8 ms·

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

by ru552 5y ago

dicomdan 5y ago
You’re giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the dictatorship. Establishing complete control over emerging power structures (tech industry) is more likely to be their goal.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything. One thing I do know is we as the West need to figure out how to come together and defend democratic and liberal values, as without them we are seriously lost. We should start by not giving any more money and technology to a Chinese state that clearly do not have our best interests at heart. I think the west is in real danger of just falling apart over the next 50 years if we lose our reasons for existing and instead spend our time arguing about cultural issues. We spend so much time right now looking inward at our small differences we can’t see the reason why our nations became worthwhile in the first place.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    "We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything." This is a not true. Dictators do long speeches. Often quite explicitly stating why they do what they do. Funnily sometimes in democracies there is a bigger space betweeen what is done and what is communicated.
    - simiones 5y ago
      Those speeches usually contain about as much actual information as a corporate PR statement: they, at best, tell you why the dictator wants others to think they are doing something. The only logical way to interpret the intentions of political leaders is to look at their effects. Anything else, even personal diaries, are likely full of interested reasoning and outright lies.
      - throwaway4good 5y ago
        If we are talking about the stuff here (regulation of internet companies) there plenty of speeches, 5-year plans, writings in party newspapers that explains the thinking behind the actions.
        andy_ppp 5y ago
        Okay so is the article right? It’s not about smashing innovation but saying popularity is the wrong metric and (CCP) power should be the driving force behind technology development? Do the powerful really always state there objectives obviously like some dastardly Bond villain?
  - papito 5y ago
    What I do notice is that the Chinese "rulers" seem to be more concerned about long-term well-being of its people, rather than trolling and performative assholery on Twitter. You might describe it as a dictatorship, but it's more data-driven than you might suspect. The Chinese keep the pulse on decisions they make, and if it's unpopular - it's gone. Of course there is a line - you can't go head-on against the Party and call them out directly. Compare this situation here, where we are trying to patch up our infrastructure and instead have to deal with a collection of spectacular douches in Congress, propagandizing against science to such an extent that our top epidemiologist has to get a security detail. Who would you bet on in this movie?
    - andy_ppp 5y ago
      Pithy response: Tell that to the Uyghur Muslims? Are they not Chinese people? More serious response: I don’t want to live under a dictatorship where a generational change could lead to corruption and suffering on a much bigger scale. I think America as a project might also be lost and we should consider if this crazy idea (democracy, freedom of religion, free speech etc.) is worth fighting for. I think it is and I believe in the values that the US has, despite some very obvious mistakes America isn’t ethnic cleansing Muslims or having a press that can’t criticise the government. I will bet on America not because China won’t win but because I still believe the (relative) peace and prosperity of the post war period isn’t worth throwing away as easily as some want. We need someone focused on this in a clear way and to get Americans stop arguing amongst themselves and look at the bigger picture.
      - papito 5y ago
        I by no means suggest that the Chinese system is superior. It's a sort of system that can descend into runaway corruption pretty easily. What I am saying is, given the decay of the western society, which is our fault entirely, our chances of staying ahead are slim. The problem is, the Chinese have a team. They do not easily sell out. We, however, have an entire layer of high-level government that will readily go to the highest bidder. This is not sustainable. The only way to fix this is a crisis that unites us, but if a global pandemic did not do it, what will?
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  In my eyes China is a technocratic autocracy, not a dictatorship. This would explain the hypothesis why they want their brains to work on rockets rather than ad tech, as OP assumed.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    It's an authoritarian oligarchy currently trending towards more autocracy. I think people often have an unfortunate lack of political vocabulary, and therefor loosely use terms like "dictatorship" for any system with a large amount of political repression.
