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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

• blakesterz 6y ago
  It was an interesting read anyways. The answer should be obvious... "The very fact that his book exists, he wrote, is the equivalent of tossing his cards face down on the table: If society had in fact collapsed, there would be no books, self-published or not. “So let me just admit that I was wrong,” he wrote. “But ... not by much. And not totally.” "
  • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    That's such a silly way of measuring the answer. Books existed in the Middle Ages (e.g. Dark Ages, yes people will say we don't call it that anymore but still). Tech could have regressed our society in manifold ways and destroyed and rotted away many many institutions and there would still be books. They should have a measure by which to mark this bet's conclusion. Arguments can be made for both sides.
    • boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >Tech could have regressed our society in manifold ways and destroyed and rotted away many many institutions and there would still be books. There would not be a new book printed about this topic if society had regressed as you described.
      • p1necone 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure you could destroy a lot of the fabric of modern society and still have a publishing house and a printing company able to produce a few thousand copies of a book.
        • Nasrudith 6y ago
          Thousands of copies of a book is something quaint in our great grandfather's days. The distribution mechanisms are what make it eyeroll worthy. Really whenever you hear anyone talk about "the fabric of society" they are full of shit. Just like how theater, jazz, rock music, heavy metal, rap, interracial marriage, women voting, and gay marriage destroyed the fabric of society. Those ample precedents of being complete bullshit aside it is a stack of abstractions with no measures. It sounds like it means something but it doesn't - it is just mouth noises to manipulate your emotions.
    • NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
      > They should have a measure by which to mark this bet's conclusion. Arguments can be made for both sides. They're not in the science game. They're in the selling content game. In that, all three (let's not forget the person writing the article) appear to have succeeded, gaining exposure (and payment for the article writer) thanks to the bet, regardless of rigor. One could perhaps forsee more books and articles forthcoming as a result of this bet?
    • 8ytecoder 6y ago
      Orthagonal and nitpick. I couldn't parse the "e.g., Dark Ages" part until I realised what you may have meant is "i.e., Dark Ages". I read "e.g.," as "for example" and "i.e.," as "that is". (English is not my first language)
      • bonoboTP 6y ago
        The "Dark Ages" usually refers to a subset of the Middle Ages, the earlier part, so "for example" worked for me and I only stopped and realized that ie was meant after reading your comment. This is one of those stupid things about English that make life for pupils harder for no reason. In most languages the abbreviation is straightforward and based on the actual language. (Also spelling bees don't exist in most other places). Entire classes of error possibilities are just made up for no good reason in English. (also, it's orthogonal, not orthagonal)
        • 8ytecoder 6y ago
          Ah. It makes sense now.
      • Talanes 6y ago
        As a native english speaker, "for example" and "that is" code as basically the same style of skip-over phrase: just there to lead into the important part. I'm curious what distinction you are reading into it. I'm sure that as a native learner I was more apt to just take mental shortcuts rather than resolve these ambiguities.
        • 8ytecoder 6y ago
          https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/ie-vs-eg-abbreviation-meaning-usage-difference https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/ie-vs-eg-abbre... I assumed "for example" follows a collection/set as opposed to "that is" which is a 1-1 mapping. Sibling comment clarified it for me on why "for example" makes sense in this context.
        • dragonwriter 6y ago
  • phlakaton 6y ago
    ...And not enough to cough up the thousand bucks, the welcher. :-D
    • gshubert17 6y ago
      I agree that Sale should have paid the bet and claimed that he was a bit "early" about when the destruction would come. In 1995 a person could have bought a US Treasury zero coupon bond for about $130 maturing in 25 years for . . . $1000. No other purchase would have been necessary to cover the bet. Relatively cheap insurance, I think.
      • grumple 6y ago
        Should have gone double or nothing. Another week might have sealed the deal with the Capitol insurrection on 1/6.
  • Nition 6y ago
    The bet wasn't that society would collapse, but that it would be "not even close" to collapse, which is a much more difficult question to answer.
    • hawkice 6y ago
      The stakes were so extreme that it _is_ pretty easy to answer. Sure, there have been economic cycles, but the bet was whether the dollar is _worthless_ -- we are so far from it the Fed still can't reliably meet their inflation targets. A rebellion of the rich against the monied? Surely you're joking. And while global warming marches on, the 'significant number of environmental collapses' haven't happened, and we know we aren't close because I'm not sure even one environment has collapsed (damage ain't the same as collapse, folks). It wasn't close. It isn't hard to tell that it wasn't close. Let's not give this doomsayer more credit than he's earned -- and he was completely wrong.
      • imtringued 6y ago
        If there will be any collapse it is still 50 years out. A war doesn't count. The world got better after WW2. Life finds a way.
        • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
          Ummm, did it though? Like metrics wise it did, but you're not counting the massive loss of life and the vast disenchantment in the world after (which is admittedly hard to measure). Millions of people were ethnically cleansed, that's not worth any kind of material progress. If you are trying to say we progressed materially in spite of ethnic cleansing, you don't understand that eliminating large swaths of the population will obviously result in material benefit to those who remain...
• qwantim1 6y ago
  He may have lost his bet, but maybe he came close. 2020 was the closest I’ve come to feeling that society was collapsing.
  • excalibur 6y ago
    The bet was that it WOULDN'T be close. The fact that it is means he lost. Pay the man.
  • mseepgood 6y ago
    The problems of 2020 weren't rooted in tech, however.
    • daenz 6y ago
      They were severely exacerbated by tech. Let's argue about it and prove my point.
