"They’re chimpanzees. They’re sapiens. This is what they do."
November 11, 2018 11:25 PM Subscribe
"The inventing minds of the Silicon Valley are just destroying their own society, but as long as you see them just as apes that's ok, because this is how naturally apes behave", Yuval Noah Harari promotes his new book at the NY times.
Controlled opposition, perhaps.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:23 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Apocryphon at 1:23 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
His recent TED Talk was called “Why fascism is so tempting — and how your data could power it.”
Well, that explains it.
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM on November 12, 2018 [9 favorites]
Well, that explains it.
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM on November 12, 2018 [9 favorites]
I tend to look at humans in general as just monkeys wearing pants. It helps keep me from getting too frustrated at the rampant greed, shortsightedness, and incompetence that is so readily apparent everywhere in society. Who put monkeys in charge of a high-pressure gas main? Who put monkeys in charge of the national economy? Monkeys did; they put themselves in charge. It explains a lot.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [89 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [89 favorites]
I tend to look at humans in general as just monkeys wearing pants
I'm quite fond of restless monkeys in tall hats.
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 AM on November 12, 2018
I'm quite fond of restless monkeys in tall hats.
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 AM on November 12, 2018
Is he providing simple fodder to engineers who want to mansplain humanity to themselves?
posted by pracowity at 4:19 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 4:19 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
To be fair, it's probably better for any such line of mansplaining to be based on misunderstanding apes than on misunderstanding lobsters.
posted by flabdablet at 4:39 AM on November 12, 2018 [19 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 4:39 AM on November 12, 2018 [19 favorites]
His work sounds fascinating. I can easily imagine that Silicon Valley techbros love it because all his words of caution make them sound "awesome." Writer Daniel Kibblesmith encapsulates this phenemon thusly:
Yoda: Fear leads to anger.
Batman: Right.
Yoda: Anger leads to hate.
Batman: Hell yeah.
Yoda: Hate leads to suffering.
Batman: Bro, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I am LOVING your energy, I am HYPED right now.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:59 AM on November 12, 2018 [82 favorites]
Yoda: Fear leads to anger.
Batman: Right.
Yoda: Anger leads to hate.
Batman: Hell yeah.
Yoda: Hate leads to suffering.
Batman: Bro, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I am LOVING your energy, I am HYPED right now.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:59 AM on November 12, 2018 [82 favorites]
MetaFilter: just monkeys wearing pants
posted by Foosnark at 5:19 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Foosnark at 5:19 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
“Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.”
I'm reminded of how Snow Crash was nominated for an award for its "libertarian themes."
posted by Foosnark at 5:25 AM on November 12, 2018 [15 favorites]
I'm reminded of how Snow Crash was nominated for an award for its "libertarian themes."
posted by Foosnark at 5:25 AM on November 12, 2018 [15 favorites]
Now it is becoming less clear why the ruling elite would not just kill the new useless class. “You’re totally expendable,” he told the audience.
Indeed. Gee, I wonder why the tech bros love this guy? Their unshatterable confidence that first, they are the ruling elite who will, i dunno, drone murder everyone else to keep their hands clean, and second, that no revolution will ever come, perhaps?
I strongly suspect that if ordinary people are faced with the options of "get quietly drone murdered by resource-hoarding tech bros" and "fling yourselves at their fortresses until you manage to kill some of them with sheer numbers even at the cost of your own life" most people are going to choose B. It may be possible to murder everyone at scale to protect your little domed AI paradise, but it won't be pleasant.
posted by Frowner at 5:27 AM on November 12, 2018 [20 favorites]
Indeed. Gee, I wonder why the tech bros love this guy? Their unshatterable confidence that first, they are the ruling elite who will, i dunno, drone murder everyone else to keep their hands clean, and second, that no revolution will ever come, perhaps?
I strongly suspect that if ordinary people are faced with the options of "get quietly drone murdered by resource-hoarding tech bros" and "fling yourselves at their fortresses until you manage to kill some of them with sheer numbers even at the cost of your own life" most people are going to choose B. It may be possible to murder everyone at scale to protect your little domed AI paradise, but it won't be pleasant.
posted by Frowner at 5:27 AM on November 12, 2018 [20 favorites]
Metafilter: just monkeys who might be wearing pants
posted by maxwelton at 5:29 AM on November 12, 2018 [22 favorites]
The only class that truly believes in class warfare is the ruling class.
posted by carter at 5:36 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by carter at 5:36 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
maxwelton: "MetaFilter: just monkeys wearing pants
Metafilter: just monkeys who might be wearing pants"
On the internet, nobody knows if you're wearing pants.
posted by chavenet at 6:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Metafilter: just monkeys who might be wearing pants"
On the internet, nobody knows if you're wearing pants.
posted by chavenet at 6:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
He told the audience that free will is an illusion, and that human rights are just a story we tell ourselves. ...Everyone in Silicon Valley is focused on building the future, Mr. Harari continued, while most of the world’s people are not even needed enough to be exploited. “Now you increasingly feel that there are all these elites that just don’t need me,” he said. “And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited.”
That last bit is spoken like a man who's lived a very comfortable life in the upper middle class. It's pseudo-witty claptrap that defends exploitation of workers around the world. I have to say, as someone who works in academia, this kind of half smart, TED-talky horseshit is exactly what people ought to think of when they think about out-of-touch ivory tower academics.
The first bit is no better. "Free will is an illusion!" is the kind of thing I want to hear if I'm looking for an excuse to set my conscience aside and ignore the consequences of the work I'm doing. The fact that this lecture was a double billing with Sam Harris gives you an idea of the take-home messages that the audience got.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 6:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [62 favorites]
That last bit is spoken like a man who's lived a very comfortable life in the upper middle class. It's pseudo-witty claptrap that defends exploitation of workers around the world. I have to say, as someone who works in academia, this kind of half smart, TED-talky horseshit is exactly what people ought to think of when they think about out-of-touch ivory tower academics.
The first bit is no better. "Free will is an illusion!" is the kind of thing I want to hear if I'm looking for an excuse to set my conscience aside and ignore the consequences of the work I'm doing. The fact that this lecture was a double billing with Sam Harris gives you an idea of the take-home messages that the audience got.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 6:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [62 favorites]
Metafilter: In space, no one can hear you wear pants.
Yes, I’m quite finished.
I shall see myself out.
posted by evilDoug at 6:35 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yes, I’m quite finished.
I shall see myself out.
posted by evilDoug at 6:35 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
It made him sad, he told me, to see people build things that destroy their own societies, but he works every day to maintain an academic distance and remind himself that humans are just animals.He is like the medieval fool who, although appreciated for his insightfulness and wisdom, is part of the cynical ruling class. Shit, you can probably create a powerful totalitarian state ideology based on this guy's ideas.
He said he had resigned himself to tech executives’ global reign, pointing out how much worse the politicians are.
Mr. Harari has written that the ruling class will vastly outlive the useless.
One ticket-holder walking in, an older man, told me it was brave and honest for Mr. Harari to use the term “useless class.”
In a region where self-optimization is paramount and meditation is a competitive sport, Mr. Harari’s devotion confers hero status.
He told the audience that free will is an illusion, and that human rights are just a story we tell ourselves. Political parties, he said, might not make sense anymore.
Now it is becoming less clear why the ruling elite would not just kill the new useless class. “You’re totally expendable,” he told the audience.
“If I was a superhuman, my superpower would be detachment,” Mr. Harari added. “O.K., so maybe humankind is going to disappear — O.K., let’s just observe.”
