What are we even doing?

submitted by magnora7 from self.CriticalThoughts

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[–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

"There's nothing new under the sun." Except profoundly powerful technology, propaganda, resources, and more power than ever before in the hands of a few who seek to exploit the many and the planet.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

profoundly powerful technology

But we have evidence that this existed 12k years ago. Technology is just tools and efficiencies. These dots on my screen aren't necessarily that much better than dots on parchment or clay. Aside from maybe the singularity, I don't see how technology can greatly alter or affect our humanity. As soon as we live to be 1000, cancer2 will make an appearance and it'll be the same thing as ever.

propaganda

Pretty sure that's the worlds second oldest profession

resources

Not really sure what this means, but sure, we do have some new elements on the periodic table and the know how to get them. We also don't have buffalo or clean water.

more power than ever before in the hands of a few

Yeah maybe it looks that way, but maybe it's just a cycle and we're at peak Pax Americana.

I donno this seems like it's gone over into subjective philosophy, but this is why/how "nothing new under the sun" makes sense to me. I've picked up on this huge "our generation/century is the best" bias when every generation has said that this whole time. Here we are 12k years into this thing, but we still just wanna drink wine with the ladies like the monkeys we are.

[–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's never been easier to control a million people.

It's never been easier to kill a million people.

It's never been easier to do it in record speed.

Same but different. The singularity is a game changer.

"They" control the biggest computers. But we have the numbers. Will the artificial A.I. God be on our side or the ruling class or somehow neutral or wipe us all out?

http://www.espen.com/graphics/kurzweil_six_epochs.jpg

I don't think any generation is better or worse. They just are.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Cool chart. I guess I have very little faith that "vastly expanded human intelligence" will be worth a damn.

The AIs will probably try to kill us all unless we get some strong libertarian philosophy all up in their core programming.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ray Kurzweil is WAAAAY too optimistic about technology and the Singularity, from where that chart is from. It's a terribly dry and long tedious read, but it's also very interesting. I got through 3/4 and lost interest. It's in my big pile of unfinished books.

He ignores all the down sides of tech. Not even talking about the war machines or depopulation agendas, how bad does pollution have to get before "the market" decides to make it profitable to develop technology to clean up the environment? And science that is proprietary is scientism. Only open science can be debunked or proven true. He ignores all the down sides of tech.

IMHO the only chance life on earth has is to become valuable to A.I.s. Just as we learn from nature, A.I. can learn from us. We have to prove how valuable we are to become symbiotic. We also have to prove how valuable our ethics are or else many of us will become lab rats, zoo specimens, or deleted useless eaters.