HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

There is an interesting talk 'Dude, You Broke the Future'[0] in which speaker compares corporations to 'paperclip maximizer' AI which could destroy us with their sole gole of maximizing profits (or paperclips)

0: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Would that be Charlie Stross's essay (and the subsequent CCC talk): Dude, You Broke The Future?[0]

0: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

⬐ rland

That's the one! Thank you for finding it.

They are slow AIs: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

> markets

We regularly hear people concerned about the hypothetical existential threat of a paperclip maximizer AI being invented in the future, yet this concern reliably ignores the AI overlords we already have: paperclip^Wprofit maximizing corporations. The VM for this type of AI has an incredibly slow clock rate and an extreme CISC ISA that often modifies itself in the RTC interrupt. The AIs are not a future threat; they already enslaved us.

The problem is our unregulated capitalism. Until that is addressed[2] we are merely debating which profit-maximizer AI we want to serve.

(my thanks to Charles Stross for the maximizer-AI/corporation metaphor[1])

[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

[2] I suggest heavy regulation to protect the useful parts of capitalism. Left alone, capitalism destroys the very markets it needs to survive.

⬐ pitaj

> unregulated capitalism

Ah yes, the unbridled laissez-faire capitalist markets throughout the world. It couldn't possibly be that our markets are more regulated than ever before, or that the very regulations and bureaucracy meant to protect us have caused these failures.

No no no, it's capitalism's fault. It's certainly not that government power has for decades been exploited by the incumbents to kill competition.

The market has failed. Now government regulation is necessary to protect us from the evil rich corporations who want nothing but profit. Rest assured, if we allowed them to operate freely it would result in catastrophe!

⬐ eesha

Some statists regulate markets into inefficiency, then other statists use the inefficiency as justification for more regulation. Yet other statists use crony capitalism as justification for giving the state more power, as if the problem of crony capitalism was one with capitalism itself rather than the state having too much power already! The statists don't necessarily do this in a coordinated, conscious or intentional way. Most of them sincerely believe that regulation is for the best. As electors their vote has an infinitesimal chance of being decisive, so the cost to them of having irrational beliefs about politics is negligible. Simultaneously they have preferences over beliefs. Whether having beliefs similar to those of people they want to associate with, loyalty to a political ideology or signaling moral qualities, when the political influence of any person in a large electorate is so small people will have irrational beliefs.

Good law in a democracy is a positive externality. Desirable policies benefit everyone but their private benefit to an individual is small even if the individual is altruistic. Government is supposed to resolve market failures, but it itself is the sole reason they exist.

⬐ ComradeTaco

Let me know once you create that perfect stateless society. Marx had that idea of a stateless society as well, but I think both you and I would argue that the idea didn't work out too well.

⬐ ComradeTaco

The US has allowed complete unbridled capitalism during the gilded age. Quoting Wikpedia "From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three fourths of it.[61] The bottom 40% had no wealth at all.[59] In terms of property, the wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed 1.1%"

So pure, unregulated capitalism, lead to wealth inequality far, far more extreme than our current situation.

58 Peter R. Shergold (1982). Working-Class Life: The "American Standard" in Comparative Perspective, 1899–1913. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 5–7, 222, 224. ISBN 978-0822976981.

59 Steve Fraser (2015). The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. Little, Brown and Company. p. 66. ISBN 0316185434.

⬐ pitaj

IIRC, before the industrial revolution, wealth inequality was much much worse, with a majority living on subsistence farming.

Wealth inequality is misleading as it doesn't represent standard of living very well. Income inequality is better in that regard.

⬐ patricius

Just remember that inequality per se is not a bad thing. Capitalism seems to me to be the only way to get people out of poverty, which is, of course, what we want.

⬐ ComradeTaco

Right, inequality isn't inherently a bad thing, its when it get so extreme that it impedes class mobility and shrinks the middle class. We have to strike a really careful of regulations and freedom to create a desirable society.

⬐ patricius

I think it is impossible to ever reach consensus on what is the right balance between freedom and regulation, especially because regulation is not decided upon with that goal in mind. Whatever gets votes or whoever has the most lobbying power will decide what is regulated.

With regard to class mobility, can we say at what level it gets too extreme or conversely at what level it is just perfect? A country such as Albania has a lower Gini coefficient than the US but is much, much poorer, but as such has less income inequality. I don’t believe that social mobility is much better there (I happen to have a good friend that lives in Tirana).

⬐ WalterBright

And yet there was explosive growth in the middle class in that era, the poor moving up into the middle class, and the US moving into a superpower economy. The standard of living went up, way up.

⬐ lifeisstillgood

I would argue that is a "despite the greediest Robber Barons that ever Robbed, wealth was created by the industrial age on such a scale that some escaped and was shared more equally"

⬐ eesha

Some optimization processes are more powerful than others. The kind of optimization process referred to as a superintelligence is vastly more powerful than corporations. It is also far harder to align the values of an artificial intelligence with humans than those of corporations because there are humans inside the corporations and no humans inside the artificial intelligence. Therefore we ought to worry more about superintelligence, even if we do not yet know the exact timeline of its creation, than we ought to worry about corporations. You shouldn't argue by analogy from corporations to superintelligence.[1]

[1] https://arbital.com/p/corps_vs_si/

(Maciej Cegłowski's talks are hilarious, insightful, and highly recommended)

It's not just the media; this is a problem inherent to capitalism (at least the type of relatively unregulated capitalism as currently practiced in the USA). Charles Stross discussed this[1] at his recent talk[2] at 34c3. The corporation is a "paperclip maximizer" that optimize for "profit", and they already took over and enslaved us.

[1] among other high-level vision ideas

[2] (the part I'm referring to starts at ~13:05) https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

⬐ TeMPOraL

Or for the little more general discussion of the mechanism that is common to capitalism, news industry and paperclip maximizers:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Reminds me of this talk, where the speaker makes the case that corporations are AIs, but slow ones

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

⬐ abvdasker

Yeah that's the same one I was thinking of. It's a pretty far out theory but is nonetheless extremely interesting. The part of this that is incomplete from an implementation standpoint is creating an algorithm that can fully digitally manage a business entity without human intervention. In general though I think we are much closer than anyone thinks to seeing the first fully autonomous corporation (though the first one will likely be pretty rudimentary and more of a toy than anything else).

⬐ fyi1183

I think you may be missing the more interesting point. Corporations can be seen as non-human intelligences that emerge from the structure of the corporation together with the incentives of is environment.

In that view, the humans inside the corporation are like individuals neurons of a larger brain. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and its incentives and actions are often not aligned with those of its parts, i.e., the humans.

