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> Global warming (incorrect): We wasted some fraction of human time and resources implementing carbon capture that wasn't necessary. Minor economic hit No, it

by pdonis 3y ago

> Global warming (incorrect): We wasted some fraction of human time and resources implementing carbon capture that wasn't necessary. Minor economic hit No, it's not at all a "minor economic" hit with the measures that are being proposed. It is a huge reduction in standard of living for everybody in first world countries, and forcing those who currently don't enjoy a first world standard of living to stay in poverty. Of course, you could avoid this by building nuclear power plants instead of the draconian carbon reduction/elimination measures that are being proposed. Then we could have the best of both worlds. But no climate change alarmists are proposing that. Why not? > Global warming (correct): We prevented the collapse of the planet's climate and the ensuing death of most living creatures. No actual scientific predictions make this claim. It is hype and FUD. > AI will take our jobs (incorrect): We wasted time unnecessarily preparing for a paradigm shift in employment that never happened. Universal basic income was implemented which led to a small positive/negative change in worldwide economic productivity. If you think UBI will just be a "small" change, I have some oceanfront property in Tibet I'd like to sell you. > AI will take our jobs (correct): UBI was never implemented. A feedback loop emerged where almost all wealth siphoned quickly to a few individuals. The reward mechanism that incentivized the general population to work broke, and hasty attempts by the government to implement a "fair" system of resource distribution among the now "economically worthless" population failed and led to mass supply chain failure, worldwide mental instability, and societal collapse. The consequences you describe here are actually consequences of UBI, not "AI". The potential negative consequences of "AI" are negative consequences of particular humans using AI as a tool to prey on everyone else--just as such humans have always used whatever tools they can to prey on everyone else. The solution to the problem is not to ban the tool (even if that were possible--you can't ban knowledge). It's to stop letting a few humans prey on everyone else. And the best way to do that is to decentralize power and stop thinking that governments can solve problems. Governments are actually an even better tool than "AI" for some humans to use to prey on everyone else.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
> stop thinking that governments can solve problems In a functional democracy, with rule of law and strong civic institutions, governments is exactly how we solve problems. The more effective the government, the less problems. Compare Europe with the US on policing, food, access to justice, tax filing, banking, fraud prevention, environmental protections, life expectancy, obesity, systems of measurement, public transport, democratic accountability, protection of the elderly, feeding children (I could go on). The US still wrestles with problems that Europe (and much of the rest of the world) has forgotten about - and it does that because it confuses 'freedom' with lack of effective central government.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > In a functional democracy, with rule of law and strong civic institutions, governments is exactly how we solve problems. Some problems, perhaps. But not all problems. In the US, the government is supposed to be restricted to a certain set of functions that are explicitly delegated to it in the Constitution. It is not supposed to solve everything that anyone thinks is a problem. Of course, the actual practice in the US has diverged greatly from this, but that is a bug, not a feature. > Compare Europe with the US I have no problem with Europe having different policies on this from the US. If Europe wants to have government solve many more problems, that's up to Europe. And people who want to live under that model of government should live in Europe. The US was supposed to be built on a different model of government, for people who want to live under a different model of government from Europe. > The US still wrestles with problems that Europe (and much of the rest of the world) has forgotten about - and it does that because it confuses 'freedom' with lack of effective central government. No, the US wrestles with these problems because we prefer to wrestle with them instead of sweeping them under the rug and hoping that "government" will somehow solve them without we the people having to get involved. I don't share your rosy view of how well Europe has actually solved the problems, but I don't live in Europe so I am not personally affected. And conversely, those who don't live in the US should not presume to tell me how well the US is doing. I live here and I can judge that for myself.