      • throwawayboise 6y ago
        Agree. I think social technology has been an unmitigated disaster. I appreciate the engineering technology that has improved our infrastructure and environment. Air is cleaner, pollution is lower, food is plentiful. Cars and almost all other machinery are more efficient and more reliable. Medicine is better; things that used to be death sentences are either managable or more treatable. But compared to the 1980s, I'd take the social environment then vs now without blinking.
        • kiba 6y ago
          It is a failure of leadership, the humanities, not STEM. Biology can only do so much if we ignore it.
      • imtringued 6y ago
        No, it's just the same thing happening over and over again. Rich screw poor. Poor want to strike back. In theory everyone could be happy. It's just that there is a lack of willingness for it to happen.
• ronnier 6y ago
  It's definitely impacted some more than others. There's now an entire class of men who can no longer have romantic relationships because they've been cast out of the dating market as technology altered dating dynamics not in their favor. For these men, their world, their society is destroyed.
  • gowld 6y ago
    Non physically beautiful or wealthy men who want non-committed relationships with physically beautiful women?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • TaupeRanger 6y ago
    ....what?
  • devlopr 6y ago
    Curious to hear a bit more. Who are these men? The non-tech jocks? There must be non-tech females left? Are you speaking about the average looking male group who can't get tinder hookups?
    • throwaway3699 6y ago
      Guessing they're on about incels. Definitely becoming a major issue now. I think they're generally gross and it's obvious why they're single, but there has to be an underlying reason for the trend.
      • sli 6y ago
        It's a form of self-harm. They seek it out. It exists for many of the same reasons as other forms of self-harm. Trying to pin down a specific cause is probably not the best approach as it's likely pretty specific to individual men.
    • 6y ago
• da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Not strictly related, but longbets.org promotes a similar idea. Most famously, it played host to the "million-dollar bet" between Warren Buffet and Protege Partners that the S&P 500 would outperform a portfolio. I believe this bet was made a year before it was established, however.
• cpr 6y ago
  Sooo tired of the non-stop Trump swipes from Wired & its ilk. Let it go, guys. He's gone, isn't he? And of Trump's supposed attack on democracy, that's how you'd characterize it if you were interested in the corrupt status quo.
• cryptica 6y ago
  Tech made life better for some people and worse for others. All I can say is that it seems to have made my life and the life of all my relatives and friends worse and it seems to have made my enemies' lives better. For reference; I'm an altruist, open source developer and value creator. My enemies are greedy psychopaths and zero-sum value capturers.
• chartpath 6y ago
  Yup
• helios_invictus 6y ago
  Reading the 3 categories the judge put together, I'd have to say that the win does go to Sales. Economic Collapse: Kelly, the "economy" is doing just fine if you're in an upper percentile. For most people the economy is not working for them. Global Environmental Disaster: Sales, many signs point to more chaotic and worse environmental conditions to come. The War Between Rich and Poor: Much like question one this one is occurring, and it's getting worse not better. Economic inequality has increased and the trend is increasing. Sale is correct on many points, his timeline just isn't accurate.
  • joe_the_user 6y ago
    The problem with the broad trend prediction format is you wind-up with binaries and predicting a 1 or a 0 is easy. Economy - "Good or bad" Environment - "Good or bad" Wealth distribution - "Good or bad". If you're betting, someone has to get 2 or more out of 3. But that could be anyone, including complete idiots. So this doesn't by itself tell you anything. Most of the "bad" would be vaguely "left" positions but they could vary from the left of the NYT to any number of extreme positions as well as including general pessimists. So at this level, "could be anything".
    • A12-B 6y ago
      The environment getting worse is a matter of fact, not ideology. You can argue in bad faith about the meaning of the word 'worse' if you want, trying to claim it's too subjective, but I think we all have roughly the same idea of 'worse' and know that that's what the environment is getting.
  • ChrisLomont 6y ago
    >For most people the economy is not working for them. For most people in the world, they are quite a bit richer than their ancestors, even by 50 years ago. In fact, the number pulled from poverty over the past 50 years is astounding. Even in rich places like the US, the poor today are vastly richer than 50 years ago. Median wages are at all time highs as well. So how do you conclude "for most people" (which I take to mean at the very minimum more than 50%) "the economy is not working for them." Which people are these? How do they compare for income or assets or access to things to their ancestors?
• paulpauper 6y ago
  if a bet does not have objective conditions, then it's not really a bet but rather an opinion or hunch. So just split the money evenly and call it a day
• trident5000 6y ago
  Less people are happy than before.
• glenstein 6y ago
  A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty, but one way to think about it, is that it can get so much worse than it currently is. And it seems like the predictions being wagered over were pointing to the "so much worse". I think the same holds for the environment, and for the proposed war between rich and poor. I get the temptation to treat those as close, because there's tensions that you could imagine leading to some worst case scenarios. And so one might want to acknowledge the tension, and you want to put that acknowledgment into some sort of partial credit. But I think that way of thinking gets all confused and hair splitty, and comes from a place of thinking everything's a trick question, and not wanting to be perceived as overlooking nuances. Anyhow, credit to all parties involved for formalizing their discussion and getting a bet out of it. I think those kinds of conversations are valuable, and I think it helps to get people thinking about what it takes for beliefs to be true over the long run.
  • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    It was close, in 2008. It was frighteningly close. Not before or since, but yeah, I'll give them "close" on that one. ("Worse than 1930" was part of the criterion. We didn't come close to that in terms of the final outcome, but we were, I think, within a very few days of getting there.)
    • JamisonM 6y ago
      I really don't think that 2008 was ever close to anything like "Worse than 1930". For example Europe handled the financial crisis in an almost completely farcical way and didn't suffer anything close to the economic problems of 1930's America. There was never a moment where the US or any other important financial center was at risk of a real bank run of any significance.
