Is it possible for a physicist to be into degrowth instead of e/acc? Or am I simply in the wrong field?I have a bachelors in physics and I have an existential crisis about my field. I used to be into technology but now I think Ted Kaczynski was spot on, whereas Beff Jezos and other techies seem absolutely insane to me.We need to decelerate the progress of technology, not let it run rampant at the cost of human welfare. What bothers me about STEM people is that they're so fixated on the universe itself as an abstract system that they don't give a shit about human life. I think it's a logical error in thinking, because we're humans and that's not going to go away. If your actions start to cater to another species like AGI androids, you didn't succeed as a scientist, you failed as a homo sapiens.
>>17087991It isn't possible to decelerate AI. Supposing you convince your government to ban it, its rival powers will do it and gain a competitive advantage.The best you can do is manage it, encourage more safety guards to ensure it serves us, that sort of thing. Also guard against the social ills it will cause.
>>17087991To answer your question, yes it is possible for a physicist to be retarded.Degrowth is a pearl clutching anti-natalist reactionary viewpoint that lacks the imagination to envision clean energy and low impact resource extraction, both of which are entirely feasible with current tech and a bit of investment.
>>17087991If you want to consume less consume less, stop shitposting on the internet and go do some woodworking or knitting or what ever.
>>17087991Yes, you can start be degrowthing yourself.
>>17088173But e/acc and techno-optimism can be debunked in seconds.I dont get it. I've spent years thinking about this and writing books about this and the only conclusion I can come to is that Ted Kaczynski was right. And nobody has debunked his idea that tech was a mistake.I'm a physics guy and a coder but to me it seems like everyone else in this field just loves tech and gadgets on an emotional level, with no rational basis.They're also well-paid and never have to see the problems e-waste creates, for example, let alone financial inequality.I've noticed that the more tech we have, the more financial inequality we seem to have. For instance, you need a smartphone to function in society now, and many people can't really afford one.I could go on and on and on about the problems of technology. I mean we're all single and sexless because Tinder doesn't work.
>>17088173>lacks the imagination to envision clean energy and low impact resource extractionWe aren't building fusion reactors, though. We're building Tiktoks, data centers for mass surveillance, filling the sky with Elon Musk's satellites and shit like that.And DON'T tell me how all the shitty technology is just a necessary step towards the clean energy utopia where everyone has UBI and everything is perfect.When is this goalpost shifting going to stop? SIlicon valley just solves one problem and creates two, that's how it's always been.
>>17088145>>17088173>>17088179>>17088205What a surprise that AI fags can't even argue without ad hominem >reeee tech is good because I say so!I bet you're also atheist
>>17087991>Is it possible for a physicist to be into degrowth?>I think Ted Kaczynski was spot onHave you actually read Kaczynski? Your investment in STEM is what he would call a surrogate activity - basically a cope for having no real, life-supporting goals. If you believe in "degrowth" to the extent Kaczynski prescribes (abolishing the technological system) you have to accept that Physics as a career, let alone as a field with grand aspirations that only extensive technological infrastructure can support, has no place in the future. It would be just a hobby.
>>17088145>we need to destroy ourselves otherwise Current Enemy will destroy itself first"AI"golems are actually insane.
>>17087991I am sort of in the same boat. When I was finishing up classes in grad school and starting research I got totally disillusioned by hep-th because every single one of the professors in the group was totally addicted to Mathematica and wouldn’t even take my by-hand work seriously unless I translated it into a .nb for them to click through. That was a decade ago now and I can only imagine how much worse it is since now they probably do everything with Claude or whatever (I saw Witten gave a nod to AI in his last paper) and the amount of fossil fuels burned on that shit is just exponentially larger than a laptop running Mathematica I think if you are in STEM nowadays and want to avoid computerizing everything you may need to do something hands-on, unfortunately. Chem or biology or maybe some hands-on branch of materials science or optics. The entire physics field is completely enamored with computers more than ever at this present day. Remember that bullshit about how they used a google quantum computer to “make a wormhole” based on AdS/CFT? you read one paragraph in and it was actually about retarded machine learning crap….
