Yuval Noah Harari

[luka]

this man is becoming a familair face in the conspiracy channel broadcasts. he reminds me of Stan and Gus in that he doesn't so much think as articulate the premises the modern world is built upon. these things are not always spelled out so clearly and where they are they fit neatly into a conspiratorial framework
for example

Historian Yuval Noah Harari offers a bracing prediction: just as mass industrialization created the working class, the AI revolution will create a new unworking class.​

1. Organisms are algorithms. Every animal — including Homo sapiens — is an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution.


2. Algorithmic calculations are not affected by the materials from which the calculator is built. Whether an abacus is made of wood, iron or plastic, two beads plus two beads equals four beads.


3. Hence, there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon?

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

he channels the ideology of the era without any conscious intervention. a mouthpiece for impersonal forces. this is why he is important.... from what i can work out... not having read anything he's written or listened to any interviews etc.

 

[version]

@mixed_biscuits posted a really frightening Twitter thread of excerpts from a talk he gave a few years ago.

 

[Leo]

@mixed_biscuits posted a really frightening Twitter thread of excerpts from a talk he gave a few years ago.

@mixed_biscuits can you share? thx.

 

[version]

Here.

This is the stuff I found really scary,

If "the info-tech revolution merges with the bio-tech revolution what you get is the ability to hack human beings."

"once we have algorithms that can understand me better than I understand myself they could predict my desires manipulate my emotions & even take decisions on my behalf. & if we are not careful, the outcome might be, the rise of digital dictatorships."

"people will give up their privacy in exchange for healthcare and maybe in many places they won't have a choice. They won't even get insurance if they're unwilling to give access to what is happening inside their bodies."

 

[Clinamenic]

Pretty sure I watched the talk of his from WEF that those were pulled from. I remember he had a quaint and non-ominous delivery of these things, pretty matter of fact and calm.

 

[version]

I wonder whether the audience saw what he was saying as positive or negative. There must have been at least a fair few of them hoping that this is exactly what happens. He's talking at the WEF about the "elite" taking an unprecedented level of control of life on this planet as though the WEF aren't exactly that.

It probably came across like a sales pitch.

 

[Clinamenic]

I remember it was something of a pep talk. You are part of a multi-hundred million year evolutionary development, our technology is advancing faster than we can culturally adapt to it, here are some of the possible outcomes, etc.

I'm sure many of these people walked away from the talk with the sole takeaway being some newly informed investment strategy.

 

[Clinamenic]

But I would be surprised if 99% of listeners aren't disturbed by this, even if their material way of life would go untouched by such developments. It does upend the reality that human life is sacred, somehow owing its animism to sources beyond the universe, despite our technology consistently making advances that indicate otherwise, that we are merely ultra-complex systems.

 

[Clinamenic]

The "unworking class" is an interesting notion, I suppose along the lines of luxury automated communism, perhaps just dialed back a bit in terms of extravagance.

 

[version]

... luxury automated communism...

That whole thing just seems fanciful to me. It's difficult to picture something like that ever happening after having seen the initial optimism surrounding COVID's potential to transform society being so swiftly and cruelly punctured.

 

[Clinamenic]

Well it may happen in pockets, and I don't think it would bear any substantial resemblance to communism as we know it politically, more in a philosophic sense of the dissolution of the individual into the collective.

 

[Clinamenic]

I get it that its a meme, but the makings are there to an extent. Food delivered to you, centuries of free entertainment content at your fingertips, etc.

Blockchain may add further nuances to this, such as letting more people than just the elite make their savings work for them. Passive income may become more of a middle class resource here.

 

[Clinamenic]

I was on UCLA's campus the other day, and it was my first time seeing a food delivery bot.

 

[version]

I think the prospect of anything like that rests on how confident the people at the top are that they could weather a serious revolt. They might throw a bone in the form of something like UBI if they're really concerned about their safety and property, but I expect they'll just keep chipping away until they find a way to either completely contain people or to get rid of them entirely.

If any of that does happen though, I think it's a way off yet. It's still in the realm of science fiction, as far as I know.

 

[Clinamenic]

Job Guarantee may be more effective, and more palatable across the political spectrum, than UBI, as far as I understand.

So there could be something like that, some public sector workforce that can guarantee a job in light of the advancing front of automation.

 

[WashYourHands]

Can’t wait not to go to work lads

I think the prospect of anything like that rests on how confident the people at the top are that they could weather a serious revolt. They might throw a bone in the form of something like UBI if they're really concerned about their safety and property, but I expect they'll just keep chipping away until they find a way to either completely contain people or to get rid of them entirely.

If any of that does happen though, I think it's a way off yet. It's still in the realm of science fiction, as far as I know.

 

[version]

Job Guarantee may be more effective, and more palatable across the political spectrum, than UBI, as far as I understand.

So there could be something like that, some public sector workforce that can guarantee a job in light of the advancing front of automation.

Isn't that what makes UBI necessary in the first place though; that jobs can't be guaranteed?

 

[Clinamenic]

As I understand it, JG would institute a general workforce across some number of sectors that state agencies are involved in, and would unconditionally accept applications.

Could be that if an applicant has gotten offers from private employers, their public job wouldn't be guaranteed, rather it would be reserved for an applicant without private offers.

The concept is interesting, and this is the only legislation I'm aware of in the US that gets at it.

In theory it could introduce a floor to the labor market, if I understand that correctly, rather than the floor just being unemployment and/or poverty.