Stewart Brand says he’s still an optimist | Hacker News Reader

Stewart Brand says he’s still an optimist

nytimes.com

67 pointsgk126 comments

For conversation, it's worth noting a recent critique of Stewart Brand here: https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/126_the_real_legacy_of_s...

Also worth noting Brand in his younger days was actually rather concerned about issues of overpopulation (and likely population pressure too), he's excerpted in the Ray Offenheiser PBS documentary about Norman Borlaug and 'the green revolution': https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/green-r...

Population pressure disproportionately harms the poor. This is still a big deal in Africa, where Nigeria is likely to have a billion people in a few years. Providing education to girls so they can later support themselves better is the most effective on-site method known to reduce that suffering, and also cuts population pressure where it is harmful.

I have strictly more complaints about John Markoff.

He is personally responsible for, e.g., Kevin Mitnick not being allowed to use the telephone while in prison, out of trumped up fear he could hack with it.

> Nigeria is likely to have a billion people in a few years.

There are less than 220M people in Nigeria now. The population growth is very fast, but even on long odds it's more accurate to say "a few decades."

I think what I read predicted a billion in Nigeria by century end, 10B total. But a lot can happen in 80 years.

The century will end in about 77.15 years, at which point most of us reading this will be dead.

A bit more than 'a few'.

There have been anatomically modern humans for ~300,000 years. We have had systematic agriculture for just a while.

Yes, but i perceive population population pressure more in terms of consumption or 'biophysical boundaries transgressed' which happens primarily in the global north / high GDP countries. See 'a good life for all within planetary boundaries' for more info: https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/

Regarding your comment about Africa specifically, I don't know enough and try to hold a bit of carefulness around Education if it's not being done with appropriate context. You might like this podcast that goes into a social facilitation framework being used in areas like Africa: https://www.outsideinpodcast.org/episodes/10-groupsofgroups

Not to bikeshed, but it'd be a pretty easy accessibility win if this "techwontsave.us" podcast had a transcript.

That's not bikeshedding, that's common sense and basic usability.

Optimism/pessimism are really weird descriptions to apply to the self outside of a therapeutic context. Given that they are both cognitive distortions or biases, as a cognitive agent, once you've noticed them, your responsibility is to root them out. But noting one and then clutching it tight as a badge of identity is little different in form from saying "I can't do arithmetic", with an implicit "yay for me!" rather than "but I'm trying to learn".

I haven’t read the article, but maybe not all distortions need correction. Maybe in some cases somebody might need to balance their optimism in such a way that more wisdom can be utilized, but I still see nothing wrong with embracing a distortion, especially one as helpful as being optimistic.

Depends what you mean by 'wrong'. It's certainly a cognitive mistake to do so, pretty much by definition. If you embrace either optimism or pessimism, your view of the world is less likely to be veridical than if you abjure or correct for either.

If you mean 'wrong' as a value judgement, I'd agree it's arguably reasonable to opt-in to optimism or pessimism on non-cognitive grounds. You might prefer optimism if you believe an inaccurately sunny view of consequences is pragmatically effective. Or you might prefer pessimism if you think it leads to reduced disappointment.

What also follows is that, given their opting in to non-veridicality, us third parties should take the views of any self-proclaimed optimists or pessimists less seriously than we do those who take cognition seriously.

You’re making a qualitative judgement by saying a sunny view of a situation might be “inaccurate”. That’s not for anybody to judge except the individual holding the sunny view. And if their perspective needs correction, again only they can say if that’s the case or not.

You don't have any idea what optimism and pessimism mean. And your radical individualistic epistemology is absurd in the extreme.

Please explain to me what they mean then. And then explain how embracing one’s optimism is a “cognitive mistake almost by definition”.

https://archive.ph/Ghoqp

http://web.archive.org/web/20220323141142/https://www.nytime...

Past comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30778889

This review of Markoff's take on the subject is rather less flattering:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/stewart-brand-whol...

It's really a kind of cultural caricature at this point - iconic of (some of) the boomer generation, who started off as a young idealistic hippie in the sixties, got jaded in the 70s, flipped over to Wall Street yuppiedom by the 1980s, and then onto more sales deals... imagine if the movie Glengarry Glen Ross was populated by these hippie salespeople. The Wolf of Wall Street kind of got it right in the pink sheets sales center, I think. This is why the punks of the 1980s printed stickers saying "Never Trust A Hippie", incidentally.

The kind of products these Whole Earth people sold were pretty shoddy as well - for years, many California roofs were littered with defunct solar hot water systems, corroded out due to the use of cheap materials. As far as the 'personal computer industry', it packed up and offshored production to overseas sweatshops as soon as they could get their friends in Congress to push it through with similar cheery positive vibes. All the high-end backpacking 'get in touch with nature' outfits, the North Faces and Patagonias, followed suit with their local Berkeley-based factories. As this happened, homeless populations boomed all across the Bay Area and Los Angeles where those jobs, basic though they were, at least allowed people to earn a fairly decent living. It's a story of hucksters looking for a quick buck while patting themselves on the back about their enlightened worldview.

As far as high-quality renewable energy tech, the Chinese approach is sure working a lot better. Hard work spent on R&D allowed Chinese companies to master monocrystalline silicon PV production, making them the world leader on durable, reliable and high-efficiency PV, also at the lowest cost (or would be if the US tariffs were dropped). Granted, China was highly motivated, having no domestic gas and oil and the world's worst air pollution, but it's really just a pathetic story for the USA, once the world's leader in tech manufacturing. Maybe the US domestic chip initiative will help, late to the party as it is, and it's not like China is slowing down on that front either.

This kind of behavior reminds me of a line from Jim Morrison of the Doors: "I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I'm gonna get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames."

Not to dispute your points in any substantial way but the fundamental R&D for China's solar panel industry was substantially funded by the Australian tax payer. See, for instance

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-09-19/solar-panels-...

Also I think Delhi's air pollution is the worst of the major cities now.

All the really productive people I've met in life were optimists regardless of their personal or external circumstances.

So it's not surprising that Stewart Brand is as well.

Counter anecdote. I've met at least one hyper productive pessimist. I haven't grilled all the hyper productives I know for positivity or pessimism.

Did they ever explain what goal they were working towards?

Earn money to pay for their family, while having fun solving problems.

Now that I think of it I know another hyper productive pessimist - they eventually burned out in the corporate world though, maybe alcohol caused it too. They are merely productive these days from what I gather.

So Bezos has too much money basically is what I got from this.

I think Bezos funding the Long Now's clock is such an odd take to select from this article.

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