For fun, the couple watches TV. It is their primary hobby and topic of conversation, and Mr. Yahav said it was the only thing from which Mr. Harari is not detached.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:46 AM on November 12, 2018 [11 favorites]
Here we see one of them saying deliberately provocative things about fascism and Augustus Caesar. Don't worry though, it's perfectly normal behaviour for an ape with a book to promote.
posted by sfenders at 6:47 AM on November 12, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by sfenders at 6:47 AM on November 12, 2018 [9 favorites]
Oh, what a piece of hyped up bullshit. I worked in the valley for 20 years. The workforce is so wildly liberal that the few conservatives leak town hall meetings to Breitbart about how durn liberal it is. The only time people talk about California secession is after the minority elects yet another right wing president.
People at Google eally want to be sharing information and using ML to solve real world problems. Facebook people really think they’re connecting people. And soon on and so on. Most of them are trying to figure out “how do we do those things and turn off the shitty part of the internet.” Unfortunately they made it too easy for the stupid and evil to logon.
Yep, there is a small and vocal libertarian, fedora wearing, mildly autisitc group of engineers who are insufferable. They’re normally not put in charge of much, because you know they’ll abuse it. Otherwise it’s a place that’s trying to increase diversity, improve STEM for women and minorities, and keep the lights on. The unintended consequences of “Let’s give everyone a voice! Oh shit people are awful” is being grappled with daily.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:58 AM on November 12, 2018 [35 favorites]
People at Google eally want to be sharing information and using ML to solve real world problems. Facebook people really think they’re connecting people. And soon on and so on. Most of them are trying to figure out “how do we do those things and turn off the shitty part of the internet.” Unfortunately they made it too easy for the stupid and evil to logon.
Yep, there is a small and vocal libertarian, fedora wearing, mildly autisitc group of engineers who are insufferable. They’re normally not put in charge of much, because you know they’ll abuse it. Otherwise it’s a place that’s trying to increase diversity, improve STEM for women and minorities, and keep the lights on. The unintended consequences of “Let’s give everyone a voice! Oh shit people are awful” is being grappled with daily.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:58 AM on November 12, 2018 [35 favorites]
There's 6ish million years of evolution and cultural filters separating us from chimpanzees. But sure, make the point that humans are great apes. That is an important point and something people forget. Then how come we're not bonobos? We've been separated from them for exactly as long.
I mean, the other apes don't destroy their own societies. That's simply not true. I'm sure that's an extrapolation from the chimpanzee "war" in Gombe National Park, which was certainly exacerbated by habitat loss and increased population densities. And there's a lesson on there for humans, too. But the lesson is not "apes destroy their societies, so humans are basically fulfilling our Evolutionary Destiny."
My ex used to read me sections of Sapiens before bed because the way information from Primatology and paleoanthropology and ethnography was extrapolated and massaged to tell a smooth and compelling narrative made me splutter with anger and it made him laugh how indignant about misuse of anthropological research I was (which in retrospect says a lot about why that was a terrible relationship). There is so much massaging and smoothing in search of good story telling. He tells a great story. It's just that if you know the research you can see exactly how it's constructed and how thin or stretched his narrative fabric is.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:08 AM on November 12, 2018 [51 favorites]
I mean, the other apes don't destroy their own societies. That's simply not true. I'm sure that's an extrapolation from the chimpanzee "war" in Gombe National Park, which was certainly exacerbated by habitat loss and increased population densities. And there's a lesson on there for humans, too. But the lesson is not "apes destroy their societies, so humans are basically fulfilling our Evolutionary Destiny."
My ex used to read me sections of Sapiens before bed because the way information from Primatology and paleoanthropology and ethnography was extrapolated and massaged to tell a smooth and compelling narrative made me splutter with anger and it made him laugh how indignant about misuse of anthropological research I was (which in retrospect says a lot about why that was a terrible relationship). There is so much massaging and smoothing in search of good story telling. He tells a great story. It's just that if you know the research you can see exactly how it's constructed and how thin or stretched his narrative fabric is.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:08 AM on November 12, 2018 [51 favorites]
An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption - "In Silicon Valley's telling, however, 'disruption' became shorthand for something closer to techno-darwinism. By imposing the rules of nature on man-made markets, the theory justified almost any act of upheaval."
It is only now, a decade after the financial crisis, that the American public seems to appreciate that what we thought was disruption worked more like extraction—of our data, our attention, our time, our creativity, our content, our DNA, our homes, our cities, our relationships. The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings.posted by kliuless at 7:11 AM on November 12, 2018 [10 favorites]
They promised the open web, we got walled gardens. They promised individual liberty, then broke democracy—and now they’ve appointed themselves the right men to fix it.
I should've known ChuraChura would call me to task for primate stereotyping.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
He tells a great story. It's just that if you know the research you can see exactly how it's constructed and how thin or stretched his narrative fabric is.
Silicon Valley also defaults to using bizarro evolutionary psychology to justify all kinds of horrible and irrational behavior. Maybe another reason why he is so appealing to them?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Silicon Valley also defaults to using bizarro evolutionary psychology to justify all kinds of horrible and irrational behavior. Maybe another reason why he is so appealing to them?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
I know the article is super-old, but if we're going to talk about Silicon Valley's "inventing minds" being mostly monkeys ruining civilization for the rest of us (and to be clear we're talking male Silicon Valley monkeys), there is a solution.
posted by tzikeh at 7:35 AM on November 12, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by tzikeh at 7:35 AM on November 12, 2018 [5 favorites]
How can you be so unreflective as to think that human rights is "just a story" but that the notion of the inevitable superiority of "tech executives" is what, something real?
posted by thelonius at 7:45 AM on November 12, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 7:45 AM on November 12, 2018 [7 favorites]
I tend to look at humans in general as just monkeys wearing pants.
Given enough time, we did produce the complete works of Shakespeare
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on November 12, 2018 [54 favorites]
Given enough time, we did produce the complete works of Shakespeare
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on November 12, 2018 [54 favorites]
Then how come we're not bonobos?
Surely brononos.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:00 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
Surely brononos.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:00 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
Indeed. Gee, I wonder why the tech bros love this guy? Their unshatterable confidence that first, they are the ruling elite who will, i dunno, drone murder everyone else to keep their hands clean, and second, that no revolution will ever come, perhaps?
I give him points for being honest and upfront at least. All the others doomer guys just dance around the edges that some large percent of humanity is going to be needlessly (but no-one will be too sad to toil) wiped out though THE EVENT. He says "THE EVENT is going to be us."
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:01 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
I give him points for being honest and upfront at least. All the others doomer guys just dance around the edges that some large percent of humanity is going to be needlessly (but no-one will be too sad to toil) wiped out though THE EVENT. He says "THE EVENT is going to be us."
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:01 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: just monkeys wearing pants
It all comes back to monkeys.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:10 AM on November 12, 2018
It all comes back to monkeys.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:10 AM on November 12, 2018
If I told you there was a vegan philosopher that wrote books, gave TED talks, used his mother-in-law as his accountant, and every year he fucked off for two months to an ashram, you wouldn’t take him seriously.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:11 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:11 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Thinking of the office (and the classroom and the bar) as a large monkey cage has served me well. I like where my career has taken me.
I've mostly played the role of the little ones that wait for the big alphas to be distracted by their big exhausting displays to go find aome success on the side.
I dont think it is right, it is just useful.
Regarding silicon valley... One of my gambits was to ask my colleagues how much they thought the ticket to be on the good side of automation/the apocalypse/the singularity would cost.
From most answers I could get a good idea of where they saw themselves in 5 to 10 years. Something like 'of course L7 (staff or principal engineer) will be saved' or 'about a million bucks'.
