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

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      I do think the answer is tech though. It might feel stupid and tech-bro-ish to those who want answers like “build more trust” or “feed means to the hungry”. I just think those nice outcomes have never in history been built directly. It’s always tech. Make the hard thing easy.

      3 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” — Alfred North Whitehead.

      1 reply 4 retweets 36 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      In the past, privileged classes have used relative security to advance civilization in material ways: making it easy to get food, clean water, energy etc without thinking about it. Now it’s getting subtler. How do you “get justice” or “avoid infection” without thinking about it?

      1 reply 2 retweets 13 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      The funny thing is nobody caught in below-the-API wars ever thinks the answer is whatever the above-the-API smug classes are doing. They seem like irritating spectators on Twitter (or whatever the equivalent was in the past). From below the API it can look like all we do is talk.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      It can be hard to believe in your own relevance to the situation when nobody in the heart of the situation thinks you have any role besides staying out of the way and sending money to gofundmes. I’ve seen people buy into and internalize that dismissive, even contemptuous view.

      1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Saw a tweet for eg from someone saying “I have neuroscience phd and my boyfriend is a car mechanic and he’s essential I’m not”. Nice supportive sentiment but just not true historically. What’s essential in the short term is ephemeral in the long term and vice versa.

      2 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      The People of Action don’t exactly think highly of the above-the-API set, so it can be hard to believe in what you do (especially while wallowing in a sense of unfair, unearned comfort and security while others suffer). It’s easy to conclude you’re in the bullshit class.

      3 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Yet the below-the-api wars are never actually winnable by the good guys without whatever the above-the-api classes bring to the party eventually. They’re just buying time in an asymmetric losing conflict. Time for above-the-api classes to bring a decisive winning factor to bear.

      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      So don’t feel too guilty (feeling a little guilty is good motivation) for safely watching the world burn on twitter and tv while enjoying your grocery and takeout deliveries brought to you by people taking more risk than you, for you even as poor-people resources burn.

      2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      Even in the worst conflicts there are inevitably better and worse places to be. If you happen to be in one of the better places you could of course rush to the frontlines. Possibly you can be of use there. There’s people doing that. Kudos. I’m not one of them.

      2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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      But possibly you might be the one to discover a decisive tide-turning factor because you have the safety and security above the api required to bring the right kind of imagination and boldness required to turn the tide.

      10:23 PM - 31 May 2020
      • 9 Likes
      • Josh Mize Herr Dr Mr Modern Major General brrr Seitz Warren Koch Alex Bowles NothingBetter OTIS! Rahul Ramchandani James Baker Bandeauxx.
      3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
        1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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          For eg, the war against U-boats sinking shipping in the Atlantic was basically won by scientists in labs developing codebreaking tech and radar. Lots of examples like that in history. They didn’t risk being killed by torpedoes. Yet their contribution proved decisive.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        2. Justis Mills  🥩+ 🍬‏ @JustisDevan May 31
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          Replying to @vgr

          I think there's some good, actually-wisdom-requiring tension here. You've got to accept that you're a being worthy of comfort and that some comfort is needed for transcendence. But you can't take out a large moral loan on the possibility you could, in theory, do remarkable good!

          2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
        3. Justis Mills  🥩+ 🍬‏ @JustisDevan May 31
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          Replying to @JustisDevan @vgr

          My personal indulgence is 10% to the Against Malaria Foundation - some will do better, others worse. But it does feel relevant to me to make sure I don't accidentally take my comfort as evidence of some special ability to think away world problems. I'm still just a footsoldier.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation
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        2. Karen Karenina‏ @culteyes Jun 1
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          Replying to @vgr

          This was some theatrical tweeting here in defense of the class divide but your metaphor doesn’t work. In the past, tech innovation created jobs and compensated scientists and thinkers. But monopolizing industry (tech esp) and Friedman model has “scaled” and “patented” us out. 1/2

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Karen Karenina‏ @culteyes Jun 1
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          Replying to @culteyes @vgr

          If you even look at the complete dissonance between what the tech people are saying (most of them) and what is happening, you realize that these days, anyone above the API is in a bubble that prevents them from seeing solutions. Those who have them but are outside, are not seen.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation

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