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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I can't be too mad at people for wanting to believe in the Singularity. Existential dread sucks and I bet it hits smart people really hard, it's like heaven for nerds. It's more absurd than that. The tech singularity refers to a feedback loop where advances in augmented intelligence or AI accelerate additional advances ad infinitum until the rate of technological progress approaches a vertical asymptote, infinite technological progress. There's no guarantee that this technological process would be good for human beings, at all. The singularity necessarily implies we have no ability to predict its shape or outcome. There's no reason to think that it will fix capitalism, anymore than it will destroy earth and extinct humanity in the birth pangs of a trancendant intelligence.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:00
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Isn't there a sneaking suspicion that most of Silicon Valley just creates apps that are in the end just ways to make the lives of other rich Silicon Valley dwellers slightly more amusing. And this while contributes to GDP is more or less worthless to the vast majority of society.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:10
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JeffersonClay posted:There's no guarantee that this technological process would be good for human beings, at all. Most singularity theorists are somewhere on the spectrum from trans- to anti-humanist, so this isn't an operational constraint.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:12
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There are also tons of failed start ups out there that don't make it even to that stage and suck down millions worth of venture capital (which I guess it appropriate). It is one of those circumstances where it really looks like a completely empty bubble but you can't call it that until it bursts and until then you just have to silently watch.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:14
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Is this anything more complex than that dump Republican mantra that "Businessmen make the best leaders. Our CEOs should be president." ? I've never been to San Francisco and don't work in the tech world, but is there something that separates Justine's ideas from that? Money is power, news at 11.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:14
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Rhesus Pieces posted:This is already the case. The mind is willing, the flesh is weak.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:20
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Another nice note on Google is how it conspired with all the other big name Bay Area tech companies to hold down wages. Basically people like Steve Jobs and Larry Paige live in the same snobbish area and after many walks worked out a gentleman's agreement to avoid talent raiding/also compensation bidding wars. They even traded compensation package information with each to make sure there wouldn't be any real wage competition between offer letters.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:24
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etalian posted:Another nice note on Google is how it conspired with all the other big name Bay Area tech companies to hold down wages.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:29
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etalian posted:Another nice note on Google is how it conspired with all the other big name Bay Area tech companies to hold down wages. Uh if it was rational for devs and engineers to unionize they would have done it already. FACT: fair wages stop the singularity. Would you like to know more?
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Mar 22, 2014 20:37
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The only difference between this and those crazy libertarians who want to live in a lawless boat is that Justine Tunney wants the USA to be that boat. Second, Justine Tunney made this Storify page because she thinks she came off the better in the exchange. Finally, what role will Shiny play in our new technical utopia? 
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Mar 22, 2014 20:39
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Last Buffalo posted:Is this anything more complex than that dump Republican mantra that "Businessmen make the best leaders. Our CEOs should be president." ? Justine Tunney literally thinks the United States is a corporation that owns the country and that leaders can and should be replaced by shareholders. She rejects democracy and says she favors "corporatism" but doesnt quite know what corporatism is. This isn't even the tip of her crazy iceburg. She once said the US government was illegitimate because of poor poll numbers, but that Egypt's repressive military junta was both legitimate and a model democracy because they've been winning elections with absurdly high margins. Also that people who protest gentrification in San Fransisco are literally terrorists and criminals while simultaneously wishing the black panthers would rise up and start a violent revolution Emanuel Collective fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 20:44
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Swan Oat posted:The only difference between this and those crazy libertarians who want to live in a lawless boat is that Justine Tunney wants the USA to be that boat. This isn't complete without Shingy on a wrecking ball.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:48
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I couldn't make it through all four pages, but I did CTRL+F on each of them for Groupon. Schmidt was a typically disastrous beancounter who sailed on the achievements of the actual non-finance/operations people around him. Hey look, here's AdSense/AdWords, it's a money machine! Remember all the greatest hits of the Schmidt years? Neither does anyone else. After his idiotic attempt to purchase flash-in-the-pan Groupon for 8 Billion dollars got outed, he was quickly fired (promoted) so that the brains in the outfit could come back on board and clean things up. Since then, Google has shifted back into high gear and looks set to really do well in a lot of areas Schmidt was floundering in. loving clown. I want to insult Tim Cook here, but he's smart enough to not be that awful. Schmidt is like Sculley/Ballmer levels of bad.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:51
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'Mister Obama I have the utmost respect for you' Oh really you have such respect for the legitimately elected leader of America that you didn't say 'President Obama'?
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Mar 22, 2014 20:51
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ReindeerF posted:I couldn't make it through all four pages, but I did CTRL+F on each of them for Groupon. Schmidt was a typically disastrous beancounter who sailed on the achievements of the actual non-finance/operations people around him. Hey look, here's AdSense/AdWords, it's a money machine! Remember all the greatest hits of the Schmidt years? Neither does anyone else. After his idiotic attempt to purchase flash-in-the-pan Groupon for 8 Billion dollars got outed, he was quickly fired (promoted) so that the brains in the outfit could come back on board and clean things up. Since then, Google has shifted back into high gear and looks set to really do well in a lot of areas Schmidt was floundering in. 