I would argue that a million bucks maybe will buy you a position as a slave in some billionaire's apocalypse bunker. If you are attractive.
Just in the US there are over 5k households worth over a hundred million. I think this would be the minimum.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:14 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
I've mostly played the role of the little ones that wait for the big alphas to be distracted by their big exhausting displays to go find aome success on the side.
I dont think it is right, it is just useful.
Regarding silicon valley... One of my gambits was to ask my colleagues how much they thought the ticket to be on the good side of automation/the apocalypse/the singularity would cost.
From most answers I could get a good idea of where they saw themselves in 5 to 10 years. Something like 'of course L7 (staff or principal engineer) will be saved' or 'about a million bucks'.
I would argue that a million bucks maybe will buy you a position as a slave in some billionaire's apocalypse bunker. If you are attractive.
Just in the US there are over 5k households worth over a hundred million. I think this would be the minimum.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:14 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Just in the US there are over 5k households worth over a hundred million. I think this would be the minimum.
It's a problem of numbers and vast space. At 5k, that's 100 rulers per state. Just not enough. Are there any states with only 100 cities?
A million bucks will be fine. That's just a bit less than 20% of the US households.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:24 AM on November 12, 2018
It's a problem of numbers and vast space. At 5k, that's 100 rulers per state. Just not enough. Are there any states with only 100 cities?
A million bucks will be fine. That's just a bit less than 20% of the US households.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:24 AM on November 12, 2018
But of course, money is a signifier in our world, not the dreadful future post THE EVENT. I would deem current status to be mostly meaningless. But it helps not to think about THE EVENT too much - it falls apart on close inspection.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2018
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2018
Right - what are the overlords planning on doing with that money, after the Singularity?
posted by thelonius at 8:30 AM on November 12, 2018
posted by thelonius at 8:30 AM on November 12, 2018
People at Google really want to be sharing information and using ML to solve real world problems. Facebook people really think they’re connecting people.
That's what some may choose to believe but what Google and Facebook are really about, job one, is making as much money as possible any way they can.
posted by JackFlash at 8:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
That's what some may choose to believe but what Google and Facebook are really about, job one, is making as much money as possible any way they can.
posted by JackFlash at 8:34 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
.... “And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited.”That last bit is spoken like a man who's lived a very comfortable life in the upper middle class. It's pseudo-witty claptrap that defends exploitation of workers around the world. I have to say, as someone who works in academia, this kind of half smart, TED-talky horseshit is exactly what people ought to think of when they think about out-of-touch ivory tower academics.
I'm not so sure. If you're exploited, you at least have a modicum of power because you're needed in some way. If you're irrelevant, you don't even have that: you're basically an ant.
Ants get exterminated when they become a nuisance. They get their homes destroyed without a thought because someone more powerful wants to put something there. So, if most of humanity becomes "irrelevant" to the powerful, you might have some Musk-like "visionary" order his robot army to pave over the farmland of the Midwest with solar panels to generate fuel for his space-empire's rockets. Fifty million "irrelevant" people will starve because they won't be able to grow food, and he'll shed a tear thinking about the glory of space exploration.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 8:39 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
"A separatist streak runs through the place: Venture capitalists periodically call for California to secede or shatter, or for the creation of corporate nation-states."
Yikes, I do not ever want to personally know the kind of psycho who would suggest a corporate nation-state as a real thing they want to happen. One major point of a nation and government is to protect us FROM corporations... letting the corporation run the nation is like letting active murderers run the jail.
“In the middle of the night,” Mr. Yahav said, “when there is a mosquito, he will catch him and take him out.”
On the other hand, while I like a lot of what he had to say, I don't want to meet someone who would suffer a mosquito to live. Literally the only species in the universe worse than humans.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Yikes, I do not ever want to personally know the kind of psycho who would suggest a corporate nation-state as a real thing they want to happen. One major point of a nation and government is to protect us FROM corporations... letting the corporation run the nation is like letting active murderers run the jail.
“In the middle of the night,” Mr. Yahav said, “when there is a mosquito, he will catch him and take him out.”
On the other hand, while I like a lot of what he had to say, I don't want to meet someone who would suffer a mosquito to live. Literally the only species in the universe worse than humans.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think that it's a mistake to presume the irrelevant will suffer politely in the event of some grand catastrophe. The people who are currently gently exploited, but are wondering whether they would be irrelevant in some nightmare future scenario, are generally polite and well-educated. These people may be taken advantage of in some way, but they are generally comfortable. It's a spectrum of exploitation. Now, the people who are currently brutally exploited, people who have been to prison or know a lot of people who have been, people whose inhibitions only exist out of fear, those people would literally eat Elon Musk in the event of some tech-driven catastrophe. The techbros would die. You and I would die, almost certainly. You can't build more drones than there are people. An empire based on apps and bullshit will fall in the face of a threat mounted by hungry people with baseball bats. The singularity would be the worst thing to ever happen to pampered folks whose lives are built around the internet. Any desire for THE EVENT, whatever it is, has to be founded in nihilism or hubris. All of these people would die first.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
Where's the Silicon Valley? Is that near the Fresno?
posted by humboldt32 at 9:03 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by humboldt32 at 9:03 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Faugh, this FPP (not y'all and not the OP) makes me splutter with rage
posted by infini at 9:03 AM on November 12, 2018
posted by infini at 9:03 AM on November 12, 2018
But of course, money is a signifier in our world, not the dreadful future post THE EVENT. I would deem current status to be mostly meaningless.
Apparently this prospect does in fact keep them up at night.
posted by Iridic at 9:08 AM on November 12, 2018 [18 favorites]
Apparently this prospect does in fact keep them up at night.
[T]he CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”This would seem to confirm that the ultra-rich are in some sense aware of the arbitrary and implicitly violent nature of their power. They have no faith that their intelligence, technical abilities, management skills, leadership qualities, or relationships will see them through an actual crisis. Buying shit and threatening people—that's all they know, all they can believe in.
[...]
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
posted by Iridic at 9:08 AM on November 12, 2018 [18 favorites]
Are there any states with only 100 cities?
Vermont has nine!
posted by Earthtopus at 9:14 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Vermont has nine!
posted by Earthtopus at 9:14 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's funny to me that people whose experience of life seems so shallow are this committed to holding on to life against all odds. I almost died two years ago, when undiagnosed cancer led to a massive infection, and I spent days in intensive care. I certainly have no desire to die. But I don't have a fantastic dread of death. I felt very peaceful and relaxed; it was fine. Trying to fuck Mars with a flying car seems laughable and pathetic to me -- you're gonna DIE, brah!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:21 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:21 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
He followed up with “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” which outlined his vision of what comes after human evolution. In it, he describes Dataism, a new faith based around the power of algorithms. Mr. Harari’s future is one in which big data is worshiped, artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and some humans develop Godlike abilities.This tells me not to take seriously anything he says.
But RE: the fact that humans are just animals, whatever else they are, it's been an odd kind of comfort at times when evil seems triumphant (which has happened a few times lately)... to stop and think of us as a community of animals stuck in bad patterns in a harmful environment. Whatever awful behavior happens you have to have some kind of high level compassion because *as animals* we can't help being what we are and acting the way we do. We can't interact with each other "as animals" because we are also humans and have to deal with each other on a human level, where there is responsibility and free will and good and evil. But it's helpful at times to step outside that and take a different perspective, if only as a temporary refuge.
posted by edheil at 9:21 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm really glad I'm not one of these people. Sure, I'm going to die in the coming climate apocalypse but at least I'll die with my humanity intact.
posted by coffeeand at 9:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by coffeeand at 9:22 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Now, the people who are currently brutally exploited, people who have been to prison or know a lot of people who have been, people whose inhibitions only exist out of fear, those people would literally eat Elon Musk in the event of some tech-driven catastrophe.