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      I know this is just semantics but I actually like 'technocratic autocracy' better than any sort of oligopoly to describe China. There are no other poles of power, the army even reports directly to the party rather than the government. And, so far, they've been quite dynamic on the technocratic front, people get fired for incompetence despite having a political base.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > There are no other poles of power, the army even reports directly to the party rather than the government. I think you have a point with your use of "technocratic," but it is an oligarchy. The party is the olígos. Autocracy implies stuff like the army reports to the leader, not the party. I think things are trending that way, but I don't think it's historically accurate (at least for the last several decades).
        refenestrator 5y ago
        You're right, I was thinking of oligopoly more in the terms where it's usually applied to Russia and the ruling 'set' all have different, separate power bases.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
- deltasixeight 5y ago
  This is a one sided view and also represents classic bias of the western viewpoint. Sure a "dictator" (more accurately "central power" for China) wants to consolidate power but to think the dictator is a one dimensional being and that all actions a dictator takes only serves that single minded motivation of power solidification is really not reasonable. Consolidating power is only one aspect of their motivation that much is true. However the article is not about this aspect of the CCP. The actions taken by the regime here represent broad views about what constitutes economic health. The OPs comment is spot on, and captures the main point of the article.
ugjka 5y ago
He who makes the hottest chips is he who rules
LatteLazy 5y ago
I don't think you're wrong, but to air the other side: people don't want breakthrough tech, they want cheaper mortgages. That's why we spent trillions on mortgage subsidies and haven't even tried to build a Mars colony. The USSR fell because people didn't care about space exploration and Opera, they wanted washing machines and pop music.
rvn1045 5y ago
The scale that these companies operate on requires huge innovations in software engineering and computer science. Think about all the distributed systems that have come out of places like Facebook and Google over the last 2 decades.
- drevil-v2 5y ago
  Distributed systems that, more or less, are only really needed to run similar social networks as Facebook or Google? That’s like saying the Cook maybe fat and morbidly obese but look at how efficiently he consumes such a large number of calories every day.
- infogulch 5y ago
  Which they promptly keep to themselves and utilize to maximally exploit their users time and attention. Technology is a tool, not a generic force for good. Tools are agnostic to human value. If technology is being used exploitatively then it's a problem.
  - jonfw 5y ago
    They don't keep it all to themselves, giant technology companies have open sourced things like mapreduce, kubernetes, golang, react, kafka, and more.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      How many years did it take for Google to release MapReduce?
- dilap 5y ago
  I think that's overstating. To be sure some real tech challenges in distributing work horizontally, but I don't think it's created anywhere near the amount of value that's come out of e.g. space race research.
  - japhib 5y ago
bennysomething 5y ago
Google works on and tech so it can fund everything else it does, i.e. the services we actually use.
usaar333 5y ago
Unfortunately, the best and brightest often also like money. This incentivizes said people to emigrate.
jayd16 5y ago
So what happens when non-Chinese software and service tech continues to dominate because China decided it wasn't important? Clearly these sectors are powerful or they wouldn't be targeted. Whats the plan to make them obsolete beyond taking Chinese software down a peg?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It will never dominate in China because of the Great Firewall, and Chinese ad-tech will never dominate abroad for similar reasons.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
908B64B197 5y ago
I think a lot of western bright minds would be working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs if the pay wasn't abysmal and working conditions exploitative.
- swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
  I know several people that got STEM degrees. One worked for Boeing, moved into progamming at an ad tech company. One had a math degree, got into programming at a real estate firm. One had a physics degree, is now an electrician. The ridiculously expensive college education can't even prepare us for our own workforce, which has very little demand for engineering, sadly.

