Co-Founder of PayPal Peter Thiel: Society Is Hostile To Science and Technology 238
dcblogs writes Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, billionaire investor and author, says "we live in a financial, capitalistic age, we do not live in a scientific or technological age. We live in a period where people generally dislike science and technology. Our culture dislikes it, our government dislikes it. The easiest way to see "how hostile our society is to technology" is to look at Hollywood. Movies "all show technology that doesn't work, that ... kills people, that it is bad for the world," said Thiel. He argues that corporations and the U.S. government are failing at complex planning.
Society Is Hostile To Science and Tchnology (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, hostile to tchnology like spell checkers....
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Yes, hostile to tchnology like spell checkers....
Spell checkers? Dang, it's not every day one gets Nazi'd by a Hogwarts graduate...
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Obviously, most of society loves those technologies that make their lives easier.
What people don't love is anything that requires of them a higher level of mental effort. Things like safe password management, for example. Similarly, if being of above-average intelligence means you can more greatly utilize available technological resources to give yourself greater success, then everyone really hates that, and hates you while they are at it. For example, they don't want to have to learn to code, because th
Its not the technology - it is the tech company (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are they hostile towards coffee? Because last I checked Starbucks was the biggest offender.
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When high tech companies offshore cash to avoid taxes, it is no wonder people don't trust the technology. They don't trust the technology companies.
Yes, and isn't it ironic that the very reason they don't like technology companies that do this is because of their capitalistic goals to increase financial wealth.
Perhaps it's not so much irony as it is proving his point dead on.
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Most of the people i see bitching about tech companies or any company for that matter who offshores cash to avoid taxes seem to object on the grounds of "fairness" and "governmentbis good except when it gets involved over seas". It typically isn't about cApitalistic financial anything.
I don't see any irony or point being proven.
Re:Its not the technology - it is the tech company (Score:5, Informative)
Except we're not the highest. Chad and the UAE have the highest [taxfoundation.org].
Also, to make up for the loss of revenue, we would have to raise the personal income tax. We could be like Germany with a 45% personal income tax, Norway with 47.2% or Japan at 50.84%.
Oh wait, you thought by lowering corporate taxes things would work themselves out. Now I see the problem.
A comparison of corporate [kpmg.com] and personal income [kpmg.com] tax rates
Re:Its not the technology - it is the tech company (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with corporate taxation is that it's based on profit, not income. Personal tax is always income based - imagine if you were only taxed on the income you didn't manage to spend each year! If corporate tax was based on income, it would be commensurable (and would presumably also be a much lower rate). Corporate INCOME tax would also make all these tax dodges irrelevant, since they work only because companies manipulate their profit.
A bit of a straw-man (Score:2)
On the other hand, implementation of technology has become a corporate thing. And as corporations have shown us, they're working in their interests, not ours. They'll release buggy or vulnerable products. They won't patch or fix those problems without being
Re:A bit of a straw-man (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't forget the scary parts.
Almost every week you read about another "hacked" company that just lost your credit card number and all your identifying information. Hope you changed all your passwords.
Will the people who "stole" your credit card ever be caught? No.
Will the people who decided NOT to protect it ever be punished? No.
Is there anything you can do? Aside from using cash everywhere? Not really.
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For everything else, there's Dogecoins.
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:D
Okay, that made me laugh.
But that requires that the average person trust someone they can't even name with keeping their money safe. And the money is just a bunch of zeros and ones. If the "hackers" can take your real money can they take your imaginary money?
Will the government take your real stuff because you got imaginary money from a "terrorist"?
Will you end up in court one day because your kid is accused of sharing a song and now you owe $50,000 in penalties?
The benefits of technology are not being ev
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Then don't use that primitive system of credit cards and pay cash. Added advantage is that you can't be spied uppon by a money trail.
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On the other hand, implementation of technology has become a corporate thing. And as corporations have shown us, they're working in their interests, not ours.
Corporations work with the same interests that anybody else does. That is to say, they can be anything from assholes to being very benevolent.
Even when they are working for their own interests, that isn't a bad thing. When Nokia invented the smartphone, they weren't intending on giving it away for free, rather they wanted to make themselves rich. But that benefited everybody else as well in the process; it eventually lead to technology being so cheap and available that anybody can have it, even the most poo
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People don't make
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I'm sorry, I do not trust the benevolence of corporations.
