5 ms·

The Bifurcation Created by Technology

26 points by telotortium 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
It just a trade off. It might overall be a bad trade off, or it might be good. Any attempt to fix it or improve it will also have tradeoffs. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If 1% of autonomous car crashes end up with a car driving into a bus full of nuns and orphans then I'd still like to run the numbers to see how many nuns and orphans are saved by the 99% of avoided crashes and think about how "technology" or even, dramatic music, "regulation" could improve that last 1%. Which it probably can in 99% of these 1% of cases.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Yes. I simplified the article to “tech isn’t a panacea; the problems leftover are doozies”. Tech still solves most problems. Regarding crashing into a bus of nuns: I think part of the issue with the self driving cars is that it removes your control. A very (read “extremely”) attentive driver is never going to crash into a bus of nuns.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    > A very (read “extremely”) attentive driver is never going to crash into a bus of nuns. I don't think this is true. People sneeze or have heart attacks or are blinded by the sun as they round a corner or exit tunnels, wheels fall off, children/animals run in front of them and they swerve etc. See also: https://how.complexsystems.fail/ https://how.complexsystems.fail/
- amelius 4y ago
  The problem is that for any random new technology there is a nonzero probability that it can destroy the planet. No amount of "good" technologies or good uses of technology can prevent disaster in the long run.
PostOnce 4y ago
It'd be interesting if some Y2K type bug caused the brakes on all self-driving cars to fail at the same time, rush hour on a Friday. It works 99% of the time could be true, but the catastrophic failure modes might be unknown to us, i.e. not just be a wreck, it might be something much larger and less fathomable. Maybe it'll all be better than what we have now, but of course there's no guarantee.
- kkfx 4y ago
  That's why in the past we have almost switched from mainframe to cluster. Or the society in the past was connected BUT far less interdependent on anything central than today. Take cars: any car can fail at any point in time, but as long as they are individual cars, not centrally managed the likelihood is low, is far lower if they are also diverse in tech (for instance some relay on some technology, some on some others, so a scarcity in fossil fuels a day and a solar EM storm another not affect all of them at once). Nowadays I just start going serious on BEV, not because they are ecological (they aren't at all) nor because their are sustainable on scale (they are not, again) or better (marginally, since can act with my home BUT not as they should nor easily as a home emergency battery far larger than the one I already have stationary, but limited lifespan and range are big minus) and well... I'm DISGUSTED to a point I think that if I'm a dictator I'll BAN THEM ALL, not BEVs in particular but new cars on sale now in general, arresting their designers and managers for crimes against humanity. Really. The amount of crappyness and surveillance capitalism inside is so sky high that ALL apical figures involved must be sentenced for many years even for life for their crimes. Technology per se is not the issue, the way is pushed and chose is. For instance design chargers of nth different vendors, demanding mth different Android/iOS ONLY crapplications and "cards" to charge, designing cars in ways that NO practical diagnostic for the formal owner is possible but complexity and bad design are so high that's hard trying a car even a single time without spotting not one but MANY bugs. That's not technology that's just a deliberate crime.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
> Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don’t even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you’re suddenly in a story by Kafka. This is not an accurate characterization. Technology does not cause this problem, business owners or leaders deciding to not spend sufficient resources on customer service causes this problem. Technology helps the 99% and 99.9% to never need customer service. But people who do not want to spend to provide customer service (perhaps because customers will go to a competitor with lower prices because they also chose to sacrifice customer service for the 0.1%) cause the lack of customer service.
theandrewbailey 4y ago
Pool's Law: As the volume of a system increases, tolerance for failure decreases. A 1% failure of a hundred might be acceptable; 1% failure of a million isn't.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikewarot 4y ago
It is technology that creates this, but that technology is older It's called triage -- sorting things into levels of effort/effect and picking the low hanging fruit first. We've automated the processing of the repetitive stuff, so we're left with the hard problems. I have a friend who repairs things, all the way from old tube based Ham radios (Collins are his favorite) through atomic clocks up to working on computers. He's been at it since the 1950s. Often we'll have this conversation, or one that rhymes with it: Him: Why do I get all the hard problems? Me: Because if it was easy, you wouldn't be getting it, it would have already been handled. Him: Oh, you're right! Us: Shared laugh Google, Amazon, et al have decided not to handle the hard problems and hope they go away. That externalizes their problems to the rest of us.