The brain/neuron analogy is not a perfect description, because in order to function towards is potentially anti-human goals, the corporation must essentially bribe a small number of humans who are critical to its function. But this only goes so far: CEOs and other executives are well compensated, but they are easily replaced if they pose a serious threat to the goals of the corporation.

I think the argument is very compelling that today's AI Doomsday prophets are seriously missing the point, and we're actually already largely being ruled by hostile or at least indifferent non-human intelligences. It's the old sci-fi trope that if an intelligence is too alien, you might not even recognize it as one.

Dupe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051337 (orig transcript)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16091105

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16056076

The orig source is https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future which is also discussed on HN, but it doesn't contain a subtitle. The antipope.org site contains the transcript.

Dude, you broke the Future! by Charles Stross https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Charles Stross read the text at the 34C3. If you want to listen to it rather than read it:

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmIgJ64z6Y4

[2]: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

EDIT: Sorry, the read mode on mobile did not show the embedded video.

Having just gotten back from 34C3 I'm going to post a few of my favorites from there:

Dude, you broke the Future! https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Pointing Fingers at 'The Media' https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9106-pointing_fingers_at_the_med...

Social Cooling - big data’s unintended side effect https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8797-social_cooling_-_big_data_s...

Full list here: https://media.ccc.de/c/34c3

⬐ vikuunishmuug

Additionally,

The Ultimate Apollo Guidance Computer Talk (https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ)

⬐ vinc

I couple of months ago I found a good TED talk on the same topic as your first link:

We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...

⬐ narrator

Except for the Singularity trashing, this talk feels like a rehash of reading your average Reddit political thread. I really wanted more than that. I think the political left viewed dialectical materialism as their futurism and now that that's gone with the fall of communism there's just doom. Global warming doom. Hyper-capitalism doom. Race war doom. Overpopulation doom. Evil AI overlord doom. They can't see the future because they don't believe there's going to be one.

I think this is why China has risen so quickly. Their government and their society has a positive view of the future that they are implementing. The west has little in the way of a positive view of the future. It's almost all doom pretty much across the board these days.

⬐ api

I agree, but I'd add the failure of Christian eschatology to materialize at the millennium. Whether openly stated or not this was a huge chunk of the right's vision of the future. There were a lot of people who thought 9/11 and Iraq was the beginning of the end times, which are followed by the return of Christ and the literal kingdom of God on Earth. Now they have their own race war doom, China will eat the world doom, etc. They're waking up to the failure of their own myths as well.

Both the secular left and the religious right are having their "the flying saucer didn't come" moment. The angst comes from the secondary implication that the future is not set and magic will not happen and that we are actually going to have to deal with our problems.

This also explains the rise of neo-Nazi and similar ideologies among not only disaffected former conservatives but also among some leftists and libertarians. (Yes, a good number of the latter have gone alt-right... more than the remaining leftists and libertarians would like to admit.) Those ideologies have at their core the idea of resisting cultural and civilizational decline. I personally think their scapegoats, theories, and solutions are all BS but they're getting somewhere because they are talking about the problem.

This will continue and will get worse until people get their heads out of the 20th century and start articulating new visions of the future. Star Trek and the Left Behind series are not going to happen.

⬐ observation

There is something in what you say.

I have to say I think this conflation of altright and neonazi is lazy in the extreme. By the media and most posters here.

Democratic socialism has overlapping territory with communism but we wouldn't say Sweden == Soviet Union.

> those ideologies have at their core the idea of resisting cultural and civilizational decline. I personally think their scapegoats, theories, and solutions are all BS but they're getting somewhere because they are talking about the problem.

I find the most incisive statements are to be found among the neoreactionaries and technocommericalists, with Thiel's loosely associated Stagnation Hypothesis being compelling to me.

> The angst comes from the secondary implication that the future is not set and magic will not happen and that we are actually going to have to deal with our problems.

He says "we can't sit and wait for the movie of the future to unfold", it's the same idea.

The ray of light there is that it is put forward that our funk is to do with social changes in how we think or past civilizational technical debt. A good example of that thought from Hollywood is Interstellar.

I feel like it used to be the case that "change how we think can change who we are/what happens" used to come from the left but now it's coming from the right. The right looks at past glories and says we must change to get to something better, the left says it is all terrible and we must prevent anything from going wrong which means everything must stay the same.

There's been a weird role reversal of some sort.

> This will continue and will get worse until people get their heads out of the 20th century and start articulating new visions of the future.

I've yet to hear of an example of that from the left, the utopians have lost faith. I've listed some examples in my other post but like I said to people like Stross they likely smell of sulfur.

⬐ api

There are some very good criticisms from the alt-right. There are also great criticisms from the left and from the conventional right. It's easy to criticize. I always skip to "what's your solution?"

The solution offered by the alt-right is neo-monarchism and race nationalism. No thanks. Not only are these irrelevant and backward-looking but the latter is morally evil. Ironically it represents a rejection of the core of Western moral thought from Christianity through the enlightenment.

I agree to some extent with Thiel's stagnation hypothesis. I used to be really excited about him, thinking he got it and might work behind the scenes to try to re-invigorate a culture of genuine innovation in the West. But then he jumped on the alt-right horse and I lost interest.

One of the core hallmarks of a declining or at least demoralized/disillusioned civilization is looking backward. The right is now looking back to the Middle Ages, the 1930s, and the 1950s, while the left is still looking back to the 1960s. Reaction is what decline looks like.

⬐ hackermailman

What you want then is to follow the work of Slavoj Zizek who also wants to toss all failed political ideology like 20th century communism as it consistently led to authoritarianism. He is often pushing for a new political theory age. One interesting theory was Murray Bookchin's 'Libertarian Municipalism' as it is designed to operate within a state as a horizontal not vertical power and gradually reduce the centralized control over populations https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/murray-bookchin-ecology-k...

⬐ 0x445442

> America has a lot of problems but I would not prefer to live in Russia or Saudi Arabia.

Would you prefer to live in Japan? Like most, I consider the "alt right" to be on the margins but I also think it's healthy to challenge conventional wisdom.

Japan is not nor does it strive to be diverse and they do not have a lot of the problems the US has.

⬐ api

Japan? It has tons of problems: chronically low birth rates, one of the highest suicide rates in the world, extreme workaholism, decades of economic stagnation, and probably the world's most intense forms of social alienation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

The latter seems a direct refutation of the alt-right's contention that racial uniformity promotes social engagement and unity. The Japanese are so alienated they barely even have sex anymore. A recent trend in Japanese restaurant design centers around making sure patrons never see another human being, not even a server.

