4 ms·

What really gets to me is how big tech isn't even pretending anymore to serve society. They clearly feel superior to the rest of us and entitled to rule.

swarnie 4mo ago
You can understand why - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo They bought a country for pocket change. Jeff will be president within 20 years imo.
- lostlogin 4mo ago
  > Jeff will be president within 20 years imo. It could be worse, it could be Musk. Having seen what Americans will vote for, either option is possible.
  - lazystar 4mo ago
    every time this comes up I feel it's worth reminding people that this already happened before in American history - 1890's and the robber baron industrialists that monopolized everything.
    - lostlogin 4mo ago
      Thanks for this. Time for some reading.
- AIorNot 4mo ago
  exactly.. and in the near term, if not Jeff directly somebody like JD Vance who is a useful puppet for techbros
bpodgursky 4mo ago
If you frame it this way in your mind you will be surprised when people pick surveillance over public disorder. If you don't like that world (I don't either) you can't bury your head in the sand about the problems it is solving, you need a "No, but... " framing where you give answers that actually work. There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people, it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.
- doctorpangloss 4mo ago
  Haha, ground level appeal in a one party government? How would you know? Of course someone likes China's system, but who? How do you know?
  - toephu2 4mo ago
    Lookup China subreddits and on YouTube. Tons of Americans wish they could just pick up and move to China. Most Americans that visit China for the first time love it. It is pretty awesome. Have you been?
    - overfeed 4mo ago
      What I've seen is visitors loving Chinese high speed rail and endless markets, but not loving the Great Firewall. An average tourist visiting a country - any country - has a much rosier experience of the country than the average person living there long-term.
  - lurk2 4mo ago
    He’s talking about shifting attitudes towards China online, not within China itself.
- overfeed 4mo ago
  > There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets Clean streets and high speed rail are not a bundled deal with the panopticon - there is no causative linkage. Surveillance - as Ellison plainly mentioned - is for controlling anti-establishment behaviors.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
  > There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Does it? Japan is also famously clean, so maybe it’s the ethnic homogeneity? On the other hand, Singapore is very heterogeneous and clean, and eastern Kentucky is very homogenous and run-down. So maybe this whole attributing outcomes of society to singular factors isn’t very founded in science or reason but just gives people an opportunity to confirm whatever biases they have.
Georgelemental 4mo ago
I think some of that is just Larry Ellison
- jasonvorhe 4mo ago
  And Google, Meta, etc. None of the big companies habe your interests at heart.
  - jstummbillig 4mo ago
    What a strange thing to say. Why would they? Do you have their interest at heart? Do you have the average persons interest at heart? Again: Why would you? That's by definition not how interests work. And that is roughly fine (albeit a kinder universe would be nice).
    - RC_ITR 4mo ago
      >Why would you? Because the fundamental building block of society (which we are losing rapidly) is some amount of care for your fellow person. Your comment is a great example of how we Prisoner's Dilemma'ed ourselves into a world of isolation and decaying institutions.
    - saghm 4mo ago
      Even if I have no one's best interest but my own at heart, I can't do anywhere close to as much damage to society at large as a trillion dollar corporation. Also, corporations aren't people, and it's silly to compare individuals to massive organizations.
      - jstummbillig 4mo ago
        That is not the point though? I am not saying that there are no issues with big corps and their interests. Theirs not being yours is just not one of them.
        saghm 4mo ago
hootz 4mo ago
Sometimes I wonder if all the hype cycles around cryptocurrencies, AI and other stuff were basically just tech powertripping really hard.
an0malous 4mo ago
Power corrupts. It’s one of the most predictable effects throughout human history. It’s interesting because it doesn’t seem like it needs to be intrinsic to power, and yet every time someone gains it they eventually become corrupt.
- thot_experiment 4mo ago
  It's so frustrating because even the notionally good actors look at this and think "yeah but it's not gonna corrupt me" No you fuck, the only way to walk the good path is to give up power and never let it concentrate again. Larry Ellison of course is one of the most anti human people on the planet and I doubt he was ever anything else.
  - bodge5000 4mo ago
    The real question is whether the threshold before it causes irreversible corruption is before or after the point where you can make real change. The latter is obviously quite terrifying as it essentially means that democracy will always be corrupt (unless time is a factor perhaps)
    - thot_experiment 4mo ago
      I think resiliency to the corruption isn't evenly distributed among the populace, there are definitely those people who are capable of resisting it long enough to get shit done. I just think it's mostly the levels of abstraction that these people have between them and anything real. Honestly, if you suggest surveillance state shit, you should just be mandated to livestream your life 24/7, you have nothing to hide right?
    - hackable_sand 4mo ago
      It's never irreversible. Every generation has to go through this.
      - bodge5000 4mo ago
breve 4mo ago
Bryan Cantrill warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn. You stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s
- afavour 4mo ago
  Eh. That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. I think there's a danger in just accepting that a human being is abhorrent. It _should_ outrage us that Ellison is the way he is. It's silly to think "the lawnmower hates me" because it isn't capable of hate. Ellison is capable of hate and it's not deluded to think he might hate you and I and want to control our lives.
  - breve 4mo ago
    You've fallen into the trap.
  - fer 4mo ago
    >That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. Agreed, he's only 41% of Oracle.
  - therein 4mo ago
    > That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle I think he also mentions what ORACLE stands for in that quote: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
- hex4def6 4mo ago
  While that's pithy, I think it's also incorrect, because it implies that Oracle / Ellison is controllable by us, in the same way a tool / lawnmower is. That's absolutely not true. It has its own motivations that are best-case neutral to our goals. It might be better to think of ourselves as individual fish in a school of fishes, and Oracle is the boat with a mile long dragnet. It doesn't care about the individual fish; it's not worth it's time to consider us individually. It's thinking in terms of tonnage.
voxleone 4mo ago
There is an implicit disbelief in human, liberated and civilized by technology, acting civilly by choice and just because it is the right thing to do.
FireBeyond 4mo ago
The way he phrases it makes it clear he doesn't consider himself or his peers as part of the "citizenry". I suppose subjects or peasants or peons might have been a bit too on the nose, even for him.
Barrin92 4mo ago
and who can blame them, if we've learned anything from the last few years it's that the American people are utterly servile and passive when faced with these people, in fact they largely seem to crave their wannabe dictators. In 2023 when Musk refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish IF Metall union, not only did the union resist, not only did other unions in Sweden resist, Scandinavian countries together boycotted supply chains including dock- and metalworkers in Denmark and Norway. What would they do in America? Give him money on Twitter to get a blue checkmark and hope he gives them five minutes of attention in a reply.

