Peter’s review of The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma > Likes and Comments
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Excellent review that cuts through the hype and one-dimensional thinking!
I don’t agree with your assessment that the predictions are wrong. We aren’t yet able to say this yet. For example: computational biology and target discovery/toxicology assessments are not mutually exclusive. It might very well be that AI will lead to breakthroughs on these fronts, as well as in drug design. So it is too premature to make any claims (yet) on both side of the divide. We can neither confirm nor deny, whether AI will revolutionise drug discovery yet in narrow terms, or whether it will revolutionise other industries in broader terms. The potential is there, that’s for sure. LLMs and AlphaFold being two of the most notable examples of this potential. I’d rather interpret this book as a prediction for the future by an industry-insider. If you expect it to be some accurate telling of the future, taking into account the complex history of innovation, you wil indeed be disappointed by this book.
Yuk. It's all a "guy" thing here. Yea, guys sort of behave and inhabit one circle of the ven diagram of human (homo _____) biological clade(?) Males ... malefactotum ... Interesting ..how will tech affect the individual > humankimd > planetary developments?
Did you recently read that black plastics are not yet recyclable? Nylon may be significant in spurring climate changing. So much too muchism. Ciao fer now.
"It's quite possible to build a reactor or bomb in your backyard"? I hope, for your sake, the U.S. government (or your local police) isn't monitoring Goodreads for potential threats because my brother-in-law got profiled, thrown to the ground, and had his face mashed into the asphalt for much less (pointing to the booster engine on his art car and jokingly telling the manager he needed "fuel for his rocket..." and having dark skin from growing up in Hawaii and having dark curly hair) at a gas station in a major metropolitan area generally known for its enlightened population.
I found this review extremely misleading.
What a strange take, it sounds like the author of the review does not fully comprehend the possibilities and potential of AI. Furthermore, was the author expecting the book to fully and wholly predict the future, instead of generally outlining what it potentially might look like? Another example of the review author not comprehending the consequences of an exponential technology such as AI.
Now it turns out that the technology experts who are actually making things happen don't have the "right perspective"...
(I wonder where are the sources, which must come from the future, to say that the book's predictions are wrong...). :D
This reviewer clearly read an opposite version of the book the rest of us got. Otherwise, we would have to assume the author of the review has a personal hatred of the author of the book—perhaps even jealousy?
This review makes many bizarre assumptions and leaps while complaining that the book makes assumptions. I've actually read the book and this reviewer got every possible thing backwards somehow.
For instance, talking about how the 'waves' of the book are how we "feel" and "Development is (more or less) constant" are exactly opposite to what the book states—in the first chapter! Literally, almost every point here is backwards from what is in the book—you need to work really, really hard to misread this badly.
'...the technocratic chattering class' - that made me sputter. On-spot review!
tldr.. you missed large gaps of this book. i suggest a re-read 👍🏻
A well-written but misleading review.
Excellent assessment, though I’m skeptical about the wave itself. There’s a lot of hype to tease out from the concrete reality of technological evolution. Well-written and thoughtful, Peter.
The comments are a nice little museum of the ways people defend a techno-prophecy book when they’ve emotionally invested in it.
1. “You just don’t understand exponentials”
Classic. The review spends half its word-count on historical exponentials (steam, flying-shuttle productivity jump, TFP flattening) but the commenter still reaches for the “you don’t get exponentials” trump card. It’s become a thought-terminating cliché the way “correlation ≠ causation” used to be.
2. “The future hasn’t arrived yet, therefore the prediction is unfalsifiable”
A more polite version of the same move. By treating any sceptical claim as “premature” it immunises the book until, conveniently, the critic has died of old age. The irony is that the review doesn’t say “AI will never crack toxicology”; it says the current choke-points are not the ones Suleyman highlights, so the wave metaphor is mis-located. That’s a present-temp observation, not a prophecy.
3. “You must be jealous / hate the author”
Standard ad hom fallback. Notice how it’s always packaged as “clearly you read a different book” rather than quoting a single passage that was mis-represented. Easier to impugn motive than cite chapter and verse.
4. “TL;DR – re-read”
The shortest path to feeling like you’ve refuted something without actually refuting it.
5. The only comment that makes you laugh out loud
A useful reminder that invoking backyard nukes on the open internet is a high-variance rhetorical strategy.
Net effect: zero engagement with the core claims—(i) tech change is usually bottom-up and socially negotiated, (ii) containment policy built around mythical choke-points has a terrible historical batting average, (iii) productivity data already fail to show the discontinuity the book treats as inevitable. Instead we get “you’ll see when the singularity arrives.”
If anything, the comment thread is supplementary evidence for the thesis: the “coming wave” discourse functions more as identity performance for the technocratic chattering class than as falsifiable forecast.
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Excellent review that cuts through the hype and one-dimensional thinking!