In addition to moral reasons a big reason I can't take the alt-right's racism seriously is that I live in a very racially diverse area (Los Angeles/OC area). Being white I might even be in the minority, or nearly so. My neighbors are more often than not hispanic, asian, or black. Our kids play together, and my daughter's best friends are pretty close to a random sampling of the planet's genetic diversity.

If anything I've found the more recent immigrants to the USA to be more friendly, more socially engaged, harder working, and even more patriotic than multi-generational American natives.

Last year I witnessed the spectacle of a bunch of first and second generation immigrants actually celebrating the Fourth of July. Like really celebrating it. I've seldom seen white Americans genuinely celebrate their country like that. I'd say a good half the white Americans I know are depressed, cynical, and disengaged. This is true on both sides of the usual political divides.

Japan's problem might actually be too much isolation. At the very least some immigration probably would have prevented three decades of economic stagnation.

The neo-racist thesis is bullshit. There is no "white genocide," though there might be a bit of self-inflicted white suicide. Sometimes I think white Americans suffer from the same problems as native Japanese, namely the social diseases that stem from multiple generations of extreme wealth. Wealth promotes social alienation, laziness, a sense of entitlement, and generally taking things for granted.

I've long wondered if the cycle of civilizational rise and fall is caused by wealth. Civilizations rise on a tide of innovation, cooperation, and optimism, but then they get rich and succumb to the social diseases that result from wealth and power.

Edit: Yes there are racially segregated high-crime ghettoes in the LA/OC area, but this seems to happen when you have racial isolation combined with poverty and criminal enterprises like illegal drug trafficking. The entire metro area is incredibly diverse and the majority of it is pretty safe. The area I live in is extremely diverse and has among the lowest crime rates in the state.

Edit #2: If I didn't live in the USA I'd probably want to live in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. I'd like to add the UK too since I love a lot of their culture, but the UK's government seems just as insane and dysfunctional as ours.

⬐ EdwardDiego

Out of curiosity, why NZ?

⬐ pjc50

> Their government and their society has a positive view of the future that they are implementing.

Their government certainly has a view. The population has to accept that view, because it's not a free country and the scope for dissent from that view is limited. If you're someone who actually prefers to live in a traditional building rather than the new apartment complex? Tough, the bulldozers are at the door. Unimpressed with the unbreathable air of Beijing? Tough, although that is gradually improving. Tibetan? Tough. Uighur? No, she went of her own accord.

> The west has little in the way of a positive view of the future.

We used to, but I think the the moon landings were the high point. Then we started to realise the downsides.

> just doom. Global warming doom. Hyper-capitalism doom. Race war doom. Overpopulation doom. Evil AI overlord doom.

First three of those were staples of my childhood. You left out nuclear war doom, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, terrorism, and Y2K; but those have actually been mitigated by lengthy efforts. Sometimes doom-mongering actually gets things fixed.

But really we're back to Gibson's "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed". The key question for any kind of left is whether and how the future gets distributed. Otherwise you get a tiny aristocracy with eternal life and pet AIs to run their security system that keeps the 99% out.

⬐ digi_owl

Soylent Green comes to mind...

⬐ narrator

>Otherwise you get a tiny aristocracy with eternal life and pet AIs to run their security system that keeps the 99% out.

This seems to be the new formulation of dialectical materialism, which is similar to the old one, except the capitalist exploiters win in the end.

⬐ pjc50

> dialectical materialism

You keep using that phrase, but I don't think very many other people still do or have any idea what it means. Everyone's moved on to Picketty now.

⬐ dogma1138

I’m pretty sure anyone who ever studied Marxist theory even at high school levels knows what that means.

⬐ edraferi

Sorry, no idea what this means. Took plenty of history and government in high school. Have a casual interest in the USSR and strong interest in general policy.

⬐ dogma1138

So the term “diamat” or historical materialism never appeared in the textbook? If so you should ask for your money back because I find it hard to believe.

⬐ bandrami

IDK. I'm amazed at how many people I've met who claim to be Marxist but haven't ever read Hegel.

⬐ dogma1138

You really don’t need to go anywhere so complicated; this is literally a high school history exam question “name the philosophical framework adopted by Communist Russia (since technically this predates the USSR) which was based on the works of Marx Engels and co.”

But I would agree with your statement I never met a self proclaimed Marxist that actually read the entire body of works behind it; those who do are usually so terrified of the potential outcomes that they would not consider Marxism as an option.

⬐ platz

such anecdote.. such generalize experiences.. wow.

⬐ fabianhjr

> “name the philosophical framework adopted by Communist Russia (since technically this predates the USSR) which was based on the works of Marx Engels and co.”

Marxism-Leninism? [1]

Honestly, Dialectic Materialism[2] can be summarized as "the idea that ideas and real-life influence each other" and Historical Materialism[3] is the thesis that history has been shaped mainly by its material reality.

[1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism

[2]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dialectical_materialism

[3]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Historical_materialism

⬐ dogma1138

Philosophical framework not an economic and or political system.

Communism isn’t philosophy it’s an economic and political system.

⬐ ajmurmann

Well, it seems your average American doesn't even know the difference between Socialism and Communism and on top of that uses "Socialism" entirely wrong all the time.

⬐ dogma1138

Socialism is used wrong also by self proclaimed socialists; modern day social democracies are not exactly pure socialists either.

Socialism can’t coexist with Communism its economic theory is not compatible with either the political or economic theories behind communism.

⬐ platz

No true scottsman...

⬐ mr_spothawk

That's the thing about postmodernism though, you get to use whatever words you want because you have new definitions. Should anybody disagree with you, they're your enemy... shout them down!

⬐ PoachedSausage

I guess it is the result of younger generations (in the West) discovering they are going to be worse off than their parents in many ways. Whereas China is still on an upward trajectory, for now.

⬐ observation

I think that the main takeaway and I think Thiel's explanation has the most explanatory power (Tech Stag Hypothesis).

⬐ Yokohiii

What you describe is opportunism. Watch star trek for a positive take on our future.

If you watched the Q&A at the end you will know that this is just Stross' way to tell stories and he is interested in a better future. But it is on humans interested in morals rather than cash flow.

⬐ narrator

The latest Star Trek Discovery is not a very happy place. It's almost dystopian. This creeping pessimism even got to the Star Trek writers!

⬐ FullMtlAlcoholc

Being at war with the Klingons has a lot to do with it.

Did they even show what life was like on earth?

⬐ gaius

Star Trek Discovery

Not real Star Trek... none of the Jar Jar-verse is...

⬐ Yokohiii

Fair point. Should have said last century star trek.

