"Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Making Sci-Fi Real"
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I empathise with the author but he doesn’t really offer an alternative
(Underwater Love, Smoke City, 1995)
And the film clip doesn't seem to be on YT...
Edit: can't find the full music video, but there's a clip just showing the "bullet time" bits:
The problem is the future is being created by sociopathic, crony capitalist neo-reactionary cultists who want to rule over a broken world as its brutal philosopher kings, and consign everyone else into the mouth of Moloch. These are the people for whom the meme "Please don't create the Torment Nexus" was made. These people are the reason Ted Kaczynski is so popular amongst the tech underclass.
I don't know what the alternative is, but we should be concerned.
There was a recent thread about him here[0,1]. Plenty of people denouncing him, of course, but also lots of sympathy. I've also noticed a trend to reform (and excuse) his violent actions as being the effect of psychological torture by the CIA and MKULTRA. The linked article goes a bit deeper into how influential his manifesto has been on the culture.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36392976 [1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/19/unabomber-te...
He is a minor TikTok celebrity.
The gutting of antitrust under Reagan was instrumental in allowing the massive hyperconsolidation in all markets, with tech very prominent among them. The Biden administration's repudiation of the intellectually and morally bankrupt Chicago school interpretation of antitrust paves the way for a much better future, but it's going to take time, and it's going to need our support.
I mean, one could just as well be a fan of sci-fi and realize the torment nexus is a bad thing, and not create it, even if one is a nerd with all the time, power and money in the world.
That's a deep kind of dream. Not saying the vision is entirely invalid, but maybe it isn't as intimate an understanding as the reader thinks.
It's a bit like religious literature that way.
Always has been.
We’ve tried it, it’s never worked, and because it relies on a fundamental denial of basic human freedoms, it will literally never work. The only question is how much misery it causes in the latest attempt.
This is also because China already tried pure communism. There were no corporations, all industries were state owned. This lasted about a decade and was a bloodbath with famines, and almost all intellectuals or people with degrees were executed for promoting inequality by their existence (not kidding - actual history (“Stinking Old Ninth”) - go look it up at your library). Be careful what you wish for when putting communism and inequality in the same sentence.
Do not assume China is the only guilty party. The USSR, as just one example, imprisoned 3,000 biologists for being on the wrong side of an evolution debate for being against Lamarckism. This culminated with banning study of neurophysiology, cell biology, and other fields. (The “Lysenkoism” purges - showing that, ironically, communist countries are among the most dangerous places to be a scientist.)
We have a system that is kind of working. Laws and regulations are ways to tweak the system, tune it for better performance.
So, lets say we notice that huge wealth inequality is having a negative impact, then we can tax the wealth, and yes, 'distribute' it, like to build roads. That does NOT mean suddenly we are communist.
People stuck in the Capitalist's/Communism argument, if they think it is binary, then really don't understand either one.
They sure are passing laws, yet there has been repeated failures at affecting the desired change despite near unilateral agreement among the lawmakers about the direction of the desired change. This includes the war on drugs, the prohibition, and so on.
I'm not disputing these laws have some effect, I'm disputing the ability to envision an outcome, and pass a law such that it has the desired effect.
That it was communist was propaganda so communist == bad.
It’s not about economics but the emotional tone of a society.
Under capitalism in the US I can let you die in the streets without lifting a finger. Guess you didn’t capitalize hard enough.
Though I think this is a bit of unfortunate expansion of its definition, as it leaves us with no term to use when talking about Fascism.
(Also I agree the notion of the Soviet Union as an elaborate Fascist false flag operation is pretty hilarious)
But this comes back to my point. This is essentially putting faith in Asimov-style psychohistory.
A communist system would have to be a layer over a capitalist one. It would be maintained by a foundation of billionaire dictators.
But, assuming a system controlled by billionaire dictators, we probably don't need any "ism". Just dictate. Ideally to everybody's benefit.
The exoteric hoi polloi get pablum and propaganda. (They can't appreciate good scifi anyway). Give them moral fables wrapped in cowboys with laser-guns.
The author provides an alternative, but perhaps readers might miss it.
Science fiction is fiction not science.
The alternative to science fiction is the scientific method and the elucidation of scientific fact.
But these individuals are outcasts, dropouts, social failures.
Not interested in education generally.
Not interested in conventional occupations.
They believe they know enough yet they barely know anything.
Understanding computers is a far cry from understanding life.
It's arguable, due to the time committment required, the more one understands computers the less one probably understands "the real world".
Are these individuals interested in scientific fact, or are they more interested in fantasy and belief.
Like Elisabeth Holmes.
Charles Stross, the author of this op-ed, makes his living writing science fiction and fantasy.
"Stick to what you know." Unlike "tech billionaires", Stross knows what he is talking about.
There was a time when they gave meaningful direction to young readers.
Albert G. Ingalls, "The Back Yard Astronomer." Martin Gardner, "Mathematical Games" C. L. Stong. "The Amateur Scientist"
After Stongs death, SciAm displayed a halfhearted attempt to keep a few back pages, but around 2000 they dumped the whole idea of citizen science.
Despite the launch of a nationwide "Maker Movement" SciAm's new management couldn't understand why anyone would care. Today, the publication has made itself irrelevant.
This generation has found a new outlet for DIY science and it is called YouTube. Maybe you should check it out. You might learn something.
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I still want to see what is on the other end of the galaxy though. Requires more lifespan and faster than light/instantaneous data transmission. So some entangled particles stored in space relay expansions?
Entangled particles aren’t going to help us. (Wish i could find that video that explains why…)
[0]https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/512504/in-layman...
