Perhaps the nuance is in the eye of the beholder? I don't think it's sustainable to go about our lives wearing blinders and averting our gaze from the misuse of technology because one might be afraid of unhappy feelings creeping in.
One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
Look at Germany 1933++ and Eastern Germany 1945++ to see how regular people act when they get power over their neighbours. I don’t have a position on the book, but your argument isn’t supporting what you think your position is - quite the contrary.
The narrative that Germans were somehow intrinsically evil was spun deliberately after the war. The truth is much more haunting than that. Ordinary people are capable of letting these things happen, and even of participating in them. Believing that we aren't is a huge of what enables us to so.
People don't stay 'regular' for long after gaining immense power or money. I imagine it's quite difficult to stay grounded and humble in such situations, especially with legions of sycophants and yes-people hyping them up.
People live mostly by convention, not reason (including those who think they don’t). When social sensibilities change, people move with them regardless of whether they are good or bad, because people in general are cowards. They fear life outside the crowd. For most, majority opinion - whether manufactured or not - is God. Most float downstream (including those who think they don’t); few swim upstream.
Is there anything 'regular' about walking onto stage wearing a cap and sunglasses and then brandishing a chainsaw as a 'symbolic' gesture (at anything other than a chainsaw conference)?
Stangneth seems like an important thinker, but wow that article hasn't aged well. Talking about the "profundity" of Hamas evil with nary a mention of Israeli genocide. You can say September 2024 was too soon to tell ... but it wasn't actually. Pure islamophobic propaganda.
You've misunderstood the point of historical absentee analysis and rhe banality of evil.
It is comforting to think that there is a group of "evil people" who are innately different, but most evil is done by people similar to people you know.
Just because your neighbor Joe or your aunt Bertha is a "great person" who coaches the local sports team doesn't mean they aren't evil if they also spend their days working to target minorities and get them thrown in jail or worse - or building the tools used for authoritarians and voting for them.
Which means we need to blatantly and explicitly call out the ones who are choosing to use their evil side for outsized material gains at the expense of a huge majority?
People are motivated by things other than material gains. The hong wei bings were not motivated by material gains. they were motivated by the four olds --erasing the four olds.
Not to be dismissive of your point, but this may be a thought-terminating cliché. That's not an argument that would hold up in court against pedophiles and murderers; I would argue that it shouldn't also hold for fascists.
The last one... well, we thought that decent people were the norm and that people would understand the nuance and spirit of laws; however, that hasn't been the case, so you see evil fascists skirting by because they're convinced that "the letter" of the law didn't specifically ban something, so it must be permissible.
> so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
Sorry to burst your bubble, but people consistently doing evil things that don't course-correct once exposed to new information are evil; those are the people we're referring to... (i.e. "a turd by any other name would smell as shit").
"We live in a society", we have a sort of social contract with each other (meaning, it's in our best interest to be nice to one another) and laws that we follow (in case someone isn't following the former).
I think most people would agree that 10 or 20 years ago, we'd be (mostly) lineally progressing towards peace and unity (glossing over some wars, as most people wanted to believe that "once that is over, we can proceed with 'progress'")...
Most people believed it so, that we didn't really give any attention to people that asked "what do we do if the fascists rise to power?"... Many laughed it off! "Fascists!? That's SO 1930's Europe! Besides, everyone knows that fascists are evil, and no one wants to be evil, right?".
So, you can imagine that almost nobody had "coordinated fascist international takeover" nor "brainwashed pedophile-apologist fascist takeover of the US" on their bingo cards. Interesting times...
Exactly. They're millions of times overrepresented in influence whereas they may have at most 1.5x (10x if we're being really generous) the skills of an average person.
In statistics, they'd be outliers and they'd be deleted from the dataset. In the news, it would be called bias. In a trampoline, they'd pierce the thing and drill down the ground; so, any outsized influence they have literally stamps out the life of a (trampoline) party.
I am and was in touch with several multimillionaires and billionaires, and in no way are they "regular people". One common trait is a gross intolerance for failing to execute their plans. I am not saying that it is necessary bad, but the amount of resources they may throw on their dissatisfaction is often frightening.
They're some of the most powerful people in America and, by extension, the world. Wielding such power required immense restraint, control, and consideration.
I completely disagree with this thesis. In my years as a founder (>40), it was very clear when I saw many forks in the road. One would lead to me getting more wealthy and one would lead to me being able to sleep at night. I chose the latter. Clearly the tech titans have chosen the other path.
I also witnessed many other founders doing really terrible things. It’s a meme around here that technical founders mostly get screwed by the time IPO or M&A proceeds are divvied up. I saw that time and again. Yes, there are exceptions, bit they are rare.
EDIT: was on mobile, wanted to add more:
IMO, the system we have sorts for sociopaths. The people with the power (politicians, CEOs, etc) are far more likely to be sociopaths than in the regular population because the rewards are so great. Look at the Paypal "mafia" (as they are called by many), and their exploits after Paypal.
Here's the way I look at whether someone got lucky or not: were they a 1-hit wonder or did they serially create companies with vast wealth? The former are people that got lucky. I've known some. The latter are mostly sociopaths. I've met many. They are predators. Some of them actually triggered my flight/flight response, and until that happened the first time, I had never in my life (in a business setting) experienced that. I now know what it means, when I feel that feeling. What is interesting is that my body sometimes knows it before my brain.
One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.