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Comment by jubilanti | Hacker News Reader

Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have.

Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.

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Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative.

Read more solarpunk then?

If you don't mind the shameless plug, you may want to check my optimistic sci-fi visual novel: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/

It's on sale now :).

"imaginitive" is a more contentious adjective but The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and the Expanse seem on the optimistic side of the spectrum to me.

Andy Weir's stuff is great, the exception to the rule. I hadn't heard that about the Expanse, I guess I should check it out.

just a warning - The Expanse is not competency porn like the Martian, more like political/military action in space.

That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.

> Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian

Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...

Forgot about We, I love that book

Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books

Classic sci-fi was far from universally optimistic, it had more optimistic pieces than we do today but I'd still say on the whole it was more dystopia than utopia. Even for its own time, the original Star Trek was considered uniquely optimistic, though a large part of that is that its just much easier to write a good story where the setting itself provides the necessary challenges for a story to work, rather than an optimistic setting which rules out a lot of the usual challenges. Even Star Trek struggled, a good chunk of its stories are about encountering a race or civilisation without that utopia, turns out telling a good story without any conflict is pretty tough, especially a long running one.

But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have.

You mean like Dune, the Neuromancer, Bladerunner, the Time Machine?

I've wondered about that.

Recently I have read fiction where someone discovers a spaceship/artifact/portal/alien/mcguffin/etc and then they... get the mcguffin, get more stuff, get the girl, win. The plot is just a straight line.

they're boring.

Although not a straight line, any superhero movie. they're predictable and therefore, boring.

So I found the stuff that used to fill me with wonder, I shy away from. I don't want to watch another marvel hero.

I kind of wonder if non-utopia scifi, with reality and struggles and character development... is that the good stuff? doesn't have to all be dark forest or enshittification++ though.

I liked district 9 for instance.

You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying.

Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.

Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables.

Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.

Let's take the two pieces you put out there and just look at logical conclusions., because it's kinda hilarious to imagine you actually hold this actually-insane position.

1. Everything is political

2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete"

Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?"

Normal people: "Sure."

You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete."

Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun

Nice strawman.

Nope, just showing how ridiculous it is to hold the position that everything is political. It's okay to just talk about things casually, dude. Chill out, it'll serve you well.

If your position isn't that everything is political, don't say it is. If it is your position, this is perfectly in line with what you stated.

Your strawman didn't show anything, except that you're unwilling to engage with other viewpoints in good faith and will immediately dismiss them as ridiculous instead of advancing actual arguments.

Why should we be silent over the obvious political aspects of giving Musk more government contracts? Just to please you?

Why should you be silent about it? Because it’s not the topic. How is this SOOOO confusing and difficult for you? Do you not notice how annoyed everyone around you is when you desperately try to ram politics into every single conversation you have in life?

Oh, you don’t really do that? You’re just being performative online?

Got it.

Just say you agree with everything Musk does and be done with it, damn. No need to hide behind this disingenuous "no politics pls".

Musk is one of the dumbest motherfuckers on Earth buddy. Just say you have no real argument and you're just upset at some strawman you thought you were conversing with.

This is pretty contrived. Politics is as simple as “Janey and I really want to swim in the ocean” vs “I wanted to go to the lake by my house.” The politics are how that conflict gets resolved peacefully.

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