I would really like if we could draw a distinction here. "tech people" who may or may not work for a company that's categorized as "tech sector." And then there are "doing a business" guys in suits who have MBAs and are "managing projects for development leadership solutions" for tech companies, but they don't actually know anything about the tech. The first group are closer on average to a trade job like electricians, whereas the "doing a business" guys are making mad amounts of money. The average mid-senior level coder probably doesn't work at what we would call "tech companies" and the people who make the most money at tech companies are not the coders
This really seems like the entire argument hinges on assumptions that are not supported empirically. To begin with, there is no strong evidence I'm aware of that individuals in resource-constrained situations are more prone to antisocial behavior, and in fact some studies on, e.g., areas affected by natural disaster, imply no correlation or even a negative correlation between resource insecurity and antisociality. In other words, when cooperation is necessary for survival, we do not suddenly shoot ourselves in the collective foot by acting selfishly. This seems sort of obvious when you consider that humanity survived for thousands of years prior to agriculture through tribe-oriented hunting and gathering, a social system characterized by high poverty and practically stagnant growth but also high cooperation. His assertion therefore that growth is the only thing capable of motivating cooperation, and thus the quality of life we expect, seems deeply flawed and unravels many of his prescriptions. Secondly, he seems to take it for granted that higher degrees of wealth will correlate to higher quality of life (as expressed by a reduction in stress or an increase in happiness.) This is also not supported empirically. I mean, just on the face of it, you would expect the wealthiest countries to have the happiest populations, but in studies comparing GDP and measures of self-reported happiness, what we've actually found is that happiness only increases with increasing wealth up to the point that a person's basic physical and psychological needs are attended to, and then hits a wall where further increases in wealth (or income, rates of consumption, whatever) do not lead to further increases in happiness. This would seem to match our expectations when looking at, for example, the US, which has a very high GDP per capita but a miserable population, because that wealth is not equally distributed - most are below the cutoff, and are made unhappy by it, while a few have exorbitant amounts of wealth that doesn't make them any happier. So, if the level of wealth needed for the best life possible is relatively small and easily achievable with a more equal distribution, why would building a fusion-powered space empire make us any happier? And if the promise of growth is not needed to motivate cooperation and thus the production levels necessary to meet that level of wealth, why not just work less and share more?
Also, he very worryingly does not seem to draw any distinction between "cooperation" in the sense of higher level of organization and "cooperation" in the sense of a higher level of prosociality. The first "temple economies" afforded by the invention of agriculture were extremely organized and productive, but the mode of production hinged on exploitation and enslavement. I don't think it makes sense to label that as "cooperative". He shows this conflation in his brief mention of the golden age of sail and British colonialism, wherein he characterizes imperial Britain as "more cooperative"; were the systemically underprivileged people whose labor fuelled that massive growth "cooperating"?
Regarding the discussion on equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. I think several very important factors have just been tossed aside. (1) A degree in equality of outcome is necessary for equality of opportunity, as people need role models. (2) It is a fact that the prevalence of sexual harassment rises with inequality in gender representation. (3) A higher status position comes with power not only for the individual, but also for the group that individual is a member of. Maybe you have heard of this word called patriarchy. It's a thing, you know. And it shouldn't be. PS: I really dislike the monetary theory of value. Especially in a world where so many externalities are not priced in. If you want to explain to me that an employee at X provides more value to society than a kindergarten teacher, you'll have a hard time.
He starts off going "we can't even conceptualize ideas outside of the culture in which we live" and then pivots 180 onto why infinite growth and capitalism are the only ways forward. On one hand it is worth stating that a culture pursuing de-growth poses the real danger of being smothered to destruction by other cultures that continue with high growth models. On the other, I struggle to enthuse about a future that delivers us fusion reactors and infinite energy so we can have oligarachy but in space. The cynic in me worries that he is right and zero-sum darwinism with its worst excesses engineered out is the best we will ever have, but the squishy lefty part of my brain hopes he is wrong.
This conversation started out as an insightful inquiry into culture and trying to define a prolem in a solvable way. I enjoyed that. The second part got extremely technocratic really fast. I like that you weren't too confrontational, it is important to hear all ideas, but: Zero-sumess can be solved in other ways and I prefer Daniel Schmachtenberger's path to this. If you haven't, check out some of his work too. e: I loved the part of the commonality of knowledge. I think Kropotkin also worte about this, but for a less ideologically charged variant I really can recommend Schmachtenberger and others tackling the "Moloch" problem.