The Guillaume Verdun paradigm about entropy can be debunked:"Entropy shouldn't be restricted" doesn't directly result in the idea that we should "move fast and break things" with technology that can potentially destabilize our entire planet.
>>17088426The problem with physicists and CS people is that they're rich and live in 1st world countries.They don't see the problems that technology creates, so they don't care.From their ivory tower it looks like uncontrolled technological progress is amazing and has no drawbacks.
>>17088145If we stop making AI, Chine no longer has to fear us making AI and anti-AI forces inside China can lobby them to stop making AI
>>17088418There isn't a single ad hominem in those posts.
>>17088473>pearl clutching anti-natalist reactionary viewpoint that lacks the imagination> stop shitposting on the internet and go do some woodworking or knitting or what ever.>Yes, you can start be degrowthing yourself.These are personal attacks on OP with no actual refutation.> Supposing you convince your government to ban it, its rival powers will do it and gain a competitive advantage.This isn't technically an Ad Hominem as defined by reddit, but it dismisses OP's concern on the grounds that... uh... Chinaman bad, so literally redirecting attention "toward the man" (ad hominem).
>>17088427The Guillaume Verdun paradigm about entropy can't be debunked because, at it's core, it's just Gurren Lagann's based irrationalism.>antispirals suck my dick>our drill will pierce the heavens>who the hell do you think we are?
>>17088424You're right.Ted did say that studying physics is just a surrogate activity.But I think he was a bit mistaken here. Humans are naturally curious and have always thought about the universe and how things work. It's something you can't stop, even if you remove it from the capitalist system and academia.
>>17088720We should start a Ted working group, but my reading of his manifesto and other writings does not lead me to the idea that surrogate activities should be eliminated. Instead he regards them as something like leisure activities that could be allowed as pursuits by men (or women) who can carry out self-sufficiency tasks with enough time to be left over to do surrogate tasks in their spare time (but that doing it full-time is not good). I think Ted would have supported a society of independent farmers bartering and so forth but the very successful independent farmer could do mathematics or even physics in whatever spare time he has over after the day’s work is finished.Admittedly my Uncle Ted scholarship is not at a high level but from what I’ve read this is my current understanding
>>17088482Those are actually core refuations of OP's point.
>>17088720>I think he was a bit mistaken here. Humans are naturally curious and have always thought about the universe and how things work. It's something you can't stop, even if you remove it from the capitalist system and academia.It's quite a leap from "humans are naturally curious" to "humans naturally gravitate towards a sedentary lifestyle centered on pondering abstractions". Curiosity can manifest in different ways. If you've never actually lived outside of civilization, how can you know what your natural priorities and interests would've looked like without its psychological pressures and deprivations?
>>17087991I'm a PhD in zoology and quite anti-tech.>Ted Kaczynski was spot onHe was not. Surrogate activities is the single most retarded hypothesis in the history of human behavior study.
>>17088908>reeeee it's heckin' stupid!!!! no, i can't explain why, but it just IS, ok???Empirically speaking, a hypothesis that makes normalgroids lash out and display their impotent rage like that is likely getting something right.
>>17088413We can profitably make solar + storage for cheaper than fossil energy. We can refine the necessary vanadim for Vanadim flow batteries from existing industrial waste flows and mine tailings.Solar has already "taken off", i.e. it is cheaper to build a new sloar power plant than it is to operate an existing coal plant. Vanadium is not far behind and just needs a few motivated entrepreneurs to develop the supply chain. That alone solves a huge fraction of the clean energy problem. That's not techno-optimism, that's an informed opinion, which you would have if you had bothered to study the industry.
Youre a shitskin beast and people like you are exactly what BRICS islamists & commies want for America, because you will make us weaker by ensuring thay countries like China develop a technological edge over us
