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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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
True but even a 10-year delta in when tech becomes available is still a big deal! eg. imagine if internet privacy tech was reliably 10 years ahead of where it has been in practice, but internet surveillance tech was not comparably accelerated. (or vice versa)
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
These scenarios are interesting but I don’t think they can be “chosen” in any meaningful way. The path dependent forking is almost entirely driven by available tech options. What eventually broke Solar stranglehold by big oil was Moore’s law driving pv cell costs down enough with old fabs, not governance…
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
Agreed. Technology is clearly an effort of human attention, which mobilizes relevant actions and resources. That effort can be deeply relevant without being omnipotent. The very same point is true of other important things we do, like politics.
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