Slashdot Mirror
Co-Founder of PayPal Peter Thiel: Society Is Hostile To Science and Technology
dcblogs writes Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, billionaire investor and author, says "we live in a financial, capitalistic age, we do not live in a scientific or technological age. We live in a period where people generally dislike science and technology. Our culture dislikes it, our government dislikes it. The easiest way to see "how hostile our society is to technology" is to look at Hollywood. Movies "all show technology that doesn't work, that ... kills people, that it is bad for the world," said Thiel. He argues that corporations and the U.S. government are failing at complex planning.
Yes, hostile to tchnology like spell checkers....
Do you have ESP?
When high tech companies offshore cash to avoid taxes, it is no wonder people don't trust the technology. They don't trust the technology companies.
I would say that they distrust it, not dislike. It is also expensive to implement over something that has been used for decades and since they see things more short term than long term, the savings aren't seen so upgrading is deemed not worth the cost and training.
-SaNo
This Thiel character has been all over the place these past couple of weeks - talk shows, opinion columns, etc. He is a real techno-cornucopian cheerleader, but does not seem to be a particularly deep thinker.
The man simply doesn't understand the need for conflict in a plot. If you have a movie about a super computer, there needs to be something to work against. The computer takes over or fails spectacularly. This in no way indicates that this is society's view of computers.
Our leader removed the minister for science! He has reduced funding for our science organization CSIRO ( The one that invented wifi among many other successes ), condemned renewable energy and promoted coal, destroyed our manufacturing sector and is pushing to make university only for the rich. All in the span of a year, impressive really.
And don't forget the scary parts.
Almost every week you read about another "hacked" company that just lost your credit card number and all your identifying information. Hope you changed all your passwords.
Will the people who "stole" your credit card ever be caught? No.
Will the people who decided NOT to protect it ever be punished? No.
Is there anything you can do? Aside from using cash everywhere? Not really.
For everything else, there's Dogecoins.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Ideology kills and oppresses; no religion needed either.
Just as plausible as his assertions.
:D
Okay, that made me laugh.
But that requires that the average person trust someone they can't even name with keeping their money safe. And the money is just a bunch of zeros and ones. If the "hackers" can take your real money can they take your imaginary money?
Will the government take your real stuff because you got imaginary money from a "terrorist"?
Will you end up in court one day because your kid is accused of sharing a song and now you owe $50,000 in penalties?
The benefits of technology are not being evenly distributed. But the risks certainly are.
It's wishful thinking. Technology should have produced a world without want, sickness or fear, where no one need labor for their own survival. Instead all that ingenuity went into devising new ways to oppress and kill our fellow man.
Actually you're exactly what he's talking about. Technology has gone a massive way towards reducing famine and sickness. I mean think about it:
- Some people actually argue that human natural selection has ended because medical technology is so good now that people rarely ever die from natural causes unless they're either very old or neglect their own health (e.g. drug abuse.) Contrast to 150 years ago where virtually any sort of serious injury often included death or dismemberment. People nowadays can be born with serious inherited diseases (e.g. cystic fibrosis) and even have kids where in the past that would have been impossible.
- The green revolution (that is, agricultural technology) has turned famine into a distant memory. The root cause of any starvation these days is almost always a 100% political one (e.g. some local warlord or government is deliberately limiting the food supply.)
In spite of the above, you prefer to subscribe to the Hollywood model where technology is only ever used for bad things. As far want and fear, no amount of technology will ever eliminate as those are just part of human nature. I'd actually be more concerned if we did get rid of those, as the only means of doing so would involve altering the person's mind (mind control is another way of putting it; think like the movie Equilibrium.)
I always misread their slogan, just for an instant.
Theil may be right that society as a whole is hostile to science but he is fundamentally missing the point: society is more interested, accepting and pro-science than it has ever been in the past. Sure, there are lots of nays but they are fewer than there were before. That's what is important. Look at the positive and move forward.
I'd say religion is a special instance of ideology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They dismiss us as geeks - not least to cover their own failure to master the subject.
Large parts of the nerd and geek culture can be surprisingly anti-science too though. As you say, it is inevitable that most people will not master fields, even those of interest, and one can't physically master them all. But when you take someone who has an ego, possibly for good reason because they do have above average knowledge in some areas, and given them a superficial view of something, they can really run with it at times. Just look at some of the more difficult science topics that end of on Slashdot from time to time, and you can find arguments between people with professional experience and those without.
In my experience doing science outreach, and even just answering questions about my research when someone asks after someone asked what my job is, the geeky and nerdy types can be as bad or worse than general public. Some general public will just have no interest, others have interest but no background and will try to ask questions, and occasionally a rare person or two will repeat some talking point they've misheard to say they think such research is pointless (whereas even those with political disagreements will acknowledge the research could be useful, just disagree on who should pay for it). But when you get to those with enough knowledge to be dangerous, many will stop asking questions and get dismissive. "Oh, what a waste of time, you could just do X instead of trying Y," ignoring that X was tried 50 years ago and shown not to work. Or "I heard of experiment Z, it proved W," when they misremember and I've read and can pull up the actual paper from the research, "But I saw it online/on a documentary/from some guy, why would you or that paper know any better?"