The first half was good but the second half kind of went into a reactionary technocrat angle. I think Muthukrishnan was onto the right thing in regards to humanity's eternal quest for more quantitative, qualitative , and efficient energy production because a lot of the US and West's geopolitics in tied into energy geopolitics. If the US seriously invested into renewable energy and made the switch along with innovations in solar panels and more nuclear stations being built, in addition to helping develop less developed nations in Africa and Asia to develop a renewable energy infrastructure, then a lot of the geopolitical misadventures would go away. Countries around the world wouldn't be vulnerable to market manipulations by petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia, OPEC, etc. I like the idea of a land value tax but by itself, it's not enough to replace all the other types of taxes like income taxes, sales taxes, wealth taxes, etc. Like, it's one thing to impose a land value tax on a piece of land that has gas or oil or mineral deposits because those are things that can be objectively measured but how exactly would that work for an Amazon Warehouse built on cheap land where most of the value comes from the products distributed in and transported through the Amazon Warehouse, not the land it was built on. I also didn't like the conflation of capitalism with efficiency or votes. If you want to talk about massive inefficiency, then billionaires are an example of a gross inefficiency in wealth distribution. To give a good sort of analogy that can convince people about how unbelievably massive a billion dollars is, there's this simple math problem that shows this using the mathematics of a 5th grader. A person with $1 billion dollars could spend $5,000 every day for 366 days in a year, for a period of 532 years, which is the period of time from when Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492 to the current year of 2024, and they still wouldn't have run out of money. They'd still have about $26.4 million left, which is more money than 3 generations of an average working class family will ever earn in their lifetimes. THAT'S how gigantic and inefficient the possession of $1 billion in the hands of a single individual is. And we get people who have 20, 50, 100, and 200 times that living today while billions starve around the world.
I don't want to be annoying but, like, I don't understand why you'd do this interview and not push back on some of the reactionary and/or silly stuff he says
@@CiviSgtButtercup Well I had to stop listening when he tried introducing IQ tests as real science. I assume that from then on he just piled on unsubstantiated onto unsubstantiated.
47:00 Here and many other places it looks and sounds like he's reading his own text, not speaking freely, but trying to look as though he is speaking freely. Comes across awkward.
The first half was good but the second half kind of went into a reactionary technocrat angle. I think Muthukrishnan was onto the right thing in regards to humanity's eternal quest for more quantitative, qualitative , and efficient energy production because a lot of the US and West's geopolitics in tied into energy geopolitics. If the US seriously invested into renewable energy and made the switch along with innovations in solar panels and more nuclear stations being built, in addition to helping develop less developed nations in Africa and Asia to develop a renewable energy infrastructure, then a lot of the geopolitical misadventures would go away. Countries around the world wouldn't be vulnerable to market manipulations by petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia, OPEC, etc. I like the idea of a land value tax but by itself, it's not enough to replace all the other types of taxes like income taxes, sales taxes, wealth taxes, etc. Like, it's one thing to impose a land value tax on a piece of land that has gas or oil or mineral deposits because those are things that can be objectively measured but how exactly would that work for an Amazon Warehouse built on cheap land where most of the value comes from the products distributed in and transported through the Amazon Warehouse, not the land it was built on. I also didn't like the conflation of capitalism with efficiency or votes. If you want to talk about massive inefficiency, then billionaires are an example of a gross inefficiency in wealth distribution. To give a good sort of analogy that can convince people about how unbelievably massive a billion dollars is, there's this simple math problem that shows this using the mathematics of a 5th grader. A person with $1 billion dollars could spend $5,000 every day for 366 days in a year, for a period of 532 years, which is the period of time from when Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492 to the current year of 2024, and they still wouldn't have run out of money. They'd still have about $26.4 million left, which is more money than 3 generations of an average working class family will ever earn in their lifetimes. THAT'S how gigantic and inefficient the possession of $1 billion in the hands of a single individual is. And we get people who have 20, 50, 100, and 200 times that living today while billions starve around the world.
I would really like if we could draw a distinction here. "tech people" who may or may not work for a company that's categorized as "tech sector." And then there are "doing a business" guys in suits who have MBAs and are "managing projects for development leadership solutions" for tech companies, but they don't actually know anything about the tech. The first group are closer on average to a trade job like electricians, whereas the "doing a business" guys are making mad amounts of money.
