Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Picking up on this. I have More Thoughts™ on why I don’t think regulation and state control is much of a bottleneck/chokepoint in tech compared to raw resource and capital control. https://warpcast.com/vgr/0x75b59b39
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Preamble: First, I think control of resources is morally and politically legitimate. You have a right to know how to make nuclear bombs and anything else you care to learn. You don’t have the right to freely acquire enough fissile material to actually make one. It’s similar to free speech vs free reach argument.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Second: I think capital as a gating mechanism for access to resources is necessary but is not and should not be sufficient. You should be free to earn billions but not to use those billions to buy uranium on the free market. Many resources of both high collective value OR risk should be publicly controlled.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
This second position is subtle. It relates to whether you think resources are default public and privatizable by exception or vice versa. “Private” property is always artificially created and we always set limits on that game. For eg, declaring Antarctica off limits as real estate (until a superpower defects)
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Ok that preamble out of the way, what stops you from just grabbing and using any technology for your own benefit given the necessary knowledge and no restrictions on either raw materials or capital accumulation constraints? How much does regulation stop people?
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Eg: nothing is stopping me from working hard to make a billion dollars and then spending it all on RPi robots that run around my mansion estate? It’s not lack of access to knowledge, resources, or freedom to buy parts. It’s simply lack of talent and motivation. That’s what stops most possible efforts.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Take an inventory of most things you might want to do and you’ll realize it’s almost never the case that someone is withholding knowledge, restricting resources, or free market sale. Invariably it will be your lack of talent and/or motivation. That’s 99% of people 99% of time. I’ll talk about the 1%/1% in a bit
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Concrete example. In my case the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do that would be stopped by regulation is build a hobby rocket with a guidance system (MTCR prevents that). And I could probably scratch that itch with simpler, legal projects. Of course I’m a normie. Not in the 1%/1%…
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I think a lot of stridently ideological people with a burning sense of Evil Forces™ withholding technology from The People™ have this idealized sense of mass hungry desperation for more technological agency that is simply a myth. 99% of people barely use any of the vast agency that *is* lying around to use.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Hell, STEM supremacists have to struggle and push on strings to get people to take the slightest interest in even absolutely trivial bits of agency like changing a setting on a phone, let alone jail breaking one. Most people don’t care. **Technological agency is not a natural hunger/drive/craving like food or sex**
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
You have to really stress people with extreme privation before they’ll do even the simplest hacks or exercising rudimentary tech intuitions. Mere necessity is not the mother of invention. It’s only the mother of shopping and clicking “I Agree” without reading. We mostly solve for minimum energy convenience.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The point of this analysis is that increasing tech agency is *never* a mass movement or ideology. You’re bullshitting yourself if you think you’ll spark some glorious mass revolution of innovation and progress by unshackling a few magic tools for The People.™ They don’t care unless it’s apocalyptic conditions
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