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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than unde
by hprotagonist 9y ago
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
C. S. Lewis, 1948
- mhomde 9y agoI kinda want to see a black mirror episode of AI overlords shepherding humans for their own good :)
- fixermark 9y agoJust read the last story in "I, Robot". Twist: from the point of view of at least one of the characters (and the general tone of the story), it's a good thing. President of the World makes the case that the world has always been too complicated for humans to control their own fate, and the ultimate goal of technology has always been to guard against chaos with machines big enough to tackle that complexity. ;)
- mhomde 9y agoYeah, he has a point :) It's always struck me as weird that we "allow" political leaders that can put personal gain and career in front of what's good for everyone else. Also as you touch upon the world is rapidly becoming too complex to be governed by us. AI could save us from bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, shortsightedness and cognitive bias. I'd actually welcome our AI overlords if they could execute according to a a reasonable value system (maybe execute is the wrong word). On the other hand, how do you set its goals, and what could possibly go wrong :)
- panarky 9y agoUp is down, black is white, wrong is right. If I have to choose between cynical, selfish, sociopathic corporations and ones that at least try to do the right thing, I'll choose the latter every time. Google doesn't always get it right, but the world is a far better place because them.
- pasta 9y agoSerious question: how became the world a better place because of Google?
- fixermark 9y agoI'm not sure; let me check the first source I reference when answering a general knowledge question. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+became+the+world+a+better+place+because+of+google http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+became+the+world+a+better+place+bec... ;) No, but seriously: having access to general knowledge at our fingertips continuously has been a deep revolution in the way people interact with the world and each other. Some highlights include regularization of prices in multiple markets (as information asymmetry has been strangled by ubiquitous information sharing modulated through search), the annihilation of the need to memorize addresses and directions (just look it up on your mapping app), and the general explosion of convenience in being able to find things (if you need a specific resource, you can search for someone who will sell it to you). All of this could have happened without Google, but Google happens to be one of the very few companies that was able to make web crawling (via fusion with ads) into a profitable business model.