⬐ Delmania

I'd disagree the political left was interested in dialectical materialism or anything to do with communism. Most of them are interested in a society with elements of socialism (education, healthcare) and capitalism. The reason many of us find doom is that the current administration in the US is blatantly corrupt and enabled by Congress.

⬐ YeGoblynQueenne

>> Global warming doom. Hyper-capitalism doom. Race war doom. Overpopulation doom. Evil AI overlord doom.

Of all these, "Hyper-capitalism" is about the only thing that originates in left-wing political discourse.

Global warming is a concern that arises from observations by climate scientists.

Wikipedia tells me that a concern about overpopulation is as old as the second century BC.

"Evil AI overlord doom" is basically the concern about Superintelligence, which is propounded primarily by a few leading figures in transhumanist circles and such left-wing luminaries as Elon Musk.

Generally, what you could say about all those concerns above is that the "political left" as you put it keeps them in mind, while other political directions (you know, the conservative right) does not.

⬐ lispm

> Their government and their society has a positive view of the future

I don't think a computerized authoritarian dictatorship is a 'positive view'.

> It's almost all doom pretty much across the board these days.

The Chinese dissidents are in Berlin and enjoy more freedom.

⬐ ThomPete

IMO The Chinese rose so quickly because they embraced capitalism and got access to the western markets.

Other than that I agree with your post.

⬐ JSONwebtoken

They also benefit from a healthy trade surplus thanks to Globalization boosting their manufacturing and labor exports while getting away with being highly protectionist when it comes to domestic production.

Their authoritarian government is nimble and decisive when it comes to implementing policy and they have no loyalty to any one economic or political philosophy. The Chinese are just really good at playing the game, the rest of the world is years behind.

⬐ fao_

> and now that that's gone with the fall of communism there's just doom.

The thing is, communism didn't really exist to fall in the first place, and the most advanced countries (Sweden, Norway, etc.) are all putting in place a mixed socialist/capitalist system.

Also, dialectical materialism didn't necessarily fail just because a set of predictions were made with it didn't come true, it just means that we didn't have the right data, or perhaps we need a new analysis. Not to mention the fact that much of communist writing with regards to capitalist failure is extremely "on point", even today. Indeed, much of it feels like it could have been written yesterday. Dialectical materialism remains a tool of science, however limited it may be, and so should be considered as one.

Also, I think you're mistaking "doom" for "actionable movements". People are actually mobilizing to fix the problem of race (mostly within America, I might add -- while racism is a problem elsewhere, you don't tend to see as much violent resistance to fixing it as you do in the American systems). Just like people are mobilizing to fix Climate Change and much of the problems with uncontrolled late-stage capitalism.

⬐ digi_owl

> and the most advanced countries (Sweden, Norway, etc.) are all putting in place a mixed socialist/capitalist system.

Living in one of them it all to often feels like they are rolling back that system.

⬐ dang

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents, regardless of ideology. They're reliably some of the most low-quality threads we see—partly because they're all the same and partly because they trigger everyone's reflexes rather than their curiosity. They are definitely not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ gaius

communism didn't really exist to fall in the first place

Come on, we can do better here than the tired old “not real communism” argument.

it just means that we didn't have the right data, or perhaps we need a new analysis

Ah yes, always followed by “it will be different next time”. How many millions more have to die?

⬐ LV-426

Millions fewer than died under centuries of global slavery and imperialism, which I'm sure you're not going to now claim is "not real capitalism".

⬐ observation

It just doesn't ring true.

Both slavery and imperialism have had a long history before capitalism. Capitalism exists in circumstances with no plausible relationship to slavery or imperialism.

It annoys me because this dialectic is so obviously wrong.

⬐ LV-426

And mass murder had a long history before communism.

Are you even disagreeing with me?

⬐ dang

We've asked you before not to use HN primarily to argue about ideology. Since you're still doing that, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ bsaul

That’s a common misconception : Capitalism isn’t as ambitious as communism in that matter. It doesn’t aim at making the world a just or better place, just more economicaly efficient one. Communism is not only an economical system, but it also aims at solving the unfairness that it attributes to capitalism, and then invents all kinds of counter measure ( one of them being the revolution, and « temporary » dictactorship).

For a capitalist, this vision is like blaming the engine for the direction the car is taking.

⬐ LV-426

> Capitalism [...] doesn’t aim at making the world a just or better place

I didn't say it did. I pointed out that if you're going to insist that mass murder under a few decades of communist regimes = real communism, then mass murder (and genocide and slavery) under centuries of capitalist regimes = real capitalism.

> Communism [...] invents all kinds of counter measure ( one of them being the revolution, and « temporary » dictactorship).

Communism did not invent revolution or dictatorship.

⬐ bsaul

Well, no you can’t make that equivalent reasoning , that’s my point. People blaming communism makes a lot more sense because it does deal with what the political regime should be (once again, a dictatorship). Who should be in charge, for what political goals, with which privilege, as well as provides all the intermediate steps on how to accomplish that goal.

It is not of the same nature.

⬐ LV-426

> Well, no you can’t make that equivalent reasoning

And yet I seem to have done it.

> People blaming communism makes a lot more sense

You're entitled to your opinion.

> because it does deal with what the political regime should be (once again, a dictatorship).

Since you persist in arguing about "dictatorship" instead of communism, I don't see any point in continuing this.

Edit: instant downvoter I think you missed one of my posts; here's a link to make it easier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034997

Feel free to check out my comments page and obsessively downvote others you may have missed, if any.

⬐ bsaul

I don't understand the sentence "your persist in arguing about "dictatorship" instead of communism". Maybe i wasn't clear in what i meant by dictatorship, but i refer to the "dictatorship of proletariat" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...) which is core to the communist doctrine.

You'll probably argue that this kind of dictatorship isn't to be understood in the common sense, but judging by the various communists thinkers that refer gladly to violence, as well as its historical examples, i'd say the difference aren't that clear.

⬐ LV-426

> "dictatorship of proletariat" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...) You'll probably argue that this kind of dictatorship isn't to be understood in the common sense

I don't have to. Your own link says so in just the second paragraph:

    Dictatorship of the proletariat is different from the
    popular notion of 'dictatorship'

⬐ mitchty

Indeed, dictators originally had term limits even, so the idea of a temporary dictatorship is... pretty much its original intent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator

⬐ legulere

It is an old argument because communism can mean different things. What you mean with communism I would rather call more precisely real socialism [1] Now those real socialist states had as their goal, or at least said so to achieve communism: "the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and the state" [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_socialism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

You could also ask: How many millions more have to die before we overcome capitalism?

⬐ geezerjay

> It is an old argument because communism can mean different things.

