You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

The article makes it sound like this is inevitable, and the only choice you have is

A: participate and have a chance to not be part of a perpetual underclass

B: for moral reasons, don't participate, be part of the underclass

I kinda would have hoped for

C: to stop this from happening

Otherwise it's the worst sales-pitch ever

This is incredibly naive. Not participating is not the solution, unless everybody stops participating at the same time. If only you stop participating, you will be marginalized now instead of later. It's a prisoner's dilemma, only against billions of people.

There are many things that can happen before we're all enslaved by AGI. It might well not happen. We might enter a war, or a cycle of civil wars that change society in a way we can't predict. Or, most probably, some jobs will disappear, some others will become available and AI will be a commodity. Just as machines did after the Industrial Revolution. It's extremely hard predicting the future. Telling people to "stop participating" (how? By quitting their job? By fighting the class war?) is a bit irresponsible.

I'm pretty sure you're literally just wrong on that one - no special knowledge of the weaving market but it seems people do still make a living from hand-weaving fabric. Eg, I found https://loomandstars.com/collections/handwoven-fabrics - they claim to have a shop in New York. They can probably afford bread - bread is quite cheap.

The issue is if bread becomes insanely cheap and cloth becomes insanely cheap, then a very inefficient weaver can still afford food. It runs in to comparative advantage theory eventually - just because someone else is much more efficient than you at literally everything doesn't mean you can't still do something inefficiently and set up a win-win situation. Although there might still be something better to put your time towards. I recommend managing your own capital - maybe even building it and maintaining it yourself - but people seem dead set against the idea for some reason.

I dunno why geohotz thinks in this article that shares in a granary are a bad idea, someone has to profit from storing food. May as well be me. I'll do it if he won't. I like granaries.

> This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable.

Except that’s already happening. Through social media being engineered to be additive, advertising and user data collection being used to manipulate voters, AI bosses proudly claiming they’re putting people out of work, and games companies paying on the weak with loot boxes and other massively overpriced in game transactions.

And why isn’t there any legislation against these predatory tactics? Because big tech also donate millions to the very people we elect and who are supposed to serve the citizens.

And that’s without discussing the indirect costs of big tech from data centres ruining the lives of local residents, to independent stores getting screwed by knockoffs from Amazon and cheap Chinese stores.

> seems to have no issue with Google hosting their email.

That’s a pretty weak counterpoint. In fact it’s basically what we call an “ad hominem attack”. What you’re doing is arguing about the individual rather than discussing their points directly.

It’s like saying “you can’t be worried about climate change because you own a car.”

> It's hard to take this too seriously (even if there is some legitimate worry here)

If you think there is legitimate worry the you should take their points seriously. It would be contradictory to do otherwise

being snarky about it doesn't change the fact that you, despite having a number of options, opted to give one of the most inhuman corporations in the world a lot of money for a luxury brand device assembled by quasi-slave laborers.

so yes, it is rather absurd to demand radical changes from the society when you are unwilling to endure even minor inconveniences yourself.