Kittensforbreakfast? More like techbrosforbreakfast, amirite?
It is true that they don't understand THE EVENT-type stuff. Like, in THE EVENT, it's not just going to be, like, a plague and riots and therefore you shut yourself in your compound; there's going to be ten million things you didn't think about and an iterating, out of control disaster. And post-event, it's not just going to be "everything as usual except without those pesky working class people, now we will live forever in utopia".
What I find most objectionable about these people is that they are so second rate - the type of people who really think that the work of, eg, figuring out how to make drone deliveries for Amazon is important and vital and makes them special, the type of people whose intellectual toolbox is so empty that they can be fooled by a tenth-rate bloviator like Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk. People who look around this pointless, alienated hellscape that they've built and think, "only what I find 'relevant' in my stymied, second-rate mind deserves to exist".
posted by Frowner at 9:23 AM on November 12, 2018 [38 favorites]
Kittensforbreakfast? More like techbrosforbreakfast, amirite?
It is true that they don't understand THE EVENT-type stuff. Like, in THE EVENT, it's not just going to be, like, a plague and riots and therefore you shut yourself in your compound; there's going to be ten million things you didn't think about and an iterating, out of control disaster. And post-event, it's not just going to be "everything as usual except without those pesky working class people, now we will live forever in utopia".
What I find most objectionable about these people is that they are so second rate - the type of people who really think that the work of, eg, figuring out how to make drone deliveries for Amazon is important and vital and makes them special, the type of people whose intellectual toolbox is so empty that they can be fooled by a tenth-rate bloviator like Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk. People who look around this pointless, alienated hellscape that they've built and think, "only what I find 'relevant' in my stymied, second-rate mind deserves to exist".
posted by Frowner at 9:23 AM on November 12, 2018 [38 favorites]
I feel like I read a different article than everyone else, or else there’s some key context I’m missing. I understood that Harari is predicting a number of awful things he’d rather not see happen, and is therefore surprised when the silicon-valley-types he’s criticizing are very into his work.
Meanwhile everyone else in this thread seems to be attacking Harari for supporting the very things he’s criticizing in his book?
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 9:33 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
Meanwhile everyone else in this thread seems to be attacking Harari for supporting the very things he’s criticizing in his book?
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 9:33 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
To be clear, I’m not coming down on everyone/anyone here. I’m genuinely curious how my impression is so different from everyone else’s... if there’s something in the article or in his other work that casts a different light on all of this!
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 9:36 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 9:36 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
People are suggesting that the reason they like his work is that the way he approaches it isn't actually terribly threatening to them.
posted by atoxyl at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
I don't think most people in the thread are criticizing Harari so much as the people he describes.
Although if Harari can be criticized, Foci for Analysis said it really well: He is like the medieval fool who, although appreciated for his insightfulness and wisdom, is part of the cynical ruling class.
posted by coffeeand at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Although if Harari can be criticized, Foci for Analysis said it really well: He is like the medieval fool who, although appreciated for his insightfulness and wisdom, is part of the cynical ruling class.
posted by coffeeand at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Buying shit and threatening people—that's all they know, all they can believe in.
If it were a corporation, then this would be corporate culture. Look at the CEO firing people all around the world.
posted by infini at 9:51 AM on November 12, 2018
If it were a corporation, then this would be corporate culture. Look at the CEO firing people all around the world.
posted by infini at 9:51 AM on November 12, 2018
I just find his starting points wrong in a particularly stupid and unhelpful way. Like accepting that people who are not employable by the machine are "irrelevant". What does that mean? That the limit horizon of meaning is techno-capitalism? Is it even true on its face or is the existence of an "irrelevant" class basically just a reserve labor army? Is this just a new form of the "surplus women" and "useless eaters" narratives of the past? Why do the rich get to be the markers of "relevance"? Is it just because saying "these people have the power to obliterate people they don't value" is too political?
The frame he uses grants way the fuck too much ground to capitalism and tech bros. He does their work for them because he thinks they actually matter in some sense rather than just being this year's iteration of Moloch.
posted by Frowner at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [23 favorites]
The frame he uses grants way the fuck too much ground to capitalism and tech bros. He does their work for them because he thinks they actually matter in some sense rather than just being this year's iteration of Moloch.
posted by Frowner at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2018 [23 favorites]
I mean, if you really do believe that we are one notch away from the "useful" (and that's another thing - why is a techbro more useful than anyone else? What does that mean? Why is "I make capitalism worse and wreck the planet faster" some marker of merit?) killing the "irrelevant", surely you, as a moral person, should be organizing the "irrelevant" against this looming meta-genocide, not selling a bunch of books to techbros and collecting speaker fees?
posted by Frowner at 10:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 10:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
Helpful responses all :)
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 10:12 AM on November 12, 2018
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 10:12 AM on November 12, 2018
And "godlike" powers - what does that mean? I think there's a lot of vague language used by this type of person because non-vague language is too frankly moral. "Godlike powers" clearly means "rich people will be able to kill poor people, they will live far longer than poor people and they will make all the decisions". That is, an intensification of the current state of affairs, and one that the average morally-centered person finds repulsive. By using allusive and vague language, you can pretend that this is somehow inevitable, or evolution, or mysticism rather than the same old evil, exploitative capitalism. You can flatter your audience by calling them proto-gods instead of insulting them by calling them greedy monsters.
This is precisely what I mean by "second rate" - when people do not have enough historical understanding or philosophical background either to set these ideas against their actual background or to question the terms being used, and when people unquestioningly believe that they are better and smarter than others by virtual of a particularly parochial kind of training, they fall for anything.
When someone starts talking about vast sweeps of history and godlike powers and vast populations as forests to be cleared, etc, etc, that's the time to keep your hand on your wallet and a close eye on the rest of the audience, because you're in among crooks, fools and villains.
posted by Frowner at 10:20 AM on November 12, 2018 [27 favorites]
This is precisely what I mean by "second rate" - when people do not have enough historical understanding or philosophical background either to set these ideas against their actual background or to question the terms being used, and when people unquestioningly believe that they are better and smarter than others by virtual of a particularly parochial kind of training, they fall for anything.
When someone starts talking about vast sweeps of history and godlike powers and vast populations as forests to be cleared, etc, etc, that's the time to keep your hand on your wallet and a close eye on the rest of the audience, because you're in among crooks, fools and villains.
posted by Frowner at 10:20 AM on November 12, 2018 [27 favorites]
The ruling class likes this guy because his framing, with the “ruling class” on one side and the “useless class” on the other, nicely obfuscates reality. If we could get out from under the madness of the self-appointed ruling class, we would come to recognize that treating a human as a means to an end — as a thing with a use — is itself a crime against humanity.
With this in mind, we see that the class identified as “ruling” is itself worse than useless; it is parasitical, and must be destroyed.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
With this in mind, we see that the class identified as “ruling” is itself worse than useless; it is parasitical, and must be destroyed.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:09 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]
“We are not big believers in falling in love,” Mr. Harari said. “It was more a rational choice.”Cool story, bro. Haven't I commented before, here, on the tendency of techbros and the like to chalk their social incompetence up to a surplus of reason? (Spoiler: it's not that.)
The first half of this article makes it sound as if he has some interesting ideas that we might like to hear more about. It shows him to be a little baffled about the attention he's getting. The second half makes him sound like exactly the sort of Silicon Valley douche that Silicon Valley douches embrace. There's very little actual content here, though.