  - Alpha3031 3y ago
    > No, the US wrestles with these problems because we prefer to wrestle with them instead of sweeping them under the rug and hoping that "government" will somehow solve them without we the people having to get involved. There's this fascinating concept called res publica that means that the public (you, the people) are supposed to do this "government" thing. I've been told you've actually got some of it in the US. Of course, it's entirely possible that what you have is so dysfunctional that the demos have entirely given up their right and responsibility in running the place, but I don't think that's actually true. While you'll always have a special place in my heart for beta testing the modern version, some of you haven't let that develop into a chauvinism that prevents one from seeing good things elsewhere that might be applicable at home (or for that matter, good things at home which might be applicable elsewhere, because home is completely and utterly incomparable in every way, and one needs not ever even bother finding out) and that's certainly better governance than trying the same thing over and over again, and somehow expecting better results.
Xcelerate 3y ago
The point was about the asymmetry of upside and downside risk. Feel free to insert your own political talking points in place of UBI or carbon capture if you don’t like the specific examples provided for illustrative purposes.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > The point was about the asymmetry of upside and downside risk. Yes, and I am disputing that point, not just with respect to climate change or other "political talking points", but with respect to AI, which is the topic of the article under discussion.
llamaimperative 3y ago
> But no climate change alarmists are proposing that. Why not? There are plenty of "climate change alarmists" proposing that. Historically both "green" activists and the corporate profit motive have prevented nuclear deployment (and killed extant nuclear capacity). > stop thinking that governments can solve problems Idk, it wasn't corporations who voluntarily chose to stop dumping chemicals into rivers or lead into gasoline. Capitalism is probably the most effective tool to solve 99.999% of problems, but it is not a good tool for the remaining 0.001%, many of which happen to be structurally important, and it's not good for managing its own externalities.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > There are plenty of "climate change alarmists" proposing that. References, please? > it wasn't corporations who voluntarily chose to stop dumping chemicals into rivers or lead into gasoline. It was governments who allowed them to do those things in the first place. The fact that governments eventually stepped in to stop them doesn't mean governments solve problems. It means governments create problems--and then sometimes manage to sort of mitigate them.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Sure! https://www.replanet.ngo/post/18-year-old-school-striker-launches-legal-action-to-defend-nuclear-power-s-place-in-eu-taxonomy https://www.replanet.ngo/post/18-year-old-school-striker-lau... there you go, your claim that "no climate alarmists" advocate nuclear is disproven. > It was governments who allowed them to do those things in the first place. The fact that governments eventually stepped in to stop them doesn't mean governments solve problems. It means governments create problems--and then sometimes manage to sort of mitigate them. bro what. That's some incredible gymnastics. "Government regulation doesn't solve problems. Examples of problems that government regulation solved are actually examples of the failure of government's prior regulatory policy of 'no regulation,' another damning indictment of regulatory policy!" Remarkable.
    - pdonis 3y ago
mrob 3y ago
The singularity scenario does not require malice to result in disaster. When your capabilities are superhuman, almost every goal is more easily and reliably accomplished with no living creatures around to complicate things. Unless the goal explicitly preserves them, the logical option is to kill them all. And "accomplish goal", or "accomplish goal with a botched constraint that doesn't actually save anyone" is simpler than "accomplish goal without killing everybody", so it's more likely to be tried first.