    • glenstein 6y ago
      Here was one of the predictions in the words of one of the participants in the bet: >“The first [measurement] would be an economic collapse. The dollar would be worthless, the yen would be worthless, the mark would be worthless—the dislocation we saw in the Depression of 1930, magnified many times over. The dollar is not worthless and not close to worthless. There's no reasonable interpretation of that outcome, or of reality, where the dollar becoming worthless was "close" to an accurate prediction. I truly, honestly don't know how to reason with someone who is going to dispute that. Another prediction was that we would be in an active global military conflict between rich and poor nations. Also not close. Another prediction was "Africa, from the Sahara to South Africa, becomes unlivable." If words actually mean things, none of these were close.
• kksalpat23 6y ago
  It may not have destroyed society (yet), but it seems clear to me that what began as a way to make life simpler and more efficient and to solve previously unsolvable problems has morphed into a dystopia of surveillance capitalism and dark patterns. The promise of tech was that we could bend it to our will to do what we want. Instead, over the last decade, we have aimed these tools at ourselves in order for companies to extract as much value from humans as possible. Then again, maybe that was the thing we were trying to do all along anyway. But I find myself here in 2021, 15 years into an engineering career, looking at the amount of effort I have to spend just to get my devices to work for me and not let my life be absorbed by whatever company I decide to interact with. I have to lock down my browsers, run pi-hole and out-bound application firewalls, use email forwarding services to mask my address, check my credit reports on a regular basis because a dozen of the services I have used have been breached. Change and manage passwords and TOTP tokens. I have to opt-out of mailing lists, set up burner accounts, answer phone calls as to why I tried to place an order online behind a VPN and how that was suspicious and my order is being cancelled. My car is on its last legs and I cringe at the prospect of even looking at a newer model-year vehicle, because it will almost certainly be connected to the internet and try and extract as much information about me, and the devices I interface with it, to be sold to who knows where. What was wrong purchasing media and curating your own collection? How did we get from "Rip. Mix. Burn" to "Spotify wins patent to surveil users’ emotions to recommend music"? Why does my HP printer require an account to scan documents locally? Why does my f*king Philips S7000 razor need a smartphone app to change its sensitivity settings? Why does my goddamn fridge have an operating system? Was it worth it? It seems the thing technology helps me do the most these days is avoid all the terrible things about technology.
• nicoffeine 6y ago
  The world has undoubtedly changed but mostly for the better. Digital technology, however, is still in its infancy. Many users are brand new to the internet in the last ten years. I have learned to pace my time on the internet, but this is after 25 years of practice and burning out on the novelty of it. We are all figuring out that new does not mean progress. Case in point: I recently started back with the DVD side of Netflix. This is what I remembered being so awesome: find a good movie list, add it to your queue, pop envelopes in the mailbox when you're done. It is 1000% better than endless scrolling on 5 different streaming services. I think about what I want to watch twice a month, and when I have time, I don't have to deal with any ads or worry about a spotty night on a cable modem. I avoided the whole smart-home fad because there's nothing wrong with physical controls and buttons that have been developed over generations of human interaction. That's why I'm waiting for a good built-in-the-USA electric instead of buying a chassis with a touchscreen. But someone else may hate controls and love touchscreens -- cool. The market lets us pick and choose. If we can continue to reign in the inequality and environmental impacts produced by technology, use the incredible wealth we have as societies to finally end poverty, and continue to make progress against injustice, the future is incredibly bright.
  • Bakary 6y ago
    >I think about what I want to watch twice a month, and when I have time, I don't have to deal with any ads or worry about a spotty night on a cable modem. I don't get why you wouldn't be able to do this on a streaming service, unless the catalogue is somehow worse. The DVD part sounds like a superfluous and cumbersome extra layer
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  I think in many ways yes. A local island that now has been turned into residential units, still has some old buildings from the 1920s. Including a dance hall. Its abandoned now. But the scale and grandeur of the place, has played on my imagination. What it was like to be in there with a thousand other people on a weekend just out dancing. No internet, or TV. I've also seen some street photos from NY from that time period. Everyone looks so trim and upright, well dressed and civilized. Its like tech added 30-50 lbs of fat on the average person. And replaced actual social interaction, with poor substitutes of facebook, twitter, youtube and TV.
  • wait_a_minute 6y ago
    It may be the case that socio-economic issues have worsened those things, not technology. And that we are not fully leveraging technology in order to improve lives.
    • dukeofdoom 6y ago
      I don't know if thats alway the case. People used to have liaisons, read books, play music together, go to church, play card games, garden, ride horses, and so on. Often surrounded by friend and family. Just seems like the quality of the average moment was better back then. The experience more authentic and often more social and more dangerous. For example if you liked to go out and play poker in a local bar in the 1920s. It Required actual poker skills, but also good banter, and had an element of danger to it. Seems like your brain neurones would be firing, just to keep up with the banter at the table while you downed whiskey trying not to lose too much money. Now so many people stay at home, watch some TV or watch some porn, fall asleep and go to work the next day. And things are safe, virtual and fake. Technology has made movies possible, I love movies. But I value the experience of reading a book differently. Its a much richer and deeper experience. And technology made it very cheap now with things like kindles. But still I think there's been a decline in the amount of people reading books. Even though I think society would be enriched from more people reading books. Its now the average person has easier lazier entertainment to occupy them.
      • 6y ago
• marianov 6y ago
  Is there a current author that follows Schumacher's Small is Beautiful in the 21st century?
• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Sale was (and still is) cheering for a collapse? And yet he spent the time writing books. If the collapse had happened, he would have spent the time subsistence farming. I doubt that 25 years of that would make him happy that a collapse happened. Be careful what you wish for. You may not like it as much as you think you will...
• atlgator 6y ago
  Not yet.
• CalChris 6y ago
  The toys are better now. The life was better then.
  • WillPostForFood 6y ago
    The life was better then. Things are better and worse. It is probably impossible to calculate the net difference, but I'd highlight things like the legalization of gay marriage, the decline in violent crime, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as improvements. I don't discount the better toys either.
• DC1350 6y ago
  I thought this was going to be about a different Wired article written to address another Luddite's predictions from around 25 years ago.. That one seems to be more accurate
• kumarvvr 6y ago
  It destroyed the average Joe's faith in the average Joe. Now, people are more separated than ever, in their echo chambers, hating each other and firmly believing they are better and righter than the other.
  • dimitrios1 6y ago
    I can't get people I am close with to even consider engaging in conversations about firmly held beliefs they have if I even remotely present myself as possibly holding a different opinion.
    • sillysaurusx 6y ago
      Understand that this is the norm. And understand that when you present differing opinions without being asked, you’re acting selfishly — you’re not doing it because you care about them, you’re doing it for yourself. Ultimately it depends what you want out of your personal relationships. I’ve found people who are willing to talk. But I haven’t found people who genuinely change their mind about deeply held beliefs without a lot of patient — emphasis on patient — conversations over a long period of time. And sometimes I’m the one who changes their mind. So I don’t think you’re going to be satisfied if you feel you must be able to change your group’s minds about social issues. A group is its own form of entity. If you don’t identify with your group, find another one. They exist. But if you don’t identify with your associates, that’s a hard problem which won’t go away. It helps to accept that you care about them more than what they believe, and leave it at that.
      • dimitrios1 6y ago
        That's not what I am saying at all. I mean for the sake of conversation and discussion, asking to even explain a belief, for understanding. Sometimes even the question is seemed as a threat. I didn't say I want to change anyone's mind. Wanting to have a discussion about important topics with loved ones isn't an instant trip down selfishness lane. I see what you are saying, but you jumped the gun a little bit.
• S_A_P 6y ago
  I think that the bet is a bit simplistic in its scope and parameters. Society isnt going to collapse in one fell swoop unless nuclear war kills us all. If things just disintegrate and collapse, there will be a long protracted period where people slowly die and or suffer. I dont even think that any one person can fully grasp how a population of 7 billion + people can collapse accurately. I think that social media and twitter owns the lions share of our current divided society, but I dont necessarily call that "tech". Its one aspect of tech. And for every twitter dumpster fire there is huge medical advances/vaccines/50 metrics that show that now is the best time to be alive. I certainly love living in the now, and hope that we can figure out how to navigate this new territory we live in...
• GizmoSwan 6y ago
  Tech always provides the tools for destruction but it is those who seek power and wealth with no set limit are those who employ those tools. Greed is worse than fear.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  Without ending up on an FBI watchlist, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Sales and "Uncle Ted" were on the right track about technology inevitably leading toward psychic isolation and environmental devastation, that corporations are finding ways to turn each human interaction into a commodity, that we're well beyond carrying capacity for the planet and have likely screwed up the ecology for the next million years or so. Just suppose ... What solution do we have? I'm pretty sure that even before homo sapiens came on the scene, Neanderthals and even earlier versions of humanity thought about labor-saving devices. They dreamed of not dying from little infections, of not dying in childbirth, of spears that went a little further, of furs that were warmer, of fires that would not need tending. Are we not more or less doomed by our rejection of physical misery and the power of our imagination to simply recreate it all? More interestingly, imagine a human society which selects a place to stop and then also has to enforce it, both internally and against any other societies which might have a different idea of where to stop (boy that gunpowder sure is a nifty idea). You would need a one world government with some kind of technological edge over those ruled ...
  • unphased 6y ago
    My comment really doesn't even do your comment justice, but... It really made me think about that scene from the Matrix where Agent Smith described humans as a cancer. There are just so many possible perspectives on it all.
  • gregw2 6y ago
    For a fictional exploration of the "doomed to recreate it all" phenomena, there's a nice novel called "Canticle for Leibowitz" where post-nuclear-armageddon scientists are in part blamed for the nuclear war and knowledge is explicitly culturally rejected... but then slowly crawls back into the picture.
    • at_a_remove 6y ago
      Oh yeah. Read that one thirty years back.
  • hedberg10 6y ago
• masterphilo 6y ago
  Great read, and a close call! Like other people mentioned, the fact that Sale's predictions were even remotely close to what we're experiencing today should be hair-raising. What I took from Sale's argument was that "Technology" is not an absolute good, and without a framework of life on which most people on this planet can adopt to guide our use of tech, it will be the end. Hopefully, it will only be the end of this current iteration of civilization.
  • hawkice 6y ago
    It wasn't close! Is there anyone who thinks we live in a society that almost had a socialist revolution? Where's the eco-collapse (not just damage, collapse, and multiple collapses as well -- this guy was basically saying there'd be no outdoors)? We can barely hit a 2% inflation target and you're saying dollars are close to worthless? Edit: The guy was saying all of civilization would collapse and the survivors would start over from nothing. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see multiple comments saying this was a close call.
    • vegetablepotpie 6y ago
      Not OP, but we are a far cry from a techno utopia. We really had two opposing world views, one where technology would help us achieve a better life, another where it would contribute to us falling off a precipice. Neither won. On the plus side we have a world where global poverty is falling and more people are developing middle class life styles, we have amazing technology like gene editing, incredible computational ability, and entertainment options. However, this same technology has pushed us dangerous close to climate disaster, has us in the middle of a mass extinction, and has enriched a very small number of people. You could evaluate this bet on the technical measures, and that was probably prudent, but at the full picture, the situation looks very mixed.
