The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

> This scenario sounds absurd to most people, yet there are a surprising number of technologists who think it illustrates a real danger. Why? Perhaps it’s because they’re already accustomed to entities that operate this way: Silicon Valley tech companies.

This argument is not from technologists! The major proponents I'm aware of are Nick Bostrom, a philosopher, and Eliezer Yudkowski. Musk is simply repeating their argument, because he found it convincing. It strikes me as extremely dishonest to psychoanalyze an argument based on the celebrity who repeated it.

> Capitalism is danger for civilization? Writes who? A buzzfeed. A very, very leftist media site.

No. Capitalism is good. However, runaway winner-take-all capitalism will destroy our planet and lead us back to feudalism. The great success of the United States has been its' ability to restrain unfettered capitalism with social responsibility, while not hampering the progress of the former. That contract has begun to break down, and it is causing the horrors we now see.

Counterpoint: tribalism is what makes us do great things. The US went to space because we wanted to beat Russia. Spain re-discovered America because they wanted to beat the Portuguese. Rome built an empire because they wanted Romans to be wealthier, stronger, more civilized than everyone else.

I like to think of ancient China as the counter-example. China built a huge, self-sufficient empire. It had almost everything it needed and a stable trade network for the few things it didn't. It was well-protected by natural borders and had a large army for keeping the peace. It developed enough technology to lend it's people a relatively good standard of living. The end result was that China stagnated and lost the ~2,000 year head start they had over Europeans. China's goal was to provide stability, and it did that very well, at the cost of progress.

Please provide proof for or source:

1. Boner pills or hair replacement is worse or better than curing malaria or exploring space.

2. That the end game for every capitalist is leadership that can be paid for and bought.

3. That treating workers as useless and interchangeable cogs provide more profit than treating them fairly (assuming profit is the goal).

4. That abuse of McDonalds and Coca Cola being worse than abuse of literally anything else (Water in big enough quantities will kill you too).

5. That people are 'fucking horrible' and their second-to-second motivation is horrible.

You sound like every extreme socialist I envision. It sounds like you want a totalitarian government (made of humans) that dictate what exactly what people can do, eat and what not. It absolutely frightens me that you can condemm the entirety of the human race and also have the ability to vote.

*> the damage that too much free market causes

This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the term "capitalism". While many people who call themselves capitalists would like everyone else to think it means a free market, the capitalists themselves don't mean that. They mean simply that they acquire control of more capital, by hook or by crook. If they can most easily acquire control of more capital in a free market, they will support a free market. But historically, most capitalists have acquired more capital by buying monopoly privileges from the government, usually because they have failed in the free market and so turn to plan B: outlaw your competition.

What seems to be new about companies like Google and Facebook is that instead of buying monopoly privileges from the government, they are acquiring them, and hence control of more capital, by exploiting bugs in the human cognitive system to get people to take actions that satisfy short term needs but have potentially disastrous long term consequences. In one sense this is still a free market, since people voluntarily choose to use Google and Facebook. But in another sense it erodes a free market, by eroding trust. Unfortunately, I don't see the buzzfeed article engaging with this aspect at all.