective decisions. Here's a bold vision for a better world: maybe the ship should set as its target the goal of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the significant numbers of human beings on the planet that aren't doing so well in those categories. > Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. This is clearly felt among policymakers, but I feel it even as a technologist: I understand that virtually all tools can be used – and more often than not, will be used – for both good and evil, and how hard the results are to predict over years in our dynamic world. I learned that technology can rarely solve fundamental social problems, and I’ve seen the public perception rollercoaster of “this technology/person/policy is good” to “this is evil” more times than I can count. Maybe the issue isn't so much the difficulty of the physical problem itself, but the tool we use to make decisions: representative democracy. The following quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." But it seems what he really said was: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." As far as I can tell, the only people who are significantly happy with the results of the ones we have now are those who are within the system, and the top <x>%. Maybe it's about time we should try a new form, one that hasn't been tried before. Is it not possible to come up with something new, something that might show the potential to actually deliver an increase in aggregate global happiness?
- guywhocodes 6y ago
  What hasn't been tried tho? All major ideologies have had their run. Some failed faster than others
d_silin 6y ago
...of some particular future. If anything it should be clear that you can't fix social problems with technology alone.
Barrin92 6y ago
>When I was a teen, growing up on a diet of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Alvin Toffler’s Futurism, I had plenty of big ideas: spaceflight, supersonic travel, mag-lev trains, geodesic domes, bio-nanotech for longevity, and social organization to provide maximum freedom for all. Cheesy, but optimistic. Now I am 29 and I have no big, optimistic ideas.[...]It feels like I’m in the belly of the ship, frenetically plugging leaky holes, never even having the space of mind to think where the ship should go. Ostensibly, those decisions are made on the bridge of the ship, which, in October 2020, seems to be populated by well-intentioned individuals, but hamstrung in their ability to make good collective decisions.* So the author turned into an adult. Geodesic domes and flying cars are cool but whether the future is good or not will depend on many people doing boring work over many decades and stuffing those leaks in the ship. Torvalds has said many times that you make the future better fixing one pothole at a time, and what he has built proves that's true. Bold visions aren't all they're cracked up to be and I'll take the linux kernel and git over Bezos phallic rockets when it comes to world improvement in tech. What I'll take from Bezos is the decidedly non-futuristic idea of putting books into boxes a little bit faster than everyone else. That made the world a bit better as well.
- Animats 6y ago
  So the author turned into an adult. No, that's not it. We don't have a vision of the future any more. Here's a well-known vision of the future: Futurama.[1] No, not the cartoon. The 1939 World's Fair exhibit. Yes, it's General Motors' view. Note the expectation of unlimited progress. Most of what you see there as the future was achieved. GM tried again at the 1964 World's Fair.[2] There was still optimism, but what we see there - huge moon bases and undersea cities - didn't happen. The big moment of disillusionment was the end of the US moon program in 1972. Going into space was just too expensive. That was about the time when science fiction turned dystopian. "Silent Running", the first "dirty future" movie, came out in 1972, and set the pattern for most later SF films. Crystal spires out, grunge in. For about a century and a half, manufacturing and transportation changed the world and led to the future. Then what? Well, we got computers, and that carried us for another half century. What's next? There's nothing obvious in the near term. Eventually biology may be figured out to the level that organisms can be designed and engineered. But that's not close. Fusion power? Not going well. We have enough technology and resources to provide a good standard of living for everyone on the planet. Nobody seems to have a scalable political system able to make that happen. This isn't a technology problem. [1] https://vimeo.com/329901114 https://vimeo.com/329901114 [2] https://youtu.be/2-5aK0H05jk https://youtu.be/2-5aK0H05jk
haltingproblem 6y ago
>Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. I would disagree that the world is much more complex than it was twenty years ago. The increase in complexity is perceived rather than actual. Just like more reporting of crime creates more awareness of crime that existed before but was unreported creating a mistaken awareness of more crime. On most indicators the world has gotten better and more free and more democratic. This matters for the next bit of reasoning. I would posit that what has happened is that second order effects are now more visible like the crime that was not reported and is now reported. More democracy and access to media means that second-order effects sufferers are more likely to make a kerfuffle and bang the equivalent of pots to get attention whereas previously the big decisions were just rammed through. A Hoover dam would probably not be built now because the communities affected are more empowered and have the resources to mobilize political opinion. I dont even know how much opposition the Hoover dam faced when it was built if any. Similarly it is far harder if not impossible to build Nuclear power plants because surrounding communities will raise hell. There is also far more understanding of the second order effects. They always existed but we were just unaware of them. I am not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing just pointing out that you are conflating awareness of second order effects with the existence of more second order effects.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  The nuclear nimbyism is one of the most erroneous mistakes we have made as a society. Solar and wind can only ever be supplemental and never primary sources of energy. We need more nuclear. Maybe this awareness of second order effects has caused analysis paralysis and calcification of progress?
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > Solar and wind can only ever be supplemental and never primary sources of energy. I think people will keep repeating this long after the entire world run on solar. The good primary sources of energy all share the characteristic that they can not react fast to changes in demand, so they run most of their time in an anti-economic mode where they cost more than they get in revenue. Coal is getting outcompeted because of that, and nuclear is way slower to react than coal. (Not that it changes much, as nuclear is never competitive anyway.)
etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
Off topic, but reading about this guy, who has apparently invested in 60+ startups starting at age 24, makes me feel a bit of a sense of inadequacy. I just can't believe this happens often... does it?
- riverlong 6y ago
  I'm 29 now, and will soon turn 30. While I did my very first few deals when I was 24, I became much more active as I got older. There are many small checkwriters like me.
pontifier 6y ago
I've got plenty of Bold Visions, but lack the resources to put them into practice. I'm not sure what the main hiccup is. Maybe I'm not great at describing my vision. Maybe I'm trying to keep too much control over my ideas (I don't like the idea of sharing equity at all). Maybe my ideas are just no good. I feel like there is a snake oil game I don't play, where people who want money get good at asking for it, and it's a continual game of "try not to get scammed" for the people being asked. I'd rather just try to fund things myself, but it's super slow to get anything done that way. I wish there were a way for good ideas to thrive on their merits without having to beg others to help, and then give huge percentages of my hard work to people who did nothing but write a check. Makes me sick to think about.
Glench 6y ago
> Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. This is clearly felt among policymakers, but I feel it even as a technologist: I understand that virtually all tools can be used – and more often than not, will be used – for both good and evil, and how hard the results are to predict over years in our dynamic world. I learned that technology can rarely solve fundamental social problems, and I’ve seen the public perception rollercoaster of “this technology/person/policy is good” to “this is evil” more times than I can count. This is a really important point that every technologist should be thinking about in their work. It's what caused me to quit tech. See also Neil Postman's "Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change": https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--five-things.html https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--... > Ask anyone who knows something about computers to talk about them, and you will find that they will, unabashedly and relentlessly, extol the wonders of computers. You will also find that in most cases they will completely neglect to mention any of the liabilities of computers. This is a dangerous imbalance, since the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences.
- riverlong 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing the Postman talk. It's a superb set of insights.