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Mar 22, 2014 20:53
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ReindeerF posted:loving clown. So what you're saying is that we should replace the SBA with Groupon.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:54
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Vladimir Putin posted:'Mister Obama I have the utmost respect for you' For whatever its worth "Mister Obama" is considered proper for most media style guides. Justine Tunney somewhat literally thinks that the President is a CEO so I doubt she calls him "mister" because the new york times does so
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Mar 22, 2014 20:55
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Justine Tunney posted:I say gently caress money! The tech industry is moving us into the information age, where money is becoming less and less relevant. -from a google employee, known destitute wage slaves
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Mar 22, 2014 20:56
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Vladimir Putin posted:Isn't there a sneaking suspicion that most of Silicon Valley just creates apps that are in the end just ways to make the lives of other rich Silicon Valley dwellers slightly more amusing. And this while contributes to GDP is more or less worthless to the vast majority of society. Yeah. I keep hearing about how Lyft and Uber are these game changing disruptive things when you've been able to use your phone to summon a taxi for decades. The main thing isn't the app, it's that they're unregulated and unlicensed taxi systems using our poo poo economy to provide transportation in the same underpaid manner as pizza delivery.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:02
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Emanuel Collective posted:She once said the US government was illegitimate because of poor poll numbers, but that Egypt's repressive military junta was both legitimate and a model democracy because they've been winning elections with absurdly high margins. Egypt's military dictator has ~95% approval ratings (last time I checked in The Economist). Around that same time, the U.S. Regime's approval ratings sunk to 9%. What does that mean for the future of western liberal democracy? Let's take it back to Hobbes for a moment. Hobbes is sort of like the godfather of western political theory. Like hundreds of years ago, this guy basically laid the foundation for much of what we know today as "liberalism". Hobbes said that political power does not come from God or divine right or the barrel of a gun, but rather the consent of the people. So regimes basically have a responsibility to not be terrible. The U.S. Regime doesn't really meet the mark. It doesn't rule in by the consent of the people and it doesn't represent the interests of the people. Our government is a for-profit corporation that extracts surplus value from our labor in the form of taxes, and gives it to Wall Street. Perhaps we should offer General Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi a promotion to be President of the United States of America.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:06
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Tubgoat posted:Could engineers really get it more wrong than bankers though? I'm honestly not sure how.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:07
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Yeah, the whole "information replaces money thing" doesn't even make any sense because even if you increase efficiency you actually still need capital to run the system. Uber isn't a free service because you use an app with it (not to mention the other problems with Uber). If anything it seems like a thin veneer over common right-authoritarian thinking, just this time it comes in app form. That or bitcoins, I hope she isn't talking about bitcoins.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:08
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She tweeted about having lost money in bitcoin, for what it's worth.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:11
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The Bay Area tech evangelists will wither on the vine and die, and they'll all just join the Republican party in the end, because it's obvious the Democrats and government itself will be the sole cause for the destruction of the beautiful concept of making Fartr app for otherkins from Petaluma.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:12
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Joementum posted:So what you're saying is that we should replace the SBA with Groupon.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:15
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Silicon Valley is already in the process of purchasing the Republican Party. It's why FWD.us has been giving public talks with Orin Hatch. The interesting thing about Orin Hatch is that he's the guy who courted the fundies back in the late 70's and got them to join the GOP. But he's been in congress long enough to know which way the wind's blowing. Which is why he's been courting Silicon Valley. You can expect them to change their stance on abortion real soon.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:16
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the whole startup system is basically a human centipede system since the only value the new startups have is because established once startup companies like Facebook or Google are ready to pay big money to bring them in the fold. It's also pretty much overinflated take over bids too when a simple messaging software WhatsApp somehow gets a $19 billion dollar buyout from Facebook. Also important to note that despite the whole startup messiah complex, around 90% of them end in failure.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:16
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You have to make a distinction between VC startups and real startups there. For every 200 clowncar VC ventures full of assclowns bragging about their Aeron chairs and Prada hand creme, there's a 37 Signals.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:19
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ReindeerF posted:You have to make a distinction between VC startups and real startups there. For every 200 clowncar VC ventures full of assclowns bragging about their Aeron chairs and Prada hand creme, there's a 37 Signals. I'm not too familiar with the nuances of startup culture and at the risk of pushing this thread too close to substantive discussion, I was wondering if you had an opinion on the extent to which the proliferation and coverage of the latter pressure the former into cultural imitation or chasing VC money through dumb poo poo, etc.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:26
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The Real Ambassador posted:Silicon Valley is already in the process of purchasing the Republican Party. It's why FWD.us has been giving public talks with Orin Hatch. Abortion is not a losing issue though, it's remained fairly constant for 30-40 years.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:26
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It will be less about abortion, and "cleaning up the rift raft" that has infected our great city/country.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:28
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Emanuel Collective posted:Also that people who protest gentrification in San Fransisco are literally terrorists Well, these protesters are using physical violence to attempt to effect political change, and the violence isn't even targeted at decision-makers (Google execs or city officials) but rather at the ground-level people just trying to do their 9-5. So yes, she's not too wrong on the first part. If the Black Bloc smashing up branch-bank storefronts is terrorism, then anti-gentrification protesters attacking engineers and Google Buses is probably terrorism as well. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 21:36
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Paul MaudDib posted:Well, these protesters are using physical violence to attempt to effect political change, and the violence isn't even targeted at decision-makers (Google execs or city officials) but rather at the ground-level people just trying to do their 9-5. They do it, and will continue to do it, until Google gets the gently caress out and stops doing it. Full stop.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:40
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Ardennes posted:It will be less about abortion, and "cleaning up the rift raft" that has infected our great city/country. That doesn't seem too different from the standard GOP position now (albeit with a focus that's probably more urban centered than rural but that's been a thing since the crack epidemic).
