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I used to worry about climate change and the environment, but eventually I realized that technological change is far more scary. The tech that will emerge in th

by p-e-w 4y ago

I used to worry about climate change and the environment, but eventually I realized that technological change is far more scary. The tech that will emerge in the next few decades is going to reduce 99.9% of humanity to less than slaves. The gap between the powerful few and everyone else will be so unimaginably large that I doubt life will be worth living for most people, even if Earth were somehow transformed back into an environmental paradise. And unlike with climate change, there is no conceivable plan to prevent any of this.

nunez 4y ago
Greg Daniel's "Upload" is a more modern take on Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" I think they did an excellent job of depicting this dystopia
dasil003 4y ago
Why will this not lead to revolution?
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  revolution matters very little when you have pitchforks and bow/arrows vs terminators, robo cops, and drones.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Who's building these robo armies and maintaining the supply chain? All automated you say? Sorry, I think that's the pipe dream of privilege software engineers and armchair dystopians. In practice, there are too many opportunities for sabotage. Sure, post-singularity some Skynet scenario is possible, but to say that will happen in "a few decades" is a big bet I'll happily take the other side of.
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  Did you just see what happened with Covid? The government, the same one who liberals thought was horribly oppressive for decades, restricted people’s ability to move, work, and regulate their own bodies and the people cheered. In some highly “advanced” countries like Australia they arrested you for leaving a small zone around your house, arrested you for leaving your home after certain hours, and arrested people who dissented in online comments. This was all applauded by the masses. All you have to do is use the media to invent something more scary than you, and then present yourself as the solution as long as the people do what you say. If this was a parent everyone would say they’re abusive, but as a government they’re leaders of science. It’s likely a reflection of the state of our collective parenting. This is the result of a decades long campaign by vested forces to demoralize the public by reducing the value of the family, and reducing the value of national identity until no one feels any allegiance to anyone but the state. Today, people will rat out their family to the state immediately. This is not how a strong society operates. The state should be afraid of the people, not vice versa.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Reasonable people can disagree about what is the right response to a pandemic with potentially deadly and long-term health implications. This is categorically not the same as a wealth and power disparity so large that it reduces "99.9% of humanity to less than slaves".
    - goldenchrome 4y ago
      Freedom is stripped slowly, and then all at once. It’s wise to pay attention to moments when freedom of any kind is degraded. The pandemic is the most recent and most obvious moment.
autoexec 4y ago
> And unlike with climate change, there is no conceivable plan to prevent any of this. If quality of life declines far enough too quickly people will simply revolt. No matter what the resources of the 1% are, if the 99% were actually to come after them there would be very little they could do about it. That's why it's important for the masses being exploited to have enough that they feel they have something to lose, to provide the illusion of upward mobility so people can have hope for more than they have, and to have an underclass to point to in order to demonstrate that things could always be worse. You can gradually get a population to accept a decline in their standard of living, but historically, only somewhat recently have Americans had to watch their children grow to be worse off than they were and the sting of that is offset somewhat by flashy new technologies, easy access to entertainment, culture wars, and other distractions. Even with things as they are now we're seeing a push back against worker exploitation in the US, including an effort to get people protected by labor unions, and some encouraging attention on economic inequality. Perhaps most of will be slaves, but unless climate change makes our situation extremely desperate with things like life threatening food/water shortages (and it might) at least we'll be somewhat comfortable and heavily entertained slaves.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  > No matter what the resources of the 1% are, if the 99% were actually to come after them there would be very little they could do about it. Have you seen the advances in robotics during the past decade? Very soon the powerful will be able to use such robots to crush any revolt, even if it's 99% vs 1%. Not to mention that those same people control virtually all human communication, so organizing a revolt against their opposition would be nearly impossible anyway. The time when there was strength in numbers is swiftly coming to an end.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Edit: I’m not sure why I inferred that you suggested that control would belong to a single group, but I wrote this response as though that’s what you said. In retrospect you don’t seem to be excluding the possibility of what I’m describing, so we might actually be on essentially the same page. Also edit: one major concern I have isn’t even traditional weapons or force, but bespoke bio weapons made possible by technologies we already have which are advancing rapidly. Using sickness against enemies was profoundly effective in the past, and could be even more so today. There doesn’t appear to be a way, or even an initiative to find a way, to prevent this technology from going rogue. ———— I worry less about unified entities using this kind of power and more about rogue entities essentially utilizing monopolies of force to terrorize each other and their dominated populations. I don’t think a single group would rule the world so to speak. Like organized crime, powerful groups would likely claim regions and countries and exist in an extremely precarious and perilous struggle for power. There would remain a seemingly endless arms race. If one group came out on top, I have no doubt that it too would fracture and initiate yet another arms race. I can’t be certain because the technologies we’re seeing developed, and what’s on the horizon, is absolutely game-changing in many ways. What if one country unlocks fusion and some other key technologies, but doesn’t share them? Say, China for example. If they could use that to efficiently build a staggeringly huge and powerful military with brand new technologies no one could practically contend with, we’d certainly see a new hegemony. But I’m very doubtful that it would last long due to internal fracturing. I’m open to being wrong of course.

