Futurology

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Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American sci-fi. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook. (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

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[–] AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But there is a problem: SF authors such as myself are popular entertainers who work to amuse an audience that is trained on what to expect by previous generations of science-fiction authors. We are not trying to accurately predict possible futures but to earn a living: any foresight is strictly coincidental.

This may be true for Mr. Stross. I don't believe Farenheit 451 or Nineteen Eighty-Four were written just because the authors needed a pay day.

[–] CanadaPlus 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Well, I don't know about Ray Bradbury, but Orwell wasn't trying to predict the future either. More just explore the madness of totalitarianism in a setting his fellow Englishmen could relate to. His other most famous book was about talking farm animals.

Maybe a better general rule is that authors aren't futurologists, but artists, who may intend to either illuminate or entertain. A possible future is simply a choice of setting.

[–] AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

I don't think I disagree with you about any point in particular.

The author of the article tries to make a case that these billionaires are stupid (and likely fascists) for chasing ideas from science fiction. For the finishing touch, he torpedoes his own credibility by saying science fiction writers like him are untalented pandering hacks who just recycle ideas and material. They don't know anything about science or bring new ideas to the table.

But there is a problem: SF authors such as myself are popular entertainers who work to amuse an audience that is trained on what to expect by previous generations of science-fiction authors. We are not trying to accurately predict possible futures but to earn a living: any foresight is strictly coincidental. We recycle the existing material—and the result is influenced heavily by the biases of earlier writers and readers. The genre operates a lot like a large language model that is trained using a body of text heavily contaminated by previous LLMs; it tends to emit material like that of its predecessors. Most SF is small-c conservative insofar as it reflects the history of the field rather than trying to break ground or question received wisdom.

Science fiction, therefore, does not develop in accordance with the scientific method. It develops by popular entertainers trying to attract a bigger audience by pandering to them.

I don't know Mr. Stross beyond this article. However, this strikes me very much like what Paul Krugman said about the internet. I think this sort of stuff comes from people who lack vision and can't imagine the potential of ideas.