[1]https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/why-does-quantum-entan...
The problem being that dereferencing (observing) is a mutating operation.
So, maybe we will find something some day. A bit of a professional deformation :o)
Science evolves.
Funny how we think about needing to live longer or travel faster than light.
Stross greatly over-estimates how much influence sci-fi has. I've been in the tech world my whole career and have encountered plenty of sci-fi references in that time. It never went beyond cute codenames for projects. In particular, I've never encountered a project that could be traced back to someone saying, "hey that sci-fi story had this cool thing in it, how do we make that?". It just doesn't happen.
The boring reality is that new tech or even long term research visions tend to be extrapolations of what already works, occasionally disrupted by an accidental breakthrough. ChatGPT didn't get invented because researchers watched Star Trek and then sat in a brainstorming session wondering how to make it. It came out of a decade long research programme in which many different directions were explored to see what could be done with GPU powered neural nets. When we finally did get AI that talks like Cmdr Data, it was almost accidental and the next year was spent figuring out what exactly had been built.
Similarly, the idea that colonizing Mars or living in space wouldn't have occurred to anyone except for sci-fi is just daft. These ideas are extremely obvious. Musk isn't inspired by sci-fi; he's explained many times that what drives him is the idea that humanity should be multi-planetary as a risk reduction measure. Peter Thiel wants to extend life because living forever has been a dream since before the start of writing. Why should we give sci-fi authors any credit for these common visions?
Related tangent, the first time I met a meme IRL was when I first sat down with the CTO of a pretty well funded "startup" in the valley and as he was trying sell me on working there, regaling me with the story of him and his cofounders (good 30 years my senior) hustle and grind in the Stanford library before they started while I looked at his model of the Enterprise on his desk...
"Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook."
So the author seems to think that tech billionaires do actually sit down and ask how to make Star Trek real.
People being generically inspired by science and technology can happen in many ways. Like, is Musk primarily inspired by sci fi, making money, a love of business, a love of engineering, politics .... you can't really separate out the different factors like Stross wants to do.
These wealthy unperceptive persons are perfect candidates for VR heaven. Being unperceptive they see no problem with that.
Then, safely sequestered in their trillion-dollar VR coffins like a crazy uncle locked in a cellar, us poor people will be free to get some work done.
The logic is that if you have lots of popular fiction describing the future a certain way, these ideas will influence the future to become that way to an extent.
But then, many alive today have probably seen more of the world through a screen than outside of one, so it perhaps shouldn't be surprising.
Dunno, maybe Plato was onto something when he wanted to ban fiction in his republic...
It's easier to be optimistic and to write optimistic when your society has high marginal tax rates and visibly uses those rates to combat poverty, fund research, and subsidize college (and when you're part of the demographic receiving most of those benefits).
When you see societal protections being stripped away and privatized, the suffering that was caused by that, and the callous nature of your fellow citizens who "got theirs" and continue to vote for politicians who attack and tear down the systems that enabled such growth and optimism, you're more likely to write stories shaped by that world view.
Dystopian fiction has a long history, but from stories I've read it feels like the inflection point was, as with so many things, the Vietnam war, which for many people shattered the myth of technological infallability.
There's not just one inflection point where things get dark. There are many. Vonnegut might be associated with the Vietnam generation, but I think living though the WWII firebombing of Dresden as a POW probably had a bigger impact on him, for example.
I consider Vonnegut cynical but not dystopian in most cases (Player Piano being a notable exception)
That’s why people need to STFU about Rokos basilisk.
As a kid I used to want things to like Star Trek.
I now have a smart phone instead of a communicator, touch screen tablets, a universal translator, my house responds when I call it "computer," and I've seen those expensive in-wall coffee/tea makers . . .
But that wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted the future where people didn't have to worry about money, where the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy wasn't a concern for anyone, and where people were enabled to learn and produce and contribute as they truly desired, so they did.
Gene Roddenberry died. Everything Star Trek turned dark and twisted. And I realized that I didn't get my dream so much as a pile of consumer goods, most of them trying to advertise at me, surveil me, or both.
I think I'm not the only one with this experience.
It's the strawman and steelman argument on a societal scale.
We also have a lot of skeletons in the closet. In some cases the tech is just exposing an underlying problem and not introducing anything new. Good tech also enables society do something about its foundation of sand.
Not perfectly cooperative, sure, but shockingly cooperative. Just recently I was sat in a commercial airline for 9 hours and struck by how much harder it would be to transport several hundred consciousness chimpanzees.
They myth that when things break down, people revert to some ultra-survivalist hyper-individual bloodline protecting supersoldier has to die.
What happens is that society reverts to pre modern relationship templates where who you know and interpersonal skills reign supreme. Our modern society enables this myth and makes us more like it in our everyday lives than our natural cooperative base state.
You are right in that in solving present problems people do converge.
It would be nice if people could follow plans to avoid having problems in the first place.
18 points by cratermoon 9 days ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
What are the checks and balances on demagoguery? I actually don't know.
They were warnings - but tech bros with no imagination and lots of money think it was a prediction.
I.e., while the tech moguls may dream these SF visions, they're really just a front for dark forces.
Sci-fi is inspirational, especially for people who use STEM to change the world. However, contrary to this opinion, this isn't inherently negative or bad.
Humans, not capable of true originality, are either innovative or derivative. For all the talk of these tech billionaires as geniuses I only see derivatives with tons of money behind it.
They lack both a healthy, wise, and deep-rooted frame-of-reference and the ability to imaginatively innovate within it.
The best dictator is an immortal, brainlinked hivemind.
Therefore scifi inspired tech will save us.