
Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love with Their Principal Doomsayer - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/business/yuval-noah-harari-silicon-valley.html
======
lightyrs
Occam's Razor tells me it's because they are being painted as capable of
subverting seemingly larger-than-life systems and institutions. I imagine it's
an ego boost to a lot of these tech CEOs.

~~~
kyledrake
And it's arrogant to boot. Seriously believing machine learning is going to
make everyone worthless/unemployed and end government is even crazy for
Malthusian standards. This is the same age old debate over technology has been
going on for centuries. There's nearly infinite things to work on out there,
even if the latest steam engine makes a particular thing more efficient or
require less workers. Those workers re-train and move on to other things. The
key to minimizing the issues is to provide the education, tools, health care,
etc. to help displaced workers with that.

~~~
dashwav
I think his argument has always been more along the lines of machine learning
will give the people in charge the knowledge of what it is that the citizen
wants to hear and what they will believe, which means that the owner of the
data then has power not by way of voting or military might, but by way of
manipulation of the masses - which is a sentiment that I find much easier to
believe.

------
hnaccy
They see themselves as members of the ruling class that will outlive the
useless class and subvert existing democratic institutions.

Of course they love his message, in it they win.

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darawk
Why is this puzzling to people? Isn't this behavior exactly what we'd want out
of intelligent, thoughtful people in high places? The ability to countenance
and enjoy interesting and thought-provoking ideas that are contrary to their
own immediate interests?

~~~
smhost
> It made him sad, he told me, to see people build things that destroy their
> own societies

> “If you make people start thinking far more deeply and seriously about these
> issues,” he told me, sounding weary, “some of the things they will think
> about might not be what you want them to think about.”

It's not puzzling, it's troubling. To see these people who are actively
destroying society be so fascinated by their own powers of destruction.

~~~
darawk
You think that all tech is doing is destroying society?

~~~
lovich
Ad tech and it's supporting industries? Yes

~~~
darawk
How, exactly? Explain the physics of that to me. How is ad tech destroying the
world?

~~~
lovich
Oh you're being a literalist. I can go into Bitcoin for global warming if you
want that, but when people say "destroying the world" in the thread they are
talking about destroying the set of values and institutions that make up our
current culture/society.

To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of it's
psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done before

~~~
darawk
> Oh you're being a literalist.

Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to.

> To that definition, I think ad tech is helping destroy the world will of
> it's psychological manipulation of people at a scale that's never been done
> before

I see very little evidence that ad tech is doing any of that. I think you
could make a much better case that social media is doing that. But it's not
the ads that are toxic - it's the primary content. The ads are really no worse
than they've ever been on television or otherwise.

There's certainly a case to be made that social media, a small corner of the
tech universe, is harming certain social institutions and values. But it's a
far cry from destroying the world, especially in light of how much tech has
given the world that has been good.

~~~
lovich
Social media and ad tech are currently intertwined. Facebook and Twitter are
both two large players who are both ad tech and social media based. Google was
until recently, and that was after years of failure, which they committed to
because social media is such a force multiplier for adtech. Can you name
another large social media company who doesn't make money off of ad tech? Snap
Chat is the only other major social media company I can think of at the
moment, and they also make their revenue off of ads.

As for

>Merely responding to the tone of the comment I was, well, responding to.

You were responding to the well known phrase "destroying the world" as if it
was physically tearing the earth apart, when it's been a phrase for destroying
the currently accepted social norms since at least the 90s when I first heard
it in popular media.

If you want to have a discussion stop being disengenous about your arguments

Edit: I went and reviewed the thread. You asked "You think that all tech is
doing is destroying society?". When I said "Yes", you asked for the physics of
how it was destroying the world. Please stop moving the goal posts

~~~
darawk
> Social media and ad tech are currently intertwined. Facebook and Twitter are
> both two large players who are both ad tech and social media based. Google
> was until recently, and that was after years of failure

Social media was never an important part of Google's business.

> Can you name another large social media company who doesn't make money off
> of ad tech?

