Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I realized what bothers me about @vitalik.eth d/acc essay. Even though it is optimistic, it shares with the pessimist side a presumption that technology, as an evolutionary process, *can* be governed according to some notion of human intent. “Tech can/cannot be governed” is a bigger divide than optimism/pessimism
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
I agree that's an important divide! I'm curious how it would translate into practice. For example, in a hypothetical earth where corporate lobbies successfully convinced everyone that climate change is actually good, do you agree that solar power tech would be decades behind where it is on our earth? Why or why not?
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I suspect this is in fact approximately the world we actually live in and renewables are in fact at least a decade behind because fossil fuel industry convinced enough people climate change was not a threat/not real. BP and Shell sat on it for decades.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
But point is, at some point the economics of solar grew compelling enough to escape that attempt to stop it. So exhibit A in governability being impossible in the long term
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Mac Budkowski ᵏ
@macbudkowski
Economics of solar grew compelling partially because of strong subsidies from governments that let producers put out half-baked products and iterate.
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Mac Budkowski ᵏ
@macbudkowski
Same with electric cars - subsidies for buying a Tesla significantly accelerated adoption and incentivized other producers to follow suit.
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Mac Budkowski ᵏ
@macbudkowski
You may not control tech being developed by 1000s independent companies around the world but you can influence their incentives.
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