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

by ru552 5y ago

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

dicomdan 5y ago

You’re giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the dictatorship. Establishing complete control over emerging power structures (tech industry) is more likely to be their goal.

andy_ppp 5y ago
We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything. One thing I do know is we as the West need to figure out how to come together and defend democratic and liberal values, as without them we are seriously lost. We should start by not giving any more money and technology to a Chinese state that clearly do not have our best interests at heart. I think the west is in real danger of just falling apart over the next 50 years if we lose our reasons for existing and instead spend our time arguing about cultural issues. We spend so much time right now looking inward at our small differences we can’t see the reason why our nations became worthwhile in the first place.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  "We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything." This is a not true. Dictators do long speeches. Often quite explicitly stating why they do what they do. Funnily sometimes in democracies there is a bigger space betweeen what is done and what is communicated.
  - simiones 5y ago
    Those speeches usually contain about as much actual information as a corporate PR statement: they, at best, tell you why the dictator wants others to think they are doing something. The only logical way to interpret the intentions of political leaders is to look at their effects. Anything else, even personal diaries, are likely full of interested reasoning and outright lies.
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      If we are talking about the stuff here (regulation of internet companies) there plenty of speeches, 5-year plans, writings in party newspapers that explains the thinking behind the actions.
      - andy_ppp 5y ago
        Okay so is the article right? It’s not about smashing innovation but saying popularity is the wrong metric and (CCP) power should be the driving force behind technology development? Do the powerful really always state there objectives obviously like some dastardly Bond villain?
- papito 5y ago
  What I do notice is that the Chinese "rulers" seem to be more concerned about long-term well-being of its people, rather than trolling and performative assholery on Twitter. You might describe it as a dictatorship, but it's more data-driven than you might suspect. The Chinese keep the pulse on decisions they make, and if it's unpopular - it's gone. Of course there is a line - you can't go head-on against the Party and call them out directly. Compare this situation here, where we are trying to patch up our infrastructure and instead have to deal with a collection of spectacular douches in Congress, propagandizing against science to such an extent that our top epidemiologist has to get a security detail. Who would you bet on in this movie?
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    Pithy response: Tell that to the Uyghur Muslims? Are they not Chinese people? More serious response: I don’t want to live under a dictatorship where a generational change could lead to corruption and suffering on a much bigger scale. I think America as a project might also be lost and we should consider if this crazy idea (democracy, freedom of religion, free speech etc.) is worth fighting for. I think it is and I believe in the values that the US has, despite some very obvious mistakes America isn’t ethnic cleansing Muslims or having a press that can’t criticise the government. I will bet on America not because China won’t win but because I still believe the (relative) peace and prosperity of the post war period isn’t worth throwing away as easily as some want. We need someone focused on this in a clear way and to get Americans stop arguing amongst themselves and look at the bigger picture.
    - papito 5y ago
      I by no means suggest that the Chinese system is superior. It's a sort of system that can descend into runaway corruption pretty easily. What I am saying is, given the decay of the western society, which is our fault entirely, our chances of staying ahead are slim. The problem is, the Chinese have a team. They do not easily sell out. We, however, have an entire layer of high-level government that will readily go to the highest bidder. This is not sustainable. The only way to fix this is a crisis that unites us, but if a global pandemic did not do it, what will?
88840-8855 5y ago
In my eyes China is a technocratic autocracy, not a dictatorship. This would explain the hypothesis why they want their brains to work on rockets rather than ad tech, as OP assumed.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  It's an authoritarian oligarchy currently trending towards more autocracy. I think people often have an unfortunate lack of political vocabulary, and therefor loosely use terms like "dictatorship" for any system with a large amount of political repression.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    I know this is just semantics but I actually like 'technocratic autocracy' better than any sort of oligopoly to describe China. There are no other poles of power, the army even reports directly to the party rather than the government. And, so far, they've been quite dynamic on the technocratic front, people get fired for incompetence despite having a political base.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > There are no other poles of power, the army even reports directly to the party rather than the government. I think you have a point with your use of "technocratic," but it is an oligarchy. The party is the olígos. Autocracy implies stuff like the army reports to the leader, not the party. I think things are trending that way, but I don't think it's historically accurate (at least for the last several decades).
      - refenestrator 5y ago
        You're right, I was thinking of oligopoly more in the terms where it's usually applied to Russia and the ruling 'set' all have different, separate power bases.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
deltasixeight 5y ago
This is a one sided view and also represents classic bias of the western viewpoint. Sure a "dictator" (more accurately "central power" for China) wants to consolidate power but to think the dictator is a one dimensional being and that all actions a dictator takes only serves that single minded motivation of power solidification is really not reasonable. Consolidating power is only one aspect of their motivation that much is true. However the article is not about this aspect of the CCP. The actions taken by the regime here represent broad views about what constitutes economic health. The OPs comment is spot on, and captures the main point of the article.

ugjka 5y ago

He who makes the hottest chips is he who rules

LatteLazy 5y ago

I don't think you're wrong, but to air the other side: people don't want breakthrough tech, they want cheaper mortgages. That's why we spent trillions on mortgage subsidies and haven't even tried to build a Mars colony. The USSR fell because people didn't care about space exploration and Opera, they wanted washing machines and pop music.

rvn1045 5y ago

The scale that these companies operate on requires huge innovations in software engineering and computer science. Think about all the distributed systems that have come out of places like Facebook and Google over the last 2 decades.

drevil-v2 5y ago
Distributed systems that, more or less, are only really needed to run similar social networks as Facebook or Google? That’s like saying the Cook maybe fat and morbidly obese but look at how efficiently he consumes such a large number of calories every day.
infogulch 5y ago
Which they promptly keep to themselves and utilize to maximally exploit their users time and attention. Technology is a tool, not a generic force for good. Tools are agnostic to human value. If technology is being used exploitatively then it's a problem.
- jonfw 5y ago
  They don't keep it all to themselves, giant technology companies have open sourced things like mapreduce, kubernetes, golang, react, kafka, and more.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    How many years did it take for Google to release MapReduce?
dilap 5y ago
I think that's overstating. To be sure some real tech challenges in distributing work horizontally, but I don't think it's created anywhere near the amount of value that's come out of e.g. space race research.
- japhib 5y ago

bennysomething 5y ago

Google works on and tech so it can fund everything else it does, i.e. the services we actually use.

usaar333 5y ago

Unfortunately, the best and brightest often also like money. This incentivizes said people to emigrate.

jayd16 5y ago

So what happens when non-Chinese software and service tech continues to dominate because China decided it wasn't important? Clearly these sectors are powerful or they wouldn't be targeted. Whats the plan to make them obsolete beyond taking Chinese software down a peg?

sudosysgen 5y ago
It will never dominate in China because of the Great Firewall, and Chinese ad-tech will never dominate abroad for similar reasons.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

908B64B197 5y ago

I think a lot of western bright minds would be working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs if the pay wasn't abysmal and working conditions exploitative.

swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
I know several people that got STEM degrees. One worked for Boeing, moved into progamming at an ad tech company. One had a math degree, got into programming at a real estate firm. One had a physics degree, is now an electrician. The ridiculously expensive college education can't even prepare us for our own workforce, which has very little demand for engineering, sadly.