Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

in my limited experience, this shit really didn’t take off until after 2010: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_accelerator

there was always a hook-up between VC and startup founders but the idea you could just want to start a company, have no idea what you want to start, and then hook up with some people at an incubator hit its stride after that. and if you manage to hit on half an idea that people like, you pivot the whole company to doing that

I have a former coworker who worked at one that had an interesting, if very niche, idea. Within a year, they’d ditched that plan completely and were doing “something new!” which appeared to be shuffling papers around while burning the rest of their seed money so he quit to get a job somewhere that actually did something

the whole thing kind of killed a lot of new ideas that would have organically grown into businesses in that you’re not demonstrating that you have an audience, you’re demonstrating you have an idea that VC types would like. so we get an endless stream of “X, but online” and “uber but for Y”

Also, and I haven't seen the movie yet, but said physicist created a horrific weapon that instantly vaporized hundreds of thousands of innocent people and lived out his days in regret, so I'm not sure this particular physicist would be the one to motivate the kids to enter the field, IDK

but if he was in SV he’d have cashed out his stock options after the bomb was a success and he could ponder his morality in a really sweet house

oppenheimer as angel investor in OPPENHEIMER 2 and he’s funding all kinds of zany ideas and his sole question at the pitch meeting is “this one doesn’t kill people, it just makes their daily lives slightly worse?”

There's not a whole lot of difference between an accelerated VC tech startup incubator and The Manhattan Project.

lol

a lot of the success of the Project wasn't just due to the "brilliant guy" but the fact that the government conscripted a bunch of math / science / engineering workers to do a lot of tedious work ... this was something I was talking to a friend about, both of us had relatives that were basically "the extras" doing a bunch of computations and calculations (some who weren't entirely clear on what they were working on exactly, just like "analyze this data for us")

it takes a village to destroy two cities

xp back when "computer" was a job description and not something you used on the job

it takes a village to destroy two cities

haven’t seen it but i think he might agree

part of me thinks that until ppl recognize what the what was— monstrous, full of fear, and under the fatigue the monstrous behavior preceding it— maybe they’re less prepared to say “no.”

the other parts of me (most) say ppl are not wired for any insights to reach them in time to change anything. only raw fear of m.a.d. has any decisional weight

you’re not demonstrating that you have an audience, you’re demonstrating you have an idea that VC types would like. so we get an endless stream of “X, but online” and “uber but for Y”

― mh, Monday, July 24, 2023

"uber, but for Y (and not a pyramid scheme)"

am i the only one who finds the idea of a film that might make Oppenheimer sympathetic totally and utterly insane?

I do not share that perspective. Oppenheimer was acting during wartime and the war was being fought on a "total war" basis in the sense Clausewitz employed that term. It was also clear that a fission bomb of enormous power was possible and this possibility was known to the enemy who was violently attempting to impose total domination and surrender upon you and your compatriots. That enemy also had quite sophisticated physicists capable of discovering how to build such a bomb and there were clear indications that such work was being pursued. Beyond those bare obvious facts, nothing else was known about the state of the enemy's ability to produce that bomb.

By the time Germany was defeated, work on the US fission bomb was far advanced and nearing completion. The war with Japan was still fiercely contested. Oppenheimer was under military auspices and had he declined to carry the project to completion another physicist would have been appointed to take his place and the work would have been done anyway. It was not in his hands to stop any of it. Focusing solely on him as if he were indispensable and in control of the outcome is counter to the facts. He was genuinely torn by a moral dilemma such as few humans have faced. Sympathy for his untenable set of choices is not insane.

FDR dies 12 april 1945 and VP the table is the table (who nailed down pennsylvania in the '44 election) becomes president

what happens next

Oppenheimer was under military auspices and had he declined to carry the project to completion another physicist would have been appointed to take his place and the work would have been done anyway.

How is this in any way an argument for carrying on? "If this horrible thing is going to happen anyway at least I'll get the credit"?

Sorry, that’s an absolute bullshit argument, Aimless.

Mostly because it doesn’t get at my question, which is whether we should feel sympathy for the historical figure of Oppenheimer, and how that feels totally insane to me. He was part of an apparatus, and he could have stepped away. He didn’t, and that should be damning, not something for fake liberals to wring their hands over, saying “he had untenable sets of choices.” fucking bullshit.

FDR dies 12 april 1945 and VP the table is the table (who nailed down pennsylvania in the '44 election) becomes president

what happens next

vp the table is the table would presumably not have made it past 1944

(but have been pushed out in favor of an airhead who would immediately nuke a couple cities)

"Oppenheimer was under military auspices and had he declined to carry the project to completion another physicist would have been appointed to take his place and the work would have been done anyway."