      • lovecg 6y ago
        > this same technology has pushed us dangerous close to climate disaster This problem is much older than the last 25 years of tech. Arguably tech gave us better climate models and power generation (and the potential for much more). > has enriched a very small number of people This has been the default for thousands of years. The amount of wealth owned by an average “regular” person today is unimaginable by even the standards of 200 years ago.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  >but Sale, who for years had been churning out books complaining about modernity and urging a return to a subsistence economy, It is generally men who talk about how great the subsistence economy was. For women, a subsistence economy was hellish. There was no reliable birth control, maternal/infant mortality was high, everything depended on physical strength which gave men an advantage due to their larger size and higher musculature on average, and the system demanded lots of children, so women spent much of their lives pregnant and/or caring for small children. Many of these cultures (see Papua New Guinea for example) have huge amounts of violence against women.
• 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Better to live in a shallow but comforting dream, or in fuller knowledge of the world as it really is? To experience only a few things, or to discover that there are more things than we dreamed of? We were near-sighted, then we put on glasses. We're sharing a time of adjustment. 25 years isn't enough. What do the young say?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rogerdickey 6y ago
  If it hasn't already, social media almost certainly will.
• fabianhjr 6y ago
  Regarding the first paragraphs where luddism is mentioned several times; Lord Byron, father to Ada Lovelace the first programmer, was one of the few on the House of Lords to defend the Luddites: > But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of poverty; men, who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully begetting several children, whom, thanks to the times!—they were unable to maintain. Considerable injury has been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. [...] These men never destroyed their looms till they were become useless, worse than useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. There is a lot of proganda use of "luddites" as anti-tech when luddites main grief was regarding income and inequality. [1]: http://www.luddites200.org.uk/LordByronspeech.html http://www.luddites200.org.uk/LordByronspeech.html [2]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/byron-was-one-few-prominent-defenders-luddites-180962248/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/byron-was-one-few-...
  • konjin 6y ago
    >father to Ada Lovelace the first programmer Babbage was the first programmer seeing as he invented the first computer. Lovelace is a perfect mirror for our society: a vapid socialite with shallow understanding of the problems and a willingness to make grandiose claims without the ability to back them up. That she is a woman just makes it even more blatant that we care nothing for ability as long as it makes for a good story. In short: if you are the type of person to think she had anything important to add to computer science you are the type of person to think Steve Jobs was anything but a snake oil salesman with a decent understanding of typography.
    • fabianhjr 6y ago
      Here are some of Ada Lovelace's notes on Menebrea's paper on Babbage's Analytical Engine: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-lovelace-notes.html http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-lovelace-notes.ht... > Again, it [the Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine . . . Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent. Some AI generated music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA03iyI3yEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA03iyI3yEA > It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with. This it is calculated to effect primarily and chiefly of course, through its executive faculties; but it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself in another manner. For, in so distributing and combining the truths and the formula of analysis, that they may become most easily and rapidly amenable to the mechanical combinations of the engine, the relations and the nature of many subjects in that science are necessarily thrown into new lights, and more profoundly investigated. The second quote in particular was important for Turing later on: https://mindmatters.ai/2020/05/lovelace-the-programmer-who-spooked-alan-turing/ https://mindmatters.ai/2020/05/lovelace-the-programmer-who-s... Back to your comment, I believe Steve Jobs was a buisnessperson with a focus on design and Steve Wozniak provided most of quality engineering on the early years. I also like to bash Apple for a lot of stuff and I have never bought nor owned a single Apple product but recognize their early products as great and not snake oil. So that is "anything but a snake oil salesman with a decent understanding of typography" and by modus tollens I am _not_ the "type of person to think she had anything important to add to computer science". Contradiction. Also, it is no coincidence that the first programmer was working with the person building the first general computer (albeit neither digital nor electronic)
• pnathan 6y ago
  no. not even close. things are quite in chaos here and there, as is normal, but it certainly hasn't turned into this absurd mad max scenario that was described.
• perl4ever 6y ago
  ` ...after General Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga during the Revolutionary War...a young nobleman...declared that the surrender would be “the ruin of the nation.” To which Adam Smith reportedly responded, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” '
• sircastor 6y ago
  I’m reminded of a long bet made a number of years ago between Joseph Romm and Greg Blencoe that 1% of car sales in the US would be Hydrogen Fuel cell vehicles by 2015. I’d done a report on this in college and completely forgot about it, probably because hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are near impossible to find on the consumer market. So Blencoe lost the bet and paid Romm the $1000 and wore a T-shirt. He posted a very short post to his blog saying it happened. [1] What’s most interesting to me is that the blog has since disappeared. At the time these things seemed like such a big deal, but a few years on and it just vanished. It’s like the bet never took place and the advocacy for Hydrogen wasn’t a big deal. It was kind of shocking to me how ephemeral it is, in spite of “nothing ever disappearing from the internet” [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160911231646/http://www.h2carblog.com/?p=1789 https://web.archive.org/web/20160911231646/http://www.h2carb...
  • Bakary 6y ago
    Ironically hydrogen is having a renaissance as we speak
    • Robotbeat 6y ago
      Are you sure? It’s 5 years after that Million ‘Murican Hydrogen bet was lost, and we’re still 2 full orders of magnitude away. (In spite of massive subsidies for fuel cell in California.) At least 8,890 FCEVs are on the road today, a far cry from the 53,000 the California Fuel Cell Partnership projected by the end of 2017. "I don't see a lot of automaker interest in hydrogen," DeShazo argued. "Most automakers are betting on battery electric vehicles for the passenger market and delivery trucks."Dec 12, 2020
    • outworlder 6y ago
      Only on Wall Street, which does not need to worry about actual physics or engineering.