But, I mean, if Grover Norquist shows up at your desert party or the Soldiers of Odin show up at your political do, it's not them you should be looking at, it's yourself. Why are they attracted to you? What are they getting from you that they used to get from Ayn Rand?
I'm not so sure. If you're exploited, you at least have a modicum of power because you're needed in some way. If you're irrelevant, you don't even have that: you're basically an ant.An apt metaphor I think, because if we exterminated the useless, lowly ant, we'd very quickly discover how critical they are to our survival.
posted by klanawa at 11:17 AM on November 12, 2018 [7 favorites]
[T]he CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
I'm reminded of a character in Max Brooks' "World War Z", T. Sean Collins, played in the audio book by Henry Rollins
I'm reminded of a character in Max Brooks' "World War Z", T. Sean Collins, played in the audio book by Henry Rollins
Recently, I sat down with Mr. T. Sean Collins in a bar in Barbados regarding his work in the Zombie War. Collins is a war vet and considers himself to be a mercenary more than anything else. He was hired by a very rich man who wanted him to do private security (from zombies) for different celebrities, whether they are musicians, athletes, or movie or television stars. He was situated with these celebrities and the man that hired him had a house right by the beach. The man had done his homework and set up an impenetrable fortress. The thing about this fortress was that the owner had set up live web cam feeds in every room of the house. These feeds would broadcast over a news network so people could see them sitting pretty. One day, they notice that some of their motion sensors tripped a few miles away and everyone went to their post to defend. It turns out that instead of hundreds of zombies, there are hundreds of people who weren't infected. They begin to get closer he tells me and they start shooting at each other, however, he does not fire a shot. He tells me he didn't do that because he was hired to protect them from zombies, not from people. He told me he took off on the beach and never saw them again. He drinks from his rum and asks the waiter to bring him another one. Mr. Collins was probably one of my favorite interviews. I wish we would have been able to talk about what happened after he left the island, but unfortunately we did notposted by mikelieman at 11:49 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
Now it is becoming less clear why the ruling elite would not just kill the new useless class. “You’re totally expendable,” he told the audience.
This is silly. You don't need to kill anyone, you just let them age out of the workplace and retire (with a social safety net sufficient to allow this). The problem will be if technological change outpaces our ability to train the next generation coming to replace them. I haven't seen any evidence that this is a bigger problem than it was during the Industrial Revolution.
Yes, the low skill jobs are going away. Good. Low skill jobs are terrible. They are getting replaced with high skill jobs. Also good. They are getting replaced with fewer high skill jobs. That's a problem, potentially, but is that a problem forever? Remember that half the world's population is at below replacement fertility. That's a demographic trend going to get worse, not better as the world further industrializes. In Bangladesh women's Total Fertility Rate is currently 2.44 children, as family planning and women's rights increase, those trends will accelerate.
There's going to be fewer jobs, but also fewer people.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:56 AM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is silly. You don't need to kill anyone, you just let them age out of the workplace and retire (with a social safety net sufficient to allow this). The problem will be if technological change outpaces our ability to train the next generation coming to replace them. I haven't seen any evidence that this is a bigger problem than it was during the Industrial Revolution.
Yes, the low skill jobs are going away. Good. Low skill jobs are terrible. They are getting replaced with high skill jobs. Also good. They are getting replaced with fewer high skill jobs. That's a problem, potentially, but is that a problem forever? Remember that half the world's population is at below replacement fertility. That's a demographic trend going to get worse, not better as the world further industrializes. In Bangladesh women's Total Fertility Rate is currently 2.44 children, as family planning and women's rights increase, those trends will accelerate.
There's going to be fewer jobs, but also fewer people.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:56 AM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
mildly autisitc group of engineers who are insufferabl
Not cool. Think a bit more carefully about what you're saying and how you say it.
More broadly I really really don't get the fuss about this guy. I read sapiens when everyone was taking about it, it's a stupid book. He takes takes a few tiny nuggets of interesting anthro/archaeological research and then makes these colossal jumps and assumptions to build this super flimsy thesis which is not backed up by evidence, at all.
Like i'd read something interesting, only to have him proclaim "and early humans did this because Blah" and its like, what? We have no idea why they did this thing, the fossil record shows no such thing at all! The whole book is like this and he never qualifies, caveats, or let's a sliver of ambiguity in. Spends the whole time talking like his very fucking out there ideas are Facts.
It's basically Just-so Stories for people that like evo psych, simple explanation and tidy narratives. No wonder it's a huge hit with the corporate world.
posted by smoke at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2018 [19 favorites]
Not cool. Think a bit more carefully about what you're saying and how you say it.
More broadly I really really don't get the fuss about this guy. I read sapiens when everyone was taking about it, it's a stupid book. He takes takes a few tiny nuggets of interesting anthro/archaeological research and then makes these colossal jumps and assumptions to build this super flimsy thesis which is not backed up by evidence, at all.
Like i'd read something interesting, only to have him proclaim "and early humans did this because Blah" and its like, what? We have no idea why they did this thing, the fossil record shows no such thing at all! The whole book is like this and he never qualifies, caveats, or let's a sliver of ambiguity in. Spends the whole time talking like his very fucking out there ideas are Facts.
It's basically Just-so Stories for people that like evo psych, simple explanation and tidy narratives. No wonder it's a huge hit with the corporate world.
posted by smoke at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2018 [19 favorites]
There's going to be fewer jobs, but also fewer people.
This seems like an inverted lump of labour fallacy. Fewer people don't just mean less people to do jobs, they also mean fewer jobs. A declining population isn't a solution to underemployment. But luckily socialism is!
posted by howfar at 12:12 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
This seems like an inverted lump of labour fallacy. Fewer people don't just mean less people to do jobs, they also mean fewer jobs. A declining population isn't a solution to underemployment. But luckily socialism is!
posted by howfar at 12:12 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Yeah, it comes back to what constitutes "value." If a person is only valuable if they're carrying out a task that makes some overboss rich, then you can't have more valuable people than you have jobs. But this is a pretty narrow-minded concept of what makes a human being valuable. The problem is our point of view.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:33 PM on November 12, 2018
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:33 PM on November 12, 2018
Having not read this guy's books, what does everyone think these new useless people will do? By definition, where there is more than one person, there is an economy. Also by definition, people do not do nothing. If this overclass succeeds in obviating the need for labour in its own economy (which is impossible anyway) and entirely separates itself economically from the "useless", an economy will still exist among the useless. There will still be work and production.
Unless the overclass decides to violently preclude access to the space and resources needed by this economy, in which case revolution and/or extermination are kind of the inevitable result.
posted by klanawa at 12:56 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Unless the overclass decides to violently preclude access to the space and resources needed by this economy, in which case revolution and/or extermination are kind of the inevitable result.
Remember that half the world's population is at below replacement fertility.But why do you think that is? And why would that phenomenon persist in the face of the kinds of radical changes we're talking about?
posted by klanawa at 12:56 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
But why do you think that is?
The linked piece spends a little time discussing why *they* think it is. It's a much-discussed question, around the world. There is a tendency to want to come up with explanations that could apply to chimpanzees, to discount the possibility that any more-sophisticated abstract reasoning going on in primate brains could play a direct role. There's a strong correlation with women's education, they say. I like to think that one specific thing about which being educated might help reduce birth rates is the fact that holy fuck are you kidding me there are way to many people already on this goddamn planet maybe you should not make too many more.
posted by sfenders at 1:15 PM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
The linked piece spends a little time discussing why *they* think it is. It's a much-discussed question, around the world. There is a tendency to want to come up with explanations that could apply to chimpanzees, to discount the possibility that any more-sophisticated abstract reasoning going on in primate brains could play a direct role. There's a strong correlation with women's education, they say. I like to think that one specific thing about which being educated might help reduce birth rates is the fact that holy fuck are you kidding me there are way to many people already on this goddamn planet maybe you should not make too many more.
posted by sfenders at 1:15 PM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
I suspect many fans of Sapiens never read Cartoon History of the Universe. The latter is far more entertaining, wise, and nuanced.