Lol

Any old physicist will do.

Seriously, I think the question is whether the project would've been completed successfully but also on time.

vp the table is the table would presumably not have made it past 1944

https://i.imgur.com/Gibn5SL.jpg

"Sorry, that’s an absolute bullshit argument, Aimless."

If Oppo had declined the military could've picked up a nuclear physicist off the streets.

Just like you can do with python programmers today.

it shouldn't really matter, there are plenty of positions where you do evil shit that are highly replaceable - if you decide not to take a job as a guard in a detention centre, say, you can be pretty sure someone else will get that position, but that's no moral justification for taking it.

I mean, it's kinda like the thread about the anti-hero protagonist prestige TV "trend" ... you can sympathize somewhat because he is human and wasn't 100% monstrous since birth ... but, still ... is Germany going to come out with a prestige drama called Eichmann?

"He engineered the final solution, but he paid the ultimate price!"

How is this in any way an argument for carrying on? "If this horrible thing is going to happen anyway at least I'll get the credit"?

This didn't all take place in some theoretical, timeless storyland. It took place in a very specific time with a very different social reality, where fighting the war and crushing the enemy was seen by 98% of society as the only acceptable moral position. His thinking was that by retaining that moral credit for the work he'd done to make the project succeed he'd be in a position to use that credit to influence subsequent policy. If he'd walked away, he'd have become a pariah, viewed as a traitor or some incomprehensible fool whose opinions are automatically dismissed, an exile from any further involvement in how the existence of "the gadget" would shape the future.

I've personally met and talked with multiple WWII conscientious objectors (now all dead), because my father-in-law was one of them, and if you all think that walking away from the war effort was a simple, easy, obvious moral choice you have far too simple a view of that era. But I guess that makes me some kind of traitor or incomprehensible fool, whose opinions are automatically dismissed, so I have forfeited any influence I might have upon your thinking.

lol I have no illusions that it would be an easy decision to take, in fact I think that rather than your pariah scenario it'd have been much more likely that the US would've just had Oppie quietly killed. But that doesn't make it a morally complex choice.

xpost to Aimless: My great grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War 1, wrote several major newspaper editorials against WW2 from a pacifist perspective, and then took a long walk off the Staten Island ferry in 1951 because he had what today would be called PTSD. I know the stakes. He wished he’d walked away, and I wish he had, too.

His daughter was arrested more than 50 times during her life for blocking and chaining herself to war recruitment offices and other anti-war protests.

But I’ve given this family history before. I don’t take the historical context for granted, and that you think I would is frankly kind of insulting, which is why I’m reacting the way I am.

you might even say oppenheimer was just following orders makes u think

it was not my intention to insult you ttitt. your defense of your position is now somewhat clearer, but when the earlier statement of your position was simply "that’s an absolute bullshit argument", it becomes very difficult to see the complex moral argument upon which you are basing that conclusion.

you might even say oppenheimer was just following orders makes u think

thinking is a good start, but you stopped too soon

lol I have no illusions that it would be an easy decision to take, in fact I think that rather than your pariah scenario it'd have been much more likely that the US would've just had Oppie quietly killed. But that doesn't make it a morally complex choice.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 27 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Depends on how many secrets he had. If he didn't touch the programme or joined the other side...some people do take the hard roads. Others do not.

But that doesn't make it a morally complex choice.

If you conceive of morality as an absolute and fixed set of values, unaffected by social consensus or particular circumstances, then no choices are morally complex. That kind of reductionist thinking about morality is very popular, not just among fundamentalists and ideologues, but humans in general. Simplicity is very seductive.

Perhaps what some of us are trying to say is “contributing to the invention of a genocide machine” isn’t a morally defensible choice?

I also reject the notion that absolute moral codes are always marked by a negative simplicity. It’s an argument that’s often meant to stifle or belittle those seeking redress and justice.

“Things are more nuanced than that!” Yeah, I’m positive that the hundreds of thousands dead in Japan and the Indigenous tribes whose land was stolen, bombed, and poisoned really care about these nuances.

You adduce some very important factors in considering the morality of the Manhattan Project. But if we are going to tabulate war atrocities as the index of morality I think the Nazis and Imperial Japanese military can contribute some factors to consider on the opposite side of the scales. I only got into this because you said that having any sympathy whatsoever for Robert Oppenheimer was "insane". Others have been comparing him Eichmann or other Nazi criminals. This is about as absolute a yardstick as I can imagine.

