Enough people have taken this premise apart that I don't have to do a whole thread on it.
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Enough people have taken this premise apart that I don't have to do a whole thread on it.
But I did want to point out this paragraph, that is one of the most Anti-African things I've read recently.
This long-termism and great replacement nonsense is seeping into brains and cooking them.
We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones.
Scientific progress is slowing just as we need it most. New AI tools that speed up discovery could help restart productivity growth and make life more affordable.
Vox (www.vox.com)
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Enough people have taken this premise apart that I don't have to do a whole thread on it.
But I did want to point out this paragraph, that is one of the most Anti-African things I've read recently.
This long-termism and great replacement nonsense is seeping into brains and cooking them.
We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones.
Scientific progress is slowing just as we need it most. New AI tools that speed up discovery could help restart productivity growth and make life more affordable.
Vox (www.vox.com)
@mekkaokereke I seem to miss the context in which this has been written - this paragraph looks to me like "immigration good".
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@mekkaokereke I seem to miss the context in which this has been written - this paragraph looks to me like "immigration good".
"Immigration good" is the part that you focused on.
"Brains in Africa don't count!" is the dangerous part.
The author doesn't even realize that he's discounting the possibility that African brains in Africa might produce the technological advancements that he seeks. Either it happens in the developed world (as defined by 2025 standards) or it doesn't happen. This is both wrong, and an awful and dangerous world view.
It's not possible to understand why DOGE happened, without understanding great replacement theory and long-termism. Yes, part of it is just certain billionaires wanting to make even more money and not be regulated. But a bigger part of it, is belief in this nonsense.
The central premise of great replacement theory is "The good white people are becoming less numerous!"
The central premise of long-termism is "Don't help people in Africa have equal resources to Europe and the US! Instead, take even more resources from Africa, to be used to advance technology in the US and EU even faster!"
Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics - Truthdig
The techno-utopian ideology gets its fuel, in part, from scientific racism.
Truthdig (www.truthdig.com)
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J Jürgen Hubert shared this topic
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Enough people have taken this premise apart that I don't have to do a whole thread on it.
But I did want to point out this paragraph, that is one of the most Anti-African things I've read recently.
This long-termism and great replacement nonsense is seeping into brains and cooking them.
We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones.
Scientific progress is slowing just as we need it most. New AI tools that speed up discovery could help restart productivity growth and make life more affordable.
Vox (www.vox.com)
If society wants "more ideas", then maybe society should invest more in education... instead of folklore like "vaccines cause autism".
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"Immigration good" is the part that you focused on.
"Brains in Africa don't count!" is the dangerous part.
The author doesn't even realize that he's discounting the possibility that African brains in Africa might produce the technological advancements that he seeks. Either it happens in the developed world (as defined by 2025 standards) or it doesn't happen. This is both wrong, and an awful and dangerous world view.
It's not possible to understand why DOGE happened, without understanding great replacement theory and long-termism. Yes, part of it is just certain billionaires wanting to make even more money and not be regulated. But a bigger part of it, is belief in this nonsense.
The central premise of great replacement theory is "The good white people are becoming less numerous!"
The central premise of long-termism is "Don't help people in Africa have equal resources to Europe and the US! Instead, take even more resources from Africa, to be used to advance technology in the US and EU even faster!"
Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics - Truthdig
The techno-utopian ideology gets its fuel, in part, from scientific racism.
Truthdig (www.truthdig.com)
Too many European and North Americans have massive blind spots (and with "blind spots" I mean "racism") that prevents them from seeing Africa as anything other than a source of refugees and raw materials.
A friend of mine is a black woman from South Africa with a medical background who specializes in regulatory affairs. She frequently told German producers of medical products that Africa is a massive growth market, and she has been met with continued disinterest - "they couldn't afford our products anyway, so we will focus on wealthy countries instead".
No wonder China is eating our lunch in the African markets.
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Enough people have taken this premise apart that I don't have to do a whole thread on it.