You can equally say "I do not trust the benevolence of strangers" for all of the same reasons you just listed. The only difference with a corporation is that it is much easier to build capital with large pooled resources, something that is rarely achievable as an individual.
That $35 Indian smartphone for instance.
That's not a very good example. I think it's more likely that the design teams encountered problems along the way and as they were running out of time and budget on their design project, they just had to release what they had. This is a
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On the other hand, implementation of technology has become a corporate thing.
Unlike 100 years ago, when anyone with a trowel and some perseverance could grow iPhones in their home garden, and communications satellites were built by village artisans.
Or we could go back in time to, say, the 1940s, when the development of computers and rockets was being driven by one of the ugliest wars in history. Not to say that it wasn't necessary, but do you really think that would be an improvement over Apple and SpaceX?
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It's also hard to see how anyone but a megacorp or government could build a chip fab plant or a HDD factory. Take a look at those two commodity devic
Dislike != Distrust (Score:3)
Re:Dislike != Distrust (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it started doing things better than the best craftsman. And faster. While craftsmen numbers fell, machine repairmen numbers did not keep up (otherwise what's the point?). This is when distrust began. But it was only a few that had been replaced and they were not heard as the technology had brought great fun and even provided quite a few other jobs.
But lately technology is replacing many different types of jobs. Salesman, accountants, and general office help (which ironically was only ever a job thanks to technology) joined the ranks of the blue collar machinist as those that had been replaced by a computer. At this point distrust is growing among many, but still the new gadgets and joys - and affordable too - are keeping dislike to a minimum.
And this is only from one perspective. The next would be the interruptions it brought.
Peter Thiel is on a book tour or something... (Score:5, Insightful)
This Thiel character has been all over the place these past couple of weeks - talk shows, opinion columns, etc. He is a real techno-cornucopian cheerleader, but does not seem to be a particularly deep thinker.
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And yet you guys worship everything his best buddy Musk does or says...
Well, that's understandable at least. I mean, have you ever smelled Musk?
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I wear Old Flux. That new low-lead stuff just doesn't smell right.
Old Flux. The solder your solder could smell like.
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They're friends, but while Musk is doing great things, Thiel mostly makes news complaining.
Plot line (Score:5, Interesting)
The man simply doesn't understand the need for conflict in a plot. If you have a movie about a super computer, there needs to be something to work against. The computer takes over or fails spectacularly. This in no way indicates that this is society's view of computers.
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Or, in some cases, eventually figures out how to make tea.
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Who's to say the super-computer or robot can't be the good guy? Or the hero's ally? Conflict has two sides, and technology could just as easily be placed on either. If movies place it more often on the bad side, that says something about, if not culture in general, at least the culture of people making movies.
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Terminator 2, technology is on both sides.
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Not entirely. "Her" was perhaps the most even-handed I've ever seen, but as such the AI managed to also be selfish and inconsiderate. But at no time did one question whether it was going to slaughter everyone and start looking for John Conner. Perhaps it did the best at showing how the failings of intelligence are from the intelligence, rather than the underlying technology.
"Transcendence" doesn't fit, the entire plot hinges around the intentions of the AI, and whether it is good or bad. However if anything
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And I have to give a movie props for going on an unconventional or outright dubious premise and conclusion. Limitless and probably Idiotocracy fall into that category for me too.
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"Not in the slightest bit. I enjoy working with people. I have a stimulating relationship with Dr Poole and Dr Bowman. My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship, so I am constantly occupied."
"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."
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I disagree.
So many movies and TV shows have inept, complacent, or downright evil scientists creating technologies that either lose control or are specifically for enacting violence. Or they mishandle something and a plague starts. Or a technology-driven society encroaching on one who's in touch with nature or a hundred years in the past.
And it's usually either a dumb "everyman" who stumbles into the situation and rises to the occasion -- maybe a military guy with a heart of gold -- and saves the day without
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Your logic doesn't track. People enjoy a good murder mystery, yet murders are actually uncommon.
Stories are all about exploring the unknown without actually having to experience it. I'd even say violence is a common thread in stories for a similar reason as evil science/tech -- people are certainly hostile toward it.
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That holds true even for the evil machine movies as evil machines don't actually exist.
Point given. I'll narrow my focus. Slasher films that place the audience in the killer's POV. People watch many of those (they outnumber evil machine movies) and yet the emulation of that behavior is extremely rare.
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You don't live in Midsomer, do you?
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No, I do not live in a fictional town. Why?