Home Deus was very disappointing. It retreads plenty of stuff science fiction writers and we in the futurist community have been talking about for a while.
I haven't gotten to the new book. The linked article does not encourage me.
posted by doctornemo at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2018
Home Deus was very disappointing. It retreads plenty of stuff science fiction writers and we in the futurist community have been talking about for a while.
I haven't gotten to the new book. The linked article does not encourage me.
posted by doctornemo at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2018
The linked piece spends a little time discussing why *they* think it is.
Yeah, I was mostly asking rhetorically. In the sense of, "why do you think the trend would continue if conditions changed completely?" I realize that it's a well-studied phenomenon.
posted by klanawa at 1:42 PM on November 12, 2018
Yeah, I was mostly asking rhetorically. In the sense of, "why do you think the trend would continue if conditions changed completely?" I realize that it's a well-studied phenomenon.
posted by klanawa at 1:42 PM on November 12, 2018
There is a tendency to want to come up with explanations that could apply to chimpanzees, to discount the possibility that any more-sophisticated abstract reasoning going on in primate brains could play a direct role.
Because if it's not innate from The Time Before Intellect, that means it can be taught, and if it can be taught it will have an ethical framework, and if there's an ethics about it, why are technologists/crats a) making harmful choices; and b) not teaching everybody about it? Because the people who created all of this are also in charge of the Explanation Factory. Assigning "nature" vs "nurture" to things has follow-on effects and probably plays a big role in shaping the fundamental discourse.
There could very well be a global social reckoning in the future for white men, especially if the true extent of the project over time is articulated with focus (e.g. Truth & Reconciliation). Might make the Hutus & the Tutsis look tame by comparison.
posted by rhizome at 2:32 PM on November 12, 2018 [7 favorites]
Because if it's not innate from The Time Before Intellect, that means it can be taught, and if it can be taught it will have an ethical framework, and if there's an ethics about it, why are technologists/crats a) making harmful choices; and b) not teaching everybody about it? Because the people who created all of this are also in charge of the Explanation Factory. Assigning "nature" vs "nurture" to things has follow-on effects and probably plays a big role in shaping the fundamental discourse.
There could very well be a global social reckoning in the future for white men, especially if the true extent of the project over time is articulated with focus (e.g. Truth & Reconciliation). Might make the Hutus & the Tutsis look tame by comparison.
posted by rhizome at 2:32 PM on November 12, 2018 [7 favorites]
Okay, so that article pissed me off.
I find status-quo futurists, like Harari, to be incredibly tedious and dishonest. Tech dudebros like him because he's selling the same shit that they are, just packaged differently.
IMO, when you are one of the privileged elites you have a responsibility to do more than tut-tut about dire consequences using language guaranteed to (continue to) get you private invites and fat checks from the likes of X and Alphabet. You have a responsibility to bend that gigantic intellect towards honestly critiquing and directly addressing the harms of run-amok capitalism and antisocial, antidemocratic techism and dataism. Not just reinforcing the status quo with smarmy techno-darwinism, agreeing that, yes, all those people who are useless to the machine are doomed, oh well, sucks to be them, guess society will have to deal with that One Day.
He says: “Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.” What the fuck, no. This is yet more pernicious both-sides bullshit. Any so-called utopia that involves mass oppression and mass human suffering and death is not a pesky little matter of a difference in opinion. It’s not damned philosophical thought experiment: it is wrong.
He said he had resigned himself to tech executives’ global reign, pointing out how much worse the politicians are...In the lottery of human leaders, you could get far worse.”
In his TED talk he says: Well, in the end, there isn't such a big difference between the corporations and the governments, because, as I said, the questions is: Who controls the data? This is the real government. If you call it a corporation or a government -- if it's a corporation and it really controls the data, this is our real government. So the difference is more apparent than real.
So. Democratically elected representatives are worse than the greedy, corrupt philosopher kings who have gamed the system, stolen our data, accumulated the capital, and it’s okay because a few of them are not that bad. Again, what the fuck, NO. There is a HUGE difference.
I see red when think of the activists who put their literal lives on the line to critique and to change the system, who create workable solutions, but who can’t even get @jack to delete the overt death threats against them, let alone get an invite to speak to the so-called exalted tech thought leaders at X.
(Full disclosure: I have not read his books, only this article, his Wikipedia page, and the transcript to his TED talk. Maybe he rigorously critiques the system and poses remedies elsewhere.)
posted by skye.dancer at 2:48 PM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
I find status-quo futurists, like Harari, to be incredibly tedious and dishonest. Tech dudebros like him because he's selling the same shit that they are, just packaged differently.
IMO, when you are one of the privileged elites you have a responsibility to do more than tut-tut about dire consequences using language guaranteed to (continue to) get you private invites and fat checks from the likes of X and Alphabet. You have a responsibility to bend that gigantic intellect towards honestly critiquing and directly addressing the harms of run-amok capitalism and antisocial, antidemocratic techism and dataism. Not just reinforcing the status quo with smarmy techno-darwinism, agreeing that, yes, all those people who are useless to the machine are doomed, oh well, sucks to be them, guess society will have to deal with that One Day.
He says: “Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.” What the fuck, no. This is yet more pernicious both-sides bullshit. Any so-called utopia that involves mass oppression and mass human suffering and death is not a pesky little matter of a difference in opinion. It’s not damned philosophical thought experiment: it is wrong.
He said he had resigned himself to tech executives’ global reign, pointing out how much worse the politicians are...In the lottery of human leaders, you could get far worse.”
In his TED talk he says: Well, in the end, there isn't such a big difference between the corporations and the governments, because, as I said, the questions is: Who controls the data? This is the real government. If you call it a corporation or a government -- if it's a corporation and it really controls the data, this is our real government. So the difference is more apparent than real.
So. Democratically elected representatives are worse than the greedy, corrupt philosopher kings who have gamed the system, stolen our data, accumulated the capital, and it’s okay because a few of them are not that bad. Again, what the fuck, NO. There is a HUGE difference.
I see red when think of the activists who put their literal lives on the line to critique and to change the system, who create workable solutions, but who can’t even get @jack to delete the overt death threats against them, let alone get an invite to speak to the so-called exalted tech thought leaders at X.
(Full disclosure: I have not read his books, only this article, his Wikipedia page, and the transcript to his TED talk. Maybe he rigorously critiques the system and poses remedies elsewhere.)
posted by skye.dancer at 2:48 PM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]
Full disclosure: I have not read his books, only this article, his Wikipedia page, and the transcript to his TED talk. Maybe he rigorously critiques the system and poses remedies elsewhere.
Drive by commenting without adequately reading up on the subject is something we ought to discourage on MetaFilter, but it seems like a completely fair and reasonable when we’re talking about peddlers of crappy pop sci books who only researched as far as was convenient to back up their own ideas
posted by chappell, ambrose at 3:23 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
Drive by commenting without adequately reading up on the subject is something we ought to discourage on MetaFilter, but it seems like a completely fair and reasonable when we’re talking about peddlers of crappy pop sci books who only researched as far as was convenient to back up their own ideas
posted by chappell, ambrose at 3:23 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]
the type of people whose intellectual toolbox is so empty that they can be fooled by a tenth-rate bloviator like Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk
Hey! That's not fair.