The average mid-senior level coder probably doesn't work at what we would call "tech companies" and the people who make the most money at tech companies are not the coders
This really seems like the entire argument hinges on assumptions that are not supported empirically. To begin with, there is no strong evidence I'm aware of that individuals in resource-constrained situations are more prone to antisocial behavior, and in fact some studies on, e.g., areas affected by natural disaster, imply no correlation or even a negative correlation between resource insecurity and antisociality. In other words, when cooperation is necessary for survival, we do not suddenly shoot ourselves in the collective foot by acting selfishly. This seems sort of obvious when you consider that humanity survived for thousands of years prior to agriculture through tribe-oriented hunting and gathering, a social system characterized by high poverty and practically stagnant growth but also high cooperation. His assertion therefore that growth is the only thing capable of motivating cooperation, and thus the quality of life we expect, seems deeply flawed and unravels many of his prescriptions.
Secondly, he seems to take it for granted that higher degrees of wealth will correlate to higher quality of life (as expressed by a reduction in stress or an increase in happiness.) This is also not supported empirically. I mean, just on the face of it, you would expect the wealthiest countries to have the happiest populations, but in studies comparing GDP and measures of self-reported happiness, what we've actually found is that happiness only increases with increasing wealth up to the point that a person's basic physical and psychological needs are attended to, and then hits a wall where further increases in wealth (or income, rates of consumption, whatever) do not lead to further increases in happiness. This would seem to match our expectations when looking at, for example, the US, which has a very high GDP per capita but a miserable population, because that wealth is not equally distributed - most are below the cutoff, and are made unhappy by it, while a few have exorbitant amounts of wealth that doesn't make them any happier. So, if the level of wealth needed for the best life possible is relatively small and easily achievable with a more equal distribution, why would building a fusion-powered space empire make us any happier? And if the promise of growth is not needed to motivate cooperation and thus the production levels necessary to meet that level of wealth, why not just work less and share more?
Also, he very worryingly does not seem to draw any distinction between "cooperation" in the sense of higher level of organization and "cooperation" in the sense of a higher level of prosociality. The first "temple economies" afforded by the invention of agriculture were extremely organized and productive, but the mode of production hinged on exploitation and enslavement. I don't think it makes sense to label that as "cooperative". He shows this conflation in his brief mention of the golden age of sail and British colonialism, wherein he characterizes imperial Britain as "more cooperative"; were the systemically underprivileged people whose labor fuelled that massive growth "cooperating"?
Wow thanks. I didn't watch the video and almost bought his book. Your comment changed my mind. Cheers.
Regarding the discussion on equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. I think several very important factors have just been tossed aside.
(1) A degree in equality of outcome is necessary for equality of opportunity, as people need role models.
(2) It is a fact that the prevalence of sexual harassment rises with inequality in gender representation.
(3) A higher status position comes with power not only for the individual, but also for the group that individual is a member of. Maybe you have heard of this word called patriarchy. It's a thing, you know. And it shouldn't be.
PS: I really dislike the monetary theory of value. Especially in a world where so many externalities are not priced in. If you want to explain to me that an employee at X provides more value to society than a kindergarten teacher, you'll have a hard time.
His theory sounds like a mix of Fukuyama and Brian Arthur.
He starts off going "we can't even conceptualize ideas outside of the culture in which we live" and then pivots 180 onto why infinite growth and capitalism are the only ways forward.
On one hand it is worth stating that a culture pursuing de-growth poses the real danger of being smothered to destruction by other cultures that continue with high growth models. On the other, I struggle to enthuse about a future that delivers us fusion reactors and infinite energy so we can have oligarachy but in space. The cynic in me worries that he is right and zero-sum darwinism with its worst excesses engineered out is the best we will ever have, but the squishy lefty part of my brain hopes he is wrong.
This conversation started out as an insightful inquiry into culture and trying to define a prolem in a solvable way. I enjoyed that.
The second part got extremely technocratic really fast. I like that you weren't too confrontational, it is important to hear all ideas, but:
Zero-sumess can be solved in other ways and I prefer Daniel Schmachtenberger's path to this. If you haven't, check out some of his work too.
e: I loved the part of the commonality of knowledge. I think Kropotkin also worte about this, but for a less ideologically charged variant I really can recommend Schmachtenberger and others tackling the "Moloch" problem.