swarnie 4mo ago

You can understand why - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo They bought a country for pocket change. Jeff will be president within 20 years imo.

lostlogin 4mo ago
> Jeff will be president within 20 years imo. It could be worse, it could be Musk. Having seen what Americans will vote for, either option is possible.
- lazystar 4mo ago
  every time this comes up I feel it's worth reminding people that this already happened before in American history - 1890's and the robber baron industrialists that monopolized everything.
  - lostlogin 4mo ago
    Thanks for this. Time for some reading.
AIorNot 4mo ago
exactly.. and in the near term, if not Jeff directly somebody like JD Vance who is a useful puppet for techbros

bpodgursky 4mo ago

If you frame it this way in your mind you will be surprised when people pick surveillance over public disorder. If you don't like that world (I don't either) you can't bury your head in the sand about the problems it is solving, you need a "No, but... " framing where you give answers that actually work. There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people, it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.

doctorpangloss 4mo ago
Haha, ground level appeal in a one party government? How would you know? Of course someone likes China's system, but who? How do you know?
- toephu2 4mo ago
  Lookup China subreddits and on YouTube. Tons of Americans wish they could just pick up and move to China. Most Americans that visit China for the first time love it. It is pretty awesome. Have you been?
  - overfeed 4mo ago
    What I've seen is visitors loving Chinese high speed rail and endless markets, but not loving the Great Firewall. An average tourist visiting a country - any country - has a much rosier experience of the country than the average person living there long-term.
- lurk2 4mo ago
  He’s talking about shifting attitudes towards China online, not within China itself.
overfeed 4mo ago
> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets Clean streets and high speed rail are not a bundled deal with the panopticon - there is no causative linkage. Surveillance - as Ellison plainly mentioned - is for controlling anti-establishment behaviors.
datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Does it? Japan is also famously clean, so maybe it’s the ethnic homogeneity? On the other hand, Singapore is very heterogeneous and clean, and eastern Kentucky is very homogenous and run-down. So maybe this whole attributing outcomes of society to singular factors isn’t very founded in science or reason but just gives people an opportunity to confirm whatever biases they have.