Musk is at the very least an eighth-rate bloviator.
posted by flabdablet at 5:54 PM on November 12, 2018
Hey! That's not fair.
Musk is at the very least an eighth-rate bloviator.
posted by flabdablet at 5:54 PM on November 12, 2018
I mean, if you really do believe that we are one notch away from the "useful" (and that's another thing - why is a techbro more useful than anyone else? What does that mean?
Harrari means needed in the sense that a company needs to pay them money to do work. His point is that in the future there will be a large group of people there won't be jobs for, and society needs to plan for that. Also, that past methods for gaining power and rights, such as unionizing and striking, won't be available to this new class. This also has implications for the 3rd world. If a lot of manufacturing truly becomes automated, we could have a global humanitarian crisis in the works, which means re-thinking capitalism's primacy.
Harrari is not all that, but some of his observations make for good food for thought, in my opinion. Most of them are "no duh" sorts of observations, but important nevertheless. Some of them, such as that we're likely to trust a much broader range of decisions to algorithms in the future, are surprising and insightful, at least to me. I find myself wondering why I hadn't thought about them before. Stunningly obvious in retrospect can be quite hard to achieve in reality.
posted by xammerboy at 7:42 PM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
Harrari means needed in the sense that a company needs to pay them money to do work. His point is that in the future there will be a large group of people there won't be jobs for, and society needs to plan for that. Also, that past methods for gaining power and rights, such as unionizing and striking, won't be available to this new class. This also has implications for the 3rd world. If a lot of manufacturing truly becomes automated, we could have a global humanitarian crisis in the works, which means re-thinking capitalism's primacy.
Harrari is not all that, but some of his observations make for good food for thought, in my opinion. Most of them are "no duh" sorts of observations, but important nevertheless. Some of them, such as that we're likely to trust a much broader range of decisions to algorithms in the future, are surprising and insightful, at least to me. I find myself wondering why I hadn't thought about them before. Stunningly obvious in retrospect can be quite hard to achieve in reality.
posted by xammerboy at 7:42 PM on November 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
> Who put monkeys in charge of a high-pressure gas main? Who put monkeys in charge of the national economy? Monkeys did; they put themselves in charge
Dance monkeys, dance!
posted by CheapB at 8:33 PM on November 12, 2018
Dance monkeys, dance!
posted by CheapB at 8:33 PM on November 12, 2018
He is a vegan because he says the dairy industry breaks the bond between mothers and calf cows. That's all I need to know.
posted by polymodus at 9:23 PM on November 12, 2018
posted by polymodus at 9:23 PM on November 12, 2018
The world is full of affluent men who wring their hands about human nature and how awful and violent it is, and how an actually just and democratic society is sadly impossible so we'd better try to flatter the inevitable Very Leet Men Rulers into being nice. You never go broke telling people, "It's very sad that you have to rule the world, and your real moral choice is to rule as a benevolent dictator or a brutal tyrant; that's very sad, and only a noble person truly in touch with Important Matters would possibly be a benevolent dictator". Back when the fascists were first rising, IIRC, there was a lot of nonsense also talked about ubermenschen and so on, and a lot of nonsense also talked about the inevitability of managerial communist states. Slightly different nonsense, but in retrospect we can see that it wasn't the recognition of inevitability but an argument for a certain way of life.
Societies aren't made of Very Elite Men being geniuses; they're made of law and custom. If we chose to tax people, if we chose to develop technology differently, if we chose democratic practice, we'd have a different society. We have Very Elite Men and algorithms telling the police who to murder because we've chosen to let Very Elite Men have their way largely unconstrained. This isn't some kind of sad fact of evolution.
It also seems like American parochialism. Like, we have incredibly shitty and unsafe food here. In the EU they don't. This isn't because the Very Elite Men of the EU have benevolently decided that all food will be nice; it's because of a set of laws, usually hated by the Very Elite Men, that restrict how food can be grown, processed and stored. They don't have Nazis running amuck on Twitter in Germany, either, and we all know that @Jack is as near a Nazi-sympathizer as makes no difference. The absence of Nazis is the result of laws made in a relatively functional democracy, not the fact that some pseudo-mystic has been Jack-whispering. It's the Very Elite Men who want the killer algos and the drones and the Nazis and the Amazon warehouses and the suffering and intellectual impoverishment and trans women getting death threats, and it's the pushback of activists and legislators which gets in their way.
And as to this nonsense about no work! If I had a billion dollars, I could walk out on the streets of my neighborhood and put every unemployed person to work on necessary tasks. We need our houses repaired. The frail and elderly need errands and social work. Kids need tutors, park workers, all kinds of arts programs and sports programs and day care. We need community health workers who can go around and get people the baseline check-ups and medications that they're missing now. We need our sewers fixed. We need more buses and we need drivers because a computer can't manage the social stuff that happens on a bus. Jesus god, we need skilled nurses and well-paid carers and people to run community gardens and people to build up all the park service stuff that's been allowed to decline. Our sidewalks are broken. Our communications infrastructure is poor. People's roofs leak. Work? I could solve unemployment in the entire state if you made me a Very Elite Person with a sufficiently large budget.
People are "useless" to capitalism because capitalism doesn't think that anything is useful that can't be sold or does not contribute to the bare minimum reproduction of labor. It's activism and law that create work, because they create society. Technology companies and their "if a drone or an underpaid, inexpert, precarious platform serf can't do it then it's not worth doing" mentality are the ones creating un- and under-employment.
(Also, note that @Jack thinks highly of this guy. @Jack could single-handedly fix probably 20% of the fascist hellscape in this country if he wanted. He doesn't want.)
Power-worship isn't new or special. This guy is a pseudo-mystic, like many others who've made it big in this country.
posted by Frowner at 12:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
Societies aren't made of Very Elite Men being geniuses; they're made of law and custom. If we chose to tax people, if we chose to develop technology differently, if we chose democratic practice, we'd have a different society. We have Very Elite Men and algorithms telling the police who to murder because we've chosen to let Very Elite Men have their way largely unconstrained. This isn't some kind of sad fact of evolution.
It also seems like American parochialism. Like, we have incredibly shitty and unsafe food here. In the EU they don't. This isn't because the Very Elite Men of the EU have benevolently decided that all food will be nice; it's because of a set of laws, usually hated by the Very Elite Men, that restrict how food can be grown, processed and stored. They don't have Nazis running amuck on Twitter in Germany, either, and we all know that @Jack is as near a Nazi-sympathizer as makes no difference. The absence of Nazis is the result of laws made in a relatively functional democracy, not the fact that some pseudo-mystic has been Jack-whispering. It's the Very Elite Men who want the killer algos and the drones and the Nazis and the Amazon warehouses and the suffering and intellectual impoverishment and trans women getting death threats, and it's the pushback of activists and legislators which gets in their way.
And as to this nonsense about no work! If I had a billion dollars, I could walk out on the streets of my neighborhood and put every unemployed person to work on necessary tasks. We need our houses repaired. The frail and elderly need errands and social work. Kids need tutors, park workers, all kinds of arts programs and sports programs and day care. We need community health workers who can go around and get people the baseline check-ups and medications that they're missing now. We need our sewers fixed. We need more buses and we need drivers because a computer can't manage the social stuff that happens on a bus. Jesus god, we need skilled nurses and well-paid carers and people to run community gardens and people to build up all the park service stuff that's been allowed to decline. Our sidewalks are broken. Our communications infrastructure is poor. People's roofs leak. Work? I could solve unemployment in the entire state if you made me a Very Elite Person with a sufficiently large budget.
