Slashdot Mirror
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.
It's not an either/or situation - we can argue about EVERYTHING.
If your point is that some people are bad at arguing and making no sense, that's one thing.
But claiming that an argument isn't important enough to fight about just makes you look stupid.
Because the people that are getting screwed over by X definitely want to fight it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If we don't pay attention to politics (and oftentimes, even if we do), thundering idiots who don't have the slightest understanding of science, technology and so forth get elected. And proceed to use that lack of understanding like it was something to be proud of when they pass laws.
You get idiots in Congress who don't know the difference between weather and climate, or claim that we don't have to worry about rising sea levels in coastal areas because "God promised he would never flood the earth again".
We get politicians who want "small government", unless it involves regulations on your genitals, which they seem inordinately fond of passing.
We get ones who can't even understand email regulating the Internet, ones who aren't doctors regulating medical procedures, and so on. People passing laws based on their religious beliefs and then getting a case of chapped ass if anyone dares compare it to Sharia law.
If we don't pay attention to it, it just gets worse.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
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
Eric sounds like a fucking cult leader.
Unfortunately, most of what that troll says is accurate. His big mistake is in thinking that everywhere else on the planet is any different, conveniently ignoring similar problems and atrocities in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and just about anywhere else on the globe. One could, by replacing the proper nouns in the rant above, make it a rant about any continent or even country in the world. Anyone want to play ad-libs below?
Whole countries have been taken down because of political decisions, so I don't consider it "Petty."
Germany essentially does not have long term debt or unfunded liabilities of consequence because they know the effect from their post WW1 collapse. Nicaragua is seeing the result of petty politics today. Argentina arguably has been held down for a century by bad politics. Brazil has its problems today because of politics. China had it.
Schmidt looks at himself as omniscient now.
Argentina could have basically been further developed than most European countries by now if they would have had saner politics.
I can't even say I really grasp the political divisions there -- it doesn't even seem to follow the basic left-right axis, it's like its following some z-axis of its own making.
"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.
The issue is that I haven't heard anything new out of politics for a while.
Party A: Wants more government control except for what conflicts with their special interests group.
Party B: Wants less government control except for what conflicts with their special interests group.
Now the special interests groups swap around over time.
So politics will go to normal progress if they like it they will give it money if they don't they will not.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
In this economy, you're better off without a job than you would be with a lot of the jobs that are offered...
I know a few unemployed people who will be happy to tell you that you are just talking out of your ass. Seriously, who the hell could possibly believe such a blatant falsehood?
To also be very blunt, technical advance doesn't create a bright fututure - or have any impact at all - unless you can get its fruits into the hands of people. And that's pretty difficult to do if they're preoccupied with killing you.
To continue being blunt, Silicon Valley is neither self-sufficient nor a fortress. Should civil order break down, it's not going to be Galt's Gulch, it's going to be a tomb, with the only question being whether the "technical people" get lynched or starve first. And even in the unlikely event that Silicon Valley would emerge more or less intact, with the rest of the country collapsed it won't be able to afford to feed a large population of "technical people" who aren't immediately productive.
And yet more bluntness: civil unrest comes and goes in waves. Sometimes it goes because people get what they wanted, and sometimes because the entire society crumbles and results in another Dark Age. Seeing how what people want typically amounts to bread and circuses, and we have an abundance of both, wouldn't it make more sense to appease the unwashed masses than letting the situation escalate?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.