4 ms·

I've always wondered (at the furthest end of full-automation) what's to stop a collection of billionaires, equipped with their self-perpetuating, self-assemblin

I've always wondered (at the furthest end of full-automation) what's to stop a collection of billionaires, equipped with their self-perpetuating, self-assembling, hermetic technological sphere, from deciding to turn the planet into their own personal Eden again by eliminating the 99.9% of humans that are no longer needed to keep civilization as was known before going? Offer a voice command and this self-functional tech (a dream at this point, admittedly, but a dream that many are actively pursuing) builds a fleet of drones and expert systems / AI work out the best strategy to achieve the end. People will say, oh the masses will rise up and eat the rich, but when the rich are in the their world war II-proof self-contained underground habitats with banks of genetic samples from every plant and animal formerly on Earth, there isn't going to be much worry about collateral damage; so chemical, genetic, germ warfare, all of it can be on the table. It might even be a video game, they could let their kids fly killer drones before dinner. Not possible? Not technologically yet. But how many 'normal' people complain about there being 'too many people'? And if someone just has to talk to fancy Alexa on steroids to get whatever they want, why should they keep me around? Adulation? Holographics, gynoids, and there's and app for that.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago
I'm not worried. There are enough nukes to solve any such situation. Get to the point where someone is actively purging percentages of humanity with no end in sight? Launch a few dozen ICBMs and turn their little pool party into an irradiated piece of shit. And if they survived the ICBM volley? Enjoy your cancer, assholes!
- ChrisClark 7y ago
  But what if the ones doing the killing own all the nukes?
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    Do you really think US/UK/Russia/France/Israel are all going to collectively give up control of their nuclear weapons to a single entity? Nuclear weapons are the ultimate equalizer. Your nation state can be 10000x less powerful, but still capable of threatening a superior civilization with total destruction of their population.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      all those governments are decidedly on the side of "The powerful"
      - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
        Abstractly, yes. But in a non-unified manner.
api 7y ago
I think a less extreme version of your scenario is a dark possibility in the future. After the explosion of neo-racism and fascism and similar ideologies in recent years I found myself wondering what would happen if liberalism did in fact fall deeply out of fashion. We have panopticon mass surveillance, bioengineering, drones, and loads of other super-technologies that could allow genocide on an incredible scale with almost no realistic possibility of resistance. Some DIY guerilla group or gun nut militia would last minutes against a modern army that truly did not show restraint because their actual goal is extermination. Now throw migrant crises created by climate change in there. Look at how a relatively small migrant crisis in Europe helped resurrect fascism across all of the West and imagine a migrant wave 10X larger. I could definitely see some future gangster plutocracy deciding it's time to follow "race realism" and the cult of IQ to its logical conclusion.
- malux85 7y ago
  Global warming might do the genocide for them. Large parts of the planet become uninhabitable. C Comfortable conditions for living and food production are in synthetic environments only the rich can afford
  - api 7y ago
    We seem to be failing to cooperate at scale to phase out carbon intensive energy sources and curtail the problem. The next test will be whether we will cooperate at scale to adapt to the change or descend into war and genocide. If a disastrous climate change scenario does unfold it could be true that large farming regions will be devastated, etc., but those people will not just sit and die. They will try to migrate. They may also engage in aggressive warfare themselves, "raiding" as we call it among our closest genetic relatives. Most deaths will be from war and genocide, not starvation. If this coincides with a true abandonment of liberal humanistic attitudes in advanced nations I could definitely see the top ~10% of humanity dispatching the other 90% in an organized fashion. Any members of the elite who voiced opposition would join the condemned. Smaller more isolated versions of that have happened before. Never before have humans had the power to scale it. BTW I think that's why people are so spooked by the Nazi holocaust vs what Stalin and Mao and many others did. The Nazi body count was not the highest, but the chilling thing is how they applied modern industrial and management practices to deliberate murder at scale. I suspect it's so chilling because of it hints at dark possible future scenarios. Imagine Hitler and the SS with China's surveillance state and CRISPR-CAS9.
sharemywin 7y ago
Does if have to be that complicated just put up a giant border wall and ignore climate change. Millions die of climate disasters and you can claim moral ambivalence.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
It’d be pretty bad if omnicidal supervillains decided to kill everyone, yeah. It’d be especially bad if all the powerful people in the world simultaneously decided to become supervillains. But I mean... why would they?
vincnetas 7y ago
Rich people (most which are smart) are smart enough to understand that this not how you would be able to create progress.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  But would they understand why they need any progress? And furthermore, rich are perfectly capable of science, I bequeathe to you a gentleman scientist archetype.
  - vincnetas 7y ago
    Yes, but you need a lot of people "doing science". You need a lot of people just to not forget what we already know.
__MatrixMan__ 7y ago
I don't think there will ever be a point where the tech you're describing is suddenly available and the world is also just as overpopulated as it is today. I think our approach to the end state you describe will be much more gradual. Our holy books still recommend that we be fruitful and multiply. We still have systems in place (like social security) that will fall apart unless we can maintain unbounded growth. Our society is riddled will all of these leftovers from a time when having more people actually was a good idea. Those memes aren't serving us anymore, and evolution will prune them with time. It probably won't be a comfortable time. Cultural attitudes towards population aside, the nightmare scenario you describe is unfolding in tiny little pockets all around us. There's no need to nuke the poor people all at once when you can just let them starve one at a time. Nobody needs to make the single big hugely unethical decision of genocide, they just need to repeatedly make the small mildly unethical decision of apathy. I'm hoping that we can make the former into a stronger effect than the latter, but I'm not optimistic.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

