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You might notice that Microsoft shareholders are also part of humanity and destroying humanity would be highly detrimental to Microsoft's profits, so maybe thei

• 9dev 3y ago
  Ha! Tell that to the species of primates that will happily squeeze even the last ounce of resources from the only habitable planet they have, to enrich said shareholders. Humans are really bad in assessing situations larger than their immediate family, and this is no exception.
  • imgabe 3y ago
    > Humans are really bad in assessing situations larger than their immediate family, and this is no exception. As far as we can tell humans are the only species that even has the capacity to recognize such things as “resources” and produce forecasts of their limits. Literally every other species is kept in check by either consuming resources until they run out or predation. We are not unique in this regard.
    • 9dev 3y ago
      And I never claimed otherwise. We might be aware of the problems we cause, but that doesn't seem to imply we're able to fix them -- we're still primates after all.
  • Applejinx 3y ago
    The really interesting question is whether AI, provided with superhuman inference, is better at this than humans. All the most powerful humans remain relentlessly human, and sometimes show it to tragic and/or laughable effect. To some extent human societies viewed as eusocial organisms are better at this than individual humans. And rightly so, because human follies can have catastrophic effects on the society/organism.
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    >Humans are really bad in assessing situations larger than their immediate family Agreed, and we're also bad at being told what to do. Especially when someone says they know better than us. What we are extremely good at is adaptation and technological advancement. Since we know this already , why do we try to stop or slow progress.
    • 9dev 3y ago
      That is no reason to throw all ethic considerations over board. We have ethics panels on scientific studies for a very good reason, unless you want to let Dr. Mengele and his friends decide on progress. It is a good thing that society has mechanisms to at least try and control the rate of progress.
      • mlrtime 3y ago
        There is no objective ethic considerations, furthermore the events unfolding now have absolutely 0 evidence that "ALL" ethic considerations are being thrown overboard. Godwin's Law.
• bspammer 3y ago
  The climate crisis has proven pretty thoroughly that companies will choose short term profit over humanity’s long term success every time. Public companies are literally forced to do so.
  • imgabe 3y ago
    Nobody knows “humanity’s long term interest” with any certainty. Consider that fossil fuels allowed humanity to make massive technological advancements in a relatively short time. Yes, it caused climate change, but perhaps those same technological advancements allow us to fix or adapt to that. Then, in 500 years, another disaster like an asteroid or a solar flare or the Earth’s magnetic poles reversing or whatever happens, and without the boost from fossil fuels we would have been too technologically behind to be able to survive it. What was in humanity’s long term interest then? I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, but moving slowly when you live in a universe that might hurl a giant rock at you any minute doesn’t seem like a great idea.
• dtech 3y ago
  Cmon, there's a myriad of examples where corporate/shareholder interest goes against humanities interest as a whole, see fossil fuels and PFAS for ones in the current zeitgeist.
• pavlov 3y ago
  Exxon shareholders are also part of humanity. The company has known about the dangers of climate change for 50 years and did nothing because it could have impacted short/medium-term profits. In reality ownership is so dispersed that the shareholders in companies like Microsoft or Exxon have no say in long-term issues like this.
  • nxm 3y ago
    There was incredible global economic growth the last 50 years which had to fueled somehow. If Exxon didn’t provide the energy, other oil and gas companies wound have
    • Fossil8131 3y ago
      Incredible global economic growth by what measurement, and how does that measurement translate to something beneficial to society at large? Also, I mean, you're kinda assuming that there weren't any stifled innovations (there were) or misleading PR to keep people from looking for alternatives (there were) or ... Interestingly, we've continued with incredible global economic growth by most measures, despite the increasing use of newer alternatives to fossil fuels...
    • _heimdall 3y ago
      That economic growth wasn't an absolute necessity that had to be powered, it was a choice based on the assumption that creating new stuff is always a positive and that we have functionally limitless natural resources that we should use before someone else does.
  • nobodywillobsrv 3y ago
    Did nothing?
  • nobodywillobsrv 3y ago
    Did nothing? What do you mean?
    • 3y ago
• altacc 3y ago
  The mega rich have been building bunkers and preparing for the downfall of humanity for a long time now. Look around and you'll notice that greed wins out over everything else. We're surrounded by companies doing nothing or only small token gestures to protect humanity or the world we live in and instead focusing on getting rich, because getting rich is exactly why people become shareholders. Don't rely on those guys to save the world, it'll be the boring committees that are more likely to do that.
