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Fascinating. How will we live ok back in, say five years, at this very funny period from, 2018ish to 2022ish when our echo chamber made us believe ESG was going

Fascinating. How will we live ok back in, say five years, at this very funny period from, 2018ish to 2022ish when our echo chamber made us believe ESG was going to save the world. How far we’ve come. Is it all due to the prospect of finally seeing a feasible road to AGI?!

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mc32 2y ago
ESG ended up being a scam. Lots of these things are nothing but cover to make money off of people’s concern for the enviro. All you need to look at is the carbon footprint of people who clamor and demonstrate for green policies. Including idiots gluing themselves to roadways —all the idle traffic they create and the manpower necessary to remove them and repair the damage. It’s a sucker’s game.
- brookst 2y ago
  Saying ESG is entirely a scam because some ESG backers travel in airplanes is like saying climate change is a hoax because it was colder than usual in Peoria today. ESG is a huge thing. Some of it is greenwashing, some is outright scam, some is legitimate pressure to make better environmental decisions. But insisting that ESG proponents can’t make suboptimal individual choices is silly.
- 4fterd4rk 2y ago
  Ah yes. Some people use airplanes so we need to keep burning coal, who cares when the sea levels rise and the water wars begin! The important thing is that some people acted silly by gluing themselves to the road! Can't give in to them, even if it would save the world for our children.
  - mc32 2y ago
    You're not trying to convince the choir, you're trying to convince the masses. Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Albert Gore, Barrack Obama and high schoolers are impressed, but not the mom and dad working jobs that are teetering, driving beaters and facing pressure from cheap labor. They see these people jet-setting being hyper-overconsumers and think, what the hell? They see these people increasing their wealth promoting change, but they don't change. Why should I change, they're not changing, they're adding more!
tivert 2y ago
> Is it all due to the prospect of finally seeing a feasible road to AGI?! Or just hope. AGI is a capitalist's wet dream: it would completely undercut labor's power or allow it to be replaced completely, and it could also allow the developer to muscle out a large fraction of other capitalists from the economy. Even though AGI would be terrible for the rest of us, it's got so much upside for VC types they can't help themselves.
- baq 2y ago
  It’s even worse. If you have money and are against deploying AGI once we get there you still want to be the first to achieve it, because it’s the only reasonable chance of stopping others… assuming you can even align it.
- throwaway48540 2y ago
  You're claiming it would be terrible for the rest of us, without supporting that assumption in any way. It's not a fact, pseudo scifi action movies don't count as facts.
  - llamaLord 2y ago
    He's talking about the economic consequences. AGI in an internet connected world is capitalism end-game. Once you have AGI, labour (both physical and intellectual) becomes redundant, humans have a "value to the system" approaching zero. Our economic system is built on a series of assumptions that fundamentally cannot survive AGI, and nobody is really even trying to grapple with that fact.
    - throwaway48540 2y ago
      The economic system is not set in stone. If everyone is irrelevant to it, the economic system becomes irrelevant to everyone, and a parallel system gradually replaces it.
      - llamaLord 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mc32 2y ago

ESG ended up being a scam. Lots of these things are nothing but cover to make money off of people’s concern for the enviro. All you need to look at is the carbon footprint of people who clamor and demonstrate for green policies. Including idiots gluing themselves to roadways —all the idle traffic they create and the manpower necessary to remove them and repair the damage. It’s a sucker’s game.

brookst 2y ago
Saying ESG is entirely a scam because some ESG backers travel in airplanes is like saying climate change is a hoax because it was colder than usual in Peoria today. ESG is a huge thing. Some of it is greenwashing, some is outright scam, some is legitimate pressure to make better environmental decisions. But insisting that ESG proponents can’t make suboptimal individual choices is silly.
4fterd4rk 2y ago
Ah yes. Some people use airplanes so we need to keep burning coal, who cares when the sea levels rise and the water wars begin! The important thing is that some people acted silly by gluing themselves to the road! Can't give in to them, even if it would save the world for our children.
- mc32 2y ago
  You're not trying to convince the choir, you're trying to convince the masses. Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Albert Gore, Barrack Obama and high schoolers are impressed, but not the mom and dad working jobs that are teetering, driving beaters and facing pressure from cheap labor. They see these people jet-setting being hyper-overconsumers and think, what the hell? They see these people increasing their wealth promoting change, but they don't change. Why should I change, they're not changing, they're adding more!

tivert 2y ago

> Is it all due to the prospect of finally seeing a feasible road to AGI?! Or just hope. AGI is a capitalist's wet dream: it would completely undercut labor's power or allow it to be replaced completely, and it could also allow the developer to muscle out a large fraction of other capitalists from the economy. Even though AGI would be terrible for the rest of us, it's got so much upside for VC types they can't help themselves.

baq 2y ago
It’s even worse. If you have money and are against deploying AGI once we get there you still want to be the first to achieve it, because it’s the only reasonable chance of stopping others… assuming you can even align it.
throwaway48540 2y ago
You're claiming it would be terrible for the rest of us, without supporting that assumption in any way. It's not a fact, pseudo scifi action movies don't count as facts.
- llamaLord 2y ago
  He's talking about the economic consequences. AGI in an internet connected world is capitalism end-game. Once you have AGI, labour (both physical and intellectual) becomes redundant, humans have a "value to the system" approaching zero. Our economic system is built on a series of assumptions that fundamentally cannot survive AGI, and nobody is really even trying to grapple with that fact.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    The economic system is not set in stone. If everyone is irrelevant to it, the economic system becomes irrelevant to everyone, and a parallel system gradually replaces it.
    - llamaLord 2y ago