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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.
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.
put aside your politics first