Even those without attitude issues seem to be pretty narrow in interests. I knew someone once, who had read dozens of popsci books on quantum mechanics, was still capable of doing calculus quite well, but never wanted to try looking into any actual textbooks or more serious material on the topic (even trade magazine pieces that are much less dry than a textbook). Laziness and/or fickleness of people's interest applies to everyone to some degree.
"...corporations and the U.S. government are failing at complex planning."
Mathematically, the world is a "chaotic" place. It is axiomatic that complex planning will fail. So those not familiar with the field, think of "butterfly effect" or "Black swans".
So inevitable planning failures are blamed on technology.
The best solution, proven empirically, is laissez-faire. I concede that "best" means different things to different people.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
This is the guy behind PayPal talking. Before PayPal, he traded derivatives. After PayPal, he ran a hedge fund. He says "We live in a financial, capitalistic age, we do not live in a scientific or technological age," said Thiel. "We live in a period were people generally dislike science and technology. Our culture dislikes it, our government dislikes it."
He's pointing out that runaway capitalism and finance is the problem. He ought to know.
We used to have a simpler, and more locked-down, financial system in the US. Banks accepted deposits, lent money, and handled cash. They weren't allowed to buy and sell stocks. Trading derivatives was definitely out. Brokers did stock transactions for others; brokerage firms didn't trade much for their own accounts. There were mutual funds, regulated by the SEC. Houses were financed mostly by savings and loan companies, which were mostly local and sent people out to check on building sites.
This worked well until the Reagan years, and the beginnings of financial deregulation. S&L and bank executives wanted the freedom to take more risks with other people's money. Within a few years of S&L deregulation, the savings and loan industry tanked. Within a few years of bank deregulation, the banking industry tanked. There's kind of a pattern there.
We just hate PayPal.
"We live in a period were people generally dislike science and technology."
US people maybe. Canada has over 60% approval for sciences.
But what do you expect? Canada also lacks the billions of dollars it took for corporations to convince you science is bad.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Those who wield technology are, therefore, akin to magicians. People are amazed by magicians but they also don't trust what they don't understand.
Most people don't understand the commitment required to be a good technologist, they just want you to fix their computer during the dinner they invited you to. How may times have you heard the "I'm not very good with computers" line? Even more how many time have you met someone with "the next great idea to make millions" and all they need is some dumb monkey coder to do the actual *work* for them? The general expectation is that you'll do it for them but just watch their face if you ask them to tile your bathroom or do a similar amount of *work*.
I think Thiel is right. I'm uncertain if people actually deserve a gift like information technology and the internet which is powerful enough to enslave or free humanity. Frankly people are so vapid and apathetic they are simply driving us to a technology driven dystopia from the sheer weight of idiocracy. The worst thing about it is that myself and every technologist I know is being dragged along, kicking and screaming, with them - fully aware of the consequences.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm sorry, I do not trust the benevolence of corporations. As to even the poorest being able to afford the products that corporations offer, I disagree with that concept as I've seen first-hand people neglecting their needs in order to pay for their wants. I've seen acquaintances fail to pay their rent on-time because they spent the money on a high-end video card. I've seen people with cable TV subscriptions and Netflix and smart phones fail to pay their gas bill and have it shut off.
People don't make the best decisions on their own behalf. They make decisions that they feel will benefit them. As to corporations making things cheaper, often that's a byproduct of the amortization of development costs being finally paid, so continued units have less costs to recuperate. It's also common for cheaper items to be decontented to the point that they're really not good, and the customer is screwed-over by giving any amount of money for something that's arguably defective in design. That $35 Indian smartphone for instance.
People buy things from corporations for a large number of reasons. Sometimes that thing has become essential in order to be efficient enough to be profitable, like smartphones can be for people in certain fields. Sometimes peer pressure makes one think that something's essential when it's actually not. The motives are all over the place.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
i like good science, i hate pseudoscience
i hate high tech hardware that is locked down for my own good, maybe bought an Android tablet for the specific purpose of wiping android off and putting a vanilla Linux distro on it like Debian or Gentoo or maybe Slackware, and most tablets wont boot from other sources, and even if you mount it as a removable storage device and manually delete everything you can on it once it reboots the dang system gets replaced with a fresh copy (system on a chip???) i dont know for sure but i really hate tablets because nothing can be done to them and i got to run the OS that comes with it, and google store is packed full of crappy spamware, ok rant over because i am digressing, thanks
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Hell, Maxwell's treatise on EM was released around the time of the U.S. Civil war. High school physics really only covers basic Newtonian stuff, and maybe some 18th century EM.
Movies "all show technology that doesn't work, that ... kills people, that it is bad for the world,"
What do you mean? We elected it governor of California.