by p-e-w 4y ago

nunez 4y ago

Greg Daniel's "Upload" is a more modern take on Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" I think they did an excellent job of depicting this dystopia

dasil003 4y ago

Why will this not lead to revolution?

gremlinsinc 4y ago
revolution matters very little when you have pitchforks and bow/arrows vs terminators, robo cops, and drones.
- dasil003 4y ago
  Who's building these robo armies and maintaining the supply chain? All automated you say? Sorry, I think that's the pipe dream of privilege software engineers and armchair dystopians. In practice, there are too many opportunities for sabotage. Sure, post-singularity some Skynet scenario is possible, but to say that will happen in "a few decades" is a big bet I'll happily take the other side of.
goldenchrome 4y ago
Did you just see what happened with Covid? The government, the same one who liberals thought was horribly oppressive for decades, restricted people’s ability to move, work, and regulate their own bodies and the people cheered. In some highly “advanced” countries like Australia they arrested you for leaving a small zone around your house, arrested you for leaving your home after certain hours, and arrested people who dissented in online comments. This was all applauded by the masses. All you have to do is use the media to invent something more scary than you, and then present yourself as the solution as long as the people do what you say. If this was a parent everyone would say they’re abusive, but as a government they’re leaders of science. It’s likely a reflection of the state of our collective parenting. This is the result of a decades long campaign by vested forces to demoralize the public by reducing the value of the family, and reducing the value of national identity until no one feels any allegiance to anyone but the state. Today, people will rat out their family to the state immediately. This is not how a strong society operates. The state should be afraid of the people, not vice versa.
- dasil003 4y ago
  Reasonable people can disagree about what is the right response to a pandemic with potentially deadly and long-term health implications. This is categorically not the same as a wealth and power disparity so large that it reduces "99.9% of humanity to less than slaves".
  - goldenchrome 4y ago
    Freedom is stripped slowly, and then all at once. It’s wise to pay attention to moments when freedom of any kind is degraded. The pandemic is the most recent and most obvious moment.

autoexec 4y ago

> And unlike with climate change, there is no conceivable plan to prevent any of this. If quality of life declines far enough too quickly people will simply revolt. No matter what the resources of the 1% are, if the 99% were actually to come after them there would be very little they could do about it. That's why it's important for the masses being exploited to have enough that they feel they have something to lose, to provide the illusion of upward mobility so people can have hope for more than they have, and to have an underclass to point to in order to demonstrate that things could always be worse. You can gradually get a population to accept a decline in their standard of living, but historically, only somewhat recently have Americans had to watch their children grow to be worse off than they were and the sting of that is offset somewhat by flashy new technologies, easy access to entertainment, culture wars, and other distractions. Even with things as they are now we're seeing a push back against worker exploitation in the US, including an effort to get people protected by labor unions, and some encouraging attention on economic inequality. Perhaps most of will be slaves, but unless climate change makes our situation extremely desperate with things like life threatening food/water shortages (and it might) at least we'll be somewhat comfortable and heavily entertained slaves.

p-e-w 4y ago
> No matter what the resources of the 1% are, if the 99% were actually to come after them there would be very little they could do about it. Have you seen the advances in robotics during the past decade? Very soon the powerful will be able to use such robots to crush any revolt, even if it's 99% vs 1%. Not to mention that those same people control virtually all human communication, so organizing a revolt against their opposition would be nearly impossible anyway. The time when there was strength in numbers is swiftly coming to an end.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Edit: I’m not sure why I inferred that you suggested that control would belong to a single group, but I wrote this response as though that’s what you said. In retrospect you don’t seem to be excluding the possibility of what I’m describing, so we might actually be on essentially the same page. Also edit: one major concern I have isn’t even traditional weapons or force, but bespoke bio weapons made possible by technologies we already have which are advancing rapidly. Using sickness against enemies was profoundly effective in the past, and could be even more so today. There doesn’t appear to be a way, or even an initiative to find a way, to prevent this technology from going rogue. ———— I worry less about unified entities using this kind of power and more about rogue entities essentially utilizing monopolies of force to terrorize each other and their dominated populations. I don’t think a single group would rule the world so to speak. Like organized crime, powerful groups would likely claim regions and countries and exist in an extremely precarious and perilous struggle for power. There would remain a seemingly endless arms race. If one group came out on top, I have no doubt that it too would fracture and initiate yet another arms race. I can’t be certain because the technologies we’re seeing developed, and what’s on the horizon, is absolutely game-changing in many ways. What if one country unlocks fusion and some other key technologies, but doesn’t share them? Say, China for example. If they could use that to efficiently build a staggeringly huge and powerful military with brand new technologies no one could practically contend with, we’d certainly see a new hegemony. But I’m very doubtful that it would last long due to internal fracturing. I’m open to being wrong of course.