      • nostromo 6y ago
        ... or even cash flow and profits.
• lsb 6y ago
  Note that this was published on 1/5/2021, the day before the coup attempt.
• fnord77 6y ago
  > urging a return to a subsistence economy yeah, no thanks. nasty, brutish and short.
• irrational 6y ago
  Destroyed? No. Made better? Definitely no. Made worse? Surely. But made worse isn’t the same as destroyed.
• fullshark 6y ago
  Probably according to someone from 25 years ago
• JamisonM 6y ago
  There are a lot of frustratingly silly responses to this article supporting Sale's side of this bet. This is utter madness, Sale wasn't even close! By virtually every material measure society has improved in the intervening time, in spite of the horrendous response to the financial crisis of 2008 and even the bungled response to SARS-COV-2. Lots silly self-indulgent stuff that is really indirectly about alienation and whatnot, get over yourselves! Its not like I don't stress about democratic backsliding and income inequality and God knows what else but the big picture perspective is clear, Sale is obviously so wrong that he should be embarrassed. But he's a crank, so he's doubling down.
  • croes 6y ago
    Climate change is still not solved, and if you think the response to the financial crisis of 2008 was horrendous an response to SARS-COV-2 was bungled, wait for the hard hits of climate change. "Not even close" could be premature.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • JamisonM 6y ago
      The bet was over a fixed term and has expired, so there is no way for the assessment to be premature as it relates to the bet. I have to confess that I have never been so optimistic as I am now about global interest in addressing climate change, there is going to be a lot of pain but we have the technology to make a lot of progress. I think that once people get a taste of the benefits of electrification in particular momentum will build quickly.
• hikerclimber 6y ago
  yes it has.
• yeuxardents 6y ago
  The only peoples left after the full collapse of technological society will not be those living in concrete and steel towers in the megacities of the west or east. It will be those that are living in the Serengeti, or those in south India, who have lived the way they have lived for thousands of years, whilst those in the megacities strived for decades to 'save' from their 'backward and primitive ways'.
• dehrmann 6y ago
  There really wasn't much nuance to either side of the bet. Compare "they wouldn’t be just off the grid; there would be no grid" to "technology as an enriching force." I guess it makes for a fun bet, but the messy and complicated outcome ended up being the most interesting part.
• cycomanic 6y ago
  My feeling is not that we are moving towards a complete collapse of civilisation, but instead move closer and closer to the distopian world of of Gibson and cyberpunk. W. Gibson, N. Stephenson or David Brin (his earth is a highly recommended read) are certainly people I would never bet against in a long bet. The predictive power of some science fiction is fascinating. I always wondered if it is the books that predict the future or if they are the shaping it, by becoming part of culture.
  • distances 6y ago
    I'll leave a differing opinion on Earth. It was the least favourite book that I've read last decade. Felt like some childish revenge fantasy to me. It's been many years now, and I'm still annoyed by it.
• igonvalue 6y ago
  Spoiler alert. > Kelly wrote to Sale on New Year’s Day, instructing him to direct the $1,000 to Heifer International, a nonprofit that gives away breeding pairs of animals. Sale puzzled him by replying, “I didn’t lose the bet.” Kelly assumed he hadn’t seen Patrick’s decision, and he had the editor resend it. > But Sale had read it—and rejected it. > “I cannot accept that I lost,” he wrote to Patrick. “The clear trajectory of disasters shows that the world is much closer to my prediction. So clearly it cannot be said that Kevin won.” > Like the raging denialist in the White House, the cantankerous anarchocommunalist has quit the game after the final score left him short. Sale says he is seeking some sort of appellate relief, if only by public opinion, when in fact the rules included no such reconsideration. Kelly is infuriated. “This was a gentleman’s bet, and he can only be classified as a cad,” he says. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this Sale fellow sounds like an asshole.
  • gojomo 6y ago
    Gloom & doom is a mood more than a reasoned position.
• OnlyRepliesToBS 6y ago
  wait
• Bedgeseb 6y ago
  If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.
• hoseja 6y ago
  You can't reject industry until you stop the Red Queen's Race. Which you can't, you can maybe only escape it temporarily, to certain peril.
• newsbinator 6y ago
  > Sale barely had $1,000 in his bank account. But he figured that if he lost, a thousand bucks would be worth much less in 2020 anyway. [...] > “Oh, boy,” Kelly said after Sale wrote out the check. “This is easy money.” > For the men involved, the bet’s outcome would be a personal validation—or repudiation—of their lifelong quests. Neither man comes through looking good. Kelly seems to have wanted to kick a weak adversary. Kelly did win, literally (according to the bet/judge) and conceptually: > [Sales's] book is called The Collapse of 2020—and yes, the neo-Luddite’s latest work is available on Kindle. In fact, Sale has made compromises with technology. He recently moved back to Ithaca with his wife to be near family. He does have a computer, as well as a printer, a land line, a stove, two televisions, and four radios. He draws the line at microwaves and smartphones. Despite believing that social media has “a visible deleterious effect,” he has a public Facebook page But this is just sad all round.
