
Dude, You Broke the Future [video] - bostik
https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
======
lowglow
(My comment will get buried because I'm flagged but whatever)

I had drinks with a bunch of Hugo award winners and candidates a couple of
years back (2015?) and we started talking about near-future stuff. Mainly that
I was looking for more of it. (Diamond Age fans out there?)

A funny thing came up: It's getting harder and harder to predict near-future
stuff for some authors. I don't understand why. Is it that technology is
becoming more and more obscured from the requirements of interacting with it?

Once upon a time, a person had to divine the landscape of network protocols
and unix command line to understand the mystery of the internet. Nowadays that
tech is just one click or swipe away -- perhaps there is less imagination
required to figure out what's happening behind the scene, or perhaps no
imagination is required anymore -- things just are.

Maybe we're just inundated with the next big trivial far future click-bait
article that the future seems... well always right around the corner and less
futur-y(?).

Or perhaps we're at the precipice of something entirely new and
incomprehensible. I run a decentralized AI startup and we have an exercise
where we try to imagine a world with particular capabilities but it (for a
large part of my peers) seems out of reach -- as if it exists beyond a great
divide.

It makes me think that whatever is next is either really beyond the scope of
understanding, or just non-existent. It's fun (and exciting) to try and think
about regardless.

~~~
codewithcheese
Daniel Suarez fiction works are very on point with near future while also
being fun.

~~~
lowglow
Awesome. Which book would you recommend?

~~~
ylere
Daemon/Freedom, Change Agent

~~~
lowglow
epic. thanks!

------
narrator
Except for the Singularity trashing, this talk feels like a rehash of reading
your average Reddit political thread. I really wanted more than that. I think
the political left viewed dialectical materialism as their futurism and now
that that's gone with the fall of communism there's just doom. Global warming
doom. Hyper-capitalism doom. Race war doom. Overpopulation doom. Evil AI
overlord doom. They can't see the future because they don't believe there's
going to be one.

I think this is why China has risen so quickly. Their government and their
society has a positive view of the future that they are implementing. The west
has little in the way of a positive view of the future. It's almost all doom
pretty much across the board these days.

~~~
fao_
> and now that that's gone with the fall of communism there's just doom.

The thing is, communism didn't really exist to fall in the first place, and
the most advanced countries (Sweden, Norway, etc.) are all putting in place a
mixed socialist/capitalist system.

Also, dialectical materialism didn't necessarily fail just because a set of
predictions were made with it didn't come true, it just means that we didn't
have the right data, or perhaps we need a new analysis. Not to mention the
fact that much of communist writing with regards to capitalist failure is
extremely "on point", even today. Indeed, much of it feels like it could have
been written yesterday. Dialectical materialism remains a tool of science,
however limited it may be, and so should be considered as one.

Also, I think you're mistaking "doom" for "actionable movements". People are
actually mobilizing to fix the problem of race (mostly within America, I might
add -- while racism _is_ a problem elsewhere, you don't tend to see as much
violent resistance to fixing it as you do in the American systems). Just like
people are mobilizing to fix Climate Change and much of the problems with
uncontrolled late-stage capitalism.

~~~
gaius
_communism didn 't really exist to fall in the first place_

Come on, we can do better here than the tired old “not real communism”
argument.

 _it just means that we didn 't have the right data, or perhaps we need a new
analysis_

Ah yes, always followed by “it will be different next time”. How many millions
more have to die?

~~~
ahartmetz
I think it's fair to call all attempts so far "not reall communism". But you
don't have to conclude "real communism would work". You can also conclude
"real communism seems unimplementable". It is, after all, a social order that
was created purely on paper and from theoretical arguments, which is
ridiculous. That activity gives you something to try, but certainly not a
fixed solution that you just need to implement as prescribed.

~~~
Fnoord
Its a typical low blow, akin to throwing all right-wing under the guise of
Franco, the Weimar republic, or some other right-wing system. Communism has
been implemented on small scale. One notable example in Spain [1], problem is
that any large political system eventually turns out to be either
authoritarian or ineffective or sabotaged (I leave the guess by whom as an
exercise to the reader). Its also been applied in part in West-Europe as well
as USA, just not in full.

Capitalism is a race to the bottom where the poor countries in the world are
being put under the thumb. You don't have to look very far. Just look at all
the CIA ops the USA has conducted in the 20th century, e.g. Allende.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#1936_Revolu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#1936_Revolution)

~~~
tqdm
Capitalism is actually currently ending the world hunger because trickle-down
effects actually exist. Living standards are rising globally incredibly
quickly. Middle-class kids in Jordan are playing Diabolo 3 on their computers
despite the region having almost no natural resources, almost no water and
despite it being troubled by Syrian refugees. Yes, capitalism needs
regulation, but it is a lie to say that the entire approach is doomed to be a
race to the bottom.

~~~
platz
This is an experiment with 1 trial. What evidence do you have that another
system with the same technological advances would not produce the same or
better living standards? (none!)

~~~
gaius
East vs West Germany, North vs South Korea, even Cuba vs Florida. There have
been plenty of experiments.

~~~
perl4ever
China vs. Taiwan and Hong Kong.

~~~
gaius
Until China went state-capitalist Hong Kong’s economy was one-sixth the size
of China’s for 1/200th of the population. Now it’s 2-3%...

~~~
platz
Another system != Statist communists, categorically

------
snomad
Some comments as watching video...

