31–40 of 114 posts
Runaway capitalism, oh shit. So that does that mean: - Global poverty will continue to decrease - We'll get a variety of options to choose from whenever we want to buy something - We'll get to choose how to spend our own money - We'll get quick and diligent service - If we don't like something, we can choose to stop buying it or working for them? The horror!!!!!
Nicely done Buzzfeed. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieves its goals because that’s the attitude they adopted. Kind of reminds one of Ex Machina . If amoral profit maximizers design AI, it's very possibly gonna be an amoral profit maximizer. It still irrationally bothers me after 30 years of shitty MS products and Gates literally preventing tech…
Such as websites run on ad clicks? Buzzfeed itself is the problem, and things like it. Not tech, not capitalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course and you can't knock him for doing that. It's good, good for him. We could at least acknowledge that others didn't accumulate that wealth because their standards for business were higher than his.
Gates is doing this because in a few short years he went from America's darling super rich success story, to the monopolistic Satan most of us tech people remember. He was not prepared for being vilified so quickly and completely during the anti-trust years. Same thing as Andrew Carnegie: After the violent putting down of steel worker strikes, Carnegie was seen as the devil himself. He was so upset that this would be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an interesting point: if I had to guess at an explanation, I'd say that "runaway capitalism" makes people miserable and in well-franchised societies the people will always demand that the government step in (see: so much of US history, the fact that this article was written). However, if the people of a country are asking that too much be "given" to them (I.E. more than the country actually has), who's going t…
> However, if the people of a country are asking that too much be "given" to them (I.E. more than the country actually has), who's going to stop that? The external actors from whom such goods must come will, as historically they always eventually have.
Just thought I'd drop by with this helpful link about Venezuela: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america... There's a first time for everything. New kinds of disasters happen. However, we can identify a number of past and present civilizational collapses, going back to the 18th century, that appear to correlate strongly with what we might call "runaway socialism." It seems difficult to identify a…
However I think the true problem is runaway sociopathy. For sociopaths and psychopaths, the promises of socialism and capitalism are just a nice story to get what they want. You can't look at Venezuela, Soviet Russia, Modern Russia, and the Military Industrial complex in the USA without seeing sociopaths. There's millions dead in the middle east and you're pointing at socialism in Venezuela.
I've seen several TV crime shows on psychopaths and sociopaths where they'll remark, in passing, that sociopaths are often CEOs or surgeons, not just murderers. I offer this, not as evidence that its true, but as evidence that we've just absorbed that information as "just how it is". The #MeToo movement is taking a stand against such sociopaths and I hope it succeeds. I'd like to see what society could look like if we didn't tolerate sociopaths. If we simply managed to educate people that sociopaths exist, and that if someone can smile at you, and tell you everything you want to hear, then they might be a nice person, but they might also be a sociopath. And if 4% of the population are sociopaths and psychopaths, is that 4% spread evenly? Or would it congregate in places of power?
Not surprising from a publication who has editors that openly support "full communism"[0]. Buzzfeed "news" is the last place I look for an objective article. [0] - http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/BuzzFee...
It's not an article. It's an essay by a science fiction writer.
Runaway capitalism, oh shit. So that does that mean: - Global poverty will continue to decrease - We'll get a variety of options to choose from whenever we want to buy something - We'll get to choose how to spend our own money - We'll get quick and diligent service - If we don't like something, we can choose to stop buying it or working for them? The horror!!!!!
We'll also get rampant misspending of scientific research funds, which will go to boner pills and hair replacement techniques, rather than curing malaria or exploring space.
We'll also have the end-game for all capitalist nations be leadership that is completely bought and paid for.
We'll also have workers treated as useless and interchangeable cogs, while public markets sway back and forth, removing jobs, pushing mergers, cutting pay.
We'll also get things like McDonald's and Coca-Cola, two of the largest companies in the world, both of which are literally, 100% dedicated to selling addictive foods that are diabolically unhealthy.
Capitalism ensures people get what they want most. The problem is, people are fucking horrible, and what they all want most is cheeseburgers, soda, angry Facebook rants, fake news, and bigger dicks.
Sure, society wants much more than this, but at the individual level, these are the second-to-second motivations, and capitalism's atavistic psychic mining project always ends up down on this dopamine level of reaction in all things.
Humans can be wonderful and do good things. The problem is capitalism is a race to exploit the worst in human nature, effectively heading off those better instincts with porn, fast cars, and lap band surgery.
Nicely done Buzzfeed. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieves its goals because that’s the attitude they adopted. Kind of reminds one of Ex Machina . If amoral profit maximizers design AI, it's very possibly gonna be an amoral profit maximizer. It still irrationally bothers me after 30 years of shitty MS products and Gates literally preventing tech…
But he's not donating to the church for "penance". He's helping save lives from malaria, and working on other projects to help the developing world! You can't dismiss that, and he's giving away so much of his money that it can't be considered a "fee". He's gonna 90% of it away by the time he's done.
Gates was born too early for immortality to be achievable. Could it be that he has come face to face with his mortality, and having enough money to get anything he wants in the word that is for sale, he is effectively buying a positive legacy to be remembered by, as that is the closest thing to immortality that is currently on the market?
I've seen similar arguments before (for example here -> https://thoughtinfection.com/2014/04/19/capitalism-is-a-pape... ) and I think it's a good analogy. What I don't understand is how this gets presented as an argument against AI risk. If the "paperclip maximizers" we construct now out of humans, machines, institutional processes and legal codes already exist, are successful, exhibit runaway growth, are a danger an…
I took it that the author wasn't doing that. He was using the "AI Threat" argument and pointing it back at the tech entrepreneur's current creations: their companies.