• yesenadam 6y ago
  > Has Tech Destroyed Society? I recently watched the documentary The Man Who Saved the World[0], about Stanislav Petrov, who one day in 1983 made the decision to ignore the early warning system computers telling him the USA had fired 5 missiles at the USSR.[1] It seems had he followed orders, a report to his superiors would have resulted in mass retaliation. The decision was in his hands. In the movie, as well as a reenactment of the incident, the real Petrov visits the USA to speak at the UN, and visits Kevin Costner, his favourite actor. Costner asks him how many people would have died if not for his actions that day. You expect him to say millions. Petrov explains that everyone on the planet would've died. They visit a disused missile silo in the USA and Petrov explains to a guard there that just one of those missiles had more explosive force than all the weapons used in WW2. According to this page[2], in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. It's very chilling, to say the least. It makes humans seem so very crazy, to create the possibility of that situation in the first place. Petrov explains emotionally to the guard that the Russian people wanted peace, and thought the USA wanted to attack them. I can't help thinking about that, reading about Whether Tech Has Destroyed Society? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto...
  • swarnie_ 6y ago
    > in 1985 the USA had 21,000+ nuclear weapons, USSR 39,000+. This is one of the facts from this era which seems completely irrational to me. Considering the damage each one of these devices can do why do you need so many. Lets presume you're in fact a genocidal maniac (i didn't say the roleplaying would be difficult America) 1 bomb per enemy military installation and 1 bomb per population centre over 100k population friend, foe, own country included. Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs?
    • dingaling 6y ago
      > Why do you need the other 18,000 bombs? Second-wave strategic targets ( surviving silos, airfields, ports and C3 facilities ) Tactical targets ( tank formations , POL depots, troop assembly areas, aviation FOBs ) Naval targets ( submarines, surface vessels, sonar installations ) Mobility targets ( bridges, valleys, tunnels ) Plus accounting for failed weapons, losses en route, missed targets...
• Draken93 6y ago
  I highly reccomend the Podcast "Your undivided attention" by Tristan Harris. Together with experts he explains very detailed, how algorithms and social media affect our society. Big changes have been made trough technology. And many of those changes have a negativ impact on our society. But I strongly believe that humanity can overcome those problems. Altough it may seem impossible from time to time.
• A12-B 6y ago
  "Like the raging denialist in the White House, the cantankerous anarchocommunalist has quit the game after the final score left him short." This is such a bitter note. I would have paid the 1000, but Kelly was very predatory. He set up a gotcha interview and then a surprise bet on some pretty wild claims from both sides. In any case, the world has clearly gotten worse and more unpredictable, so the spirit of the bet favours Sale, but because he lost to a technicality, now he's being compared to trump??
  • rendall 6y ago
    > the world has clearly gotten worse and more unpredictable By what measure? Crime? Child mortality? Global poverty? Death by warfare?
    • A12-B 6y ago
      By Sale's measures, and since the time of Sale's prediction. I don't care for comparing this year to the past 400 years on issues like poverty, etc, people only do that because it makes them feel better so they can continue on ignoring problems. Equality and environment are clearly on a downward trajectory.
      • rendall 6y ago
        > I don't care for comparing this year to the past 400 years on issues like poverty, etc Since 1995, crime, child mortality, global poverty and death by warfare are all dramatically down.
• jaggirs 6y ago
  Can't help but point out the two of them would have been better off investing that money. With a 3% interest rate they both would have doubled it in 25 years.
• croes 6y ago
  "Kirk must hit the trifecta to win, meaning that all three horses of his apocalypse must come through" Shouldn't it be Sale?
  • natmaka 6y ago
    "Kirk" goes here for "Kirkpatrick", Sale's first (given) name.
    • croes 6y ago
      Thanks, totally missed that.
• zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Society is a moving target however. That's what makes it difficult to see how society is being destroyed. It is more that many aspects of it change (are "destroyed"). Something unthinkable a hundred years ago has become normal today. Perhaps we do not need to even go that long a time back to find examples.
• pdimitar 6y ago
  The whole debate boils down to: Shall we conflate "technological progress" with "predatory capitalism"? If your answer is "yes" then Sale is right. If your answer is "no" then Kelly is right. --- Technology by itself never "destroys" anything except certain ways of life, perhaps, and even then many people opt not to have their way of life destroyed or disrupted (assuming they have the choice, which not all do). Case in point: a chunk of the modern people no longer want to live in the cities and start living in more rural areas again (I don't keep around the link for the study though). Many people described technology as a weapon: it can be used for a number of purposes. Can it be argued that the more advanced technology has made it easier for the bad guys and thus their predatory capitalism is destroying society? Sure, I would agree with that. But it made it easier for the good guys, too. Arms races will always exist, it seems. But I can't deny things started grim lately. Not sure what the answer is but it surely isn't destroying all tech. We do however have to stand up to some corporations, that much seems clear.
• dgudkov 6y ago
  After reading "Principles" by Ray Dalio [1], I think the winner was pronounced a bit too soon. [1] https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/ https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/
• nottorp 6y ago
  > Before their rebellion was squashed and their leaders hanged, they literally destroyed some of the mechanized looms that they believed reduced them to cogs in a dehumanizing engine of mass production. Always fun to read that. They weren't against machines because they had a religious fear of machines. The machines were taking their jobs. Just like Facebook is complaining now that Apple is ruining their business model?
• tdudzik 6y ago
  No, it hasn't. I tended to think that the Internet, or more specifically social media, brought more harm than good to the world and society. But now I don't think it's true. Tech connects people, it shows us that people on the other side of the world are actually the same like us, it gives us instant access to almost all existing information and knowledge, it easily solves problems that were almost unsolvable before and it has a chance to decentralize power and brings us more democratic society. Tech have some problems but still, it's amazing.