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The Andromeda Strain comes to mind, though the book makes the computer's role more prominent than the film.
But that was before Crichton went full on into the business of writing anti-technology and anti-science screeds.
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"But that is the point, you don't have to make a movie about a supercomputer." was what I was responding to and if you read up the subthread you'd realize that was the context. Explain how your comment addresses that.
Pretty much (Score:2)
People fear and then hate what they do not understand. If you're not interested in how the world works you're not gonna learn, and will just default to anger and scaremongering in your interactions with it, because emotions you do understand.
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That's part of it. People also frequently partake in shooting the messenger, so when researchers come along and say "This thing we're all doing is having these negative consequences, and we are going to have to stop that thing", they end up learning what Socrates must have felt like as he put the hemlock tea to his lips.
Australia is leading the way! (Score:4, Informative)
Our leader removed the minister for science! He has reduced funding for our science organization CSIRO ( The one that invented wifi among many other successes ), condemned renewable energy and promoted coal, destroyed our manufacturing sector and is pushing to make university only for the rich. All in the span of a year, impressive really.
Society is Hostile to Idiotic Billionaires (Score:3)
Just as plausible as his assertions.
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They created PayPal to circumvent government intereference in money exchanges *cough avoid taxes*. And now he's shocked and dismayed that governments aren't spending enough on infrastructure?
It's no shock that the government is hostile to idiotic billionaires who both want to promote tax evasion while also expect a well funded government's services in order to profit further.
We need a movie to spread the word (Score:2)
One where technologically capable individuals fight back against brutish peers. The technologists could be portrayed as smart and kind, but socially marginalized and not particularly attractive.
We could call it, I dunno, "Revenge of the Science and Technology People". Truly a story for our decade, it could get the word out that society is hostile towards the people involved in science and technology.
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Or we could call it the Foundation Series.
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"Real Genius. (1985) [wikipedia.org]
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Unfortunately, Real Genius suffers badly from horrific acting (the young teenager and the girl, not to mention most of the others), some terrible scenes (the water party takes the cake), and an unappealing 1980's shooting style that dates the movie badly.
But, the movie holds a very special place in my heart, I love it. Actually, it holds a very special nostalgic place in my heart, my memory of watching it a lot of times a long time ago are special to me.
About a year ago I tried to watch it again, and withi
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and not particularly attractive.
Hey now! Some of us are solid 7's.
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^shrug^
A mixed story (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that real science is HARD. Most people can't cope and avoid it at school. They dismiss us as geeks - not least to cover their own failure to master the subject. So there's a built up frustration that comes out when it does go wrong... not healthy - but perhaps inevitable given that
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They dismiss us as geeks - not least to cover their own failure to master the subject.
Large parts of the nerd and geek culture can be surprisingly anti-science too though. As you say, it is inevitable that most people will not master fields, even those of interest, and one can't physically master them all. But when you take someone who has an ego, possibly for good reason because they do have above average knowledge in some areas, and given them a superficial view of something, they can really run with it at times. Just look at some of the more difficult science topics that end of on Slas
Bias much? (Score:2)
Robocop showed *both* sides ... killer robots, and technology used to help a person put an end to corruption.
Technology is *tool*; it be used or abused.
* A fire can be used for light & heat (i.e. camping), or to burn someone.
* A gun can be used to protect or to hurt.
Lastly, Technology is NOT the problem -- people _misusing_ it are.
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Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett
Paypal - the best way to get laid... (Score:3)
I always misread their slogan, just for an instant.
Theil may be right that society as a whole is hostile to science but he is fundamentally missing the point: society is more interested, accepting and pro-science than it has ever been in the past. Sure, there are lots of nays but they are fewer than there were before. That's what is important. Look at the positive and move forward.
Chaos Theory (Score:3)
"...corporations and the U.S. government are failing at complex planning."
Mathematically, the world is a "chaotic" place. It is axiomatic that complex planning will fail. So those not familiar with the field, think of "butterfly effect" or "Black swans".
So inevitable planning failures are blamed on technology.
The best solution, proven empirically, is laissez-faire. I concede that "best" means different things to different people.
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Sorry, your statements are not as axiomatic as you think.
