"It's not all skulls" -- Noah Smith responds to latest SSC post

I think it's hard to critique or particularly compliment a community that has no real power of any kind. They haven't been tempted or had to stand for anything, with the slim exception of forecasting. And if I think of who these communities admire, you could almost say the same, e.g. Peter Thiel or Elon Musk. Because they are busy pushing the front line of innovation, they never have to answer for their politics, because everyone in the community just views whatever they do as potentially world-saving. (Did anyone in this community find themselves even remotely capable of critiquing Thiel for supporting Trump?)

Philosophers have already viewed this perverted result of capitalists-as-our-only-philanthropists as the most obvious end-point of our current trajectory and technologies, that businesses like Microsoft are so universal and intangible that they produce effects such that socialism/communism becomes more and more obvious because these technologies point to the end of work as we know it. Meaning people like Gates/Thiel/Musk aren't necessarily smarter but perhaps more privileged to see the end of history coming soon.

The dilemma for me remains the same, which is that we still only seem capable of imagining technology which brings the end of history, not a beginning, because we only seem able to imagine technology producing convenience, and idolizing those manufacturers of convenience, who give us no other inspiration. And when we say they give us inspiration, we say insane, insipid, pointless crap like "I hope we can go to Mars". Why, so you can be bored there, too?

The community raises questions in earnest, but I fail to see how it finds any answers, and imagination regarding the future feels unforgivably limited. Take for example this recent article on Cost Disease by Tyler Cowen. Indisputably fascinating, but as no one in this community has any expectation of a solution other than robot doctors and the end of our current healthcare paradigm, what really can be said of these attempts at understanding besides "we were honest enough to say healthcare sure is complicated"?

/r/slatestarcodex Thread Link - noahpinionblog.blogspot.com