  • KineticLensman 6y ago
    > it shows us that people on the other side of the world are actually the same like us It can if you are open-minded, less so if you are in an online community that aggressively demonises the out groups.
  • tgv 6y ago
    > it shows us that people on the other side of the world are actually the same like us Newspapers and TV showed that message before. That did seem to go well. And shutting down parler and gab also seemed to work. Perhaps connectivity is not for the best in all cases. > it easily solves problems that were almost unsolvable before I don't think internet has solved that many problems that were almost unsolvable before 2000. > Tech have some problems but still, it's amazing. The atomic bomb is also amazing, but it's a menace anyway. Tech needs control. A lot of it.
• rendall 6y ago
  "Twenty-five years later, the once distant deadline is here." But first, before we get to the results, let us pad this story out to 5000 words :/
• iandanforth 6y ago
  Badly worded terms of bet make for 10k word Wired article. Kelly wins. Nothing to see here.
• eternalban 6y ago
  Technology provides capabilities. Capablities can afford positive utility, as well as destructive power. Even the benign utility, specially if convenient, alters society and societal norms. Changes in society in turn affect the personal and collective mind, from language to philosophy. Kelly expresses his horror of "no, no, no" when remembering his experiences travelling in technology poor locales in Asia. 'The journey, lasting for the better part of a decade, transformed him. “I was in very remote parts of Asia, parts of which were literally medieval societies in every respect, from the dress, architecture, beliefs, behavior,” he says. “I saw completely vehicle-less cities—people throwing garbage in the streets, no toilets. That's not even to mention the hinterland villages, which were without even metal.” When he returned to the US in 1979, he had a deep appreciation for the technology that made life easier.' Kelly is focused on convenience. Convenience is reasonably a good thing. And this is the fundamental weakness of his position on the embrace of machine in human society. The mechanised society is clearly far more than just a more "convenient" human society. There is a fundamental philosophical fork in the road that informs this question: is a human being, as an individual, a complete being, or is species as a whole (and including its civilizational artifacts) the complete being? This can be reworded as: do human beings have souls, or are we mere biological machines? What Kelly does not consider -- and a cursory grep for "happy"/"happiness" in the Wired article seems to support this -- is what was the individual and social experience of these technology poor societies. Does having "no metal" preclude happiness? Does is possibly promote it? As hacker news denizens neck deep in technology rich societies, the germinal question is whether we are happier because of technology or not. Obviously we enjoy greater conveniences. Are our societies healthier than before, or not? Technology comes in two conceptual flavors: as tool, and as garment (immersive environment). It is the latter kind of technology which requires moderation, as it alters our perception and social experiences (whether by extending and/or enhancing senses, or collapsing spatial (transport tech) and temporal (a/v tech) aspects of our reality). Naturally, those who hold that man is merely a biological machine, should and would argue for unimpeded integrtion of technology into human societies, and in its extremist manifestation, into the very unit organism itself. And it seems entirely reasonable that those of us who reject the notion of a soul-less Human being, to insist that there must be limits to unfettered adoption of technology, for the sake of Human happiness, and well being.
• bikamonki 6y ago
  On the contrary, it is tech (sw, ai, bio, solar, crypto, etc) that will save society, or better said: help us move forward. Now more than ever we can witness how tech is helping us go through the pandemic. Yes, there are ugly uses of tech (I am looking at you social networks), but overall, tech is doing good to humans. A vaccine that can be tweaked in a couple of days to attack a new virus variant? Come on! That has to be proof enough that Kelly won the wager.
• einpoklum 6y ago
  So, let's recount the conditions for Sale winning the bet: 1. an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; 2. a rebellion of the poor against the monied; 3. a significant number of environmental catastrophes. --- # Condition 1: Well, the Covid-related depression could be described as worse than in 1930, but it's a toss-up, especially if you don't focus on the US. However, the dollar has not been rendered worthless at all. And while the population is struggling, the world and the US' base of industrial production and infrastructural services are in reasonable working order. So condition 1 is NOT MET. # Condition 2: The poor have not rebelled against the monied. In most of the world, there is some Covid-related unrest - some demonstrations, some strikes (a really huge one in India recently, but maybe not quite Covid related). In the US there has been a wave of mass protests, occasionally bordering on riots, regarding police violence and fueled by Covid. But that has not gotten anywhere close to a rebellion against the monied. I _wish_ it would have, but: Condition 2 is NOT MET. # Condition 3: Is Covid an environmental catastrophe ? Naah, that's too much of a stretch. There's Global Warming - but it's currently only grave, not catastrophic. One might argue the catastrophe is now just a matter of time (not sure I would accept the argument) - but this is a timed bet. You also have things like mass deforestation destroying cultures; or the state of the great barrier reef etc. But still, Condition 3 is NOT MET. ------------ Kelly squarely wins the bet. That Patrick guy evaluated the situation unfairly.
• agumonkey 6y ago
  Interesting to see how people made a bet 25 years ago. I wonder what other bets are being done right now. Tech I don't blame, but the chase of more tech and bad tech is something I'm jaded about. People commented here that the scientific/engineering miracle in their pocket is mostly used to swipe cat pics. Meanwhile bad management, weird economic structures, changes in social relationships.. all these going in the wrong direction.
• AndrewKemendo 6y ago
  I just don't understand how this is even close. On nearly every single measure for a good life that we have, life is better and more equitable than ever across the world. https://www.oecd.org/statistics/how-s-life-23089679.htm https://www.oecd.org/statistics/how-s-life-23089679.htm
• maybenotafart 6y ago
  Society has been destroyed thousands of times over and has still survived. We think of the past as glorious and fair. Reality is that this is foolish optimism fed by historical revisionism and survivorship bias.