The first half was good but the second half kind of went into a reactionary technocrat angle. I think Muthukrishnan was onto the right thing in regards to humanity's eternal quest for more quantitative, qualitative , and efficient energy production because a lot of the US and West's geopolitics in tied into energy geopolitics. If the US seriously invested into renewable energy and made the switch along with innovations in solar panels and more nuclear stations being built, in addition to helping develop less developed nations in Africa and Asia to develop a renewable energy infrastructure, then a lot of the geopolitical misadventures would go away. Countries around the world wouldn't be vulnerable to market manipulations by petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia, OPEC, etc.
I like the idea of a land value tax but by itself, it's not enough to replace all the other types of taxes like income taxes, sales taxes, wealth taxes, etc. Like, it's one thing to impose a land value tax on a piece of land that has gas or oil or mineral deposits because those are things that can be objectively measured but how exactly would that work for an Amazon Warehouse built on cheap land where most of the value comes from the products distributed in and transported through the Amazon Warehouse, not the land it was built on.
I also didn't like the conflation of capitalism with efficiency or votes. If you want to talk about massive inefficiency, then billionaires are an example of a gross inefficiency in wealth distribution. To give a good sort of analogy that can convince people about how unbelievably massive a billion dollars is, there's this simple math problem that shows this using the mathematics of a 5th grader.
A person with $1 billion dollars could spend $5,000 every day for 366 days in a year, for a period of 532 years, which is the period of time from when Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492 to the current year of 2024, and they still wouldn't have run out of money. They'd still have about $26.4 million left, which is more money than 3 generations of an average working class family will ever earn in their lifetimes. THAT'S how gigantic and inefficient the possession of $1 billion in the hands of a single individual is. And we get people who have 20, 50, 100, and 200 times that living today while billions starve around the world.
thanks for the good comment
I don't want to be annoying but, like, I don't understand why you'd do this interview and not push back on some of the reactionary and/or silly stuff he says
What reactionary/silly stuff are you referring to?
I didn't hear any opinions stated that had reactionary reasoning when splayed out
@@CiviSgtButtercuphe refers to the idea that communism is a good idea but doesnt work because humans are selfish
@@CiviSgtButtercup Well I had to stop listening when he tried introducing IQ tests as real science. I assume that from then on he just piled on unsubstantiated onto unsubstantiated.
This is sort of a trivial comment to make, but it’s difficult to listen to the end of any sentence that begins with “if AI fulfills its promise.” 😂
47:00 Here and many other places it looks and sounds like he's reading his own text, not speaking freely, but trying to look as though he is speaking freely. Comes across awkward.
yeah, please no
The first half was good but the second half kind of went into a reactionary technocrat angle. I think Muthukrishnan was onto the right thing in regards to humanity's eternal quest for more quantitative, qualitative , and efficient energy production because a lot of the US and West's geopolitics in tied into energy geopolitics. If the US seriously invested into renewable energy and made the switch along with innovations in solar panels and more nuclear stations being built, in addition to helping develop less developed nations in Africa and Asia to develop a renewable energy infrastructure, then a lot of the geopolitical misadventures would go away. Countries around the world wouldn't be vulnerable to market manipulations by petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia, OPEC, etc.
I like the idea of a land value tax but by itself, it's not enough to replace all the other types of taxes like income taxes, sales taxes, wealth taxes, etc. Like, it's one thing to impose a land value tax on a piece of land that has gas or oil or mineral deposits because those are things that can be objectively measured but how exactly would that work for an Amazon Warehouse built on cheap land where most of the value comes from the products distributed in and transported through the Amazon Warehouse, not the land it was built on.
I also didn't like the conflation of capitalism with efficiency or votes. If you want to talk about massive inefficiency, then billionaires are an example of a gross inefficiency in wealth distribution. To give a good sort of analogy that can convince people about how unbelievably massive a billion dollars is, there's this simple math problem that shows this using the mathematics of a 5th grader.
A person with $1 billion dollars could spend $5,000 every day for 366 days in a year, for a period of 532 years, which is the period of time from when Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492 to the current year of 2024, and they still wouldn't have run out of money. They'd still have about $26.4 million left, which is more money than 3 generations of an average working class family will ever earn in their lifetimes. THAT'S how gigantic and inefficient the possession of $1 billion in the hands of a single individual is. And we get people who have 20, 50, 100, and 200 times that living today while billions starve around the world.