People are "useless" to capitalism because capitalism doesn't think that anything is useful that can't be sold or does not contribute to the bare minimum reproduction of labor. It's activism and law that create work, because they create society. Technology companies and their "if a drone or an underpaid, inexpert, precarious platform serf can't do it then it's not worth doing" mentality are the ones creating un- and under-employment.
(Also, note that @Jack thinks highly of this guy. @Jack could single-handedly fix probably 20% of the fascist hellscape in this country if he wanted. He doesn't want.)
Power-worship isn't new or special. This guy is a pseudo-mystic, like many others who've made it big in this country.
posted by Frowner at 12:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
On that note: kids staging a walkout because their schools have adopted a Facebook-run education program which seems to involve sitting in front of screens all day except when you get ten to fifteen minutes a week of 'mentoring' with an actual human. Do you think this is how the children of tech elites are educated? Or do they get real teachers with real expertise?
If we raised every child as well as the children of rich white tech people are raised, we would have no unemployment in this country, because we would need massive investments in education, food, housing and medical care. Poor people are not unemployed because of Amazon; they're unemployed because our wealthy have decided that poor people should live in slums and spend their off hours peering into the phone.
posted by Frowner at 12:54 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]
If we raised every child as well as the children of rich white tech people are raised, we would have no unemployment in this country, because we would need massive investments in education, food, housing and medical care. Poor people are not unemployed because of Amazon; they're unemployed because our wealthy have decided that poor people should live in slums and spend their off hours peering into the phone.
posted by Frowner at 12:54 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]
And now they're pushing this at Africa, though I hear the Indians are offering them serious pushback because they're the ones who built the backends for them out in Bangalore and know the bullshit algorithms they wrote.
posted by infini at 2:20 AM on November 13, 2018
posted by infini at 2:20 AM on November 13, 2018
On that note: kids staging a walkout because their schools have adopted a Facebook-run education program which seems to involve sitting in front of screens all day except
What the fuck? Who asked Facebook to get involved? People sending pictures to each other? Great, Facebook is awesome at helping people do that. Teaching children? Kill me now, this is the self-checkout of education.
And I've done this. In 1980, in sixth grade. Our math class was self-directed for...I want to say two quarters but maybe only one. There was a chart at the back of the class where we affixed stickers next to our names for every section we completed. Instead of screens, we had dittos. For me it was great, at first, I remember being like "Hell yeah, I'm gonna learn algebra," but I mark this class as the point of age and education where the opportunity to learn to structure the study skills that would be useful later on presented itself, and you had to teach yourself. I also remember that it seemed like some people only completed like half of what the person who got furthest did, though I don't remember any teasing or anything from it. Now that I think of it there was kind of a weird curriculum the whole year. Long story short, eventually I slacked off, getting 75% of what the furthest classmate achieved, as usual.
I really feel like the mentality of charter schools has set us up for the Technocrat's Syllogism, even at public schools.
posted by rhizome at 2:46 AM on November 13, 2018
What the fuck? Who asked Facebook to get involved? People sending pictures to each other? Great, Facebook is awesome at helping people do that. Teaching children? Kill me now, this is the self-checkout of education.
And I've done this. In 1980, in sixth grade. Our math class was self-directed for...I want to say two quarters but maybe only one. There was a chart at the back of the class where we affixed stickers next to our names for every section we completed. Instead of screens, we had dittos. For me it was great, at first, I remember being like "Hell yeah, I'm gonna learn algebra," but I mark this class as the point of age and education where the opportunity to learn to structure the study skills that would be useful later on presented itself, and you had to teach yourself. I also remember that it seemed like some people only completed like half of what the person who got furthest did, though I don't remember any teasing or anything from it. Now that I think of it there was kind of a weird curriculum the whole year. Long story short, eventually I slacked off, getting 75% of what the furthest classmate achieved, as usual.
I really feel like the mentality of charter schools has set us up for the Technocrat's Syllogism, even at public schools.
posted by rhizome at 2:46 AM on November 13, 2018
human rights are just a story we tell ourselves
It's weird because I have heard this before as an argument for keeping alert and ready to fight in protection of societal ideals. The use here seems to be the complete opposite (human rights are manufactured, so we can discard them!).
Death in The Hogfather explains that things like Justice and Duty are fantasies we tell ourselves and that they become reality because we believe in them. The implication is that humanity must believe and fight for them, or they fall apart because they do not come naturally to us.
posted by Tarumba at 7:42 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
It's weird because I have heard this before as an argument for keeping alert and ready to fight in protection of societal ideals. The use here seems to be the complete opposite (human rights are manufactured, so we can discard them!).
Death in The Hogfather explains that things like Justice and Duty are fantasies we tell ourselves and that they become reality because we believe in them. The implication is that humanity must believe and fight for them, or they fall apart because they do not come naturally to us.
posted by Tarumba at 7:42 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
I read Sapiens when everyone was taking about it, it's a stupid book. He takes takes a few tiny nuggets of interesting anthro/archaeological research and then makes these colossal jumps and assumptions to build this super flimsy thesis which is not backed up by evidence, at all.
Seconded. After reading it, I knew I wouldn't need to read any of his other books. To be fair, he does say a few sensible things well, which is probably why the book was a success but overall, it's not a very good book.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:06 AM on November 13, 2018
Seconded. After reading it, I knew I wouldn't need to read any of his other books. To be fair, he does say a few sensible things well, which is probably why the book was a success but overall, it's not a very good book.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:06 AM on November 13, 2018
I kinda liked 'Sapiens', but I got the impression that some of the more recent stuff described in the article seems to deviate from his previous musings.
The parts that I liked about Sapiens were his side themes against Essentialism. He described some significant aspects of the modern human world (like the concept of money) as conditional and relative in the long view. (So I was also a bit miffed at his SamHarris-ish denial of free will. Free Will is a metaphoric concept that is conditional and relative, denying it is forcing a metaphor to look like imperfect science so that you can kill it;)
Much of Sapiens is generic Evo-psych retold in a relaxed manner. I've enjoyed reading older things like this (Desmond Morris; Rob Ardrey; EO Wilson) as long as you don't take it too seriously. Popular Evo-psych is storytelling about apes & cavemen using metaphor & myth; It's fun if you don't interpret it as dogma.
posted by ovvl at 3:10 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
The parts that I liked about Sapiens were his side themes against Essentialism. He described some significant aspects of the modern human world (like the concept of money) as conditional and relative in the long view. (So I was also a bit miffed at his SamHarris-ish denial of free will. Free Will is a metaphoric concept that is conditional and relative, denying it is forcing a metaphor to look like imperfect science so that you can kill it;)
Much of Sapiens is generic Evo-psych retold in a relaxed manner. I've enjoyed reading older things like this (Desmond Morris; Rob Ardrey; EO Wilson) as long as you don't take it too seriously. Popular Evo-psych is storytelling about apes & cavemen using metaphor & myth; It's fun if you don't interpret it as dogma.
posted by ovvl at 3:10 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
Maybe I'm just humorless, but as a biologist it matters to me when people tell myths about what humans are and then stamp it with a "scientific" seal of approval. It's not innocent when the field explicitly insists that nonspecialists not only can interpret it as dogma, they should.
I suppose the stories are more enjoyable when you can envision yourself as the hero of the yarn, not one of the faceless NPCs.
posted by sciatrix at 3:17 PM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
I suppose the stories are more enjoyable when you can envision yourself as the hero of the yarn, not one of the faceless NPCs.
posted by sciatrix at 3:17 PM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
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posted by flabdablet at 1:17 AM on November 12, 2018 [5 favorites]