Silicon Valley billionaires literally want the impossible | Ars chats with physicist and science journalist Adam Becker about his new book, More Everything Forever
Silicon Valley billionaires literally want the impossible | Ars chats with physicist and science journalist Adam Becker about his new book, More Everything Forever
I really liked Becker’s book “What is Real”. I’ll look for this one and give it a read, even though I feel oversaturated by hearing about what silicon valley billionaires think about things (and they all seem like college freshman dorm thoughts).
Hrmbee on
A selection of interesting bits from this interview, including a section from the intro:
>”One current critique of Silicon Valley is that they moved fast and broke democracy and institutional norms. That’s true. Another is that they’re contemptuous of government, and I think that’s true, too. But there wasn’t much critique of their visions of the future, maybe because not enough people realized they meant it. Even among Silicon Valley critics, there was this idea that at the very least, you could trust that the statements they made about science and technology were true because they were experts in science and technology. That’s not the case.”
>
>More Everything Forever covers the promise and potential pitfalls of AI, effective altruism, transhumanism, the space race to colonize Mars, human biodiversity, and the singularity, among many other topics—name-checking along the way such technological thought leaders as Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, William MacAskill, Peter Singer, Marc Andreessen, Ray Kurzweil, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Jeff Bezos, and yes, Elon Musk. It all boils down to what Becker calls the “ideology of technological salvation,” and while its uber-rich adherents routinely cite science to justify their speculative claims, Becker notes that “actual scientific concerns about the plausibility of these claims” are largely dismissed. For Becker, this ideology represents a profound threat, not the promise of a utopian future.
>
>”More than anything, these visions of the future promise control by the billionaires over the rest of us,” Becker writes in his introduction. “But that control isn’t limited to the future—it’s here, now. Their visions of the future are news; they inform the limits of public imagination and political debate. Setting the terms of such conversations about the future carries power in the present. If we don’t want tech billionaires setting those terms, we need to understand their ideas about the future: their curious origins, their horrifying consequences, and their panoply of ethical gaps and scientific flaws.”
and a section from the interview proper:
>Q: Yet there is a long history of science fiction inspiring people to become scientists and invent things like the flip phone, which was inspired by Star Trek’s handheld communicators. Science fiction can inspire and help us dream. It’s not just about dystopian nightmares.
>
>A: At the end of the book, I quote Ursula LeGuin—who herself said science fiction isn’t about predicting the future—saying that we need better science fiction. There’s some tension there. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think it’s always going to be easier to build a dystopia than a utopia and easier to build a utopia than something realistic. I think realistic, hopeful visions of the future are something that it would be good to have more of. But I also think the problem isn’t really science fiction, it’s the reading of science fiction. There’s incredibly problematic science fiction out there, especially some of the older stuff. I have a lot of problematic faves in science fiction, but I think it’s okay as long as you say, “Okay, it’s problematic, and here’s how. I still like it.” But I’m not going to use Robert Heinlein as a political roadmap because his politics were trash.
>
>I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking science fiction as a source of inspiration to a point. The problem is when you get people saying science fiction should not remain fiction forever. It’s not a roadmap. You are not Hari Seldon. This is not Foundation, which is a cautionary tale. Foundation is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in space. Something like Civilization is a lot of what’s going on here as well—the idea of a tech tree that’s predefined by the game, and you just choose how quickly you’re going to advance along that tree. That’s just not how anything in human history has ever worked. It’s a dangerous belief.
>
>Generally, more careful and critical readings of science fiction would be the way to go. The humanities are deeply undervalued, and I think it’s good to learn to read with a more critical eye. But I also think some people are never going to be able to get it. You don’t need a critical eye in order to understand that Star Trek is not about space, it is actually about society. Just look at The Original Series, like the episode with the guys with the faces that are half black and half white. Some people are upset about “woke Star Trek.” In what world was Star Trek ever not woke? I don’t think that we can lay the blame for those people at the feet of science fiction. It’s just those people being how they’re going to be.
For those of us who have spent a chunk of time reading speculative (science) fiction, the last decade or so have been somewhat surreal as big tech and their supporters look to be speedrunning a number of classic works of the genre, and are doing so without any regards to the underlying cautionary messages of these works. It’s unfortunate and yet timely that this author addresses some of these issues in his book, and once again warns of the misuse of these works as a justification for what they’re looking to do, which is to increasingly exert influence or control over societies. Critical readings of these works can help more people understand both the promises of technologies and their prophets, but also the pitfalls. And a refocus on the arts and humanities in education is a welcome suggestion here as well. STEM is great at telling us how to do something, but the arts and humanities deal with why we might or might not want to do it.