Corporation as AI is good analogy. But as with many, he stops short and
repeatedly just says corporations. Please, every large group entity -
governmental bodies, unions, non-profits - is an AI. And with/in those groups
(and corporations) are also competing AIs.

Comments about weaponized social media: It is odd that we in the West don't
want to acknowledge / know / accept the US government and US tech firm roles
in the Arab Spring and Ukraine. If we even go further back, really Wikileaks
were the true pioneers in weaponizing social media.

~~~
olegkikin
But corporation collections as paperclip maximizers is a bad analogy.
Corporations generally produce something large numbers of people want (be it
solar panels or cars in his example), whereas a paperclip maximizer AI
produces paperclips that _only it_ wants, destroying everything in its path.

~~~
digi_owl
The "paperclip" in Stross' talk is not the item being produced, but earnings.
If a corporations could massively increase its quarterly earnings by starting
a nuclear war, it may well decide to do so.

It is not that the item or service is useful or not in the short term, but
that it will pursue a set goal with a single minded conviction.

Another analogy may well be the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

------
eksemplar
There is something interesting about the speed of things in regard to best
practices. We've written a lot of code this year, that is likely going to be
replaced rather than rewritten, because tech moves forward, which means all
the time we've spent on doing it right, so it'll be easy to get into in five
years, is essentially wasted.

Not that we're going to abandon best practices, because you never know, but
it's somewhat hilarious to think about how much effort we've wasted doing
something right that no one will ever notice.

~~~
tjoff
If the problem isn't trivial doing it right saves time during first
implementation as well.

------
braindead_in
Here's a automated transcript in case you want to skim through it.

[https://scribie.com/transcript/89ba55c337fb4bf6b8d75a1443e2d...](https://scribie.com/transcript/89ba55c337fb4bf6b8d75a1443e2d1aab375029c)

~~~
omnibrain
/u/cstross mentioned on Twitter that his script will appear on his blog in a
few days.

------
agumonkey
I often reflect on this these days. Seems like the future chasing is not the
solution. Society just need a fundamental subsistance obligation layer, a
leisure layer and a fictitious layer for imagination purpose only.

------
agumonkey
Thanks for making me joyful about climate change induced collapse.

------
zeep
It would not play for me, but the direct link to the video did:
[https://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/congress/2017/h264-hd/34c3-...](https://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/congress/2017/h264-hd/34c3-9270-eng-
deu-fra-Dude_you_broke_the_Future_hd.mp4)

------
sneak
Great author; sadly another terrible keynote choice by the CCC.

~~~
avian
Care to elaborate? I think the talk was on topic and a suitable kick-off for
the rest of the congress. I found Stross' perspective on predicting the future
and AI novel and interesting.

~~~
mrweasel
He's just a terrible speaker. The topic is well chosen and I'm certain the
transcript will read very well. The presentation is bad though, Stross is not
an engaging speaker, he's just reading what he prepared and that no a good way
to keep people engaged and focused for an hour.

------
jlebrech
"this time germans are the good guys", history will tell.

~~~
cgio
Ask southern europeans.

~~~
fasteo
Southern European here. Could you elaborate ?

~~~
LeonM
I think it's a reference to WW2

~~~
rimliu
I think this is reference to Greece and its perceotion that Germany is somehow
responsible for their irrespondible spending.

~~~
freeflight
That's a tad bit oversimplified, not just in terms of what actually happened
in Greece, mostly private banks being bailed out [0] but also how that whole
situation came about.

There's been a big elephant in the room nobody really wants to talk about for
quite a while now: EU's most successful economies running up massive export
surpluses, which really hurt the weaker southern economies [1].

In that regard, it's in very bad taste, to just go "Them southern European
countries are all just lazy and don't know how to handle money" because
nothing about that whole situation is as simple as that. Just like it wasn't a
coincidence that Greece crashed on the tails of the 2008 recession. In our
globalized world, nothing of this scale happens in a vacuum, but it's just
that much more convenient to put all the blame on the people of Greece
supposedly just being too "lazy and clueless", as opposed to the "diligent and
frugal Germans". As a German, I can assure you: Most Germans are pretty fed up
with "being frugal" and not having seen any real wage gains in decades, for
the sole purpose of driving this supposedly "economic miracle" of the Germany
economy.

Greece was a gigantic shame for the European idea, left out to die, used for
IMF austerity experiments while being framed as "lazy people just don't know
how to money", even tho it was their misery which boosted Germanys economic
standing even further [2].

[0] [http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-
ban...](http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-banks-
study/a-19234391)

[1] [https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-
save...](https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-saves-too-
much-and-spends-too-little-why-germanys-current-account-surplus-bad)

[2]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/11/despite-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/11/despite-
losing-tens-of-billions-of-e-germany-is-making-a-profit-out-of-the-greek-
crisis/#6ac165d95409)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Just like it wasn't a coincidence that Greece crashed on the tails of the
2008 recession.

That's a very good point that is completely overlooked in most analyses I've
read (and, being Greek, I've read quite a few).

On the other hand, let's not forget that it was _Greece_ that crashed after
2008. Not Spain, not Portugal, not Ireland or Cyprus. All these others, they
swallowed the pill of austerity and their economies bounced back. Ours is
still connected to the IMF and EU IV that's keeping it alive.

Not that I'm actually convinced that austerity would help us. And I do believe
that the measures imposed on us ignored the reality of the Greek economy. But
it was not the measures that brought us to our knees in the first place.

------
jorgec
I predicted a future with flying cars and its not happening.

Was i wrong? no, its the future that is wrong! (sarcasm).

