Mr. Proyect's thoughts are recorded in a post entitled The Boeing 737 Max 8: a case-study in uncreative destruction. The lede paragraph:
On October 29, 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 belonging to Lion Air in Indonesia crashed into the Java Sea 12 minutes after take-off. All 189 passengers and crew members were killed instantly. It is extremely unusual for planes to suffer such accidents in clear weather after having reached their cruising altitude. Flight experts concluded that the pilots were not adequately trained in the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a robotics technology that lowers the nose of a plane to prevent a stall. Although there is no definitive judgement on exactly what happened, it appears to be a combination of inadequate training for the pilots and a malfunctioning MCAS.His larger argument is that flying has become deskilled, and therefore pilots less competent. Similarly, he bemoans the rise of driverless cars. Noting that pedestrians have been killed by such vehicles, he writes,
Despite such incidents (there have been 4 fatalities already), the bourgeoisie is determined to push ahead since the savings in labor costs will make up for the collateral damage of dead pedestrians. While I am skeptical that completely driverless cars will ever become the norm for Uber or Lyft, I can see people with little driving experience being paid minimum wage just to be a back-up to the computer system—as long as they don’t watch TV on the job. (Fat chance with such a boring job.)Mr. Thiel agrees with him--the dead pedestrians are a problem. Indeed, Thiel goes further and suggests that driverless cars are mostly propaganda and won't happen for decades, if ever. The reason--we have become way too risk averse. He mentions that two dozen people died from polio vaccines when they first came out--there was a lot of uncertainty about the correct dosage. Had that happened today the whole vaccine effort would have been put on ice--the FDA would never approve a polio vaccine today.
Mr. Thiel's larger point is that we can no longer organize large-scale collective effort. That's readily apparent in public works: the NYC subway, public schools, NASA, Obamacare, etc. But Thiel argues that the rot is spreading into the private sector. The 737 scandal is not simple error or corruption on the part of some individuals--it is instead because the US can no longer manufacture aircraft. It's too complicated and we're increasingly incompetent.
I always thought Mr. Proyect was a pessimistic Luddite, but when it comes to pessimism Mr. Thiel has him beat by a mile. Don't watch the video if you're in need of cheering up.
Mr. Proyect's anti-technology bias does show through big-time, however. He bemoans automation on the flight deck, suggesting it deskills pilots. And it is true: nearly the entire commercial flight is by wire: from accelerating down the runway until landing, the pilots do nothing but oversee the computers. They are still in charge of landing the plane--the last hundred feet descent to the runway still requires human control.
They retain responsibility for when something goes wrong. Most dramatically that happened in 2009 when "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson river after bird strikes had knocked out both engines, saving all lives on board. Mr. Sullenberger was 1) a skilled pilot with military experience; 2) had spent countless hours in a simulator rehearsing emergency procedures; and 3) had a genius IQ. Lucky passengers!
Somebody in the video says "no human should be condemned to do work that a machine can do better." A computer can do straight and level flight much better than a human being. It's not a hard job (even I, a novice flight student, can do that), but it requires unflagging attention. People aren't good at that--certainly not on 14 hour trans-Pacific flights. Computers are much better.
I think Mr. Proyect believes we should go back to digging ditches with picks and shovels. Let's return to the days when men did real work!
Mr. Proyect thinks that we're on the cusp of pilotless planes. I think he's wrong--no computer will ever be able to deal with an emergency. Driverless trucks, if they run into problems, can simply pull over to the side of the road and wait for human assistance. An airplane can't do that; it has to land, one way or the other. For any circumstances outside the training of AI, a human being will have to be on board. Perhaps we'll reduce the number of pilots in the cockpit, but we'll never eliminate them.
I'm more optimistic than Mr. Thiel. I do think driverless trucks on the interstate are on the near horizon. Driverless taxis will be possible in simpler environments--say in small and mid-sized towns. Though it will be a long time before they're feasible in complex places like Manhattan or Mumbai.
Mr. Thiel does not bemoan creative destruction. It is a symptom of technological progress, and at the end of the day any durable improvement in our standard of living is because of new technology. The fact that (in his opinion) technology has come to a standstill means that per capita economic growth is now zero. There is not too much creative destruction, but rather too little. Or maybe none at all.
I'll observe that our current circumstance--full employment at low wages--supports Mr. Thiel's point of view. Technological change implies a lot of churn in the labor market, and that's what pundits keep predicting. (It's even what I predicted in my book on careers.) But perhaps there is no technological change. Perhaps, instead of churn, the problem is stasis. Then everybody works as hard as they can just to stay in the same place. No creativity, and also no destruction.
The worst outcome is zero growth, which is where Mr. Thiel believes is where we're at. Then everything becomes a zero-sum game. In a zero-growth world there is no room for charity.
I hope he's wrong.
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