[dhoulb]

I got into a conversation once that I think frames this well. We had WILDLY different views on whether going to Mars was a good idea (like, violently polar opposite views). The strength of our disagreement surprised me.

I was arguing that we should “race to Mars”, mainly because the value of having a second planet dramatically increases the odds of survival for our the human race, as a whole. Thus Mars is one of the highest importance activities we could possibly be focusing on.

My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of.

He’d rather see everyone die together on Earth than a small group people live (at least it’d be fair). I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere (I’m ambivolent about who they are, I presume there’s a formula to be found?).

I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.

I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)

I think it’s easy to label Silicon Valley as “unethical monsters” who’re out for themselves. But Assuming we’re talking about the crime of “innovation without regard for effects” (as opposed to ACTUAL rulebreaking, like theft, assault, fraud, which I assume the Valley is no worse for than anywhere else in the world), the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people.

I also think a lot of hackers/builders/entrepreneurs, for all the optimism they have about growth and innovation, are simultaneously very realistic/pessimistic about all the various ways our race is fundamentally screwed, and kinda recognises they need to be more powerful and have more resources in order to do anything about that.

Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.

[sebular]

There's enough straw in your comment to make an army of men, and almost too much cringe to handle.

For starters, you're putting a mountain of words in Kumail Nanjiani's mouth. It's odd that you must be told this, but when you use quotes to summarize your opposition's arguments, you're supposed to actually wrap them around words that were actually used. A quick Ctrl+F on that page leaves one having to guess at whether you're dishonest, careless, projecting your own securities, or all at once.

Then you go and draw a line in the sand and separate yourself from "regular" people who lack the capacity to see beyond their small and petty concerns. You applaud Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as holy warriors fighting for humanity's "best long term outcome" without providing a single example. You claim that people start businesses not to make money, but to save mankind itself.

All this grandiose talk while you fervently pat yourself (and your kind) on the back, but your only tangible anchors are imagined words and flimsy analogies to humans colonizing Mars.

You are the exact personality that Silicon Valley team expertly mocked in the first season.

"We're making the world a better place!"

And for the record, if you managed to get 5% of the human population on Mars, that would be ~350 million, more than the entire population of the United States. If we put that much energy into moving people to a planet that's currently capable of supporting life for zero humans, you'd think we could've built a pretty damn good defense system to knock asteroids off a collision course with Earth.

Why is it that so many people who describe themselves as forward-thinking are more attracted to the idea of terraforming a planet with a poisonous atmosphere than lifting a finger to keep our little oasis in decent condition? I'm not saying the entire human race should rise and fall on a single planet, but don't try to paint your Mars fantasies as an altruistic plan to save all the coarse-minded sheeple from themselves.

[dcow]

It never stops astonishing me how many people claim the ends justify the means without the slightest indication of ever having considered the moral or ethical implications of such a stance. Sacrificing 95% of the population on earth for 5% to survive on mars also shows how fundamentally perverted the mindset is. Yes there are ethically grey areas but it's all about the journey because that's all there is. Anyway thanks for utterly destroying the GP so eloquently.

[dhoulb]

Tough crowd.

[vile]

>Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.

I think this is a very naive view; novel new ways to share vapid content on the internet and unnecessarily internet-connected junk are getting nobody out of any sort of mess.

There are a few aspirational startups, but the vast majority follow The Cartman Plan: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da...

[scoot]

> My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of.

I'd argue that, far from being an escape, it's a great sacrifice to migrate from fertile earth to a sterile planet as an insurance policy against the possibility of the extinction of the human species (that is unlikely).

[skybrian]

Yeah, I don't see how you can put a good spin on saying that you don't care if 95% of humanity dies.

Treating people equally means it only solves 5% of the problem. Probably far less than that. It rounds to zero.

[dhoulb]

Yeah, I totally should’ve phrased that bit more carefully

The clearer, fuller argument would would be: if something terrible was to happen to Earth it would be objectively better (though obviously still a tragic and nightmarish event) if we only lost 95% of living humans vs losing 100%.

Also though it might also be worth a teensy bit more risk of near-complete wipeout to gain a backup. (e.g. the risk of migration to Mars causing economic or political issues back here that cause a terrible war or something). It’d be crazy hard to do the maths on that though.

You would also kind of assume though that as long as a tiny percentage lived, they would turn a lot more people than are currently alive over a few 1000s of years? So even if the worst happened the ethics would eventually balance out.

Given the amount of really really bad stuff that could happen to humans on Eart (disease, asteroids, super volcanos, sea level change, nuclear war, etc) having 5% safe somewhere else sounds like a great situation to be in. Doubt we’ll get there though.

[TeMPOraL]

To be fair, "5% rounds, rounds to 0" is still strictly more than 0, which was what the other person proposed.

[angersock]

> I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere

But...that 95% already live here?

What do you think you'd be making that sacrifice for?