Actually, it has a very concrete definition. The only thing that's flexible is where will communists move the goalpost when another downside or systemic problem is pointed out.

⬐ 0x445442

One can also state, WRT the US, that "real" capitalism hasn't existed and its closest approximation has been in steady decline for the last 125 years. Ergo, if we only tried "real" capitalism things would be so much better.

⬐ legulere

It does not work the other way around, as capitalism as a term was coined by socialists and communists to describe the then status quo.

⬐ golergka

Real communism was tried and worked – in communities under 100-200 people (like kibutzim). This feeling of community, where people truly care about one another, is detrimental for communism to work – and turns out, millions of people can be shaped into something similar only under a terror and propaganda machine.

Free people will never care about millions of their "comrades" the same way the can care about their 100-200 closest social connections.

⬐ smichel17

I think you meant to s/detrimental/fundamental/

⬐ kpdxxx

Hackernews again at it with the hottest takes. How many millions more have to die in the name of capitalism?

⬐ ahartmetz

I think it's fair to call all attempts so far "not reall communism". But you don't have to conclude "real communism would work". You can also conclude "real communism seems unimplementable". It is, after all, a social order that was created purely on paper and from theoretical arguments, which is ridiculous. That activity gives you something to try, but certainly not a fixed solution that you just need to implement as prescribed.

⬐ platz

The original intention was the communist revolution would take over the whole world at once. it was never intended/feasible to be a sole communist nation surrounded by a sea of capitalist nations, but they couldn't admit that failure and pressed on anyway.

⬐ gaius

The original intention was the communist revolution would take over the whole world at once

This in and of itself speaks volumes. If it were truly a viable system it could start in one country which would quickly outstrip all others in technology, culture, industrial production, quality of life for its citizens... Then all other countries would gladly follow.

But they knew from the very beginning that people who could vote with their feet, would flee that system. Countries that restrict people from leaving know perfectly well that they are doing something evil.

⬐ platz

Well, your 'restriction' motivation is a bit conspiracy theory / disingenuous, but yes for many reasons communism at the level of nations doesn't work. Do we really need to re-hash that the leninists' revolution model was flawed over and over again? There is no disagreement here.

Instead, following your startup idea, we should foster worker co-ops, which already exist today and are compatible within existing nations. One example is the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

⬐ Fnoord

Its a typical low blow, akin to throwing all right-wing under the guise of Franco, the Weimar republic, or some other right-wing system. Communism has been implemented on small scale. One notable example in Spain [1], problem is that any large political system eventually turns out to be either authoritarian or ineffective or sabotaged (I leave the guess by whom as an exercise to the reader). Its also been applied in part in West-Europe as well as USA, just not in full.

Capitalism is a race to the bottom where the poor countries in the world are being put under the thumb. You don't have to look very far. Just look at all the CIA ops the USA has conducted in the 20th century, e.g. Allende.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#1936_Revolu...

⬐ observation

> ny large political system eventually turns out to be either authoritarian or ineffective

Your thoughts on seasteading, even as a hypothetical?

⬐ tqdm

Capitalism is actually currently ending the world hunger because trickle-down effects actually exist. Living standards are rising globally incredibly quickly. Middle-class kids in Jordan are playing Diabolo 3 on their computers despite the region having almost no natural resources, almost no water and despite it being troubled by Syrian refugees. Yes, capitalism needs regulation, but it is a lie to say that the entire approach is doomed to be a race to the bottom.

⬐ YeGoblynQueenne

>> Middle-class kids in Jordan are playing Diabolo 3 on their computers despite the region having almost no natural resources, almost no water and despite it being troubled by Syrian refugees.

That's interesting, but what is the proportion of middle-class individuals to the rest of the population, in Jordan? If there's 100 kids able to play Diablo 3 in Jordan, while every other kid their age can't afford a computer, then Diablo 3 is not a very useful metric of anything.

Jordan is one of the richest countries in the region btw.

⬐ platz

This is an experiment with 1 trial. What evidence do you have that another system with the same technological advances would not produce the same or better living standards? (none!)

⬐ gaius

East vs West Germany, North vs South Korea, even Cuba vs Florida. There have been plenty of experiments.

⬐ perl4ever

China vs. Taiwan and Hong Kong.

⬐ gaius

Until China went state-capitalist Hong Kong’s economy was one-sixth the size of China’s for 1/200th of the population. Now it’s 2-3%...

⬐ platz

Another system != Statist communists, categorically

⬐ Fnoord

Capitalism needs all kind of patches/bandaids in order to function, and even then it won't function for all. The Kuznets Curve (as mentioned in this article [1] about the doughnut economy) shows the vast amount of inequality in rich countries. Not so much for the general readership of HN (ie. I am arguing the readership is biased).

I fundamentally disagree with a left-right x-axis; we're missing out on authoritative-liberty. Hence politicalcompass.org provides a better framework.

Some of these bandaids are authoritarian, some are liberal. For example, trademarks, patents, copyright each grant power to one or more individuals (ie. a minority) over a vast majority. Here, the free market is being regulated by the government. We consider it part of capitalism.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/the-new-economic-mode...

⬐ fabianhjr

> Capitalism is actually currently ending the world hunger

There are a ton of efforts, both from state-actors[1], NGOs[2] and individuals, seeking to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide. It is not apparent that it is "fixing itself with capitalism" or that any of the previous actors think it is going to happen.

> trickle-down effects actually exist

Citation Needed because trickle-down economics has been shown to increase inequality and not increase the quality of life for those in poverty.

> Yes, capitalism needs regulation, but it is a lie to say that the entire approach is doomed to be a race to the bottom.

Why is it a lie?

[1]: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/data/oecd-internati...

[2]: https://data.oecd.org/drf/grants-by-private-agencies-and-ngo...

⬐ BjoernKW

> The thing is, communism didn't really exist to fall in the first place

Not a true Scotsman, eh? The same argument can be applied to the current capitalist system, too. Some libertarians in fact do so when saying that the problems we see with capitalism don't actually arise from free markets but from precisely the state intervention in those markets that's supposedly meant to alleviate these problems.

> and the most advanced countries (Sweden, Norway, etc.) are all putting in place a mixed socialist/capitalist system.

It's called social democracy or social market economy. It's still largely a free market capitalist system because the means of production for the most part are privately owned.

> Not to mention the fact that much of communist writing with regards to capitalist failure is extremely "on point", even today.

Like many people being lifted out of poverty in the last decades? Like the average person having a much easier life than the average person just a hundred years ago?

That's not to say there are no problems in a free market system at all but it's not all doom and gloom. Quite to the contrary, free markets overall have been tremendously beneficial to the development of mankind.