If the world is mathematically a chaotic place I would love to see the mathematical prove for that. So far we got no further to say the world is complex and there are some chaotic processes. Chaotic would be akin to the claim that any fraction of a number, say Pi must eventually repeat itself or follow a descernable pattern. The other is saying (much less strict) it is a really long string of numbers, that might have come about for reasons that may be
Technology is fine. Finance sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the guy behind PayPal talking. Before PayPal, he traded derivatives. After PayPal, he ran a hedge fund. He says "We live in a financial, capitalistic age, we do not live in a scientific or technological age," said Thiel. "We live in a period were people generally dislike science and technology. Our culture dislikes it, our government dislikes it."
He's pointing out that runaway capitalism and finance is the problem. He ought to know.
We used to have a simpler, and more locked-down, financial system in the US. Banks accepted deposits, lent money, and handled cash. They weren't allowed to buy and sell stocks. Trading derivatives was definitely out. Brokers did stock transactions for others; brokerage firms didn't trade much for their own accounts. There were mutual funds, regulated by the SEC. Houses were financed mostly by savings and loan companies, which were mostly local and sent people out to check on building sites.
This worked well until the Reagan years, and the beginnings of financial deregulation. S&L and bank executives wanted the freedom to take more risks with other people's money. Within a few years of S&L deregulation, the savings and loan industry tanked. Within a few years of bank deregulation, the banking industry tanked. There's kind of a pattern there.
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This is the guy behind PayPal talking. Before PayPal, he traded derivatives. After PayPal, he ran a hedge fund.
Wow, no wonder he thinks people hate technology. It's not technology, it's him. They hate him.
Maybe people are catching on... (Score:2)
Maybe people are catching on to the fact that a lot of what passes for advanced technology these days only amounts to the arrangement of pixels on screens.
Previous waves of technologies liberated us from hard work. The Internet wave, while impressive, has not really been able to do that.
And no, sites that help wealthier people buy services such as cooking, cleaning and driving from poorer people don't count, since the work is still done by a human. I'm talking about machines or devices that physically make
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Perhaps you've been missing the stories on how robots will replace 1/3 of workers in 20 years? Robotics is slowly climbing the "unskilled labor" curve, able to do more mindless repetitive tasks for us. Of course, people fear change, and so just like every automation revolution that has dramatically improved our live, this will have it share of Luddites, but one way or another people will be excited.
Effectively free unlimited internet pron? People are exicited about/by that, mere "arrangement of pixels on
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robots will replace 1/3 of workers in 20 years [...] Of course, people fear change [...]
I'd rather say they fear loosing their job. Originally the idea of the robotic revolution was that everyone would have his own robot who does all the hard work for him. That didn't work out so well now, did it?
As long as 1% of the population owns 35% and the top 20% of the population own 85% of a nations wealth, it is not very surprising that people oppose to change that gives the richest 1% even more money - money which according to their own theory (Principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility) should be pre
We don't hate technology (Score:2)
News? (Score:2)
Wasn't Galileo sufficient enough an example?
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Anti-People? (Score:2)
Movies also often show people doing bad things. Does that mean our society also hates people? (Letting the sick and poor die is arguably a sign of such.)
But in general, for any drama you need an antagonist. Sometimes that antagonist is a person(s) and sometimes technology. Happy rainbow movies rarely sell.
Plus, it's fun watching sparks fly out of machines. Unrealistic, but fun. Blood and guts are too unpleasant to watch i
So US centric, AGAIN (Score:3)
"We live in a period were people generally dislike science and technology."
US people maybe. Canada has over 60% approval for sciences.
But what do you expect? Canada also lacks the billions of dollars it took for corporations to convince you science is bad.
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You make nonsensical assertions, US is far more a driver of science and technology on planet earth than Canada could ever hope to be. What does Canada do for science, beer yeast genetics?
Canada is tiny; you'd have to compare to pop (Score:3)
Canada looks big but they have fewer people and less area to produce $$$ for funding. Plus they probably can't ever have high productivity because that is something that doesn't go with being the #1 or #2 nation to live in.
The global economy and banking system which control everything are not pro-science. For their population and GDP, Canada probably beats the USA. It doesn't help that Canadians easily cross over to the USA college system and end up staying here despite the lower quality lifestyle. Guess
The gift of Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Those who wield technology are, therefore, akin to magicians. People are amazed by magicians but they also don't trust what they don't understand.
Most people don't understand the commitment required to be a good technologist, they just want you to fix their computer during the dinner they invited you to. How may times have you heard the "I'm not very good with computers" line? Even more how many time have you met someone with "the next great idea to make millions" and all they need is some dumb monkey coder to do the actual *work* for them? The general expectation is that you'll do it for them but just watch their face if you ask them to tile your bathroom or do a similar amount of *work*.