51 points by riverlong 6y ago

TrevorFSmith 6y ago

People being screwed by the current systems have bold visions. Listen to them. Lend them your privilege. Fund them.

aklemm 6y ago
Yes, exactly.
riverlong 6y ago
I'll assure you I am trying to do my best on that front. I spend a lot of time listening to people who are being screwed. Trying to move the needle on polarization and climate change. On one hand, those are important movements. On the other hand, this is fixing problems we've brought upon ourselves -- it's maintenance. Plugging leaks in a moving ship. It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations. Certainly the last few years have felt more like we've been running in neutral (both in terms of society/tech) than anything else.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  The world in general, and the US in particular, has accumulated too many problems to make meaningful forward progress. The ship is in credible fear of sinking. Leak plugging is going to distract from navigation, at least until we can be sure the next generation will have a ship to sail.
- jacknews 6y ago
  I don't think plugging leaks is what is required. The entire basis of the current system is corrupt.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  Didn't America's civil rights as well as communism fear/wars, population explosion fear, and nuclear holocaust fear, happen in a time absolutely brimming with technological marvels like nuclear power, space travel, and the first computers, not to mention general technological utopia thinking? I don't see why you can't have both. Maybe stop worrying about the politics and get more enthusiastic about Mars colonies or machine learning or whatever.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  We don't control the climate and we may never control it. It's amazing the downvotes I get from such an obvious statement. It's true. The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc. Before you click downvote, ask yourself how much you actually understand about the subject and go learn more if you care about it. Go deep. Stay skeptical.
  - orwin 6y ago
    > The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc It is funny how many phenomenas have an influence on the climate, and yet there is only one phenomena [0] that explain how the low troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling, and its not part of this list. Do you have a take on this too? And also orders of magnitudes are key here, but you have to go deep and stay skeptical to get that. [0] Actually two, but we are sure the second had no influence in the last 20 years at least.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Only one? You've made the claim. Now show the proof.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations. We never have and we never will. The two can be done in tandem, but not sequentially. When we went to the moon, there were plenty of leaks being plugged. It was a worse society and world back then. Violent crime was higher. Racism was worse. Public health was worse. Famines were a thing. Civil liberties overall was worse. Treatment of the out crowd (e.g. at work) was worse. There are plenty of leaks to plug, but this should not be a barrier to lofty goals.
petr_tik 6y ago
Can you please share how you’ve lent your privilege before, so I know what you mean by that? Also, if you have children and one of them secures an offer to study in Cambridge, MIT, your country’s equivalent of a prestigious university - will you tell them to turn that offer down to lend their privilege?

iambateman 6y ago

Where our culture used to dream of flying cars, we seem to be leaving our technocratic utopian bull run. In my opinion, we are entering a cultural period of “cementing” the gains from the switch to digital life. For example, over the last ten years we all got cameras in our pocket and over the next ten years we will figure out new ways to use the pictures. That same process is happening everywhere...how should companies use Slack? How do small companies measure digital ad effectiveness well? How do we limit phone addiction? As a result, innovation may be slower as we collectively optimize and distribute new technology. P.S. learning how to retrofit a US city away from car-culture and toward a city that works for everyone is simultaneously iterative and radical.

riverlong 6y ago
That being said, I'm not sure that we're actually leaving our bull run. We keep getting more efficient. Sure, we don't have flying cars, but for example, we've connected the entire world via the internet, and it's only getting better. The milestones of obvious tangible technological progress -- supersonic travel, life extension, etc. are different. We've had real progress, but in more abstract ways, along a different axis. Perhaps because we've been progressing mostly along that less visible axis, we've forgotten how to dream big in the tangible, physical world.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Flying cars are also an example of utopianism gone wrong; it turns out it's impractical for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to: - energy; it's going to take a lot more energy to get something and keep it in the air, than it does to just fight rolling resistance - safety; cars are dangerous enough, adding gravity as a potential additional vector in an accident sounds like even more of a disaster waiting to happen. transportation is already one of the biggest energy consuming sectors; in an age where we are trying to reduce fossil fuel use does throwing in more energy requirements make sense? - noise and visual pollution; people are going to be upset when their nice upper story bedroom now gets inundated with traffic
  - 6y ago

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I have a bold vision for the future. Using consensus algorithms, humans are able to build a bucket of knowledge verified by web-of-trust, free of interest corruption, and make society-wide decisions in matters of months and weeks rather than decades and years. We can go from "scientists discover X" to "scientists I personally know and trust have reviewed the paper and I now accept it as truth" to trustworthy consensus on the matter to action items with just consensus algorithms and humans voting on blocks of text.

Invictus0 6y ago
The idea that who a scientist is and what they stand for has any bearing on their work is a an affront to science itself. Let the papers speak for themselves; the authors need not even be mentioned.
- gpm 6y ago
  This just isn't how science work. Papers don't stand on their own because it takes far too long for even a subject matter expert to evaluate one paper, and that's even assuming that the paper was written honestly and without fudging the results. Science works on reputation. That reputation is most evident in the form of peer review where trusted members of the community review papers and decide which ones are good enough to get published. It also works behind the scenes in people finding out what papers to read by word of mouth, and people setting there prior on how trustworthy it is by who the authors are. Reputation is built partially (largely even) on being able to reliably publish true and verifiable results, and doing this without ever playing any politics will quickly build a reputation (meanwhile building a reputation by playing politics is next to impossible), but it's still reputation based.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    You could rely on the reputation of the reviewers, while concealing the identity of the authors from everyone. That may be what Invictus0 was suggesting, and it does sound workable. It raises one question—"How do we get the first reputable scientist to bother reviewing Mr. Anon's paper?" But as long as there wasn't a huge problem of outright spam, or of crackpot submissions that eat up too much time... or if serious submitters had to offer a monetary bounty (on the order of $100-$500) for the first or the first few reviewers, or if the bounty was more like a "security deposit" which would be given back if the paper was confirmed to be neither spam nor crackpot... There seem to be multiple plausible options.