⬐ fallingfrog

There is no such thing as pure capitalism either, because private property cannot exist without all the elaborate state machinery that libertarians love to hate: a court system, contract law, a police force, an army, and the taxes to support it. All this stuff exists to create the illusion of such a thing as pure private property. Neither pure communism or pure capitalism are things that could exist in the real world.

⬐ perl4ever

Rejecting "a court system, contract law, a police force, an army" sounds like an anarchist's point of view, and while libertarian anarchists (or anarcho-capitalists) exist, equating them with libertarians in general approaches the limit of how ignorant I can believe a non-troll to be.

⬐ fallingfrog

Well, I've heard self proclaimed libertarians say things like "taxation is theft of private property". So that's what I'm basing that on.

⬐ johnny22

Most libertarians I've talked to at least see the role for a minimal state. That state does manage external threats and contract enforcement. I can't imagine those being free things, so at least some taxes would be necessary.

⬐ fao_

> Not a true Scotsman, eh?

No, accuracy. If there's a raft with "YACHT" scribbled on it in permanent marker, and you call it a yacht, and I correct you that it is, in fact, a raft, then my correction is not an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. To date, there haven't been any 'true' communist states. For that to be so, the workers would have had to hold the power. It is trivial to prove that in most self-professed communist countries, the workers have not held the reigns of power.

For example, in Mao's China only 11% of the communist party consisted of working class people. In Cuba, the working class never held power -- it was a revolution solely of the upper echelons (Actually, the way the revolution was performed was quite clever, I'd advise you to read about it, it's quite a marvel of strategy :)). In the USSR, for a short time, the workers held the reigns, however this was quickly made not the case. And -- to paraphrase Cliff -- if the state truly consisted of and gave power to the workers, the workers would have fought against the destruction of it.

> It's called social democracy or social market economy. It's still largely a free market capitalist system because the means of production for the most part are privately owned.

Yes. It took some of the materials from communism and bolted it on to capitalism so that the roof doesn't fall down every 20 years.

> Like many people being lifted out of poverty in the last decades? Like the average person having a much easier life than the average person just a hundred years ago?

Really? From the UK all I can see is the literacy rates getting worse and worse in either country, people being driven into unspeakable amounts of debt by private universities and bank bailouts, and Americans dying of silly things like Type 1 Diabetes just because they couldn't afford enough medicine.

Just because things are "getting better", doesn't mean that things aren't bad -- in fact, it's an open admission to that fact. Nor does it mean that under an alternate system things would be worse.

> Quite to the contrary, free markets overall have been tremendously beneficial to the development of mankind.

On the contrary, "free markets" of the current ideation have only existed for about a hundred years or so. Just because something is a market doesn't mean that you can jam it into the capitalist Free Market slot. I'd advise you to read Ellen Meiksins Wood "The Origins of Capitalism" for an academically correct view on this.

⬐ BjoernKW

> It is trivial to prove that in most self-professed communist countries, the workers have not held the reigns of power.

While this is true the question is: What does 'the workers holding the reins of power' even truly mean? Why didn't that state last longer in communist systems where it initially was the case (I suppose both the Paris Commune and the short-lived Soviet Republic in Germany after WWI are additional examples)?

These affairs or definitions tend to be more gradual than we commonly think. For example, we usually take for granted that both the US and France have been democracies since the late 1700s. However, by today's standards they weren't (France in particular) because they hadn't universal suffrage and excluded large parts of the population from political participation.

> Really? From the UK all I can see is the literacy rates getting worse and worse in either country, people being driven into unspeakable amounts of debt by private universities and bank bailouts, and Americans dying of silly things like Type 1 Diabetes just because they couldn't afford enough medicine.

Those are certainly urgent problems but not necessarily ones that are entirely driven by poverty:

Literacy rates drop because education systems are insufficiently funded and don't keep up with societal changes.

Rampant university debt and bank bailouts are symptoms of a crony capitalist system that has politicians and corporations collude in order to extract value from society (i.e. rent-seeking).

People dying from type 1 diabetes is a symptom of a dysfunctional healthcare system, which in rich countries is less a question of poverty but one of ideology.

The true epidemic is type 2 diabetes, though, which is caused by malnutrition and obesity (which in turn in rich countries indeed are linked to relative poverty).

⬐ YeGoblynQueenne

>> Like many people being lifted out of poverty in the last decades? Like the average person having a much easier life than the average person just a hundred years ago?

Yes, the number of people living under the international poverty line has halved since 2000, however:

a) The international poverty line is currently set to $1.25. This means that, e.g. someone who makes $1.26 a day would be counted as "above the poverty line"... which is very much not the same as "not poor".

b) And more importantly, there is no reason to assume that the fact that people are marginally less poor today, than in 2000, is thanks to free market capitalism, rather than despite it.

In fact, there is another metric of financial well-being, than wages, or absolute or relative poverty: inequality. And that one is _rising_. And has risen steadily throughout the last century. Only in this case we can be very secure in the knowledge that it is the result of free market capitalism- because that's exactly what leads to ever smaller minorities hoarding ever larger portions of the world's wealth.

⬐ BjoernKW

> a) The international poverty line is currently set to $1.25. This means that, e.g. someone who makes $1.26 a day would be counted as "above the poverty line"... which is very much not the same as "not poor".

You have to define 'not poor' somehow if you want to measure poverty and do something to alleviate it. The definition of 'not poor' intended by measures such as the poverty line is: The basic needs are met.

> b) And more importantly, there is no reason to assume that the fact that people are marginally less poor today, than in 2000, is thanks to free market capitalism, rather than despite it.

So, what alternative explanation other than free markets do you have?

> In fact, there is another metric of financial well-being, than wages, or absolute or relative poverty: inequality. And that one is _rising_.

That's a common fallacy. I'm not poor just because Bill Gates is rich beyond all means.

Inequality is just that: Inequality. It could be an indicator of financial well-being but it's not sufficient proof someone or a large part of the population is poor.

Socialist policy today is often obsessed with the idea of inequality, which is a shame because in many cases financial inequality at least might not be the true underlying problem that needs to be solved.

I consider increasing inequality not so much a problem in terms of current poverty but as to continued economic prosperity and subsequent improvement of living conditions: If wealth is concentrated at a few corporations or people, possibly inherited through generations, that means that capital is less likely to be invested in new, risky businesses but instead will be lying around accruing interest.

⬐ fao_

What we consider 'basic needs' must be vastly different.

1.26 a day is 37.8$ a month. I don't know about you, but in all of the places I know, such a person would barely be able to afford food, let alone shelter, replacement clothing, petrol and insurance for travel (or public transport -- in many places public transport would be four days worth of work for such a person at least).

