What's really messed up about this is that as designers of what AGI even means, these mostly self-taught or otherwise non-scientific clowns who think that being rich makes them smart will create the post-human life forms they think will outlive humanity. The problem is it will be inadequate like most of their products and we'll all die for nothing.
I've been thinking that industrialization at the end of the enlightenment was not the conclusion of the enlightenment but a stifling that led back into a new dark age where we replaced God and the church with money and business. I only hope we can recognize the system has supplanted the people again.
It's funny that these null nodes get so obsessed with declining birth rates whilst doing everything in their power to make people not afford to or not want to bring a child into the hellish world they're creating. But of course they're not worried about the birth rates in Africa or Asia... just that their employees and customers aren't reproducing fast enough to maintain that growth curve for their investments.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so horrible, how obvious all of this is. "Effective altruism" my ass. I can only hope I convey a fraction of the contempt for these people that they display for everyone else.
> The founder, Yudkowsky, posted an article ... in which he asked readers to choose between two options. One is that a single individual is tortured mercilessly for fifty years. The other is that some unfathomable number of people suffer the almost imperceptible discomfort of having a speck of dust briefly in their eye. So which of these is worse? His argument was that the second, the dust speck scenario, is much worse because if you do the math. . .
Does shitposting on Twitter count as eye irritation?
I don't know if "tech capitalists" care about humans or not but I am certain that we should behave as if they do not.
I include myself in that.
I hope people find value in the things I have built and I assume that my literal skin in the game, in the form of my children and eventual grandchildren, will allow others to identify aligned interests ...
... but don't let your guard down just because that one guy did some nice things.
> Right now, with their billions and trillions of dollars, they are trying to create a new world run by post-humans without ever having inquired about the opinions and preferences of the rest of humanity. They’re doing this without our consent, and they don’t really care one bit about what the rest of us have to say.
Man this shit makes me so sad for our future. The money train has left the station and I don’t know if enough good people have the will or ability to shut this destructive speed run down.
They're building their own little world, a parallel reality where owning submarine garages and yachts and island hideouts is appropriate; but helping the rest of humanity isn't.
I hope we — the People — realise this faster and decide we don't want to help them out. Divest from their properties, stop using their tools, and keep being nice to other humans. The rift isn't our design, we just have to do what we can. We may lack the ability but not the will.
Teach your kids right, folks. Let them aim for a firm kindness and honesty rather than monetary success.
Should we say that every other country that doesn't provide aid equivalent to what USAID did, is also killing those 14 million? E.g. China, Japan, India, Brazil, the UK, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Canada, Mexico..?
Many countries have their variation of the USAID. In fact the UK, France, Canada, etc. have such programs.
I'd argue that these are an investment in the future and end up being positive for the countries investing in them, in the form of the world being a better place, putting less pressure on immigration flows, and so on.
Per capita, other countries contribute more, so this wasn't such a wasteful use of American resources.
And absence of such a program elsewhere doesn't take away from Musk's DOGE wilfully destroying the program. Yes, that's in his legacy, the deaths that will be caused.
Musk, who the article feature has been one of the most outspoken in favour of humans, re we need to do more about declining populations, funding OpenAI with the idea that it wouldn't be monopolised by a profit maxing corporation and so on.
The magazine is named after a 1938 book "The Black Jacobins" about the Haitian revolution started by slaves and which occurred partially because of the French revolution. The revolution was successful with slavery (mostly) ending and Haiti becoming a state.
The book claims the revolutionaries (The black versions of the Jacobins) in Haiti were more true to the ideals of the French revolution than those in France because human rights extended to all in the former.
So since the magazine isn't named after the Jacobins in France your criticism makes no sense.
If true, it makes the magazine come out even worse. The Haitian Revolution was followed within a year by the massacre of most of the European population, a few selected demographics aside.[0] This was already well known down the long decades to that 1938 book and today. So, the mag closed its eyes to a reign of terror no better than the 1789 French revolution.
As for the controversy of Jacobin ideologically, the magazine typically takes a Marxist standpoint, but not all leftist schools of thought are Marxist.
While I agree that technically correct is best correct, if someone created a magazine called Nazi and their defence was, “it’s not named after the original Nazis, but rather a group inspired by them”, how would that differ in structure from this explanation?
It shouldn't be. See my other comment for details but it's named after a book about the Haitian revolution (The Black Jacobins) not the Jacobins in France.
I'm also curious why you think the magazine is controversial on the left because of the name? What information led you to that conclusion?
I've been thinking that industrialization at the end of the enlightenment was not the conclusion of the enlightenment but a stifling that led back into a new dark age where we replaced God and the church with money and business. I only hope we can recognize the system has supplanted the people again.
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