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Mar 22, 2014 21:41
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Paul MaudDib posted:Well, these protesters are using physical violence to attempt to effect political change, and the violence isn't even targeted at decision-makers (Google execs or city officials) but rather at the ground-level people just trying to do their 9-5 (or 8am-3am as the case may be) Delusional community activism is a big thing in SF and all the whining didn't accomplish anything beside getting Google a small fine for using muni bus stop infrastructure.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:43
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When the bay area explodes again, Google will probably still be there. It's really not a question of if but when. It's always great to read articles about how this bubble is different from the last bubble and the rationalizations though. "We just paid an exorbitant amount of money/stocks for a product that doesn't have a revenue model and has never made money! This is constant growth! It can only go up, up, up!" But the big guys will probably still be around, and I think it's a bit late to try to shove them out without city help. And the city doesn't exactly look like they want to help.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:44
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Nonsense posted:They do it, and will continue to do it, until Google gets the gently caress out and stops doing it. Full stop. Until Google stops doing what, though? Paying decent salaries (actually artificially low, they got caught colluding to pressure them down) for top talent? Google's not going to stop doing that. Relocate to somewhere far away from the talent pool? That's not going to happen either. The real problem is that SF has a very tight housing market combined with a flourishing economy. One of the two has to give, and solving it by trying to drive out the economic activity is just crab mentality. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 21:55
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Speaking of glorious CEO Schmidt's impending benevolent regime:quote:Confidential internal Google and Apple memos, buried within piles of court dockets and reviewed by PandoDaily, clearly show that what began as a secret cartel agreement between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to illegally fix the labor market for hi-tech workers, expanded within a few years to include companies ranging from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks, and London-based public relations behemoth WPP. All told, the combined workforces of the companies involved totals well over a million employees. quote:Schmidt responded: Super genius avoids incriminating paper trail by openly discussing avoiding paper trail in email.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:00
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etalian posted:Delusional community activism is a big thing in SF and all the whining didn't accomplish anything beside getting Google a small fine for using muni bus stop infrastructure. Last I checked there doesn't even seem to be any actual laws about not using those bus stops, apparently SF never got around to making them? A lot of other cities do take the time to make it illegal to use city marked bus stops by other bus companies, or require other bus services wishing to share stops with the city bus to sign a contract with the municipal service (NYC in particular does this). Paul MaudDib posted:Until Google stops doing what, though? Paying decent salaries (actually artificially low, they got caught colluding to pressure them down) for top talent? Google's not going to stop doing that. Relocate to somewhere far away from the talent pool? That's not going to happen either. That's the funny part. Google isn't in SF, Google's down in actual Silicon Valley. It's a bunch of dumbass google employees who decided to live 50+ miles away in SF and Oakland and commute to the suburbs who are in there, and Google eventually decided to pay for chartered bus service when they all bitched about how hard it was to commute down to where most of Google's offices are. The Google Buses wouldn't exist if Google was actually moving into SF, or if Google was willing to risk losing a few crybaby employees who insist on an utterly ridiculous commuting distance. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 22:01
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Install Windows posted:Last I checked there doesn't even seem to be any actual laws about not using those bus stops, apparently SF never got around to making them? A lot of other cities do take the time to make it illegal to use city marked bus stops by other bus companies, or require other bus services wishing to share stops with the city bus to sign a contract with the municipal service (NYC in particular does this). The city has a $271 fine for blocking muni bus stops but Google managed to compromise it down to $1 penalty per stop after all the activist whining since they have more friends in high places. It's pretty much driven by single engineer nerds wanting to live in SF instead of the more suburban areas around mountain view
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Mar 22, 2014 22:09
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