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Ironically, I think "normal" people are more concerned about P(utopia) OR P(doom) than any folks in the groupthink bubble you are referring to. That is, I hear
by hn_throwaway_99 8d ago
Ironically, I think "normal" people are more concerned about P(utopia) OR P(doom) than any folks in the groupthink bubble you are referring to.
That is, I hear lots of techies talk about us living in an "age of boundless abundance" if we can just manage to not kill ourselves (e.g. Thiel seems to consider anyone worried about the pace of technological process as the antichrist). Normal people are extremely concerned that this abundance will be hoarded and leave most of them without a job (and they generally like having money to eat stuff and live in a house/apartment). And who can blame them, we basically live in an age of abundance now but one that has resulted in extreme wealth inequality where some are living another gilded age and others are watching their towns decay. The techies always seem to handwave that we'll just have UBI or whatever without putting forth a plausible scenario as to how we'll wrest power from our future trillionaire overlords.
When someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's house, I remember seeing a post online that tons of people were cheering on this act of violence, and there was a post by an SF techie saying she was floored people were willing to put their face to comments supporting this vigilantism. The top response to that was "If you don't realize that everyone outside SF hates your fucking guts, you don't get out enough."
I hope it can go without saying that I don't support this violence, but if folks think it's only "SF group thinkers" who are deeply angry about the current and future impacts of AI on society, you're frankly clueless.
- ryandrake 8d agoI don’t even tell people in my (remote work, non tech) neighborhood that I work in tech anymore unless they really probe. I don’t like getting my ass kicked.
- kunai 8d agoCoward.
- lovich 8d agoWell it’s easy for these people. They are smarter than the plebs and so the plebs are barely if even human. That’s like a running theme in these connected groups and even the article calls it out.
- chihuahua 8d ago> They are smarter than the plebs and so the plebs are barely if even human What's hilarious about that is that it's baked into the name of the group: rationalists. "We are rationalists, we think rationally. Anyone who doesn't agree with us is therefore not rational, or irrational. And who do you think is right, the rational thinker or the irrational one? See, we are right because we're rational."
- qlte 8d agoIt appears you're using a motte and bailey to expand P(doom) to include all the non-Skynet reasons regular people hate SV.