[TeMPOraL]

I'm with you, but I feel you still have a crush on startup ecosystem. I used to have it too, ~5 years ago. What I've learned since then is, the kind of idealistic forward-looking people you seek do not form the majority of startups.

Technology makes shitloads of money now. This attracted all kinds of people - the regular ones just looking to live their lives in comfort; the greedy assholes looking to become rich by scamming (er, advertising to) others or profiting off offloading externalities on the society. There are more of them than idealists. For each "actually help the world" startup, you have 10 "get $$$ through screwing the society" ones, and 50 "build things people will buy" ones.

Also, I feel most idealists have realized by now that startups are not necessarily a good vehicle for change, because by their nature, you trade control for money. Which means that even if you have good intentions and a great long-term idea, your investors may not share it, they need their shorter-term profits, and they just gave you money for control, so you'd better do what they want.

All in all, do seek out people who want to actually help everyone, instead of forever living in the world of tribalism and petty soap-operish nonproblems. But do not thing startups are where they gather - startups are just another flavour of mundane business world, no matter what the copy on their webistes says.

[eli_gottlieb]

>I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.

>I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)

And I think that both of you have a very peculiar taste for bullets, since you like biting them so much when there was otherwise no actual need. We can invent cool technologies, colonize space, and have an egalitarian society. In fact, in my view, those things go together: you can't really get a stable multiplanetary civilization going when people are constantly trying to tear out each-other's throats over socioeconomic inequality.

[brokenbyclouds]

Its hard to believe people actually think this shit.

[csydas]

> These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain. > I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. > (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.) > the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people. > Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.

I'm sorry, but too much of this leaves me scratching my head as to whether this is satire or not, and I will explain my position and not just be snarky about it, but truthfully after reading through the post having previously only glossed over it, I find some of the statements just very curious.

I take issue with the statement that SV/Entrepreneuer/programmer types just want what is the best long term outcome because more or less what they want is a long term profitable outcome most of the time. We can see examples of software and services which are produced for a better long term outcome; the Linux Kernel, software like ffmpeg, cURL, World Wide Web, etc. Not only are the statements from the founder clear on the goals and intentions of the software, but the software and services live up to their delcaration of intentions and look to solve a problem in a focused and sustainable way. There's always a lot of talk about "nothing wrong with making a little bit of profit while doing something great", but this is a pretty thin line to walk most of the time - Microsoft, for example, does have some very useful software solutions, but there's no doubt that everything about the procurement and design is meant to lock you into using it without question - it's not software to better the human, it's software to lock you in. Microsoft isn't the only guilty party here, they're just an easy example. When I see startups, when I hear about entrepreneuers and SV programmers, and heck I'll outright say it, when I hear about side-projects on HN, a lot of the times it's not software to enhance or improve life, it's software taking a stab at a share of the market.

Not everything has to be F/OSS; we don't all need to be Stallmanites with regards to our data and privacy, and I'm happy to pay out for software that does what it says on the box. I happily dropped $10 on DaisyDisk for macOS because it does exactly what it says it does without trying to lock me in further; I pay and it's done, no subscriptions, no limited functionality, no restrictions on what I can use with it. It serves its purpose very well. Sublime Text is much of the same, and it's such a good program that I've seen people here wish that new versions would require a new purchase just for another excuse to give the authors more money. The difference between these projects and most of the non-sense that gets released is that they're trying to serve an actual goal; they fulfill a need instead of creating one, and they do as promised.

This is what long-term betterment looks like; not subscription models, nag campaigns, constant notifications on what you're not getting, but instead providing a functional tool that makes your life better instead of trying to figure out more ways to get you to put out your credit card.

> I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that.

I wonder if Doug Evans thinks much of the same thing and wonders why people don't understand he was just trying ot better their future. I take from statements like these a lot of hubris, that such Entrepreneuers know better than everyone else. Everyone at some time is guilty of thinking "if everyone just thought like me it'd be perfect", but it should be pretty obvious this just isn't how the world works. I think that indeed many of the 'regular' people do think very hard about the future, but they also think about how their 'now' will affect their and their children's future. It's not that they aren't trying to help the trillions of yet unborn humans, it's that they see a different way of getting there. For example, a programmer like you're describing wants to write a service to better the future of humanity - my friends in Seattle think we need trees and gardens everywhere. Whose solution now is going to be more important in 10 years? In 1000? In 1000? I'm not sure that you can confidently say the software is going to be impactful and important in 10 years, much less in 1 year, when more and more it seems we just get flashes in a pan.

Your conclusion that startups are concerned about survival and the human race, not just about money, isn't really supported by what the start ups are trying to do. They consolidate power instead of distributing it; they hoard information instead of sharing it. They try to lock you in instead of giving you freedom and options. This is what SV has come to represent with many of the startups you see; a new, more benevolent master, instead of a new tool to help you. There are dozens of new [Something]aaS every week, each one just fighting to lock you in to whatever cycle they have and to wring out a bit of money. These aren't there for the long term betterment of humanity, they're there for the quick buck and to make promises they can't deliver on.