gemini://thrig.me/blog/2023/10/27/techno-something.gmi

I had just gotten done removing features from my primary web browser, w3m (in particular, the ability to make system(3) or execv(3) calls) when I happened across a certain Techno-Optimist manifesto by Marc Andreessen.

> For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently.

We did? All of us? I know this is a manifesto—picture the soft rustle of draped flags as the emperor pontificates to stirring strings as the sun rises to glint off the (inevitably) square jaw and steely gaze of the Hero—but certainly not all of us were onboard with the whole "White Man's Burden" or other such Enlightenment antics.

Some of us also grew out of a teenage obsession with Ayn Rand.

> Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.

Sharks grow and die. And so do societies. How long this society lasts is an interesting question, given its habit of "ripping out the wires of spaceship Earth to make disposable trinkets for the natives" as some commentator on Ars Technica more or less put it.

A look at the fossil record, or at the fate prior civilizations tells a story. Well, realism may not be to the taste of everyone.

> We believe everything good is downstream of growth.

It may amuse the reader to think up just one thing that is good but does not involve growth to falsify this claim.

Also, growth is not without various downsides, for example the Trinity of Air, Noise, and Light pollution. Billionaires are doubtless less exposed to such, so may develop a certain blindness here. Techno-blinkers, one might say.

> Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population.

Cellphone and Internet plans are a trifle expensive in America; how does the magic of productivity growth explain that? Or what of increasing costs of housing and food?

As to the entire population claim, one might find that the gains are rather unevenly distributed. Perhaps America should go back to the 90% tax on the rich? In some aspects America was better back then.

You are still waiting for nature to kill you. It now may take longer (especially if you are lucky enough to be rich in America) and may involve repeated, long, and frustrating phone calls and other such adventures with technology. Kafka's "Das Schloß" often comes to mind.

> Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.

What technology would you suggest to end light pollution, to eliminate the noise of air conditioners, to remove the toxic tire dust? Why not take simple measures to manage these and other problems? Turn the lights off. Use more insulation. Drive less, or not at all.

> Markets cause entrepreneurs to seek out high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving those prices down.

Cool story. Reality might paint a somewhat different picture. America appears to be shaking off some anti-trust torpor: Google. It's a shame that Microsoft didn't get broken up, who knows how much competition and innovation that might have spurred. One can probably find one or two or three or more other places where there are high prices and a lack of competition. Where is your handy invisible market thing? Why hasn't it corrected these and other problems?

> The economist William Nordhaus has shown that creators of technology are only able to capture about 2% of the economic value created by that technology.

Others have shown that there's a little bit of inequality going on, and that the rich usually get their way, politically. Somehow. And how is economic mobility (a.k.a. the American Dream) going these days? What, it's been stagnant since the Reagan revolution? Thanks, magic market!

> We believe a market sets wages as a function of the marginal productivity of the worker.

That's nice, but how does your market explain non-complete clauses, or that regulation has been necessary to dismantle some of them? The market must have done right by all those workers on strike. Oh, is that an effort to unionize? Why would one need a union, when there's the magic of the market? And why might the plutocrats be hell bent on preventing the rise of unions?

> We believe that since human wants and needs are infinite

I'll let the forest monks in Thailand know about these wants and needs.

> We believe markets are generative, not exploitative

Yeah, about that. TPS report, the need to come in on a Saturday, etc.

> We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward.

Reality often shows "S" shaped curves that taper off as drawbacks (pollution) and diminishing returns (less to discover) come to bear. Why do you ignore this?

> Ray Kurzweil defines his Law of Accelerating Returns: Technological advances tend to feed on themselves, increasing the rate of further advance.

Ah, I was wondering when the good Saint Kurzweil would make an appearance.

Methinks this is rather more a hypothesis. Sure, if you put a ruler to a log-log plot a Star Trek timeline may appear (2018 - Sleeper ships are made obsolete) just as if you plot the rate of weeds expanding in an empty field one might project "weeds, everywhere!!" in a few years. Was Kurzweil looking at a law, or did he happen to graph during a rare and limited period of exceptional growth, weeds claiming a previously empty field?

> We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral – first, as more smart people around the world are recruited into the techno-capital machine

Others have been chewed on by that machine (and the machine is bleeding to death) and now instead spend their time, among other non-productive things, pointing out the good clothing tastes of would-be emperors.

Read around the smolnet, and one might find those who are perhaps less than amused with the machine. Why have they soured on it?

> We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think.