Start there. Read the whole thing, don't just cherry pick looking for proof of your statement.
Since the first half of that page is about the history of Famine (which most of it is history at this point in time) the only relevant bits are anything *after* the green revolution, as per what I stated, so I'll "skip" to this point, thank you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Even so, I don't see any causes listed there that aren't political. Since you're so keen on using wikipedia to make your case, then I'll point you to this line:
Food shortages in a population are caused either by a lack of food or by difficulties in food distribution; it may be worsened by natural climate fluctuations and by extreme political conditions related to oppressive government or warfare.
Now if you read on further, the "lack of food" mentioned is mainly this:
Food shortages in a population are caused either by a lack of food or by difficulties in food distribution; it may be worsened by natural climate fluctuations and by extreme political conditions related to oppressive government or warfare. The conventional explanation until 1981 for the cause of famines was the Food availability decline (FAD) hypothesis. The assumption was that the central cause of all famines was a decline in food availability.[132] However, FAD could not explain why only a certain section of the population such as the agricultural laborer was affected by famines while others were insulated from famines.[133] Based on the studies of some recent famines, the decisive role of FAD has been questioned and it has been suggested that the causal mechanism for precipitating starvation includes many variables other than just decline of food availability. According to this view, famines are a result of entitlements, the theory being proposed is called the "failure of exchange entitlements" or FEE.[133] A person may own various commodities that can be exchanged in a market economy for the other commodities he or she needs. The exchange can happen via trading or production or through a combination of the two. These entitlements are called trade-based or production-based entitlements. Per this proposed view, famines are precipitated due to a breakdown in the ability of the person to exchange his entitlements.[133] An example of famines due to FEE is the inability of an agricultural laborer to exchange his primary entitlement, i.e., labor for rice when his employment became erratic or was completely eliminated.[133]
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), global climate change is additionally challenging the Earth's ability to produce food, potentially leading to famine.[134]
Some elements make a particular region more vulnerable to famine. These include poverty, population growth,[135] an inappropriate social infrastructure, a suppressive political regime, and a weak or under-prepared government.[136]
Thank you.
And you fail at trolling by the way.
Canada looks big but they have fewer people and less area to produce $$$ for funding. Plus they probably can't ever have high productivity because that is something that doesn't go with being the #1 or #2 nation to live in.
The global economy and banking system which control everything are not pro-science. For their population and GDP, Canada probably beats the USA. It doesn't help that Canadians easily cross over to the USA college system and end up staying here despite the lower quality lifestyle. Guess buying more junk and the dream of getting more junk is just too compelling... Once that fades away, can't see why anybody would stay-- we've got nothing else to offer that compensates for being at the bottom of the 1st world nations (except expensive military tech.)
Hope I offended fellow citizens. #1 problem in the USA is we are full of shit; I'm only here (for now) because my science job is here...and all my relatives.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
When talking about culture in TV Nation where community has died and all that comes close is TV/Movies. We talk using movie metaphors, adopt phrases and new metaphors from the medium which sadly doesn't even come close to the past sources they supplanted.
Advertizing controls people and they don't spend all that $$$ doing product placement, infotainment, endorsements, and advertizing if it didn't have a big impact. People only SAY they don't vote based upon the advertizing that goes on-- but they are lying because most the billions that goes into elections is TV related. Since the biz is all about buying attention-- it's a mix of giving people what they want to see while making them see stuff they don't want to. It actively tries to influence while it actively tries to reflect-- in addition to the other aspects! It can be hard to discern which but it's probably one of the two.
If you want to take a disjointed culture without any community and characterize it, using the most common thread which binds them (I'm avoiding making a LOTR ref) you use TV/Movies. Referencing that either gives the promoted impressions being pushed by a few (since a minority has working control) or you are seeing what people expect to see. Usually the medium doesn't upset people by going too far outside their cultural expectations. That's bad for business unless you are targeting the intellectual minority... A little makes it interesting but too much and it's a niche market.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
iii - Mention pseudo scientists and one will always turn up to tell you how cold it's been lately.
Troll food: The min temp anomaly map for Australia over the past six months, it's clear minimum temperatures have been warmer across most of the continent. It also clear that maximum temps have been well above average for the same period.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s science culture was popular in the US. People looked forward to new discoveries and gadgets and careers in science. Big industry did need to be restrained by environmentalists and that did mostly work in the US. Then young people got seduced by higher paying jobs in finance, an industry that doesnt really create much else than money.
When I travel in China I see the pro-science and technology attitudes of my youth. It i s refreshing.
If the Terminator comes from the future, let's be realistic! He'll show up with lots of bloatware. Not only will ke kill you, he'd go through your social media accounts to track down and kill everyone on Facebook that you ever went to high school with. He'd also check your mail, handle phone calls, self-install software updates from the future, keep track of your bank account, play second-person-shooter video games, autoplay video advertisements, and sound cool alarm tones to remind you of your impending appointment with death.