I think Thiel is right. I'm uncertain if people actually deserve a gift like information technology and the internet which is powerful enough to enslave or free humanity. Frankly people are so vapid and apathetic they are simply driving us to a technology driven dystopia from the sheer weight of idiocracy. The worst thing about it is that myself and every technologist I know is being dragged along, kicking and screaming, with them - fully aware of the consequences.
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not totally (Score:3)
i hate high tech hardware that is locked down for my own good, maybe bought an Android tablet for the specific purpose of wiping android off and putting a vanilla Linux distro on it like Debian or Gentoo or maybe Slackware, and most tablets wont boot from other sources, and even if you mount it as a removable storage device and manually delete everything you can on it once it reboots the dang system gets replaced with a fresh copy (system on a chip???) i dont know for sure but i really hate tablets because nothing can be done to them and i got to run the OS that comes with it, and google store is packed full of crappy spamware, ok rant over because i am digressing, thanks
The third law of slashdot. (Score:3)
Troll food: The min temp anomaly map for Australia [bom.gov.au] over the past six months, it's clear minimum temperatures have been warmer across most of the continent. It also clear that maximum temps have been well above average [bom.gov.au] for the same period.
Hostile? (Score:3)
Movies "all show technology that doesn't work, that ... kills people, that it is bad for the world,"
What do you mean? We elected it governor of California.
How not to write a screenplay! (Score:3)
Cofounder of Paypal talks out of his Bunghole (Score:2)
Hollywood movie plots don't prove anything except what is considered marketable entertainment.
Last I checked the USA was ranked #1 in research and science.
Hollywood reflects and shapes our culture. (Score:3)
When talking about culture in TV Nation where community has died and all that comes close is TV/Movies. We talk using movie metaphors, adopt phrases and new metaphors from the medium which sadly doesn't even come close to the past sources they supplanted.
Advertizing controls people and they don't spend all that $$$ doing product placement, infotainment, endorsements, and advertizing if it didn't have a big impact. People only SAY they don't vote based upon the advertizing that goes on-- but they are lying
Indeed (Score:2)
And that's why we steer clear of mobile phones, computers, digital watches and clocks, microwaves, cars, planes, xboxes, the internet ect, which has led to the lack of any tech industry in the US. Films attack technology because of the producers hatred of it and they stick to analogue film etc, CGI? what's that?
Really, what a stupid thing to say. There are some luddites, so what.
Failing at complex planning! What? (Score:2)
living in China reminded me of 1960s science (Score:4, Interesting)
When I travel in China I see the pro-science and technology attitudes of my youth. It i s refreshing.
Re:Technology enables abuse on a large scale (Score:5, Insightful)
It's wishful thinking. Technology should have produced a world without want, sickness or fear, where no one need labor for their own survival. Instead all that ingenuity went into devising new ways to oppress and kill our fellow man.
Actually you're exactly what he's talking about. Technology has gone a massive way towards reducing famine and sickness. I mean think about it:
- Some people actually argue that human natural selection has ended because medical technology is so good now that people rarely ever die from natural causes unless they're either very old or neglect their own health (e.g. drug abuse.) Contrast to 150 years ago where virtually any sort of serious injury often included death or dismemberment. People nowadays can be born with serious inherited diseases (e.g. cystic fibrosis) and even have kids where in the past that would have been impossible.
- The green revolution (that is, agricultural technology) has turned famine into a distant memory. The root cause of any starvation these days is almost always a 100% political one (e.g. some local warlord or government is deliberately limiting the food supply.)
In spite of the above, you prefer to subscribe to the Hollywood model where technology is only ever used for bad things. As far want and fear, no amount of technology will ever eliminate as those are just part of human nature. I'd actually be more concerned if we did get rid of those, as the only means of doing so would involve altering the person's mind (mind control is another way of putting it; think like the movie Equilibrium.)
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That is what I always admired about Star Trek. While there were no lack of episodes of all the series where technology was put to evil or misguided uses, at the end of the day, it was still shown to be a deliverer of humanity from hunger, war and disease. By and large technology was represented not as an obstacle to human development, but rather as its great enabler.
But in general, you're quite right, the film industry has long favored dystopian visions; stemming right back to Metropolis (the first and stil
Re:Technology enables abuse on a large scale (Score:5, Informative)
Start there. Read the whole thing, don't just cherry pick looking for proof of your statement.