It seems unlikely any of us could withstand being measured by our complicity in national atrocities. This is not to deny them, but to point out that denying any sympathy at all for those enmeshed in a complex moral situation is to condemn ourselves in equal measure. Instead I see plenty of unearned righteousness in this discussion.

I have zero pretensions to righteousness, and I also do not encourage making a biopic featuring my moral dilemmas. But I will say Oppenheimer's complicity was somewhat more active than the average person's, in the 40's or now.

I don't know this history particularly well, but I read this piece the other day and found it interesting:
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/22/23803380/j-robert-oppenheimer-film-movie-nuclear-weapons-manhattan-project-world-war-ii-christopher-nolan

I think it's worth reading in full, but this is relevant to the discussion:

How complicit was Oppenheimer? David Hawkins, Oppenheimer’s aide and the Manhattan Project’s official historian, claims that Groves told Oppenheimer at the end of 1943 that the Nazis had abandoned their attempt — and Oppenheimer shrugged. Oppenheimer dominated the ethical discussions among scientists in late 1944, as both the war and the race to the atomic bomb were nearing their end stages, arguing that scientists had no right to a louder voice than other citizens, and that if the war ended without nuclear use, the next war would be fought with nuclear weapons. Was Oppenheimer swept up by the same patriotic fervor that prompted him to have a colonel’s uniform tailored for himself? Was the bomb just too “technically sweet” for him to resist? It is unclear. Perhaps the best we can say in his defense was that Oppenheimer was chumped into doing it (to some extent), and inadvertently or not, he chumped the other scientists as well.

Others have been comparing him Eichmann or other Nazi criminals. This is about as absolute a yardstick as I can imagine.

I don't think social consensus or particular circumstances were absent in the case of Eichmann and other nazis either, and you could well argue about the specific paths that lead each of those men down the roads they went. But current social consensus, imo rightfully, judges that once you've thrown your lot in with something as evil as the third reich these can only ever be explanations, not justifications. The question them becomes, is the launching of two atomic bombs also an evil where you should draw such a line? And I think yes, it is.

xpost

It seems unlikely any of us could withstand being measured by our complicity in national atrocities. This is not to deny them, but to point out that denying any sympathy at all for those enmeshed in a complex moral situation is to condemn ourselves in equal measure. Instead I see plenty of unearned righteousness in this discussion.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 27 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Sounds like you struggle with basic stuff.

Some people just would not want to build a destructive weapon under any circumstances whatsoever.

I guess, for me, it depends on how you define "sympathy"? Like there is a certain "pathos" to it, but at the same time I agree with Daniel's lines:

once you've thrown your lot in with something as evil as the third reich these can only ever be explanations, not justifications. The question them becomes, is the launching of two atomic bombs also an evil where you should draw such a line? And I think yes, it is.

it's kinda like watching "The Fog of War" and seeing the elderly Robert McNamara come to terms with the fucked up shit he did/was complicit in. I watched it once with my parents, and my mom explained her & my dad's response to the movie as, "Imagine watching Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney be humble and apologetic years after the fact."

kind of easy for McNamara, since he would never face justice in the Hague or anything. Still, it's something.

Is Edward Teller in the movie? re: SV utopianism, his son is named Astro and is head of Google's moonshot division. He also wrote a really cringey AI chat SF novella a long time ago. I mean Astro did.

ok I thought I missed something having seen Astro Teller speak at some college nerd thing in the early 2000s, but no

I only partially missed it, he’s the grandson of Edward Teller. I think I have a signed copy of his first book because, hey, it was a college nerd conference and I wanted something to grab other than the conference program. His entire career after that has been between nebulous and cringe

I looked him up recently and he co-wrote some book with his wife about marriage and divorce and I assume it’s some un-thinking junk about being swingers

it’s really funny when tech people think they’re ~subverting norms~ by proclaiming what they’re up to in their personal lives and it’s just like, no, it’s obnoxious and you can pretty much live however you like in most places and if you feel guilty about not wanting a picket fence house and 2.5 children and living on the straight and narrow, just don’t do that

I guess it’s affirming for people stuck in dead-end marriages or other conventional social problems but the SV people always make it seem like they’re the first to discover everything!

Whoops! I guess I skipped a generation. I wonder if Oppenheimer has a grandson named Frontside-360-Ollie Oppenheimer who is head of GoPro.

re: swinging tech nerds, does the movie show Feynman organizing key swap parties when they're supposed to be physics-ing?

Such genius (his bail was indeed revoked)

https://www.reuters.com/legal/ftxs-bankman-fried-seeking-avoid-jail-due-back-court-2023-08-11/