3 ms·

Most of what your talking is gross exaggeration. Exaggeration to the point of falsehood. Even the kernel of truth of underpaid, subsistence workers producing a

Most of what your talking is gross exaggeration. Exaggeration to the point of falsehood. Even the kernel of truth of underpaid, subsistence workers producing a lot of our food and machines, to call the rest of it what you have is just false.

throw310822 3y ago
I don't agree with everything in it and how absolutely it is presented, but upvoted it for the sheer power of the prose.
- highstep 3y ago
  you must be a be fan of chatgpt :)
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    if chatgpt wrote that then I for one welcome my angry, passionate, articulate robot overlords. Yes we hide a lot of ... oppression/violence/unfair business practises ... under the supply chain. But hell i think the electronic ledger and RFID will be amount the most transformative technologies our children will see.
walleeee 3y ago
Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge portion of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated slaughter do put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios and social networks employ psychologists to most effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news is a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above is largely true. The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there are reasonable people too. The more important point, which the comment misses, is that nobody is really in charge. Yes, there are "smoke-filled rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too large and complex for complete centralized control. The dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions), and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous, evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has its own autonomy. This is Moloch, and it doesn't even require active malice on any particular person's part. Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we are surrounded by them. We are in them.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  What irks me about this (op's) line of thought is the labeling of these facts as the devil, evil, even though it's still very likely the best the humanity got to ever experience. Yes, the advertisers don't care one bit for the well-being of the consumers, but can you imagine a reality where they would? I don't. Calling something evil even though there's not much improvement to be made is ... needlessly negative?
  - walleeee 3y ago
    I agree that it doesn't help to call it evil or invoke the devil. I don't agree that there's not much to improve on. > the advertisers don't care one bit for the well-being of the consumers, but can you imagine a reality where they would? Yes. Imagine a reality where we don't have anything like the advertising sector, or myopically extractive industry in general, sidestepping the whole problem. Failures of imagination seriously constrain the possibility space. Modernity's totalizing tendency ("the end of history", "the best we've ever had it", etc) is a big reason it threatens to self-terminate, I think. History is path-dependent, yes, and for all I know we do live in a block universe, but for practical purposes the future is under-determined.

throw310822 3y ago

I don't agree with everything in it and how absolutely it is presented, but upvoted it for the sheer power of the prose.

highstep 3y ago
you must be a be fan of chatgpt :)
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  if chatgpt wrote that then I for one welcome my angry, passionate, articulate robot overlords. Yes we hide a lot of ... oppression/violence/unfair business practises ... under the supply chain. But hell i think the electronic ledger and RFID will be amount the most transformative technologies our children will see.

walleeee 3y ago

Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge portion of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated slaughter do put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios and social networks employ psychologists to most effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news is a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above is largely true. The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there are reasonable people too. The more important point, which the comment misses, is that nobody is really in charge. Yes, there are "smoke-filled rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too large and complex for complete centralized control. The dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions), and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous, evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has its own autonomy. This is Moloch, and it doesn't even require active malice on any particular person's part. Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we are surrounded by them. We are in them.

The_Colonel 3y ago
What irks me about this (op's) line of thought is the labeling of these facts as the devil, evil, even though it's still very likely the best the humanity got to ever experience. Yes, the advertisers don't care one bit for the well-being of the consumers, but can you imagine a reality where they would? I don't. Calling something evil even though there's not much improvement to be made is ... needlessly negative?
- walleeee 3y ago
  I agree that it doesn't help to call it evil or invoke the devil. I don't agree that there's not much to improve on. > the advertisers don't care one bit for the well-being of the consumers, but can you imagine a reality where they would? Yes. Imagine a reality where we don't have anything like the advertising sector, or myopically extractive industry in general, sidestepping the whole problem. Failures of imagination seriously constrain the possibility space. Modernity's totalizing tendency ("the end of history", "the best we've ever had it", etc) is a big reason it threatens to self-terminate, I think. History is path-dependent, yes, and for all I know we do live in a block universe, but for practical purposes the future is under-determined.