mistermann 6y ago

> I spend much time thinking about solutions to existing problems – the incentive mismatch in mass media that is causing accelerating polarization, how to remedy the effects of climate change, and so on. But these are all fixes, reactions. It feels like I’m in the belly of the ship, frenetically plugging leaky holes, never even having the space of mind to think where the ship should go. Ostensibly, those decisions are made on the bridge of the ship, which, in October 2020, seems to be populated by well-intentioned individuals, but hamstrung in their ability to make good collective decisions. Here's a bold vision for a better world: maybe the ship should set as its target the goal of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the significant numbers of human beings on the planet that aren't doing so well in those categories. > Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. This is clearly felt among policymakers, but I feel it even as a technologist: I understand that virtually all tools can be used – and more often than not, will be used – for both good and evil, and how hard the results are to predict over years in our dynamic world. I learned that technology can rarely solve fundamental social problems, and I’ve seen the public perception rollercoaster of “this technology/person/policy is good” to “this is evil” more times than I can count. Maybe the issue isn't so much the difficulty of the physical problem itself, but the tool we use to make decisions: representative democracy. The following quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." But it seems what he really said was: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." As far as I can tell, the only people who are significantly happy with the results of the ones we have now are those who are within the system, and the top <x>%. Maybe it's about time we should try a new form, one that hasn't been tried before. Is it not possible to come up with something new, something that might show the potential to actually deliver an increase in aggregate global happiness?

guywhocodes 6y ago
What hasn't been tried tho? All major ideologies have had their run. Some failed faster than others

d_silin 6y ago

...of some particular future. If anything it should be clear that you can't fix social problems with technology alone.

Barrin92 6y ago

>When I was a teen, growing up on a diet of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Alvin Toffler’s Futurism, I had plenty of big ideas: spaceflight, supersonic travel, mag-lev trains, geodesic domes, bio-nanotech for longevity, and social organization to provide maximum freedom for all. Cheesy, but optimistic. Now I am 29 and I have no big, optimistic ideas.[...]It feels like I’m in the belly of the ship, frenetically plugging leaky holes, never even having the space of mind to think where the ship should go. Ostensibly, those decisions are made on the bridge of the ship, which, in October 2020, seems to be populated by well-intentioned individuals, but hamstrung in their ability to make good collective decisions.* So the author turned into an adult. Geodesic domes and flying cars are cool but whether the future is good or not will depend on many people doing boring work over many decades and stuffing those leaks in the ship. Torvalds has said many times that you make the future better fixing one pothole at a time, and what he has built proves that's true. Bold visions aren't all they're cracked up to be and I'll take the linux kernel and git over Bezos phallic rockets when it comes to world improvement in tech. What I'll take from Bezos is the decidedly non-futuristic idea of putting books into boxes a little bit faster than everyone else. That made the world a bit better as well.

Animats 6y ago
So the author turned into an adult. No, that's not it. We don't have a vision of the future any more. Here's a well-known vision of the future: Futurama.[1] No, not the cartoon. The 1939 World's Fair exhibit. Yes, it's General Motors' view. Note the expectation of unlimited progress. Most of what you see there as the future was achieved. GM tried again at the 1964 World's Fair.[2] There was still optimism, but what we see there - huge moon bases and undersea cities - didn't happen. The big moment of disillusionment was the end of the US moon program in 1972. Going into space was just too expensive. That was about the time when science fiction turned dystopian. "Silent Running", the first "dirty future" movie, came out in 1972, and set the pattern for most later SF films. Crystal spires out, grunge in. For about a century and a half, manufacturing and transportation changed the world and led to the future. Then what? Well, we got computers, and that carried us for another half century. What's next? There's nothing obvious in the near term. Eventually biology may be figured out to the level that organisms can be designed and engineered. But that's not close. Fusion power? Not going well. We have enough technology and resources to provide a good standard of living for everyone on the planet. Nobody seems to have a scalable political system able to make that happen. This isn't a technology problem. [1] https://vimeo.com/329901114 https://vimeo.com/329901114 [2] https://youtu.be/2-5aK0H05jk https://youtu.be/2-5aK0H05jk

