From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2000 - 10:52:55 MST
>From: Jeff Davis <jdavis@socketscience.com>
>
>Do you ever get the feeling that just plain ol' luck is behind much of what
>happens in life? Are the Bill Joys, Alfred Noyces, Bill Gateses, etc,
>really supreme geniuses, or did they just win some kind of global lottery.
>No question, that when opportunity knocks, you have to get up and answer
>the door. But you also have to live in the right neighborhood, and be at
>home at the time. You could add to that, your parents answering their
>respective doors before you, and their parents before them. An amazing
>string of sevens at the cosmic crap table leads to the founding of a Sun
>Microsystems, an Intel, or a Microsoft.
>
>I have no doubt that Bill Joy is a very talented software architect. But
>it would surprise me a whole heck of a lot if most of the folks on this
>list couldn't have done all that Bill Joy did, had they been in his shoes
>when opportunity--the silicon revolution--came knocking. Read the bio part
>of his wired article. Between the lines I got the impression that when he
>was at Berkeley, buried beneath his work, the OTHER Sun Microsystems
>founders came and found him. Dragged him off. Now he thinks he's hot
>shit.
>
>"Mommy, mommy, the future scares me!"
>
>Go back to Aspen, Bill. Write some more code. The future doesn't need
>YOU.
<lots of snipping>
Well, I do agree with what I think is your main point: That Bill Joy tends
to overstate the magnitude of the danger from GNR tech and, moreover, he
doesn't really seem qualified to serve as the point man on this issue. But
I wouldn't be as hard on old Bill as you are. After all Ray Kurzweil (who
at least has a more proven track record when it comes to prediction of
future tech) wrote that we have ~50% chance of exterminating ourselves with
GNR. And he considers himself an *optimist*. My vote for point man on the
issue would probably be Eric Drexler, and he was so worried about the
dangerous potential of nanotech that he started the Foresight Institute to
get smart folks thinking and talking about how to minimize the risks.
Sure we might have preferred that someone else had appointed themselves town
crier on this issue, and we might agree that Bill Joy tends to be a little
reactionary in his characterization of the risks. But the fact of the
matter is that we *are* hurtling headlong into a great unknown that, by
*all* accounts, has some potential to end in utter global disaster. It was
Drexler, after all, who came up with "gray goo," not Bill Joy. So perhaps
it is a good thing that Bill Joy has put these questions on the radar screen
of the general public. At least it will get people talking. If Joy's fears
are completely unfounded, that will be revealed by the national debate he
has fomented. But we must recognize the possibility (however remote) that
extreme pessimists like Bill Joy are right and extreme optimists (like you)
are wrong. In any event, given the *huge* magnitude of the potential
dangers, it is probably a good idea to have a national (preferably a global)
debate so that a consensus (if possible) can be reached.
By the way, as to your observations of Bills Joy and Gates being winners in
the lottery of life, I agree. You have to be at the right place at the
right time. But you also have to be prepared to take advantages of
opportunities as they arise. Because like it or not, I was at the same
right place at the right time as Bill Gates. However, I had not spent my
youth learning to code and did not have the foresight to develop an
operating system and market it to IBM. Further, if I'd had the foresight
(say 20 years ago or so) to invest every dollar I could scrape together into
Microsoft, I'd be one of those lucky lottery winners, and if you had done
the same so would you.
But I don't begrudge those who were lucky enough to do it. And I don't
agree that fortune just fell into their laps just because they happened to
be at the right place at the right time. Sure they were lucky, but luck is
just the nexus of preparation and opportunity. The preparation component is
just as important as the opportunity component. You want to be lucky?
Here's a hint:
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." Can't remember who this quote is
attributed to.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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