by pdonis 3y ago

somewhereoutth 3y ago

> stop thinking that governments can solve problems In a functional democracy, with rule of law and strong civic institutions, governments is exactly how we solve problems. The more effective the government, the less problems. Compare Europe with the US on policing, food, access to justice, tax filing, banking, fraud prevention, environmental protections, life expectancy, obesity, systems of measurement, public transport, democratic accountability, protection of the elderly, feeding children (I could go on). The US still wrestles with problems that Europe (and much of the rest of the world) has forgotten about - and it does that because it confuses 'freedom' with lack of effective central government.

pdonis 3y ago
> In a functional democracy, with rule of law and strong civic institutions, governments is exactly how we solve problems. Some problems, perhaps. But not all problems. In the US, the government is supposed to be restricted to a certain set of functions that are explicitly delegated to it in the Constitution. It is not supposed to solve everything that anyone thinks is a problem. Of course, the actual practice in the US has diverged greatly from this, but that is a bug, not a feature. > Compare Europe with the US I have no problem with Europe having different policies on this from the US. If Europe wants to have government solve many more problems, that's up to Europe. And people who want to live under that model of government should live in Europe. The US was supposed to be built on a different model of government, for people who want to live under a different model of government from Europe. > The US still wrestles with problems that Europe (and much of the rest of the world) has forgotten about - and it does that because it confuses 'freedom' with lack of effective central government. No, the US wrestles with these problems because we prefer to wrestle with them instead of sweeping them under the rug and hoping that "government" will somehow solve them without we the people having to get involved. I don't share your rosy view of how well Europe has actually solved the problems, but I don't live in Europe so I am not personally affected. And conversely, those who don't live in the US should not presume to tell me how well the US is doing. I live here and I can judge that for myself.
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  > No, the US wrestles with these problems because we prefer to wrestle with them instead of sweeping them under the rug and hoping that "government" will somehow solve them without we the people having to get involved. There's this fascinating concept called res publica that means that the public (you, the people) are supposed to do this "government" thing. I've been told you've actually got some of it in the US. Of course, it's entirely possible that what you have is so dysfunctional that the demos have entirely given up their right and responsibility in running the place, but I don't think that's actually true. While you'll always have a special place in my heart for beta testing the modern version, some of you haven't let that develop into a chauvinism that prevents one from seeing good things elsewhere that might be applicable at home (or for that matter, good things at home which might be applicable elsewhere, because home is completely and utterly incomparable in every way, and one needs not ever even bother finding out) and that's certainly better governance than trying the same thing over and over again, and somehow expecting better results.

Xcelerate 3y ago

The point was about the asymmetry of upside and downside risk. Feel free to insert your own political talking points in place of UBI or carbon capture if you don’t like the specific examples provided for illustrative purposes.

pdonis 3y ago
> The point was about the asymmetry of upside and downside risk. Yes, and I am disputing that point, not just with respect to climate change or other "political talking points", but with respect to AI, which is the topic of the article under discussion.

llamaimperative 3y ago

> But no climate change alarmists are proposing that. Why not? There are plenty of "climate change alarmists" proposing that. Historically both "green" activists and the corporate profit motive have prevented nuclear deployment (and killed extant nuclear capacity). > stop thinking that governments can solve problems Idk, it wasn't corporations who voluntarily chose to stop dumping chemicals into rivers or lead into gasoline. Capitalism is probably the most effective tool to solve 99.999% of problems, but it is not a good tool for the remaining 0.001%, many of which happen to be structurally important, and it's not good for managing its own externalities.

pdonis 3y ago
> There are plenty of "climate change alarmists" proposing that. References, please? > it wasn't corporations who voluntarily chose to stop dumping chemicals into rivers or lead into gasoline. It was governments who allowed them to do those things in the first place. The fact that governments eventually stepped in to stop them doesn't mean governments solve problems. It means governments create problems--and then sometimes manage to sort of mitigate them.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Sure! https://www.replanet.ngo/post/18-year-old-school-striker-launches-legal-action-to-defend-nuclear-power-s-place-in-eu-taxonomy https://www.replanet.ngo/post/18-year-old-school-striker-lau... there you go, your claim that "no climate alarmists" advocate nuclear is disproven. > It was governments who allowed them to do those things in the first place. The fact that governments eventually stepped in to stop them doesn't mean governments solve problems. It means governments create problems--and then sometimes manage to sort of mitigate them. bro what. That's some incredible gymnastics. "Government regulation doesn't solve problems. Examples of problems that government regulation solved are actually examples of the failure of government's prior regulatory policy of 'no regulation,' another damning indictment of regulatory policy!" Remarkable.
  - pdonis 3y ago

mrob 3y ago

The singularity scenario does not require malice to result in disaster. When your capabilities are superhuman, almost every goal is more easily and reliably accomplished with no living creatures around to complicate things. Unless the goal explicitly preserves them, the logical option is to kill them all. And "accomplish goal", or "accomplish goal with a botched constraint that doesn't actually save anyone" is simpler than "accomplish goal without killing everybody", so it's more likely to be tried first.