... curing death? It's not hubris. It's something we should have been focused
on doing for at least past few hundred years. If it takes rich SV guys to
finally do something about it, I think instead calling them full of hubris one
should instead ask, why it was them who finally started tackling this problem ...
I totally appreciate what you're saying. You're saying "the rich SV guys are right, why haven't we been trying to cure death? Obviously curing death would be amazing! Death is awful!".
But the fact that people whose expertise is primarily in software, entrepreneurship, and/or investing, who all have, I think we can safely say, limited experience as biology researchers, the fact that these people are making predictions about when death will be cured and judgements as to which approaches are most promising, predictions and judgements that are not deferred to actual biologists who study senescence...there are of course upsides to such hubris (e.g. being unaffected by perverse incentives in the academic system in which biologists traditionally work), but surely you can see that there is hubris here?
In spite of all the caveats like how academia sucks, at the end of the day, the actual biologists who study senescence are still understood to be the experts on the feasibility of immortality. Making any kind of prediction or judgement call that isn't deferring to the acknowledged experts is incontrovertibly arrogant.
To be clear, we wouldn't be leveling this criticism if "rich SV guys" were simply increasing financial support for aging research. There are undoubtedly controversies around actors raising money for medical research (e.g. because it arguably results in disproportionate funding for diseases of old rich white people), but nobody criticizes those celebrities of hubris, either.
This criticism is because there are people in Silicon Valley who earnestly, genuinely believe that because they're hackers not biologists, they're gonna cure death by hacking biology. Even if you believe they're right, how can you deny the arrogance?
... finally started tackling this problem in a way that has at least a chance
of being effective.
And this part is why this hubris is harmful: the dismissal of the efforts of anyone other than the "rich SV guys" of even having "at least a chance of being effective".
politics is one of the least cost-effective way of solving *anything* one
can imagine
Which way of solving institutionalized slavery, or women's suffrage, or totalitarianism do you think would've been more "cost-effective" than politics?
At least one of those was directly caused by technology, and solved by politics and its siblings, economics and war.
I moved this out of the parent comment because I really want you to read the parent comment and was worried about the wall-of-text; hopefully, you'll be interested enough to read the continuation, too.
it's not politicians who fed the world, it was Haber & Bosch
Without diminishing their accomplishments, it's important to note that Haber & Bosch have come and gone but world hunger still isn't solved. And it will never be solved by technology alone. It's going to require politics, and economics, and unfortunately probably war. Hopefully technology can provide an important supporting role, but the realization that technology will only be providing a supporting role, that's exactly the humility I'm arguing for.
Also, in what way were Haber & Bosch representative of "rich SV guys" or techie hubris? Maciej has never seemed to me to be criticizing mainstream scientific research at all.
It wasn't environmentalists who saved whales from extinction,
it was whoever invented that synthetic whale-oil substitute.
...
Personally, I'm getting more and more convinced that social
changes are caused by changes in technology landscape, not the
other way around.
Isn't synthetic whale-oil a clear counterexample to this causative claim? Surely you agree that research into whale-oil substitute was driven at least in part by environmentalism, it wasn't the invention of synthetic whale-oil substitute that incited people into caring about the environment.
And again, in what way is the invention of whale-oil substitute representative of the hubris that Maciej is criticizing?
we didn't have liberal democracy 500 years ago not because we
were stupid then, but because technologies that can support it
Didn't the Greeks have democracy 2500 years ago? The Roman Republic also had a form of democracy, which lasted longer than the US is old, our technology may well turn out not "support it" any better than theirs.
This reminds me of a quote from a talk I read recently:
More broadly, we have to stop treating computer technology as something
unprecedented in human history.
... let's at least learn from our past, so we can fail in interesting
new ways, instead of failing in the same exasperating ways as last time.
But the fact that people whose expertise is primarily in software, entrepreneurship, and/or investing, who all have, I think we can safely say, limited experience as biology researchers, the fact that these people are making predictions about when death will be cured and judgements as to which approaches are most promising, predictions and judgements that are not deferred to actual biologists who study senescence...there are of course upsides to such hubris (e.g. being unaffected by perverse incentives in the academic system in which biologists traditionally work), but surely you can see that there is hubris here?
In spite of all the caveats like how academia sucks, at the end of the day, the actual biologists who study senescence are still understood to be the experts on the feasibility of immortality. Making any kind of prediction or judgement call that isn't deferring to the acknowledged experts is incontrovertibly arrogant.
To be clear, we wouldn't be leveling this criticism if "rich SV guys" were simply increasing financial support for aging research. There are undoubtedly controversies around actors raising money for medical research (e.g. because it arguably results in disproportionate funding for diseases of old rich white people), but nobody criticizes those celebrities of hubris, either.
This criticism is because there are people in Silicon Valley who earnestly, genuinely believe that because they're hackers not biologists, they're gonna cure death by hacking biology. Even if you believe they're right, how can you deny the arrogance?
And this part is why this hubris is harmful: the dismissal of the efforts of anyone other than the "rich SV guys" of even having "at least a chance of being effective". Which way of solving institutionalized slavery, or women's suffrage, or totalitarianism do you think would've been more "cost-effective" than politics?At least one of those was directly caused by technology, and solved by politics and its siblings, economics and war.