I don’t agree with your assessment that the predictions are wrong. We aren’t yet able to say this yet. For example: computational biology and target discovery/toxicology assessments are not mutually exclusive. It might very well be that AI will lead to breakthroughs on these fronts, as well as in drug design. So it is too premature to make any claims (yet) on both side of the divide. We can neither confirm nor deny, whether AI will revolutionise drug discovery yet in narrow terms, or whether it will revolutionise other industries in broader terms. The potential is there, that’s for sure. LLMs and AlphaFold being two of the most notable examples of this potential. I’d rather interpret this book as a prediction for the future by an industry-insider. If you expect it to be some accurate telling of the future, taking into account the complex history of innovation, you wil indeed be disappointed by this book.
Yuk. It's all a "guy" thing here. Yea, guys sort of behave and inhabit one circle of the ven diagram of human (homo _____) biological clade(?) Males ... malefactotum ... Interesting ..how will tech affect the individual > humankimd > planetary developments? Did you recently read that black plastics are not yet recyclable? Nylon may be significant in spurring climate changing. So much too muchism. Ciao fer now.
"It's quite possible to build a reactor or bomb in your backyard"? I hope, for your sake, the U.S. government (or your local police) isn't monitoring Goodreads for potential threats because my brother-in-law got profiled, thrown to the ground, and had his face mashed into the asphalt for much less (pointing to the booster engine on his art car and jokingly telling the manager he needed "fuel for his rocket..." and having dark skin from growing up in Hawaii and having dark curly hair) at a gas station in a major metropolitan area generally known for its enlightened population.
I found this review extremely misleading.
What a strange take, it sounds like the author of the review does not fully comprehend the possibilities and potential of AI. Furthermore, was the author expecting the book to fully and wholly predict the future, instead of generally outlining what it potentially might look like? Another example of the review author not comprehending the consequences of an exponential technology such as AI.
Now it turns out that the technology experts who are actually making things happen don't have the "right perspective"... (I wonder where are the sources, which must come from the future, to say that the book's predictions are wrong...). :D
This reviewer clearly read an opposite version of the book the rest of us got. Otherwise, we would have to assume the author of the review has a personal hatred of the author of the book—perhaps even jealousy? This review makes many bizarre assumptions and leaps while complaining that the book makes assumptions. I've actually read the book and this reviewer got every possible thing backwards somehow.
For instance, talking about how the 'waves' of the book are how we "feel" and "Development is (more or less) constant" are exactly opposite to what the book states—in the first chapter! Literally, almost every point here is backwards from what is in the book—you need to work really, really hard to misread this badly.
'...the technocratic chattering class' - that made me sputter. On-spot review!
tldr.. you missed large gaps of this book. i suggest a re-read 👍🏻
A well-written but misleading review.
Excellent assessment, though I’m skeptical about the wave itself. There’s a lot of hype to tease out from the concrete reality of technological evolution. Well-written and thoughtful, Peter.
The comments are a nice little museum of the ways people defend a techno-prophecy book when they’ve emotionally invested in it.1. “You just don’t understand exponentials”
Classic. The review spends half its word-count on historical exponentials (steam, flying-shuttle productivity jump, TFP flattening) but the commenter still reaches for the “you don’t get exponentials” trump card. It’s become a thought-terminating cliché the way “correlation ≠ causation” used to be.
2. “The future hasn’t arrived yet, therefore the prediction is unfalsifiable”
A more polite version of the same move. By treating any sceptical claim as “premature” it immunises the book until, conveniently, the critic has died of old age. The irony is that the review doesn’t say “AI will never crack toxicology”; it says the current choke-points are not the ones Suleyman highlights, so the wave metaphor is mis-located. That’s a present-temp observation, not a prophecy.
3. “You must be jealous / hate the author”
Standard ad hom fallback. Notice how it’s always packaged as “clearly you read a different book” rather than quoting a single passage that was mis-represented. Easier to impugn motive than cite chapter and verse.
4. “TL;DR – re-read”
The shortest path to feeling like you’ve refuted something without actually refuting it.
5. The only comment that makes you laugh out loud
A useful reminder that invoking backyard nukes on the open internet is a high-variance rhetorical strategy.
Net effect: zero engagement with the core claims—(i) tech change is usually bottom-up and socially negotiated, (ii) containment policy built around mythical choke-points has a terrible historical batting average, (iii) productivity data already fail to show the discontinuity the book treats as inevitable. Instead we get “you’ll see when the singularity arrives.”
If anything, the comment thread is supplementary evidence for the thesis: the “coming wave” discourse functions more as identity performance for the technocratic chattering class than as falsifiable forecast.
This is exactly the take away I got. "This stuff can be very dangerous in the wrong hands (translation: YOUR hands). Sit back and let US take care of it all"