2 Comments
I really liked Becker’s book “What is Real”. I’ll look for this one and give it a read, even though I feel oversaturated by hearing about what silicon valley billionaires think about things (and they all seem like college freshman dorm thoughts).
A selection of interesting bits from this interview, including a section from the intro:
>”One current critique of Silicon Valley is that they moved fast and broke democracy and institutional norms. That’s true. Another is that they’re contemptuous of government, and I think that’s true, too. But there wasn’t much critique of their visions of the future, maybe because not enough people realized they meant it. Even among Silicon Valley critics, there was this idea that at the very least, you could trust that the statements they made about science and technology were true because they were experts in science and technology. That’s not the case.”
>
>More Everything Forever covers the promise and potential pitfalls of AI, effective altruism, transhumanism, the space race to colonize Mars, human biodiversity, and the singularity, among many other topics—name-checking along the way such technological thought leaders as Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, William MacAskill, Peter Singer, Marc Andreessen, Ray Kurzweil, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Jeff Bezos, and yes, Elon Musk. It all boils down to what Becker calls the “ideology of technological salvation,” and while its uber-rich adherents routinely cite science to justify their speculative claims, Becker notes that “actual scientific concerns about the plausibility of these claims” are largely dismissed. For Becker, this ideology represents a profound threat, not the promise of a utopian future.
>
>”More than anything, these visions of the future promise control by the billionaires over the rest of us,” Becker writes in his introduction. “But that control isn’t limited to the future—it’s here, now. Their visions of the future are news; they inform the limits of public imagination and political debate. Setting the terms of such conversations about the future carries power in the present. If we don’t want tech billionaires setting those terms, we need to understand their ideas about the future: their curious origins, their horrifying consequences, and their panoply of ethical gaps and scientific flaws.”
and a section from the interview proper:
>Q: Yet there is a long history of science fiction inspiring people to become scientists and invent things like the flip phone, which was inspired by Star Trek’s handheld communicators. Science fiction can inspire and help us dream. It’s not just about dystopian nightmares.
>
>A: At the end of the book, I quote Ursula LeGuin—who herself said science fiction isn’t about predicting the future—saying that we need better science fiction. There’s some tension there. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think it’s always going to be easier to build a dystopia than a utopia and easier to build a utopia than something realistic. I think realistic, hopeful visions of the future are something that it would be good to have more of. But I also think the problem isn’t really science fiction, it’s the reading of science fiction. There’s incredibly problematic science fiction out there, especially some of the older stuff. I have a lot of problematic faves in science fiction, but I think it’s okay as long as you say, “Okay, it’s problematic, and here’s how. I still like it.” But I’m not going to use Robert Heinlein as a political roadmap because his politics were trash.
>
>I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking science fiction as a source of inspiration to a point. The problem is when you get people saying science fiction should not remain fiction forever. It’s not a roadmap. You are not Hari Seldon. This is not Foundation, which is a cautionary tale. Foundation is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in space. Something like Civilization is a lot of what’s going on here as well—the idea of a tech tree that’s predefined by the game, and you just choose how quickly you’re going to advance along that tree. That’s just not how anything in human history has ever worked. It’s a dangerous belief.
>
>Generally, more careful and critical readings of science fiction would be the way to go. The humanities are deeply undervalued, and I think it’s good to learn to read with a more critical eye. But I also think some people are never going to be able to get it. You don’t need a critical eye in order to understand that Star Trek is not about space, it is actually about society. Just look at The Original Series, like the episode with the guys with the faces that are half black and half white. Some people are upset about “woke Star Trek.” In what world was Star Trek ever not woke? I don’t think that we can lay the blame for those people at the feet of science fiction. It’s just those people being how they’re going to be.
For those of us who have spent a chunk of time reading speculative (science) fiction, the last decade or so have been somewhat surreal as big tech and their supporters look to be speedrunning a number of classic works of the genre, and are doing so without any regards to the underlying cautionary messages of these works. It’s unfortunate and yet timely that this author addresses some of these issues in his book, and once again warns of the misuse of these works as a justification for what they’re looking to do, which is to increasingly exert influence or control over societies. Critical readings of these works can help more people understand both the promises of technologies and their prophets, but also the pitfalls. And a refocus on the arts and humanities in education is a welcome suggestion here as well. STEM is great at telling us how to do something, but the arts and humanities deal with why we might or might not want to do it.