> So, what alternative explanation other than free markets do you have?

The increase of social welfare safety nets.

> Socialist policy today is often obsessed with the idea of inequality, which is a shame because in many cases financial inequality at least might not be the true underlying problem that needs to be solved.

Of course it isn't, much of it falls down to social class and identity politics -- which is another debate for another day.

⬐ BjoernKW

> What we consider 'basic needs' must be vastly different. 1.26 a day is 37.8$ a month. I don't know about you, but in all of the places I know, such a person would barely be able to afford food, let alone shelter, replacement clothing, petrol and insurance for travel

You can't simply apply rich industrial country standards to that. $1.25 is a global average (which by the way lately has been increased to $1.90). In developing countries $1.26 might be enough to get by.

> The increase of social welfare safety nets.

Those safety nets for the most part again only exist in industrialised countries. The reduction of poverty in recent decades however is accounted for mostly by developing countries, which typically don't have that kind of system.

⬐ observation

There is some light but it's from obscure political ideologies.

Nakamoto's Bitcoin, Yarvin's Urbit, Friedman's Seasteading.*

These seem concerned with the technical debt we have, used loosely.

As the famous Ycombinator talk by Balaji Srinivasan pointed out these kinds of projects have a common theme of starting from first principals.

I blame the stagnation on the rejection of nuclear energy and biotechnology by our society. We built a fine collection of mythological fog stories around each of them, nuclear might produce mutant children and kill us all, biotechnology might produce race/class war (more mutants). Where have all of these misanthropic ideas been cultivated? Hollywood and the Universities. Actually I blame people like Mr Stross for this, the breed of people who decided we had a moral imperative not to support the use of these technologies.

The piles of fissile material, petri dishes and computer circuits don't contain any urge to murder us all. The existential funk started proper I think like yourself, with the failure of Communism, and then a loss of faith in democracy (increasing numbers of non-voters), lots of apathy.

This is why I feel like we should revitalize the old Victorian spirit of exploration, get the body moving, work together in gentleperson clubs (hacker spaces) and that shall produce more optimistic individuals. Then when we toy with new ideas we shall be less so inclined to view them darkly. I'm open to suggestions.

* To Charlie (who will be reading this thread and can tell me exactly what he thinks) I suspect these sorts of possibilities have a whiff of sulfur about them? I'm also curious to know if you've read Nick Land's essays. Context: Yarvin/Land are accusing Mr Stross of the thing he was flaking the transhumanists with, namely that his socio-political (socialist-democrat?) beliefs are a thinly veiled form of Christianity, where original sin is discrimination and paradise is multicultural utopia.

I suppose after a thousand or so years it kind of seeps in everywhere even when it becomes assumed it is on its last legs.

The story of slow moving AI is compelling, but since The Election there has been 24 hour news/outrage coverage of how we're all going to hell ever since - so at least one paperclip maximizer has influenced the motivation to make the talk.

The trouble I think is that nearly everything I can imagine Mr Stross supporting as progress basically backfires because at least half the public will have you for lunch over infringements to liberties. Once you're being tossed between the bulls horns of the left and right it's hard to imagine positive outcomes. At the start of the talk microtransactions were mentioned. That seems like a much better route because it is not partisan in nature.

⬐ JSONwebtoken

Western Liberals have lower self esteem, a less optimistic outlook, and an overall lower level of satisfaction with life that shapes their world-views [1]. Research indicates that it's not so much that they believe there's not going to be a future, they just don't expect their own futures to get any better and transitively, they are unable to conceive a world that gets better over time.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656611...

⬐ icc97

His discussion of corporations being actual, literal AIs in the mould of the Chinese Room [0] I found fascinating.

He jokes in the Q&A that he wants an app that finds the 3% of the sociopaths out there. I like the connection to the Book / film The Corporation [1], that labels all corporations as psychopaths. So you don't need an app to find them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

[1]: http://thecorporation.com/

⬐ tqdm

The only similarity between cooperations and AGI is that they are superhuman optimization processes that yield considerable risk and that are tricky to control. The difference is that in case of cooperations there still is a human element: vulnerability/fallibility, social reputation/integration, slowness/interpretability, empathy. The policies for mitigating the respective risks are very different.

⬐ codewithcheese

That implies that "vulnerability/fallibility, social reputation/integration, slowness/interpretability, empathy" are not useful for decision making. Until we see intelligence comparable to human I don't think we can make that assumption.

⬐ icc97

He connects the corporation to the description of the Chinese Room. A corporation is a very big room full of people with human level intelligence under an artificial union acting as one.

Perhaps you can find other areas where that breaks down, but as far as reasonable guesses as to what will happen with AI in the near furture, this is the best I've heard so far.

⬐ tqdm

An AI that looks like a cooperation will likely do so for a very brief time before it can leverage computational resources far greater than than the equivalent of a group of cooperating humans plus simulation tools made from silicone. It is not an interesting comparison because it does not challenge the arguments that human potential is strongly limited by the size of the cortex and by the slowness of neurons and therefore of linguistic information transmission.

⬐ None

None

⬐ digi_owl

I have read the claim that you will find more sociopaths in executive chairs than you will find in jails.

Also all this talk about corporations as paperclip AIs gets me thinking about one of the sub-plots of Accelerando. Meaning that it is likely not a new idea for Stross.

⬐ snomad

Some comments as watching video...

Corporation as AI is good analogy. But as with many, he stops short and repeatedly just says corporations. Please, every large group entity - governmental bodies, unions, non-profits - is an AI. And with/in those groups (and corporations) are also competing AIs.

Comments about weaponized social media: It is odd that we in the West don't want to acknowledge / know / accept the US government and US tech firm roles in the Arab Spring and Ukraine. If we even go further back, really Wikileaks were the true pioneers in weaponizing social media.

⬐ olegkikin

But corporation collections as paperclip maximizers is a bad analogy. Corporations generally produce something large numbers of people want (be it solar panels or cars in his example), whereas a paperclip maximizer AI produces paperclips that only it wants, destroying everything in its path.

⬐ Veedrac

The risk of a paperclip maximiser isn't that the paperclip maximiser wants paperclips, but that the limits of almost any reasonable goal become strongly perverse when one approaches the limits of feasible computation.

Corporations are different because there are very strong diminishing returns on scale when it comes to how smart they can be.

⬐ digi_owl

The "paperclip" in Stross' talk is not the item being produced, but earnings. If a corporations could massively increase its quarterly earnings by starting a nuclear war, it may well decide to do so.

It is not that the item or service is useful or not in the short term, but that it will pursue a set goal with a single minded conviction.

