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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Small indication: there's paragraphs and paragraphs talking about social justice (the "new deal" part) but not even a sentence justifying the "100% renewable" part (which to anyone who tracks this stuff is code for "no nuclear" which is basically the biggest item of debate)

      2 replies 3 retweets 39 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      While I'm generally on the side of the broad climate-hawk consensus in believing that nuclear has to be part of the equation or you don't know what you're talking about, I'm open to there being a debate about it. Leaving out all mention of nuclear means one of two things:

      1 reply 7 retweets 34 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      You're either ignoring tech side and building a big-tent coalition that includes anti-nuclear people (typically 1960s style climate doves). This is basically choosing to build a larger, but fundamentally hamstrung capability, like "okay, space program, but no rockets" or worse...

      2 replies 4 retweets 33 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      ... you are ignoring the numbers with the assumption that it's a technical/engineering detail and that engineers/industry can meekly go and do whatever politicians decide needs to be done, within the constraints they decide are politically expedient to impose.

      1 reply 5 retweets 34 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      But setting aside green part, the GND document smells to me like a cocktail of 2 poison pills. The "green" part is a poison pill for the "new deal" part and the "new deal" part is a poison pill for the "green" part. But maybe I just don't understand power of political charisma?

      3 replies 2 retweets 20 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      I saw this argument in the Atlantic that this approach is "smart" because while economists prefer broad macro-measures, voters prefer one labeled, legible measure after another, like "medicare for all", "free community college" https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-winning-climate-strategy/576514/ …

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      This is a case of putting political feasibility ahead of technical feasibility. Just because "the people" demand faster horses does not mean you can get to the invention of the car by supplying a series of faster horses.

      1 reply 6 retweets 32 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      This is depressingly common. Politicians are so aware of Overton window issues and the "physics of voting" they keep sacrificing technical plausibility in order to preserve political possibility. Another example of incoherence is demanding that algorithms explain themselves.

      1 reply 8 retweets 40 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      I think we're going to see this increasing divergence between science/engineering ideas of good attacks on complex problems and political ideas of good attacks. There's a reason politicians keep going back to Apollo as a charismatic megafauna reference point for science/tech...

      1 reply 5 retweets 33 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Rocketry was the last popularly legible sector where you could pose politically feasible goals while conveying a cartoon technical vision that did not create implausible design spaces for the tech community. Everything since: computing, genetics, neuroscience, AI, is illegible.

      1 reply 7 retweets 44 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      It seems weird, but Kennedy's "Moon in a decade" was fundamentally more coherent a technical proposal than something like "decarbonize without nuclear energy to hit 50% emissions target by 2030."

      9:59 AM - 10 Feb 2019
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      • Jurd🦖 apologetic godzilla stupid twitt account ian hines Wheeler 🤯 Hesaitix 💉 ”mesh” Ace of Arrows roon
      3 replies 9 retweets 40 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          So what we're seeing here is a 3-stage process: a) ignore the science/tech that's too hard to explain to voters b) promise them impossible things c) attach unrelated side goals that are possible to achieve but don't actually hit the main goals.

          1 reply 10 retweets 37 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          You know what this feels like? It's a "Wall" except with "Science Scare" rather than "Brown Immigrants" as the rallying flag. To the extent the "Science Scare" is real, it's not meaningfully acted upon. To the extent it's an expedient scare, it's a means to other ends :(

          1 reply 9 retweets 54 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          If this is the best democracy can do in a world based on really complex technologies and global intertwingling, then I see why many see democracy (and more broadly, the nation state as a problem solving unit) as the problem. Still there's a bit of hope.

          2 replies 5 retweets 24 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          First there is hope that it is possible to make the *processes* of democracy more scientifically literate somehow, in ways that are not quite as anemic as having toothless scientific committees "advising" politicians. Can we add more teeth to scientific influence over policy?

          5 replies 6 retweets 22 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          Maybe. After all, we ended up in a place where corporations are people, and can influence politics in a very toothy way with money, directly (a condition I am broadly in favor of btw, even if the specific mechanics leave much to be desired...). Perhaps ideas can be people too?

          3 replies 2 retweets 18 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          Second, the practice of lumping together popular and unpopular policy pieces was expedient pragmatism in a low-tech world, but in a complex tech world, is suicidal. I don't think there's anything necessarily either "democratic" there or psychologically fundamental.

          2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          Not quite sure how you retain a democratic spirit in political processes, but I have a few at least theoretical, spherical-cow ideas. For example, I proposed somewhere once that everybody on the planet should have at least a small fractional vote in all elections.

          2 replies 2 retweets 13 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          What is clear is that we're still running political infrastructure based on politicians' ideas of mass psychology that haven't evolved in 200 years, coupled with a technological imagination that hasn't moved an inch since Apollo. We're being governed by 1761 minds living in 1961.

          3 replies 10 retweets 49 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          I don't know what *is* the right action plan here. All I have an idea about is what science+tech+policy experiments are at least worth trying. The problem with GND is that it corners attention/agency in a way that makes those experiments harder.

          3 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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          Final point, a few are reading this thread like vindication of a Trump-equivalence on @AOC. I don't endorse that. There is no comparison between the two. She's just a regular human politician, perhaps more charismatic and principled than average. Trump is a class IV void demon.

          6 replies 4 retweets 39 likes
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        12. End of conversation

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