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You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you res

You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?

aspenmartin 5mo ago
My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?
- bluecheese452 5mo ago
  Yes? Life was almost certainly better before the internet.
  - aspenmartin 5mo ago
    Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?
    - bluecheese452 5mo ago
      You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument. That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.
      - aspenmartin 5mo ago
        That’s a fair point to the first part, but if you look at the numbers it’s also just not true. Poverty went from 38% to 10%, scientific progress was enormous (imagine doing a lit review in 1980). Internet destroyed old media yet aggregate employment didn’t collapse. Developing economies got access to global markets. Yea I mean ok I’m glued to my phone now, that’s bad, but to your point and to make a second argument (which I sort of blended into my original comment): this is inevitable. It’s inefficient not to have done the internet. The idea of “if <country> had somehow avoided connecting their society to the internet they would have been just fine” is just not logical: they would be completely disconnected from the entire world economy and their economy would be incredibly inefficient and stagnant. You would have rioting in the streets. Do you think life in Iran without the internet is better? Similarly for AI: yea there will be serious downsides not least of which you doing this will be surveillance and centralized state power and suffering for people ill positioned to navigate the transition. It would be more damaging to not let AI develop fully and to engage in the global competition that the US is strategically winning at this point (though China will probably figure out how to get around their compute starvation in the next ~5 or so years).
  - munksbeer 5mo ago
    For who?

You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?

aspenmartin 5mo ago

My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?

bluecheese452 5mo ago
Yes? Life was almost certainly better before the internet.
- aspenmartin 5mo ago
  Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?
  - bluecheese452 5mo ago
    You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument. That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.
    - aspenmartin 5mo ago
      That’s a fair point to the first part, but if you look at the numbers it’s also just not true. Poverty went from 38% to 10%, scientific progress was enormous (imagine doing a lit review in 1980). Internet destroyed old media yet aggregate employment didn’t collapse. Developing economies got access to global markets. Yea I mean ok I’m glued to my phone now, that’s bad, but to your point and to make a second argument (which I sort of blended into my original comment): this is inevitable. It’s inefficient not to have done the internet. The idea of “if <country> had somehow avoided connecting their society to the internet they would have been just fine” is just not logical: they would be completely disconnected from the entire world economy and their economy would be incredibly inefficient and stagnant. You would have rioting in the streets. Do you think life in Iran without the internet is better? Similarly for AI: yea there will be serious downsides not least of which you doing this will be surveillance and centralized state power and suffering for people ill positioned to navigate the transition. It would be more damaging to not let AI develop fully and to engage in the global competition that the US is strategically winning at this point (though China will probably figure out how to get around their compute starvation in the next ~5 or so years).
- munksbeer 5mo ago
  For who?