Wrong set containment. Yes, social media functions on ad tech. Bullets
function on momentum. So what? Ad tech does a lot of things, social media is
just one of many, many things it is used for. You are decrying ad tech as
'destroying the world', by pointing at a sliver of its use cases. You're not
upset with ad tech, you're upset with social media.

> You were responding to the well known phrase "destroying the world" as if it
> was physically tearing the earth apart, when it's been a phrase for
> destroying the currently accepted social norms since at least the 90s when I
> first heard it in popular media.

Erm, no. I was using the phrase exactly how you are. My question, as you went
back and reviewed, is whether or not the _ONLY_ thing that ad tech is doing is
destroying the world? I didn't even object to the silly insinuation that it
was in fact, doing so.

> If you want to have a discussion stop being disengenous about your arguments

I'm not being disingenuous, you just need to work on your reading
comprehension.

> Edit: I went and reviewed the thread. You asked "You think that all tech is
> doing is destroying society?". When I said "Yes", you asked for the physics
> of how it was destroying the world. Please stop moving the goal posts

I didn't ask if it was destroying the world. I asked if _all_ it was doing was
destroying the world. You still haven't answered the physics question, either.
Ad tech is a business model for social media.

If you want to tar 'ad tech' with the sins of social media, then you need to
assert that social media _can only exist_ because of ad tech, and that the
other things enabled by ad tech (e.g. google search) would be worth giving up
in exchange for eliminating social media. Otherwise you're just saying
"Bullets rely on momentum and bullets kill people! Therefore momentum is
bad!".

~~~
lovich
Dude, your exact post is

>How, exactly? Explain the physics of that to me. How is ad tech destroying
the world?

And now your telling me

>I didn't ask if it was destroying the world

Was some critical word here deleted by autocorrect? Because those you
explicitly asked how it was destroying the world in the text that is in this
thread

~~~
darawk
Read the original post. I pretty clearly articulated what I was asking. You're
being disingenuous, now.

~~~
lovich
You asked how it was destroying the world, and then said you didn't ask that.
I am actually trying to understand you, but cannot see what you mean when
these statements can't both be true

~~~
darawk
I asked if all it was doing was destroying the world. Then, in a follow-up, I
asked you to explain the physics of how it was destroying the world. The
emphasis being on the word 'how' in that question. I didn't mean the literal
physics in the sense of tearing the earth apart - I meant the process by which
it was eroding culture, community, values, etc.

I think that there is a decently strong case to be made that social media,
especially certain forms of social media, are in fact doing those things. I
think there is a case to be made that advertising generally has helped that
along, by allowing social media services to be free for users. I don't really
see the case that 'ad tech' has had much to do with that, other than by
optimizing the ads seen to make the companies marginally more profitable.

------
empath75
I actually think that well before the useless class becomes useless for
economic productivity, they will be put to use for another purpose — mass
violence.

The elites will simply put guns and bombs in the hands of the unemployable
masses and use them to take what they can’t win in the market place.

You can already see sustained and successful efforts to radicalize people
online and it’s only going to get worse.

Asymmetric warfare is always going to work and no matter how many drones and
missions you have, enough armed radicals will eventually bring anyone to their
knees.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a global spasm of violence but I think
we’ve been inching closer and closer towards it, year by year since 9/11.

------
slavik81
It reminds me of The Boondocks. Huey Freeman dreams of inciting white people
to riot by shattering their most cherished beliefs, but he discovers that the
wealthy, white people of his neighbourhood aren't bothered by his revelations
in the slightest.

 _Huey_ : And all I'm saying is, Ronald Reagan was the devil.

 _Rich Man_ : You are such an articulate young man.

 _Huey_ : I'm trying to explain to you that Ronald Reagan was the devil!
Ronald Wilson Reagan? Each of his names have six letters? 666? Man, doesn't
that offend you?

 _Rich Man_ : I love this kid!

....

 _Huey_ : (to Granddad) These people aren't worried about us. They're not
worried about anything. They're rich. No matter what happens, these people
will just keep applaudin'.

