But you have to keep in mind that this is the same as not being able to get stuff done :) Economies don't exist in a vacuum.
If a US company can buy an EU company out,
* business conditions in the EU are not favorable enough for people to want to grow their business in the EU (they would rather sell to the US);
* there are no EU companies that are competitive enough to counteroffer (meaning the EU has not created an environment to grow competitive businesses).
"Getting stuff done" isn't determined in a vacuum, so unless the EU totally isolates its economy it has to deal with the fact that it needs to actually encourage innovation and business to be competitive and "get stuff done" on the world stage.
The US is isolating itself, that really only leaves China for Europe to worry about on these points.
China is absolutely capable of replacing the US as buyer of all the interesting companies, European nations can absolutely fail this if they forget that.
Having near-death experiences has made me much more scared of death. I realized I do not want eternal nothingness and nonexistence. I like existing, loving, etc.
I do not think death adds any value. It certainly does not motivate me in any way. I don't do things because I will die, I do things because I want to. Most of the time I am not thinking about death at all. When I do, it is only with a sense of sadness/dread.
> Living a short, happy life is much better than being miserable forever
IMO this is a false dichotomy. You could also live an immortal happy life in this scenario.
When people talk of life extension and us eventually achieving immortality, it is always "relative immortality" though. Maybe we develop the technology to regenerate our bodies and we could live for thousands of years. Maybe we can transfer our consciousness and minds into computers and maybe live for quite a bit longer than that.
But the time scale of the universe is unfathomable. Even if we lived for millions of years, it would be a drop in the bucket. And that time would still come to an end and we'd reach that same state of eternal nothingness and nonexistence.
AGI via LLMs: No. The AI will need a natural understanding of the real world (the physics you and I live within) and ability to self-modify it's training (ie learn), so we're working on hybrid AI architectures which may include LLMs, but not rely on them. And imho Yes we are solidly on track to AGI <5 yrs 8)
Reading the beginning and end is like eating just the buns off a burger and declaring it bland and tasteless.
Part of the magic of this story is that it can change what you agree with (as it did for me.) Not saying it will do the same for you, but it is a compelling vision; I can't think of other ways to get there without getting unscientific.
I am familiar with NLP and persuasion techniques, and when I started feeling it creep in as I read this story, I started skimming. I have learned that a compelling vision alone does not mean it is correct or even wise.
The analogy is not correct. I know that burger is rich in taste and marvelous. It is also my opinion that it is an illusion, and lacks substance.
There is so much more to the cosmos than science, though I get that this is the current preoccupation of our civilization. Maybe one day, people will expand their consciousness beyond science the way the main character expanded her’s to communicate with aliens. Until then, I recognize I am in the minority here in HN with this view.
It isn’t in the content of the story, but in the craft of storywriting itself. The author does not have to know these to make use of the methods identified by NLP. Rhetoric (as a study in and of itself) and persuasion has long been studied and practiced by humanity.
It's pretty obvious what it's doing, honestly. I did skim the entire thing but I don't think you need much more than the beginning and end once you see the point. Which is more or less lampposted by the title.
It's technology propaganda. The protagonist is initially skeptical, but learns to accept the wonders of tech as her life is magically transformed by it.
I've had this bookmarked for years. It is my vision for the future.
It is more relevant now than ever, when techno-pessimism is on the rise, and people are forgetting the incredible technology that makes their quality of life real - and could guarantee the lives of billions in the future.
I'm in my 30s and probably won't live to see this future. I only hope cryonics can get me there, but I doubt it - so much information is lost.
I would recommend re-reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas as a companion story then. Maybe you'll get to underhand techno-pessimism as something more than the the result of people "forgetting the incredible technology that makes their quality of life real".
Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole by Isabel Kim. My favorite short story of 2024, and very much worth reading if you’re at all familiar with LeGuin’s original story.
They’re both short stories, less than 10 minutes to read.
If you’d like to read novel length LeGuin, “The Left Hand Of Darkness” and “The Dispossessed” are excellent. Much of her most lauded work shares a universe, but each novel stands alone and doesn’t share relevant characters, let alone protagonists.
There are more objective reasons to be pessimist about technology than optimist. There's mass surveillance, centralisation of power to an historically unprecedented degree, and algorithmic social media is destroying our community, culture, and politics. The industry that's receiving an Apollo project's worth of money every few months appears on track to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop as indistinguishable from human speech or real images as possible. At present there's no reason this insane build-up will leave us anything more than than.
The fact you talk about cryonics instantly reveals your worldview. I'm sorry to say, but I firmly believe you're mistaken.
> The industry that's receiving an Apollo project's worth of money every few months appears on track to produce not a machine to cure cancer, but to produce fake slop as indistinguishable from human speech or real images as possible.