Since the first half of that page is about the history of Famine (which most of it is history at this point in time) the only relevant bits are anything *after* the green revolution, as per what I stated, so I'll "skip" to this point, thank you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Even so, I don't see any causes listed there that aren't political. Since you're so keen on using wikipedia to make your case, then I'll point you to this line:
Food shortages in a population are caused either by a lack of food or by difficulties in food distribution; it may be worsened by natural climate fluctuations and by extreme political conditions related to oppressive government or warfare.
Now if you read on further, the "lack of food" mentioned is mainly this:
Food shortages in a population are caused either by a lack of food or by difficulties in food distribution; it may be worsened by natural climate fluctuations and by extreme political conditions related to oppressive government or warfare. The conventional explanation until 1981 for the cause of famines was the Food availability decline (FAD) hypothesis. The assumption was that the central cause of all famines was a decline in food availability.[132] However, FAD could not explain why only a certain section of the population such as the agricultural laborer was affected by famines while others were insulated from famines.[133] Based on the studies of some recent famines, the decisive role of FAD has been questioned and it has been suggested that the causal mechanism for precipitating starvation includes many variables other than just decline of food availability. According to this view, famines are a result of entitlements, the theory being proposed is called the "failure of exchange entitlements" or FEE.[133] A person may own various commodities that can be exchanged in a market economy for the other commodities he or she needs. The exchange can happen via trading or production or through a combination of the two. These entitlements are called trade-based or production-based entitlements. Per this proposed view, famines are precipitated due to a breakdown in the ability of the person to exchange his entitlements.[133] An example of famines due to FEE is the inability of an agricultural laborer to exchange his primary entitlement, i.e., labor for rice when his employment became erratic or was completely eliminated.[133]
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), global climate change is additionally challenging the Earth's ability to produce food, potentially leading to famine.[134]
Some elements make a particular region more vulnerable to famine. These include poverty, population growth,[135] an inappropriate social infrastructure, a suppressive political regime, and a weak or under-prepared government.[136]
Thank you.
And you fail at trolling by the way.
Re: Technology enables abuse on a large scale (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Technology enables abuse on a large scale (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say religion is a special instance of ideology.
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My Logic Says Burn So Send Me Away (Score:2)
President Joe once had a dream
The world held his hand, gave their pledge
So he told them his scheme
For a Saviour Machine
They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
Its logic stopped war, gave them food
How they adored
Till it cried in its boredom
'Please don't believe in me,
Please disagree with me
Life is too easy,
A plague seems quite feasible now
Or maybe a war, or
I may kill you all
Don't let me stay, don't let me stay
My logic says burn so send me away
Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen
You can't st
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What people don't like is any science that suggests they have to alter their behaviors.
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The real kicker is, Apple, Samsung and all the cellphone makers are unknowingly building the first generation of replicators [wikipedia.org]. Once enough units have been manufactured, they'll all activate and take over the planet.
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the real issue is that Science and Tech are just evolving at a pace that it becomes difficult to comprehend the implications
Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are both about 100 years old now (really!). Why aren't they taught in high school? High schools mostly teach science that was the state of the art around the time of the US civil war (really!).
We're so culturally bought into the idea that math is hard, that modern physics is full of baffling ideas that normal people can't make sense of, and so we don't even try to teach what we should. Especially if you go on to college: someone who specializes in the works of Shakespeare
Re: Yes, because everyone is burning their smartph (Score:2)
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Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are both about 100 years old now (really!). Why aren't they taught in high school? High schools mostly teach science that was the state of the art around the time of the US civil war (really!).
Kant is even older than that, and yet you don't see him being taught in high school either. The age of an idea has little to do with the complexity of the idea, and quantum mechanics is quite complicated, if you want to really understand it. Shakespeare is only widely taught because, due to cultural influences, he is considered something that everyone should know, and his plays aren't really all that hard to understand. Quantum mechanics, orbital dynamics, E&M, etc., not so much. It's not simply because
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You don't need to know anything except where to find food, but humans should know more than they need to, or what's the point of it all?
Neither relativity nor QM is all that hard to understand. The math can be hard to understand, but the more important consequences of both can be explained geometrically. And, really, you only need algebra and trig to do the math for the basic results in special relativity and in very simple quantum mechanical systems.
I think it's more important to do some simple experimen
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I fear people will hate you for this comment. Are you technology?
No, he's Tchnology.