I'm not worried. There are enough nukes to solve any such situation. Get to the point where someone is actively purging percentages of humanity with no end in sight? Launch a few dozen ICBMs and turn their little pool party into an irradiated piece of shit. And if they survived the ICBM volley? Enjoy your cancer, assholes!

ChrisClark 7y ago
But what if the ones doing the killing own all the nukes?
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Do you really think US/UK/Russia/France/Israel are all going to collectively give up control of their nuclear weapons to a single entity? Nuclear weapons are the ultimate equalizer. Your nation state can be 10000x less powerful, but still capable of threatening a superior civilization with total destruction of their population.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    all those governments are decidedly on the side of "The powerful"
    - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      Abstractly, yes. But in a non-unified manner.

api 7y ago

I think a less extreme version of your scenario is a dark possibility in the future. After the explosion of neo-racism and fascism and similar ideologies in recent years I found myself wondering what would happen if liberalism did in fact fall deeply out of fashion. We have panopticon mass surveillance, bioengineering, drones, and loads of other super-technologies that could allow genocide on an incredible scale with almost no realistic possibility of resistance. Some DIY guerilla group or gun nut militia would last minutes against a modern army that truly did not show restraint because their actual goal is extermination. Now throw migrant crises created by climate change in there. Look at how a relatively small migrant crisis in Europe helped resurrect fascism across all of the West and imagine a migrant wave 10X larger. I could definitely see some future gangster plutocracy deciding it's time to follow "race realism" and the cult of IQ to its logical conclusion.

malux85 7y ago
Global warming might do the genocide for them. Large parts of the planet become uninhabitable. C Comfortable conditions for living and food production are in synthetic environments only the rich can afford
- api 7y ago
  We seem to be failing to cooperate at scale to phase out carbon intensive energy sources and curtail the problem. The next test will be whether we will cooperate at scale to adapt to the change or descend into war and genocide. If a disastrous climate change scenario does unfold it could be true that large farming regions will be devastated, etc., but those people will not just sit and die. They will try to migrate. They may also engage in aggressive warfare themselves, "raiding" as we call it among our closest genetic relatives. Most deaths will be from war and genocide, not starvation. If this coincides with a true abandonment of liberal humanistic attitudes in advanced nations I could definitely see the top ~10% of humanity dispatching the other 90% in an organized fashion. Any members of the elite who voiced opposition would join the condemned. Smaller more isolated versions of that have happened before. Never before have humans had the power to scale it. BTW I think that's why people are so spooked by the Nazi holocaust vs what Stalin and Mao and many others did. The Nazi body count was not the highest, but the chilling thing is how they applied modern industrial and management practices to deliberate murder at scale. I suspect it's so chilling because of it hints at dark possible future scenarios. Imagine Hitler and the SS with China's surveillance state and CRISPR-CAS9.

sharemywin 7y ago

Does if have to be that complicated just put up a giant border wall and ignore climate change. Millions die of climate disasters and you can claim moral ambivalence.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

It’d be pretty bad if omnicidal supervillains decided to kill everyone, yeah. It’d be especially bad if all the powerful people in the world simultaneously decided to become supervillains. But I mean... why would they?

vincnetas 7y ago

Rich people (most which are smart) are smart enough to understand that this not how you would be able to create progress.

AstralStorm 7y ago
But would they understand why they need any progress? And furthermore, rich are perfectly capable of science, I bequeathe to you a gentleman scientist archetype.
- vincnetas 7y ago
  Yes, but you need a lot of people "doing science". You need a lot of people just to not forget what we already know.

__MatrixMan__ 7y ago

I don't think there will ever be a point where the tech you're describing is suddenly available and the world is also just as overpopulated as it is today. I think our approach to the end state you describe will be much more gradual. Our holy books still recommend that we be fruitful and multiply. We still have systems in place (like social security) that will fall apart unless we can maintain unbounded growth. Our society is riddled will all of these leftovers from a time when having more people actually was a good idea. Those memes aren't serving us anymore, and evolution will prune them with time. It probably won't be a comfortable time. Cultural attitudes towards population aside, the nightmare scenario you describe is unfolding in tiny little pockets all around us. There's no need to nuke the poor people all at once when you can just let them starve one at a time. Nobody needs to make the single big hugely unethical decision of genocide, they just need to repeatedly make the small mildly unethical decision of apathy. I'm hoping that we can make the former into a stronger effect than the latter, but I'm not optimistic.