  • imgabe 3y ago
    Yeah that makes sense. Work your whole life building a company worth billions of dollars so that you can burn down the world and live in a bunker eating canned beans until the roving bands of marauders flush you out and burn you alive. I'm sure that was their greedy plan to enjoy eating canned beans in peace!
    • FrozenSynapse 3y ago
      you will be eating canned beans, they will ride high as they do now
      • imgabe 3y ago
        You realize money isn’t magic, right? If the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland billions of dollars doesn’t mean anything. You aren’t getting any wagyu beef down in your bunker.
        • phatfish 3y ago
          You think they wouldn't give up wagyu beef and the idea of the US dollar for a shot at rebuilding society with a massive head start over the 99.9% percent of the population that don't have a bolt hole?
          • imgabe 3y ago
            They already have massive influence over society with the added benefit of not having to rebuild 10,000 years of human progress so no I don’t think that makes any sense at all. That is cartoon supervillain nonsense. No real person thinks that way.
• sundalia 3y ago
  [dead]
• jampekka 3y ago
  Shareholders tend to be institutions whose charter is to maximize profit from the shares. An economic system that doesn't factor in human welfare is worth a thousand villains.
  • thworp 3y ago
    As opposed to what? (National) Socialism was for the benefit of the working people on paper, but in practice that meant imprisoning, murdering and impoverishing anybody thought to be working against the people's welfare. Since this included most productive members of society it made everyone poorer anyway. Human welfare is the domain of politics, not the economic system. The forces that are supposed to inject human welfare into economic decisions are the state through regulation, employees through negotiation and unions and civil society through the press.
    • jampekka 3y ago
      In this case as opposed to e.g. a non-profit? What you describe is indeed the liberal (as in liberalism) ideal of how societies should be structured. But what is supposed to happen is necessarily not what actually happens. The state should be controlled by the population through democracy, but few would claim with a straight face that the economic power doesn't influence the state.
• rdtsc 3y ago
  > You might notice that Microsoft shareholders are also part of humanity and destroying humanity would be highly detrimental to Microsoft's profits Will nobody think of the poor shareholders? > I am always bemused by how people assume any corporate interest is automatically a cartoon supervillain. It’s not any more silly than assuming corporate entities with shareholders will somehow necessarily work for the betterment of humanity.
  • imgabe 3y ago
    > Will nobody think of the poor shareholders? Do you have a 401k? Index funds? A pension? You’re probably a Microsoft shareholder too.
• taway1237 3y ago
  >corporate interest is automatically a cartoon supervillain Not a cartoon villain. A paperclip maximizer.
• Fossil8131 3y ago
  You might notice that history has shown that businesses - especially large ones - and their leadership are very bad at considering the impacts to anyone but themselves. Almost like their entire purpose is to make money for themselves at the expense of literally anyone (or ideally everyone) else on the planet. Worse yet, the businesses they're competing against will include people willing to do whatever it takes, even if that means sacrificing long-term goals. Almost like it's a race to the bottom that you can see in action every day.
• agsnu 3y ago
  I'm sure Exxon's shareholders and leadership were also part of humanity in the 70s & 80s, and presumably by your logic this means they wouldn't have put their corporate profits ahead of suppressing climate research that perhaps indicated that their greed would contribute to an existential threat to civilisation and the quality of life of their children & grandchildren?
• ssnistfajen 3y ago
  Corporate shareholder interest has been proven to be short sighted again and again throughout history. Believing such entities can properly prepare for a singularity event is more delusional than asking a fruit fly to fly an aircraft.
  • cyanydeez 3y ago
    especially when corporate governance is basically just a stripped down social government. almost all dystopian fiction shows that they're nothing more that authority without representation to the greater good. sure, we should have competitive bodies seeking better means to ends but ultimately there's always going to be a structure to hold them accountable. people have a lot of faith that money is the best fitness function for humanity.
• dimask 3y ago
  They do not want to exterminate humanity or the ecosystem, but rather profit from the controlled destruction of life, as they try to do out of everything.
• _heimdall 3y ago
  That assumption hasn't worked with the cigarette, oil, or pharmaceutical industries. Why would it work here? It doesn't take a cartoon supervillain to keep selling cigarettes like candy even though you know they increase cancer risks. Or for oil companies to keep producing oil and burying alternative energy sources. Or for the Sacklers to give us Oxy.
• meigwilym 3y ago
  Capital punishment exists in many countries, but still fails to dissuade many people of murder. It's not about wanting to destroy the world, but short term greed whose consequences destroy the world.