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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 Jul 9
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      I’m struck by the eerie parallels between the virus disproportionately killing old/poor/black people and the trump regime disproportionately killing old/dysfunctional/humanist institutions. @EpsilonTheory is the person to examine this. Very “as above so below”

      1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      In both cases, it’s been a 1-2 punch following a “slowly, then all at once” pattern. Punch 1: a slow force beyond human control weakens a whole class of entities. Globalization eats vulnerable humans, software eats vulnerable institutions. Both have proved stronger than politics

      2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Punch 2: humans direct a rapidly developing force to selectively undermine a particular subset of the vulnerables. Trumpism is Punch 2 of software eating. Virus is punch 2 of globalization. Both allow human steering, protecting some vulnerable sat the expense of others.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Almost all the action is around the selective defense for punch 2. Punch 1 is still doing most of the work of creative destruction, but punch 2 is directing the energy in very specific ways. Mostly through inaction.

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      The hard part is, if you think both slow forces are net good (globalization and software eating the world) as I do, so long as any human steering intervention is somewhere between indifferent and humane, the perversion via weaponization of the fast forces feels particularly ugly.

      1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Worst case scenario: Globalization is pwned by virus and turned into global ethnic cleansing by trumpy leaders weaponizing trumpist mass sentiments. Software eating is directed to destroy all humanist institutions while radically strengthening high-tech surveillance states.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Two slowly unfolding good things turned into rapidly deployed evils things. Every slow, big force has both a good and an evil aspect. For the good to prevail, humans mostly just need patience and resisting the urge to “do something.” Minimal viable steering.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      For evil to prevail, all it takes is for one asshole to recognize a temporary moment of historic steering capacity and grab it to derail the good-by-a-slim-margin fragile, slow trend. Trump found not one but two such levers: irrational white sentiment against Obama, and a virus.

      1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Obama was no saint. He was par for course among presidents in office since globalization kicked in. But he happened to be black and that unleashed an acute fear available for the right opportunist. A few Obama voters and blacks voted Trump, but he mainly rode white fear to office

      3 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      In his fourth year, the virus has turned what was Trump’s uphill struggle to dismantle a Obama’s legacy into an easy downhill course. Software eating the world has proved a harder force for him to steer. But countries like China have done a great job with it.

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      In case it isn’t obvious, my “eugenics by happy accident is ok” point in first tweet is sarcasm. If it needs to be said, it’s an awful thing to let happen, and not very different from running death camps yourself.

      9:28 AM - 9 Jul 2020
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      • Shreya Nanda ian m hines Selina in PDX 🗽🇺🇸 Jason
      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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          This thread is unfortunately a rather awkward attempt to try and pick out a rather complex pattern of evil emerging out of an opportunistic manipulation of potentially good forces using transient leverage. It’s not a simple kind of evil that’s going on. This trips up moralists.

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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          Humanists want to keep it simple. Just “resist” what Trump is doing with sheer force of abstract moral clarity. Unfortunately it isn’t simple. He’s steering potentially good forces towards evil, and it is tempting to try and shut down good forces in the process of stopping him.

          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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          Ie, it’s the easiest thing in the world to let anti-trumpism turn into leftist anti-globalism and anti-techism. Sadly this is what I think will happen.

          1 reply 2 retweets 6 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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          I don’t hold out much hope for both forces (globalization and software eating the world) being put back on their fragile net-good tracks. I suspect both will just be pointed in a new evil direction. Decades of turn-taking in distorting big forces towards mutually opposed evils.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        6. End of conversation

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