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

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

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?

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.

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