The Moral Economy of Tech
This article brings up an important source of bias that tech people risk - that we overuse models from programming when thinking about other aspects of the world. We should be learning alternative models from other subjects like economics, philosophy, sociology, etc so that we can improve our mental toolbox and avoid thinking everything works like a software system.I'd say that another related source of bias is that we are surrounded by people who think like us.It's a shame though, that the article dismisses without much explicit justification risk from artificial intelligence and the problem of death. When I first encountered these ideas, I dismissed them because they seemed weird. But if you read the arguments for caring you realise that they are actually well thought-out. For AI risk, check out http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu... and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategie.... For an argument for tackling death, checkout http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html.Also, there's a clear answer to 'If after decades we can't improve quality of life in places where the tech élite actually lives, why would we possibly make life better anywhere else?' -- because the tech elite live in a rich society where most of the fundamental problems (e.g. infectious disease control, widespread dollar-a-day level poverty, access to education) have been solved. The remaining problems are much harder and we should focus on problems where our resources can go further - e.g. in helping the global poor. We should also work on important problems that we have a lot of influence over, such as risks from artificial intelligence and surveillance technology.