Georgelemental 4mo ago

I think some of that is just Larry Ellison

jasonvorhe 4mo ago
And Google, Meta, etc. None of the big companies habe your interests at heart.
- jstummbillig 4mo ago
  What a strange thing to say. Why would they? Do you have their interest at heart? Do you have the average persons interest at heart? Again: Why would you? That's by definition not how interests work. And that is roughly fine (albeit a kinder universe would be nice).
  - RC_ITR 4mo ago
    >Why would you? Because the fundamental building block of society (which we are losing rapidly) is some amount of care for your fellow person. Your comment is a great example of how we Prisoner's Dilemma'ed ourselves into a world of isolation and decaying institutions.
  - saghm 4mo ago
    Even if I have no one's best interest but my own at heart, I can't do anywhere close to as much damage to society at large as a trillion dollar corporation. Also, corporations aren't people, and it's silly to compare individuals to massive organizations.
    - jstummbillig 4mo ago
      That is not the point though? I am not saying that there are no issues with big corps and their interests. Theirs not being yours is just not one of them.
      - saghm 4mo ago

hootz 4mo ago

Sometimes I wonder if all the hype cycles around cryptocurrencies, AI and other stuff were basically just tech powertripping really hard.

an0malous 4mo ago

Power corrupts. It’s one of the most predictable effects throughout human history. It’s interesting because it doesn’t seem like it needs to be intrinsic to power, and yet every time someone gains it they eventually become corrupt.

thot_experiment 4mo ago
It's so frustrating because even the notionally good actors look at this and think "yeah but it's not gonna corrupt me" No you fuck, the only way to walk the good path is to give up power and never let it concentrate again. Larry Ellison of course is one of the most anti human people on the planet and I doubt he was ever anything else.
- bodge5000 4mo ago
  The real question is whether the threshold before it causes irreversible corruption is before or after the point where you can make real change. The latter is obviously quite terrifying as it essentially means that democracy will always be corrupt (unless time is a factor perhaps)
  - thot_experiment 4mo ago
    I think resiliency to the corruption isn't evenly distributed among the populace, there are definitely those people who are capable of resisting it long enough to get shit done. I just think it's mostly the levels of abstraction that these people have between them and anything real. Honestly, if you suggest surveillance state shit, you should just be mandated to livestream your life 24/7, you have nothing to hide right?
  - hackable_sand 4mo ago
    It's never irreversible. Every generation has to go through this.
    - bodge5000 4mo ago

breve 4mo ago

Bryan Cantrill warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn. You stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s

afavour 4mo ago
Eh. That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. I think there's a danger in just accepting that a human being is abhorrent. It _should_ outrage us that Ellison is the way he is. It's silly to think "the lawnmower hates me" because it isn't capable of hate. Ellison is capable of hate and it's not deluded to think he might hate you and I and want to control our lives.
- breve 4mo ago
  You've fallen into the trap.
- fer 4mo ago
  >That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. Agreed, he's only 41% of Oracle.
- therein 4mo ago
  > That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle I think he also mentions what ORACLE stands for in that quote: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
hex4def6 4mo ago
While that's pithy, I think it's also incorrect, because it implies that Oracle / Ellison is controllable by us, in the same way a tool / lawnmower is. That's absolutely not true. It has its own motivations that are best-case neutral to our goals. It might be better to think of ourselves as individual fish in a school of fishes, and Oracle is the boat with a mile long dragnet. It doesn't care about the individual fish; it's not worth it's time to consider us individually. It's thinking in terms of tonnage.

voxleone 4mo ago

There is an implicit disbelief in human, liberated and civilized by technology, acting civilly by choice and just because it is the right thing to do.

FireBeyond 4mo ago

The way he phrases it makes it clear he doesn't consider himself or his peers as part of the "citizenry". I suppose subjects or peasants or peons might have been a bit too on the nose, even for him.

Barrin92 4mo ago

and who can blame them, if we've learned anything from the last few years it's that the American people are utterly servile and passive when faced with these people, in fact they largely seem to crave their wannabe dictators. In 2023 when Musk refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish IF Metall union, not only did the union resist, not only did other unions in Sweden resist, Scandinavian countries together boycotted supply chains including dock- and metalworkers in Denmark and Norway. What would they do in America? Give him money on Twitter to get a blue checkmark and hope he gives them five minutes of attention in a reply.