------
tlb
I can't recommend his books highly enough. It's human nature explained in a
single book! And although I've read hundreds of other books on various aspects
of human nature, Harari's non-judgemental synthesis from a consistent point of
view clarified my thinking significantly.

~~~
Judgmentality
Any books in particular you'd recommend over the others?

~~~
tlb
Start with either Sapiens, or 21 Lessons for the 21st century.

~~~
kashyapc
IMHO, starting with Sapiens is better—as that is the really core expertise of
Harari, and it's a masterful distillation of human history into a single book.

------
nperez
I'm not a Silicon Valley CEO, but I like hearing this sort of thing because I
don't think my work is going away even if the social impact of the industry is
known and controlled.

As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it to
make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a darker
side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the world a
better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs either.

~~~
xoa
> _As a kid, I was in love with software because of the possibilities for it
> to make the world a better / more interesting place. I grew up and saw a
> darker side. I still want the tech industry to be an industry that makes the
> world a better place. I don't think that's out of the question for CEOs
> either._

Yeah, a lot of folks both at C-level and in the trenches may feel, even if
they run an individual company, that they're a bit caught in mutual escalation
and wouldn't actually mind some level of imposed disarmament. Ie., it wouldn't
be bad if there were in fact some more consideration forced so long as that
applied to everyone all at once, but that it's harder to do unilaterally on
their own, particularly taking into account VC/investor/customer pressures.
Having someone challenging the entire industry intelligently could actually
help take things in a direction many wouldn't mind moving anyway.

One example I think where this already happened was sales taxes. Yes there
were some people ideologically opposed to all taxes even after the industry
matured, or were seeking out some individual advantage, but I also know plenty
of people who had no specific problem with taxes per se but just didn't want
to be put at an active _disadvantage_ vs competitors. Compared to other tech
companies they didn't want them to have zero while they didn't, and compared
to local retailers they didn't want any gotchas of getting screwed by hard to
parse local composite tax numbers and figuring out where to send the money
nationwide and all that with many states/counties have terrible scaling
archaic systems. If there was just a database to consult and an orderly system
to send to then no problem. So there was a win-win potential there as far as
they were concerned and people challenging "nothing" weren't unwelcome, but it
was still hard to do alone.

------
Bjorkbat
His predictions don't sound that far off from something Ray Kurzweil would
predict. They're both predicting a utopia and the beginning of a new form of
intelligence. The difference is that Yuval Hariri is a little more explicit
about the fact that not everyone might make it to the rapture.

Quick reminder: doesn't matter how exclusive you make heaven. People have a
tendency to believe that they'll be one of the lucky ones.

More importantly, they don't really leave a lot of room for avoiding something
that feels inevitable to a lot of people. Well, a lot of people in the
audience anyway. The people you encounter at lunch would probably find the
notion of God-like humans to be kind of crazy.

------
trevyn
Mr. Harari worries and is anxious, but by the end of the article, his
superpower is detachment?

------
xoa
An interesting read, and I don't see why he'd be confused. In my experience
and personally a lot of intelligent people, particular ambitious startup
types, _like_ to be challenged (in an intelligent way). They like
"intellectual combat", vigorous debate. They may defend themselves
vociferously (they're also the type to have extensively thought about and
researched their positions already, so they're not lightly held) but it's
_exciting_ to encounter opposed views argued beautifully, where there is
strong disagreement but damn if they don't have a point. I think some people
confuse people dismissing what they consider mediocre arguments with no
interest in any challenge at all. As always implementation matters a lot. I
mean, that's why a lot of us are right here on HN right? To gain information
from those smarter then we are.

I think his interpretation of UBI is an oversimplification however that does
not fully encompass many practical or positive moral considerations in support
of it:

> _' This, Mr. Harari told me later, is why Silicon Valley is so excited about
> the concept of universal basic income, or stipends paid to people regardless
> of whether they work. The message is: “We don’t need you. But we are nice,
> so we’ll take care of you.”'_

There are at least a few parts to this. To get the most simple and pragmatic
out of the way first, some people are interested in UBI and base level
resource/shelter/information access purely (or at least heavily) from a coldly
rational efficiency point of view. They see it as a better system all around
vs an unorganized hodgepodge of defined bespoke benefits, and simply figure
"well if something needs to be kept around let's make it better" and go no
farther then that. This also does in fact have at least some real world
support as well as theoretical. Simply giving money directly to people in the
developing world has yielded promising results in some initial trials I read
vs trying to distribute goods. It can be made more resistant to corruption,
more decentralized, and many of the efficiencies of a market economy work just
as well if the economic input is external.