Another analogy may well be the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

⬐ eksemplar

There is something interesting about the speed of things in regard to best practices. We've written a lot of code this year, that is likely going to be replaced rather than rewritten, because tech moves forward, which means all the time we've spent on doing it right, so it'll be easy to get into in five years, is essentially wasted.

Not that we're going to abandon best practices, because you never know, but it's somewhat hilarious to think about how much effort we've wasted doing something right that no one will ever notice.

⬐ tjoff

If the problem isn't trivial doing it right saves time during first implementation as well.

⬐ braindead_in

Here's a automated transcript in case you want to skim through it.

https://scribie.com/transcript/89ba55c337fb4bf6b8d75a1443e2d...

⬐ omnibrain

/u/cstross mentioned on Twitter that his script will appear on his blog in a few days.

⬐ agumonkey

I often reflect on this these days. Seems like the future chasing is not the solution. Society just need a fundamental subsistance obligation layer, a leisure layer and a fictitious layer for imagination purpose only.

⬐ agumonkey

Thanks for making me joyful about climate change induced collapse.

⬐ zeep

It would not play for me, but the direct link to the video did: https://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/congress/2017/h264-hd/34c3-...

⬐ sneak

Great author; sadly another terrible keynote choice by the CCC.

⬐ avian

Care to elaborate? I think the talk was on topic and a suitable kick-off for the rest of the congress. I found Stross' perspective on predicting the future and AI novel and interesting.

⬐ mrweasel

He's just a terrible speaker. The topic is well chosen and I'm certain the transcript will read very well. The presentation is bad though, Stross is not an engaging speaker, he's just reading what he prepared and that no a good way to keep people engaged and focused for an hour.

⬐ jlebrech

"this time germans are the good guys", history will tell.

⬐ cgio

Ask southern europeans.

⬐ ferongr

Don't ask me, I'm thankful for all the bailouts, debt restructuring and the dragging the inefficient, bloated public sector of Greece into the 21st centrury.

⬐ YeGoblynQueenne

Ask what? I'm Greek. We fucked up with money and paid the price. It's not the fault of the Germans.

⬐ fasteo

Southern European here. Could you elaborate ?

⬐ LeonM

I think it's a reference to WW2

⬐ rimliu

I think this is reference to Greece and its perceotion that Germany is somehow responsible for their irrespondible spending.

⬐ ZenoArrow

The Greek debt crisis was as a result of using public money to bailout private banks. Whether that bailout was irresponsible is a matter for debate.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/banks-are-responsible-for-the-...

⬐ arethuza

I do think there is an argument that the German and French banks who originally financed the ill-advised spending by previous Greek governments should have done a bit of due diligence as to what they money was going to be used for and whether there was a realistic chance of being paid back.

⬐ freeflight

That's a tad bit oversimplified, not just in terms of what actually happened in Greece, mostly private banks being bailed out [0] but also how that whole situation came about.

There's been a big elephant in the room nobody really wants to talk about for quite a while now: EU's most successful economies running up massive export surpluses, which really hurt the weaker southern economies [1].

In that regard, it's in very bad taste, to just go "Them southern European countries are all just lazy and don't know how to handle money" because nothing about that whole situation is as simple as that. Just like it wasn't a coincidence that Greece crashed on the tails of the 2008 recession. In our globalized world, nothing of this scale happens in a vacuum, but it's just that much more convenient to put all the blame on the people of Greece supposedly just being too "lazy and clueless", as opposed to the "diligent and frugal Germans". As a German, I can assure you: Most Germans are pretty fed up with "being frugal" and not having seen any real wage gains in decades, for the sole purpose of driving this supposedly "economic miracle" of the Germany economy.

Greece was a gigantic shame for the European idea, left out to die, used for IMF austerity experiments while being framed as "lazy people just don't know how to money", even tho it was their misery which boosted Germanys economic standing even further [2].

[0] http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-ban...

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-save...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/11/despite-...

⬐ rainingmonkey

Greeks in fact work the longest hours of any EU state. source: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

⬐ YeGoblynQueenne

>> Just like it wasn't a coincidence that Greece crashed on the tails of the 2008 recession.

That's a very good point that is completely overlooked in most analyses I've read (and, being Greek, I've read quite a few).

On the other hand, let's not forget that it was Greece that crashed after 2008. Not Spain, not Portugal, not Ireland or Cyprus. All these others, they swallowed the pill of austerity and their economies bounced back. Ours is still connected to the IMF and EU IV that's keeping it alive.

Not that I'm actually convinced that austerity would help us. And I do believe that the measures imposed on us ignored the reality of the Greek economy. But it was not the measures that brought us to our knees in the first place.

⬐ wazoox

That's a reference to the austerity absurdly imposed upon Greece, Portugal and Spain (and soon Italy and France) though it has demonstrably worsened the situation (not for Germany, though, so you may say that it worked well enough for them).

⬐ izacus

What do you want us to say? That Germany is first in line when it comes to privacy and customer protection?

⬐ jorgec

I predicted a future with flying cars and its not happening.

Was i wrong? no, its the future that is wrong! (sarcasm).

⬐ lowglow

(My comment will get buried because I'm flagged but whatever)

I had drinks with a bunch of Hugo award winners and candidates a couple of years back (2015?) and we started talking about near-future stuff. Mainly that I was looking for more of it. (Diamond Age fans out there?)

A funny thing came up: It's getting harder and harder to predict near-future stuff for some authors. I don't understand why. Is it that technology is becoming more and more obscured from the requirements of interacting with it?

Once upon a time, a person had to divine the landscape of network protocols and unix command line to understand the mystery of the internet. Nowadays that tech is just one click or swipe away -- perhaps there is less imagination required to figure out what's happening behind the scene, or perhaps no imagination is required anymore -- things just are.

Maybe we're just inundated with the next big trivial far future click-bait article that the future seems... well always right around the corner and less futur-y(?).

Or perhaps we're at the precipice of something entirely new and incomprehensible. I run a decentralized AI startup and we have an exercise where we try to imagine a world with particular capabilities but it (for a large part of my peers) seems out of reach -- as if it exists beyond a great divide.

It makes me think that whatever is next is either really beyond the scope of understanding, or just non-existent. It's fun (and exciting) to try and think about regardless.

⬐ codewithcheese

Daniel Suarez fiction works are very on point with near future while also being fun.

⬐ lowglow

Awesome. Which book would you recommend?

⬐ ylere

Daemon/Freedom, Change Agent

⬐ lowglow

epic. thanks!

⬐ et1337

I think tech is hard to predict because it's more about economic and human factors rather than the actual difficulty of research. New tech doesn't truly change the world until it hits mass market.