ShroOmericMIT Economist Daron Acemoğlu Takes on Big Tech: "Our Future Will Be Very Dystopian"
What I like about this interview is that it demonstrates the absurd, thought-terminating clichés that modern elites use…and Acemoğlu just steamrolls them. Like this:
DER SPIEGEL: But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies.
Acemoğlu: That is the reason we have to go so far back in history. The argument that you just gave is wrong. In the past, we’ve always had struggles over the uses of innovation and who benefits from them. Very often, control was in the hands of a narrow elite. Innovation often did not benefit the broad swaths of the population.
There was no argument. A sentence does not an argument make. But regular people trying to argue from a similar perspective would say “…well, yes, but…” whereas Acemoğlu is just like “Nope. You’re wrong.”
MxM111I am sorry, but I am not buying his internet. Every technological change that had significant impact on our economy (fire, iron making, machinery, electronics, computers, internet) benefited most of the people. I challenge you to name even one counter example.
theludditeNuclear weapons, the maxim gun, lead paint, lead gasoline, basically all lead-based products, thalidomide, CFCs, the electric chair, agent orange, asbestos, oxycodone, zyklon b, refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, disposable plastics, cigarettes, trans fats, …
I think @[email protected] is doing a great job of pointing to the actual substance of the argument, so I’ll leave that to them, but it’s actually really easy to come up with a long list of technological horrors that absolutely did not benefit most people but had huge impacts on our economy.
I do think “impact on our economy” is a pretty squishy phrase that’ll give you some wiggle room, but many of these nightmare technologies are inextricably and inseparably tied to the way we’ve structured our economy. Likewise, I think it’s easy to define “technology” in convenient ways for these kinds of arguments, but also ends up being circular pretty quick.
Ahh the the cynics hindsight. I’ll just leave with you’re right and you’re wrong. The advancements will always come, no matter the form, those highlighted led to enlightenment on the benefits AND dangers that we were unaware of. We refined them and ended up better off while furthering our understanding .
We needed nuclear arms to teach us that giant bombs that could vaporize cities and irradiate significant portions of the globe were bad? We needed asbestos to teach us to be careful what we used to insulate things? We didn’t learn that from the untreated tin cans we stored foodstuffs in that poisoned people in the 1800’s?
You phrased this as a “gott’em”, but it’s really bizarre logic.
Nuclear arms brought us nuclear power and the flow on effects like leaving our planet for the first time, medicines, list goes on and on and on.
What’s sad here is your sad view on life. Name 3 good things to come from the military industry.