On treacherous grounds

Professor Peter Woit affects a disinterested We're Only Here For The SCIENCE tone but nobody who reads him should believe him. In his comments he won't let you disbelieve his premises, as happened when he accused Assange of being in league with THE RUSSIANS. Lately he's signed on with the Russian boycott - problematic enough - where he again controls the matrix: I don’t want to host a general political discussion here, especially not with the all too many people I’ve heard from who don’t have a problem with burying liberal democracy.

So when Woit's next post contrasted Charles Hoskinson with Michael Harris, I had a dark feeling that Harris was going to bear his own little issues. Over on Harris' Substack - yeah, he's fluent in Newspeak. A more interesting post, on the face of it, was the apologia for Ned Ludd. Except for this: no one seems to be talking about what will be done about all the people — including mathematicians — whom technology will make superfluous.

I scented the stench of Baby Boom-Boom here so looked it up and, oh yeah - Harris was born 1954. He hasn't read or watched Palahniuk's Fight Club. Someone born 1974 would know that You Are Not Your Job. You are not even your career. If your job is redundant you find a new one; or at least your progeny should.

And sure, for the 1974 generation: this process of reinventing your skillset is difficult. That is where the no one seems to be talking assertion steps in. It was argued all my life that many jobs were redundant, such as in manufacturing and in energy. Some people talked about all this like my post here just has. Others, like Patrick Buchanan and, more recently, Donald Trump, were talking about finding means to keep at least such businesses here so they could hire more people and keep the people they had. The point is less which side we take but more on the no one seems to be talking guff which was weasel-wording and, well, plain false.

The next question (objectively) is whether he's got a point about the Tech Singularity overall - which I concede he has. My followup question, from that assumption, is - does Harris want to engage with Trump's electorate? - we know Woit doesn't. We know Woit considers us like Richard Spencer considers us - a coalition of Russian spies and traitors. We do not hear the words of traitors, as the Klingons say.

The first step in a meaningful dialogue about, how we keep pace with technology: is to assure the work-force which America currently has, that you are taking their concerns seriously. And I mean: as a group - not cant about "racism" or "sexism" which only people of that race and/or sex will care about. You claim to value loyalty to nation, transcending these identities. Prove your own.