Over the past ~12 months I've become increasingly convinced that LLMs are a net negative for society. It's so intensely disheartening to see them eating the entire industry.
> Strongly disagree, it's why I'm not dying in a ditch of famine at the ripe age of 30.
I'm obviously talking about the future of technology and not about technology in general. I agree that vaccines and antibiotics and fertilisers and the three field system and writing and the automatic bread slicer are all good technologies that improved our lives. The """innovations""" peddled by big tech, AI among them, are nothing like this! Again: mass surveillance, predatory pricing, mass manipulation, fake videos, line-rate slop: this is what big tech proposes, not the cure for cancer or the 15-hour workweek.
Also a nit: infant mortality was dreadful and pushed avg life expectancy way down. But if you lived to 15 you had a good chance of living to 70 even in pre-modern times.
This is the ultimate cope out: taking technology as a singular entity that evolved outside of human control and is simply commented on by passive observers who are simply "pessimist" or "optimist" about it instead of people whose lives are meaningfully impacted by it.
The trick to do so is to flatten human experience under the determinism of "efficiency" (which you euphemistically called "quality of life"). This way "optimists" can dismiss nuanced oppositions to a lack of regulations as "luddism" and fold together anti-vaxxers and AI skeptics, as if those are the same people, with the same motivations or arguments.
This also conveniently distracts from the fact that technological pessimism exists as a contrast to periods of technological optimism, which helps evade the question of what changed: after all, pessimists aways existed, as your link shows.
I would suggest unfolding the "pessimist" reductionism and questioning why AI skeptics are not stem-cell skeptics. This will probably help avoid arguments that sound very much like "the end justify the means".
Any argument along the lines of "Venezuelans aren't happy with this" out of touch with Venezuelan culture. They do not have to die by the millions to oust a dictator that killed thousands and caused 20% to emigrate. They are happy with this.
That is what OP is saying: HN users, in order to promote their personal politics, are being concerned for a people that don't want and actively reject your concern because they are happy with the outcome.
HN is doing the equivalent of (a) denying Venezuelans appreciate this, and when that fails (b) claiming they know better than Venezuelans wrt whether this is good or bad for them.
> That is what OP is saying: HN users, in order to promote their personal politics, are being concerned for a people that don't want and actively reject your concern because they are happy with the outcome.
> (b) claiming they know better than Venezuelans wrt whether this is good or bad for them.
Well, this isn't surprising at all. At least these two points also apply to the right within the US, the HN bubble doesn't even try to understand their actual views either.
> HN is doing the equivalent of (a) denying Venezuelans appreciate this, and when that fails (b) claiming they know better than Venezuelans wrt whether this is good or bad for them.
It’s very dangerous to do the “right thing” for the wrong reasons in a complex situation. This is step 1. Does anyone have faith that the Trump admin will properly execute steps 2..N?
I would have some respect if the administration announced that it would support a provisional government led by the apparent winner of the last election in Venezuela. As such it seems to be that the administration has left the existing power structure in place and established a client/patron relationship with the leadership. This is revolting.
> It’s very dangerous to do the “right thing” for the wrong reasons in a complex situation.
Venezuelans do not care for this train of thought. No one else was going to do it, and their equivalent of Hitler has just been ousted.
Far better, from their perspective, to have the evil guy removed than endless do-nothing hand-wringing from the international community that shares your train of thought.
Democratically held elections will be run again in the country.
The "wrong reasons" can still be mutually beneficial. The US gets its oil and Venezuela gets its dictator disappeared.
If push comes to shove, I believe France is incredibly unlikely to actually attack the US with nuclear weapons regardless of what happens to Italy.
Doctrines and policies are meaningless under pressure. Would France risk global nuclear armageddon and the near-extinction of humanity for Italy? Almost certainly not, regardless of what their "doctrine" says.
My question wasn't about whether he was popular, it was about whether people approve of this specific military action by the US. People can hate their leaders and still not want a foreign country directly replacing them.
In this case you are just objectively wrong. Venezuelans are thrilled with this military action. They are happy they don't have to die by the millions to oust their dictator. For many, this was the best-case scenario (assuming democratic elections are held at some point in the future.)
But you have to keep in mind that this is the same as not being able to get stuff done :) Economies don't exist in a vacuum.
If a US company can buy an EU company out,
* business conditions in the EU are not favorable enough for people to want to grow their business in the EU (they would rather sell to the US);
* there are no EU companies that are competitive enough to counteroffer (meaning the EU has not created an environment to grow competitive businesses).
"Getting stuff done" isn't determined in a vacuum, so unless the EU totally isolates its economy it has to deal with the fact that it needs to actually encourage innovation and business to be competitive and "get stuff done" on the world stage.