AI does have a history of grandiose claims, and subsequent winters. "The Lighthill Debate" is relevant here. Maybe this time will be different? Maybe there will not be the usual drawbacks and diminishing returns? Somehow? Besides the most excellent Lighthill video, consider also the during, and after quotes on the graph search algorithm in "Paradigms of AI Programming" by Peter Norvig.

> There are scores of common causes of death that can be fixed with AI, from car crashes to pandemics to wartime friendly fire.

And there are scores of common causes of living that can be fixed with AI, from killbots to designer pandemics. As for cars, why the childish obsession? Walkable cities have many benefits: less toxic tire dust, less noise pollution, etc.

> We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives.

And hurrying up AI risks regulation after some disaster costs lives—or, worse, monetary loss for the rich. In addition to the many bad things that humans can think to do with clever code. Granted, slowing AI down would probably hurt the profit expectations of… oh, right. The quiet part.

> Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth.

What, you cannot think of a single negative from, say, light pollution or excess energy consumption? Is it all ancient Zoroastrian binary thinking for you? Here's something for your continuing education:

> The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be.

Others feel that the planet was already way too overpopulated some time ago. More would only help the ongoing mass extinction event, among other such problems.

Quantity does have a quality of its own, as Joseph Stalin used to say. Yet, somehow, in your equation the quality can only be positive. This is not realistic.

> We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment.

And yet, for some reason, the Clean Air Act and other such regulations were passed. Why did your market not magically fix those externalities? Doubtless some who slave for the machine will want the regulations defanged, with all too predictable results.

> A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it.

False. The collapse of the Soviet Union was good for some parts of the natural environment.

Meanwhile one might find a superfund site or two in America, among other such not-so-nice places to live, though how much does a billionare sleep under the old Interstate? Probably not much. This may explain the blinkers over the noise and light and air pollution involved.

> “What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.

Sipping sugar water whilst boob tubing isn't what I'd reach for for an example of the Augmenting of the Human Intellect. Adult onset diabetes, lack of exercise… can you think of any other downsides of all this abundance?

> All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Same for the browser, the smartphone, the chatbot.

Opinions vary here. Others may take issue with the shoddy logic. What's the point of fluff like the browser, the smartphone, the chatbot if they can only come up with crap like this?

> Fuller: “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

More magical thinking that ignores drawbacks and diminishing returns. For example, Intel turned up the wattage on their CPUs until they couldn't squeeze any more from that stone. Other examples can doubtless be found.

> We believe change only happens on the margin – but a lot of change across a very large margin can lead to big outcomes.

"C-suite powerpoint sloganeering" is about the only meaning I can extract.

> We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology.

But don't neglect the study of logic and rhetoric meanwhile!

> We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train …

Totems and taboos are common in various societies. Uncritical regard may make one blind to the downsides of totems, and the benefits of taboos. Perhaps spend some time pondering the drawbacks of cars and moreover money, and then consider what benefits there might be from turning the lights off at night, or using planes less?

> Undertaking the Hero’s Journey … conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.

Beowulf encounters a dragon. There might be lessons to be had from that. Granted, the lessons might bring uncomfortable nuance to the techno-optimist, but such is life.

> We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today.

Then followed a long section with various punchy one-liners, oh here's some Greek, but nary a mention of the hubris and nemesis that were so important to Greek thought. Well, we all have our blind spots.

> Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there will be bias on all these points (and more!) especially around who to advertise what to, or even who to put into jail. Or is surveillance capitalism somehow not a thing?

"Trust via aligned incentives" is listed as good, but then "trust and safety" is part of a purported mass demoralization campaign—by who?—folks with space lasers? This apparent contradiction needs elaboration. Why is trust and safety a bad thing?

Ezra Klein in "The Chief Ideologist of the Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas" also brings up (and concludes with) trust:

> Take Andreessen’s naming of trust and safety teams as among his enemies. We have an example of that playing out in the real world right now. Musk purchased Twitter (in an acquisition that Andreessen Horowitz helped finance) and gutted its trust and safety teams. The result has been a profusion of chaos, disinformation and division on his platform.

How is the trust between Washington and Silicon Valley going? Especially given certain manifestos that may not show faith in the rule of law or for the peaceful transfer of power? I did see "revenge" mentioned somewhere as a virtue.

> Our enemy is … disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.

This is an apt description of an out-of-touch elite.

P.S. The reason for removing system(3) and execv(3) support from w3m, my main web browser, is that web browsers have a poor or in fact terrible security record, so making it extremely difficult for an attacker to find the execve(2) interface in the likely event of a security breach makes sense. This ethos, to remove features from software, is perhaps contrary to the beliefs held by some.

Techno Something