haltingproblem 6y ago

>Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. I would disagree that the world is much more complex than it was twenty years ago. The increase in complexity is perceived rather than actual. Just like more reporting of crime creates more awareness of crime that existed before but was unreported creating a mistaken awareness of more crime. On most indicators the world has gotten better and more free and more democratic. This matters for the next bit of reasoning. I would posit that what has happened is that second order effects are now more visible like the crime that was not reported and is now reported. More democracy and access to media means that second-order effects sufferers are more likely to make a kerfuffle and bang the equivalent of pots to get attention whereas previously the big decisions were just rammed through. A Hoover dam would probably not be built now because the communities affected are more empowered and have the resources to mobilize political opinion. I dont even know how much opposition the Hoover dam faced when it was built if any. Similarly it is far harder if not impossible to build Nuclear power plants because surrounding communities will raise hell. There is also far more understanding of the second order effects. They always existed but we were just unaware of them. I am not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing just pointing out that you are conflating awareness of second order effects with the existence of more second order effects.

chrisco255 6y ago
The nuclear nimbyism is one of the most erroneous mistakes we have made as a society. Solar and wind can only ever be supplemental and never primary sources of energy. We need more nuclear. Maybe this awareness of second order effects has caused analysis paralysis and calcification of progress?
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > Solar and wind can only ever be supplemental and never primary sources of energy. I think people will keep repeating this long after the entire world run on solar. The good primary sources of energy all share the characteristic that they can not react fast to changes in demand, so they run most of their time in an anti-economic mode where they cost more than they get in revenue. Coal is getting outcompeted because of that, and nuclear is way slower to react than coal. (Not that it changes much, as nuclear is never competitive anyway.)

etaioinshrdlu 6y ago

Off topic, but reading about this guy, who has apparently invested in 60+ startups starting at age 24, makes me feel a bit of a sense of inadequacy. I just can't believe this happens often... does it?

riverlong 6y ago
I'm 29 now, and will soon turn 30. While I did my very first few deals when I was 24, I became much more active as I got older. There are many small checkwriters like me.

pontifier 6y ago

I've got plenty of Bold Visions, but lack the resources to put them into practice. I'm not sure what the main hiccup is. Maybe I'm not great at describing my vision. Maybe I'm trying to keep too much control over my ideas (I don't like the idea of sharing equity at all). Maybe my ideas are just no good. I feel like there is a snake oil game I don't play, where people who want money get good at asking for it, and it's a continual game of "try not to get scammed" for the people being asked. I'd rather just try to fund things myself, but it's super slow to get anything done that way. I wish there were a way for good ideas to thrive on their merits without having to beg others to help, and then give huge percentages of my hard work to people who did nothing but write a check. Makes me sick to think about.

Glench 6y ago

> Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. This is clearly felt among policymakers, but I feel it even as a technologist: I understand that virtually all tools can be used – and more often than not, will be used – for both good and evil, and how hard the results are to predict over years in our dynamic world. I learned that technology can rarely solve fundamental social problems, and I’ve seen the public perception rollercoaster of “this technology/person/policy is good” to “this is evil” more times than I can count. This is a really important point that every technologist should be thinking about in their work. It's what caused me to quit tech. See also Neil Postman's "Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change": https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--five-things.html https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--... > Ask anyone who knows something about computers to talk about them, and you will find that they will, unabashedly and relentlessly, extol the wonders of computers. You will also find that in most cases they will completely neglect to mention any of the liabilities of computers. This is a dangerous imbalance, since the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences.

riverlong 6y ago
Thank you for sharing the Postman talk. It's a superb set of insights.