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MichaelVassar comments on New Year's Predictions Thread - Less Wrong
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My first prediction is that as is usually the case, political and random events will change the way people live far more over the next year than technology will. Given the current state of the financial system, I would place about even odds on politics having more impact than technology over the next decade, but with the caveat that over such a long time scale political and technological events will surely be interwoven.
There's no separation to be had between politics and technology.
The biggest influence on technology is regulation which outlaws, restricts, or places huge financial barriers to entry (as with medical research); another non-trivial influence is politically controlled financing of R&D.
And arguably, the biggest influence on politics that isn't itself political is technology (case in point: modern communications, computer, and the Internet spreading censored information, creating more popular awareness and coordinating protests.)
So I think political and technological events are inseparable over almost any timescale.
I agree that there is little to no separation, but I think a distinction can be made. Namely, there are two different words that mean different things. When predicting what is going to affect people you can probably find a way to split the techno-political mash usefully. This may be as simple as using one word over the other.
It seems pretty vague - do you have any ideas about how this should be measured?