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MIT Economist Daron Acemoğlu Takes on Big Tech: "Our Future Will Be Very Dystopian"
(www.spiegel.de)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Technology
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I am sorry, but I am not buying his point. 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.
Nuclear 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.
Yes, arguably I was talking about technologies that had paramount impact on economy on the level AI will have, and none of those can be considered like this.
I have also answered to PeepinGoodArgs about windmills.
This is what I mean when I say it's going to end up being a circular argument.
Both the maxim gun and nuclear weapons had the biggest possible impacts possible on the economy. The maxim gun (and other war technologies) were hugely important in the viability of colonial administration. Nuclear weapons made the US one of two superpowers, which defined 20th century economic debate.
High fructose corn syrup has had a paramount impact on the entire American food system, probably the single most important part of an economy, from our agriculture to our food processing.
Plastics have so transformed our economy that we rely on it to get basically any physical good to the consumer, and the resulting trash now exists in every part of Earth, including our own bodies.
Is there harm side from technologies? Of course. But say plastic overall has much more economic good for an average person. And I do not think that war and war technologies is part of this discussion. By definition everything relating to war is waste of resources on civilization scale. It was always so, has nothing to do with technology and our discussion.
"But see, if you draw all these bizarre, arbitrary lines around things, I'm absolutely correct. We're talking about technology, not economics when it comes to war, because then I'd have to acknowledge that imperialism drives economics and it immediately defeats my argument."
"Plastic doesn't count because it does more good than harm and -- STOP GESTURING EXCITEDLY AT GLOBAL WARMING!!! WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT!"
That's what you sound like. Why are the things that invalidate your point out of bounds?
I could prove to you that war is actually a good thing as long as we don't discuss the loss of human life, or the losing side of any of them in any way. Should we have that discussion next?