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It's Time To Ignore Petty Politics and Focus On 'Transformative' Tech: Eric Schmidt (techcrunch.com)
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Alphabet in an interview said that we need to focus more on the possibilities of advances in biology and medicine as well as AI. But he feels people are spending "all our time arguing about political issues that are ultimately not that important." He urges people to stop doing that and work on things that are transformative. He added: "We've gone from an era where we thought about solving problems that were very, very big," he said. "We now define them as problems of special interests. Everyone's guilty. I'm not making a particular political point here." Schmidt seemed excited enough about the possibility of medical breakthroughs that Rose asked him: If he was starting over today, would he be more likely to go into computer science or biology? "Both are having a renaissance," Schmidt said.
It's all really lovely and swell that we're on the verge of making incredible medical and scientific progress and certainly we, as a species, should put our minds to such ideas.
It's just hard to argue that to people whose most pressing problem isn't curing cancer but finding a place to park the car they live in 'cause they got evicted. They might have a different idea of "important".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Man rich enough to transcend politics tells those who aren't to stop worrying about it.
Things that are transformative usually involve transforming things for the worse as well as the better. Politics should protect people from that.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
put aside your politics first
"Europe is far more racist than the United States, and that's despite strong prohibitions against hate speech."
And so we confront the problem - hate-thought. Good luck making that illegal.
All politics is someone's morality.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
getting caught up in political garbage rather than focusing on the collective ascension of the species
The problem with "getting rid of petty politics" is that the only way to get rid of it is to impose one viewpoint. So how do we fix the transgender toilet issue? Do we tell the TG people to just shut up and use the toilet matching their birth gender? Or do we override the democratic rights of the people of North Carolina? To most people, one or the other of those is "obviously" the right solution, but we don't agree on which one. So who gets to decide? And how do we force the "losers" to accept the decision (especially if they turn out to be the majority)?
People don't even agree that "transformative technology" is a good thing. There is strong opposition to GMO. Many people fear AI. Workers don't like robots "stealing" their jobs.
Anyway, I don't really see "petty politics" as impeding tech. If anything, it is the other way around. If the politicians are busy arguing about toilets, they have less time to interfere with the economy, regulate innovators, and "pick winners". The last time the economy was truly "booming" was when the politicians were focused on Bill Clinton's blowjobs.
Personally I think the politicians keep arguing about toilets because the solutions to all the *real* issues will not be liked by their rich friends. Politics have become too dependent on money, so politicians are not likely to make decisions that will get them less money. The elephant in the room is that something needs to be done with companies who have become too large and drain too much from the economy but that will never happen under current system.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Rich people invest in transformative tech innovation. Poor people don't.
Rich people invest in rent-seeking. Poor people figure out new ways to do stuff. Like Elon Musk, who turned $30k into a $300M internet-Fodor's, then turned that into an internet prepaid credit-card. Or like Eric Schmidt, who worked his way from public high school to chief of Alphabet.
OK, maybe not poor poor, but technical revolutions are not started by some rich dude looking for something interesting to do with his money. Once you're rich, your main concern becomes staying rich. Technical revolutions are started by relatively ordinary people doing something interesting, then going out and borrowing money from some rich dude.