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> seems to be working fine, people seem to care what Sam Altman says and Elon Musk is making himself deputy emperor of a nuclear weapons state. For the billion

by tivert 2y ago

> seems to be working fine, people seem to care what Sam Altman says and Elon Musk is making himself deputy emperor of a nuclear weapons state. For the billionaires and chatterers. But even for non-chatterers, you probably should pay attention to what Altman says, not so much in a gullible take-it-at-face-value sense, but in a kremlinologist look-carefully-for-hints-about-what's-really-going-on sense. > pretty fucking dire indictment of the rest of us and what we let the world come to. What are the rest of us to do? Pretty much everyone has been trained by society to follow the rules above all else as a strong moral imperative, no matter how stupid or how bad the collective outcome may be. If you do otherwise, you will get smacked hard; and if you try to organize, you will all get smacked harder.

martin-t 2y ago
> Pretty much everyone has been trained by society to follow the rules above all else as a strong moral imperative, no matter how stupid Oh, you are "aware", for lack of a better word. It's so depressingly rare to even see anybody display understanding of this issue. I don't know what to tell you, I am just genuinely happy to see somebody else who is able to describe this. The last few years, I've increasingly felt that people are divided into a few percent of actually good people (i.e. willing to act morally, sometimes even at their own expense, regardless of the rules), about 20% bad people (those with various anti-social adaptations, mostly, it adds up to this number) and the rest which I call neutral, who are not really aware of this distinction. The neutrals have some inclination towards good (because evolutionarily it was somewhat beneficial) but it's at a subconscious level perhaps and society overrides it by indoctrination. They will act on behalf of either side given the proper "inputs". They are not fully self-aware. And from what I see around me, the neutrals are mostly playtoys for the self-aware bad people. Is that your outlook too? As for what to do, I don't know. I've been trying to talk to people about the difference between legality and morality but most people don't see why they should care. If I try to talk about what a legal system based on maximizing morality (tl;dr everything would be reciprocal, the way you treat me gives me the right to treat you similarly - intentionally causing suffering can be punished by a proportional amount of suffering by anyone, not just an "authority") as opposed to minimizing visible conflict would look like, people get really upset and attack me or mock me. Some of those attacking me seem to be bad people who are not self-aware but have a strong negative reaction to the idea, some who self-aware are and know it's beneficial to them to turn neutrals against the idea. But there are still beacons of hope, a serial-killer was punished reciprocally recently and many neutrals agreed with the punishment...

by tivert 2y ago

martin-t 2y ago

> Pretty much everyone has been trained by society to follow the rules above all else as a strong moral imperative, no matter how stupid Oh, you are "aware", for lack of a better word. It's so depressingly rare to even see anybody display understanding of this issue. I don't know what to tell you, I am just genuinely happy to see somebody else who is able to describe this. The last few years, I've increasingly felt that people are divided into a few percent of actually good people (i.e. willing to act morally, sometimes even at their own expense, regardless of the rules), about 20% bad people (those with various anti-social adaptations, mostly, it adds up to this number) and the rest which I call neutral, who are not really aware of this distinction. The neutrals have some inclination towards good (because evolutionarily it was somewhat beneficial) but it's at a subconscious level perhaps and society overrides it by indoctrination. They will act on behalf of either side given the proper "inputs". They are not fully self-aware. And from what I see around me, the neutrals are mostly playtoys for the self-aware bad people. Is that your outlook too? As for what to do, I don't know. I've been trying to talk to people about the difference between legality and morality but most people don't see why they should care. If I try to talk about what a legal system based on maximizing morality (tl;dr everything would be reciprocal, the way you treat me gives me the right to treat you similarly - intentionally causing suffering can be punished by a proportional amount of suffering by anyone, not just an "authority") as opposed to minimizing visible conflict would look like, people get really upset and attack me or mock me. Some of those attacking me seem to be bad people who are not self-aware but have a strong negative reaction to the idea, some who self-aware are and know it's beneficial to them to turn neutrals against the idea. But there are still beacons of hope, a serial-killer was punished reciprocally recently and many neutrals agreed with the punishment...