Practical considerations also encompass an expression of _humility_ : even if
someone cared only about the "valuable" humans, we don't actually have any
clear idea how that comes about beyond the roughest figures. But we do know
that bad nutrition and lack of even basic opportunity can destroy potential
for good. I'm _positive_ , just on a pure statistical level, that we have had
world changing genius level intellects in the dozens to hundreds that have
been born in slums, into starvation and threats and lack of any sort of
serious upward potential and have thus been utterly wasted. Enormous amounts
of valuable human potential has been actively pissed away for no good end at
all, in fact for negative value since that directly correlates to
crime/prison. The poor are not some lesser race, but that's how policy has
effectively treated them.

Both those lead into and inform a moral angle, which is that I think direct
income (and in turn UBI) can also come from a much more fundamental position
of _respect for individual humans_ , not merely "but we are nice". This may be
easiest to come at by looking at the charity example: if you dig down, a lot
of current schemes fundamentally come from a view of poverty being a moral
failing. The view is that the poor and desperate are that way because they're
stupid, inferior beings, and in turn they must be given the goods they need
(decided by their betters) directly because otherwise "of course" they'd
fritter the money all away on booze/drugs/junk/[thing giver considers a bad
idea].

It turns out though that while sure there are hard cases there are also plenty
of smart, decent people who are nonetheless very badly off due to essentially
bad luck and an inability to muster the capital to bootstrap. If given a
stipend they will not just spend it frivolously, but rather intelligently use
it for their needs, save, invest and all the other things anyone else would
do. They can be taught some basic financial literacy and offered
education/metaeducation as well with basic needs satisfied, just as others
would get naturally growing up, and do even better. Offering someone badly off
money rather then food/goods of the exact same monetary "value" is in many
ways an expression of trust and respect: that they are capable of figuring out
their needs more intelligently then the giver is, and the giver is just trying
to achieve the goal of supporting another human at some level and not just to
indulge in some righteousness

Mr. Harari seems to take the negative spin of "we don't need you", but that
itself seems to implicitly take as given "a human's worth is wholly defined by
their capacity to work and the need for them." But UBI also makes sense if
someone as an ideological stance wishes to make a world where any human has a
base level of worth at birth by definition that doesn't need to be justified.
Other worth beyond that may then be found in other ways, but it should never
be zero. Work has often been a proxy for that and necessary in and of itself,
but if that changes down the road then a new value system will have to be
created. It doesn't have to just be about "nice".

------
saagarjha
> An Alphabet media relations manager later reached out to Mr. Harari’s team
> to tell him to tell me that the visit to X was not allowed to be part of
> this story.

Did Alphabet have him sign an agreement before presenting?

------
xrd
"And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited."

------
erwan
I'm going to be unpleasant and venture a guess.

A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves _consuming_
pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of _producing_
the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually
too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with
what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is
very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the
fringe of the internet, a _few_ domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-
spots.

The _cheap_ worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel
popularized the idea of "secrets" in _From Zero To One_ as well as with F8 and
their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older
idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to
consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts.

It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis
(craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian
insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming
content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and
vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it
comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your
world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas.
So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion.

If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are
about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark
indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and
probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that
you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career,
network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear
someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either
high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.

That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.

~~~
WalterBright
Dr. Pepper ran a TV ad in the 70's where the pitch was essentially "join us,
the non-conformists!"

I've often wondered if they were aware of the irony in that.

~~~
badcede
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA)

------
alexnewman
Standard human behavior.

------
person_of_color
This guy is a hack

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

