Technology = Salvation: An Interview with Peter Thiel
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Thiel admits that we could print money without fear if our future looked brighter. And the 20th century saw such amazing progress that we did just that successfully. But he says that things are different now. We cannot print money because growth will not support it unless we get sentient robots and nanotech red blood cells, FAST! We better support the Republicans because at least they talk tough and hate Keynes, but it doesn't matter who we support because shit will hit the fan anyway.
But really, how much has technology failed us? Of course we must agree that the Jetson's world is not yet manifest. But the hardest problems that humanity faces are not technological. If anything, the 20th century's lesson was not that we need to get deeper into tech faster, it is that we need to approach the problems in a different way. We built airplanes as soon as we could, and Hitler turned them into blitzkreig. Einstein and Bohr pushed the limits of physics and we built A-bombs. Tesla gave us AC and Radio; and we built coal power plants to power Air Conditioned McDonalds advertised on TV via mass media.
The reason we don't have undersea cities is not because we cannot build them. I believe that we have the technology. But if 100 rich people could live forever in an undersea bubble powered by green nanotech, would it really change the global situation? The real technological problem is bringing the billions of people who eke out a stone-age existence in tribal towns all over Asia and Africa into the modern world. And we are making progress every day at an accelerating rate. Tell Google that AI is a pipe dream. Urbanization, digitalization, communication; these are the things that are accelerating like electrons and oil were 100 years ago. Don't give up on Keynes just yet, HN. Of course it will not be easy for our species to survive another 100 years. But let's not give up on ourselves either.
I personally discussed this topic with Peter in that same cafe several weeks ago, and I find that hard to believe. He didn't seem interested in discussing near-term politics at all, or near-term stuff in general. What's your evidence?
"We built airplanes as soon as we could, and Hitler turned them into blitzkreig."
If the airplane had been built fifty years later, is there some reason that it would not have been used to wage war more efficiently?
"But if 100 rich people could live forever in an undersea bubble powered by green nanotech, would it really change the global situation?"
Yes, because the technology that would need to be developed for that to happen would benefit everyone else.
"The real technological problem is bringing the billions of people who eke out a stone-age existence in tribal towns all over Asia and Africa into the modern world."
That's not a technological problem, it's a political problem. The example of China shows that a well-run country is perfectly capable of starting out from ancient-world level and catching up to the industrialized West within fifty years or so; there are no big technological barriers, just political ones.
My point is not to delay the invention of airplanes, but to focus on the political problems first. Technology and politics are connected - that is Keynesianism is all about and that is what Peter, and you (it seems), fail to understand. The problem with medicare and social security, for example, is not "too few robots" but actually probably too many MRIs and prescription drugs. Not that we shouldn't have MRIs.
The political barriers are the hardest ones to jump over, because acts of individual genius are rarely meaningful in a political context. And try mass-producing smartphones (or solar panels) in a world where China and India are regressing towards chaos.
http://news.google.com/news/search?q=%22Technology+%3D+Salva...
Lack of technology is not the problem, the problem is lack of demand, and there is lack of demand because most people are poor. That's pretty much it. Once there is demand the technology will catch up pretty quickly.
For example, when after WWII middle class americans ended up with money (either from their pay as soldiers, or due to the higher salaries during the war time labor shortages), the US economy and technology grew very quickly to acomodate every single desire they might have, cars, houses, highways, boats, every consumer product you may think of, etc. were built in enormous quantities.
But now the middle class is relatively poor and at their best hope is to stay at the same level. So their spending decreases or stays the same. And the economy suffers.
Why aren't there household robots? Because people are too poor. The middle class american is too poor to afford a complex piece of robotics, and also there is a bunch of even poorer people that will do your housework for cheap. So why would anybody invest in a complex expensive Jetson's like household robot?
Take Hacker News for example, full of innovative people but most of them are working hard trying to figure out how to make money from a free product. Why? Because the average American does not have much money to spend.
So IMO, Thiel is in denial when he blames lack of technological know-how and advances for the economic woes.
It's the not the Jetsons, but when I think about how complex other household chores can be (from an AI perspective), Thiel's theory makes more sense than yours. Are there even commercial/industrial robots advanced enough to collect, sort, wash, dry, fold and put away my family's laundry?
You say the middle class is relatively poor–relative to what?
I didn't know there was huge demand for self-driving cars–and it's cheaper to ride the bus–but Google is working on the technology.
Relatively poor? Relative to what? To their parents who lived a golden age?
There are so many reasons why our countries aren't doing as great as they can and the wealth of middle classes isn't a cause but a consequence.
As an entrepreneur I observe that companies that innovate a lot do much better than those who don't.
Please name a single consumer good or service which the Americans had more of after WWII than they do now.
Products made obsolete by new technology don't count.
-so true, and let's hope we can keep it that way.
Yep, its all over transportation. And you can see from the daily block long backup in front of Apple's global headquarters of cars waiting to get on the clogged highway 280 that innovative entrepreneurs aren't allowed to fix it.
For a real-world example see South Korea, where until just a few months ago government regulations mandated the use of IE for all commerce: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/01/korea.no.longe...
And the reason was so you could have ActiveX verifying your identity. Yeah, bet ya Microsoft worked real hard getting the latest and greatest browser out for that market.
http://reason.com/archives/2008/04/28/homesteading-on-the-hi... http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seaste...
As soon as I see a Libertarian candidate on the ballot who believes in climate change, they'll have my vote in a heartbeat.
I love studying the period in history between the franco-prussian war and World War II (1871-1940). The speed at which technology snuck up on the world and completely changed it was astonishing.
In 1940, the US army air force's best fighter plane was probably the P-40: a piston-driven, straight-wing, propeller-driven aircraft that had a top speed of 360mph.
A mere 20 years later they were using the F-106 Delta Dart, a jet-powered, delta wing aircraft that had a top speed of 1,525mph (Mach 2.3)...
Ok, the article lost me there. I really can't connect with that way of thinking.
First, even if this were true, that's a gigantic except. By comparison, one would probably not talk about the mid-1400's being a time of little progress, except for the development of the printing press.
Second, the U.S. GDP has been roughly doubling every 20 years since at least 1890 (source: http://norvig.com/speech.html), and I doubt such a longstanding trajectory is going to change anytime soon, Thiel's pessimism notwithstanding.
And if the economical system would be a pure capitalism, we'd get there anyway, but unfortunately people feel the need for government regulation, which produces more scarcity and monopolies, ultimately hurting innovation (e.g. DMCA, DRM, patents, or my recent favorite, Net neutrality).
You see, people are betting that technological progress will take of everything. You can keep inflating and there will still be price deflation. Unfortunately, that's a rather naive notion.
Technological progress are not guaranteed. You have to work at it to ensure that technological progress outpace the bad behaviors of politicians.
It's clear that neither party in the US has the slightest interest in fiscal responsibility, not as long as it's a winning strategy to buy votes with tax cuts and free benefits. The only way I see to avoid the coming demographic and financial time bomb is massive economic growth, e.g. one or more of AI/robotics (replace most human labor), nanotech (make material goods much cheaper), and biotech (cure aging, radically reducing medical expenses and increasing productivity).
*excuse the cliche', trying to be concise.