26 points by telotortium 4y ago

It just a trade off. It might overall be a bad trade off, or it might be good. Any attempt to fix it or improve it will also have tradeoffs. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If 1% of autonomous car crashes end up with a car driving into a bus full of nuns and orphans then I'd still like to run the numbers to see how many nuns and orphans are saved by the 99% of avoided crashes and think about how "technology" or even, dramatic music, "regulation" could improve that last 1%. Which it probably can in 99% of these 1% of cases.

comfypotato 4y ago
Yes. I simplified the article to “tech isn’t a panacea; the problems leftover are doozies”. Tech still solves most problems. Regarding crashing into a bus of nuns: I think part of the issue with the self driving cars is that it removes your control. A very (read “extremely”) attentive driver is never going to crash into a bus of nuns.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > A very (read “extremely”) attentive driver is never going to crash into a bus of nuns. I don't think this is true. People sneeze or have heart attacks or are blinded by the sun as they round a corner or exit tunnels, wheels fall off, children/animals run in front of them and they swerve etc. See also: https://how.complexsystems.fail/ https://how.complexsystems.fail/
amelius 4y ago
The problem is that for any random new technology there is a nonzero probability that it can destroy the planet. No amount of "good" technologies or good uses of technology can prevent disaster in the long run.

PostOnce 4y ago

It'd be interesting if some Y2K type bug caused the brakes on all self-driving cars to fail at the same time, rush hour on a Friday. It works 99% of the time could be true, but the catastrophic failure modes might be unknown to us, i.e. not just be a wreck, it might be something much larger and less fathomable. Maybe it'll all be better than what we have now, but of course there's no guarantee.

kkfx 4y ago
That's why in the past we have almost switched from mainframe to cluster. Or the society in the past was connected BUT far less interdependent on anything central than today. Take cars: any car can fail at any point in time, but as long as they are individual cars, not centrally managed the likelihood is low, is far lower if they are also diverse in tech (for instance some relay on some technology, some on some others, so a scarcity in fossil fuels a day and a solar EM storm another not affect all of them at once). Nowadays I just start going serious on BEV, not because they are ecological (they aren't at all) nor because their are sustainable on scale (they are not, again) or better (marginally, since can act with my home BUT not as they should nor easily as a home emergency battery far larger than the one I already have stationary, but limited lifespan and range are big minus) and well... I'm DISGUSTED to a point I think that if I'm a dictator I'll BAN THEM ALL, not BEVs in particular but new cars on sale now in general, arresting their designers and managers for crimes against humanity. Really. The amount of crappyness and surveillance capitalism inside is so sky high that ALL apical figures involved must be sentenced for many years even for life for their crimes. Technology per se is not the issue, the way is pushed and chose is. For instance design chargers of nth different vendors, demanding mth different Android/iOS ONLY crapplications and "cards" to charge, designing cars in ways that NO practical diagnostic for the formal owner is possible but complexity and bad design are so high that's hard trying a car even a single time without spotting not one but MANY bugs. That's not technology that's just a deliberate crime.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

> Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don’t even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you’re suddenly in a story by Kafka. This is not an accurate characterization. Technology does not cause this problem, business owners or leaders deciding to not spend sufficient resources on customer service causes this problem. Technology helps the 99% and 99.9% to never need customer service. But people who do not want to spend to provide customer service (perhaps because customers will go to a competitor with lower prices because they also chose to sacrifice customer service for the 0.1%) cause the lack of customer service.

theandrewbailey 4y ago

Pool's Law: As the volume of a system increases, tolerance for failure decreases. A 1% failure of a hundred might be acceptable; 1% failure of a million isn't.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mikewarot 4y ago

It is technology that creates this, but that technology is older It's called triage -- sorting things into levels of effort/effect and picking the low hanging fruit first. We've automated the processing of the repetitive stuff, so we're left with the hard problems. I have a friend who repairs things, all the way from old tube based Ham radios (Collins are his favorite) through atomic clocks up to working on computers. He's been at it since the 1950s. Often we'll have this conversation, or one that rhymes with it: Him: Why do I get all the hard problems? Me: Because if it was easy, you wouldn't be getting it, it would have already been handled. Him: Oh, you're right! Us: Shared laugh Google, Amazon, et al have decided not to handle the hard problems and hope they go away. That externalizes their problems to the rest of us.