from Hacker News

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

by thoradam on 10/17/23, 11:18 PM with 12 comments

• by peatmoss on 10/18/23, 12:28 AM

  I've felt that techno-doomerism has been the hegemonic narrative for a while now. We see it our science fiction. Optimistic sci-fi like Star Trek TNG tends to be campy, and the quickest way to make something un-campy is to make it gritty.

  I do worry we have target fixation for bad technological outcomes. When learning to ride a motorcycle, one of the first bits of advice is to look where you want to go, and you'll go there. If you stare intently at the deadly thing, there's a good chance you'll freeze up and run straight into it.

  I was excited when I saw the Andreessen Horowitz posting yesterday, and expected to nod along in agreement. Instead, I saw in it something that looked like it escaped Twitter / X.

  This too feels like it's wide of the mark, more of a rebuttal to yesterday's posting than a manifesto that inspires and stands on its own.

• by jacomoRodriguez on 10/18/23, 9:44 AM

  Why are all this techno-optimisitic about exploring space... are we done with earth yet? Did we solve world hunger, poverty, equality and conservation of our biosphere already? No, we didn't. Maybe, we should solve such topics first, before we reach for the stars. Yes, we probably can do both, but all in this manifest seems to aim to only expanse the human space - not making it any better for the actual humans who live in that space (with the exception of improvements which are necessary for going to space).

• by Georgelemental on 10/18/23, 1:22 AM

  > Human societies are systems. Systems are themselves tools.

  Systems have emergent behaviors that arise from the their individual components, and the interactions between them. These behaviors limit the possible stable equilibria of the system as a whole.

  In human systems, the components are people, whose behaviors are governed by human nature (itself a product of natural selection) and by incentives. Wishing it weren't so will not make human nature or incentives go away.

• by throwaway9274 on 10/18/23, 2:05 AM

  This is not optimistic about advancing technology for the purposes of bettering the human condition. So the title is a bit misleading.

  Words have meanings and we should adhere to them so communication does not break down into rhetoric.

  It focuses on the social circumstances, or “human systems” for which it recommends re-engineering human societies to achieve a variety of goals.

  It advocates for non-market economic systems, of which the only currently extant examples we have are socialist.

  It advocates for slowing technological development to ease unspecified existential risks.

  It offers that engineers can essentially make an inevitable societal decline a little bit less bad.

  As much as Marc’s essay was a caricature of a considered techno-optimist position, this is the caricature of the inverse.

• by baggy_trough on 10/18/23, 2:12 AM

  I would like to know what their replacement for free market capitalism is, as the description is entirely hand-waving. I hope it's not some sort of socialist or communist utopia as those are disastrous in practice.

• by Warwolt on 10/18/23, 12:26 AM

  Bunch of wankery

• by earthboundkid on 10/17/23, 11:36 PM

  Live long and prosper.