But I did want to point out this paragraph, that is one of the most Anti-African things I've read recently.
This long-termism and great replacement nonsense is seeping into brains and cooking them.
We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones.
Scientific progress is slowing just as we need it most. New AI tools that speed up discovery could help restart productivity growth and make life more affordable.
Vox (www.vox.com)
OK. As well as the white supremacy, this guy is a fucking idiot with no scientific training or experience in doing actual research in actual research institutions funded by taxpayer grant funds.
1. AI doesn't come up with "new" ideas. He clearly has no fucking clue how any of that works. For example AlphaFold doesn't spontaneously decide to research new toxin proteins sampled from some random frog from Equador with the hope they might lead to new migraine treatments. I mean fuck!
2. This dickhead has no fucking concept of how soul crushing life has become for researchers and how much of their time is spent NOT doing research but preparing grant proposals for next year's grant round, which only has a national success rate of 5%. And if they don't succeed, they lose their job. Then there are the perverse incentives to "publish or perish". To publish anything, fast and often, as the ONLY metric by which you can advance in your academic career. This means that rather than trying longer term "blue sky" big idea research that might never work, but if it does it'll be really ground breaking, they'll do what's safe, incremental and far more likely to pay off in the short term with publications. Otherwise they'll be unemployed.
Just to highlight how bad things have become. One of this year's Nobel prize in chemistry recipients (Prof Richard Robson) was my post-doc boss some 20 or more years ago. He was awarded the Nobel for inventing an entire field of chemistry in the 1980s-90s and onwards. I caught up with his long time collaborator and also my former colleague for coffee a while ago and he basically said that if Richard of then was to apply for the same position now, he wouldn't get it. There's just not as much incentive given or freedom and funding allowed for creative, truly new ideas or "disruptive" research now.
OK. End bitter and personal rant.
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Too many European and North Americans have massive blind spots (and with "blind spots" I mean "racism") that prevents them from seeing Africa as anything other than a source of refugees and raw materials.
A friend of mine is a black woman from South Africa with a medical background who specializes in regulatory affairs. She frequently told German producers of medical products that Africa is a massive growth market, and she has been met with continued disinterest - "they couldn't afford our products anyway, so we will focus on wealthy countries instead".
No wonder China is eating our lunch in the African markets.
@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @ligasser
I’ve kept this from 2018, during the first Trump years. -
OK. As well as the white supremacy, this guy is a fucking idiot with no scientific training or experience in doing actual research in actual research institutions funded by taxpayer grant funds.
1. AI doesn't come up with "new" ideas. He clearly has no fucking clue how any of that works. For example AlphaFold doesn't spontaneously decide to research new toxin proteins sampled from some random frog from Equador with the hope they might lead to new migraine treatments. I mean fuck!
2. This dickhead has no fucking concept of how soul crushing life has become for researchers and how much of their time is spent NOT doing research but preparing grant proposals for next year's grant round, which only has a national success rate of 5%. And if they don't succeed, they lose their job. Then there are the perverse incentives to "publish or perish". To publish anything, fast and often, as the ONLY metric by which you can advance in your academic career. This means that rather than trying longer term "blue sky" big idea research that might never work, but if it does it'll be really ground breaking, they'll do what's safe, incremental and far more likely to pay off in the short term with publications. Otherwise they'll be unemployed.
Just to highlight how bad things have become. One of this year's Nobel prize in chemistry recipients (Prof Richard Robson) was my post-doc boss some 20 or more years ago. He was awarded the Nobel for inventing an entire field of chemistry in the 1980s-90s and onwards. I caught up with his long time collaborator and also my former colleague for coffee a while ago and he basically said that if Richard of then was to apply for the same position now, he wouldn't get it. There's just not as much incentive given or freedom and funding allowed for creative, truly new ideas or "disruptive" research now.
OK. End bitter and personal rant.
I had to leave academia in order to understand what a non-toxic work environment was like.
This was back in 2019, in Germany. I gather things have gotten worse since then.
