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Comment by gmerc | Hacker News Reader

We created an autonomous system of entities running on meat CPUs with a singular non human aligned goal of profit maximization at all costs and the system has exceeded the capability of human governance which is stalled at a country / block level.

It by now controls almost every single human’s everyday schedule - the entire race has been put in service of it and it extracts all resources and externalizes all the costs and by now benefits a tiny fraction of the planet primarily - but even that fraction appears to be powerless to stop it (Lol Big tech billionaires tearingly having to take responsibility and make hard cuts at times of record profits. It’s the system, even the majority Shareholder Zuck cannot escape it. )

Despite clear evidence that its continued trajectory amounts to suicide for the human race, we appear unable to stop it.

And we have illusions about aligned AI. Lol.

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Everyone always wonders when the Ultron scenario will come to pass but I maintain that _the AI has already taken over_. This AI doesn't run on a computer- it runs on a machine made of laws, business interactions and human brains. This AI does not have personality, and it isn't that smart, but this algorithm is very much in charge over every human being on earth, every minute of our lives from birth to death. It seems to have no higher aspirations than grinding the bounty of our Planet into bitcoin. We made this machine that turns everything into capital and it won't stop until... what exactly? When some captain of industry has _finally_ achieved their goal of _owning it all_? Because if you follow the trend, that is where the line is headed- A ever-shrinking class of Skeksis ruling over a ruined planet, with just as many slaves, or as few, as they want.

I've thought the same thing. Our society is a superorganism with growth and consumption as its only goal.

"No raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood."

It's time we all had discussions about evolving past this phase. I think it can be done.

I don't love everything Noval Harrari has to say, but I love his idea that money is a story we believe in, if we didn't, it would have no value, and it's a story we need rewrite if we want to survive.

Greed is not good, being a billionaire is unwise. Money is the root of much evil..or something like this.

i prefer whuffie

I too think it can be done, but good luck finding a platform that allows uncensored discussion of the full spectrum of the situation and countermeasures.

Surely, with decentralization and the dark web, such a platform can be created. But would there be enough people who join?

First question that comes to my mind: how many (exceptional) people are needed to accomplish the goal?

This is it. If we just all gather around some pet HN public intellectual, chant something about a real thing in fact just being a narrative, then that real thing will disperse as the mind-goblins that were giving it life let go.

Wasn’t what I had in mind. What do you have in mind ?

What is amusing and sad to me is that we have now created so many insanely big problems through greed, and unbridled technological progress in the name of profits that we actually now need AI (which will for sure have introduce it's own problems) to get us out of the shit situation we've created.

I hear this parroted all the time, "AI will save the world", well maybe, but what about thinking about what has fucked this world and tackling that instead?

I know AI progress is being made but I really think it's also a fantasy to think a talking computer is going to come to our rescue.

I 100% agree with you and have recently come to the conclusion that we already are the paperclip maximizers. We have turned the entire fucking ecosystem into money.

If "AI saves the world", we should consider handing over the keys. We've been weighed, measured, and found wanting. Let someone competent drive for a bit.

Nothing built primarily from human-generated internet content is going to be competent in the way you mean.

It's fair to, in some combination, underestimate the learning curve of AI and overestimate the competency of humans. Lots of systems in place today that behaviorally nudge humans through economic and other signal, for example. And they are just dumb lines of code. How smart is a traffic light? Exciting times ahead to understand what the concept of reasoning is.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...

https://149909199.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Don't fully disagree, but feel a counterpoint needs to be said.

> created so many insanely big problems through greed, and unbridled technological progress in the name of profits

Capitalism is an allocation algorithm that scales.

We haven't just created insanely big problems, we've delivered insane boosts to productivity.

Capitalism's outputs in that name of progress (the things that greed and unbridled technological progress have enabled) are now necessary to deliver the current living standard we have for the number of people we're supporting on this planet.

- Fertilizer-boosted and genetically-modified factory agriculture

- Mass manufacturing with global supply chains

- Global energy markets with worldwide distribution

- International capital flows

If we're talking about toppling the current system, then we have to admit that means losing its positives as well as its negatives.

Reengineering isn't complete when only looking at the negatives we'd avoid and the positives we'd gain.

It needs to also include the positives we'd lose and the negatives we'd incur by shifting to an alternate system.

The alternatives to capitalism aren't just 'avoiding capitalism's problems' -- they've historically also been 'rampant inefficiency to the extent that it decreases standard of living.'

One reason I'm bullish on carbon taxes et. al. Adjust the incentives, and then let the best allocation model we've found run to optimization under the altered constraints.

"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

I under most of what you’re saying there but if capitalism can’t provide the solution for the climate crisis it needs to go as it’s reached it’s usefulness. There is no point in maintaining a system which will destroy itself like cancer.

In my opinion, it’s had its chance but it’s too slow to deal with this. This is urgent.

I’d say this much. It got us to a decent place, now maybe we need to have something else replace it. Personally I think it actually is time to move into a post scarcity type world, eliminate poverty and favour open source style collaboration, sharing and communication in every possible. At least until we get the climate under control.

This is giving Africa and India the renewables they need, for example.

I agree with much of what you say. But how are we supposed to get there from here? It seems hard, if not impossible, to convince entrenched interests to give up the game. It seems even harder to get “the people” united enough to overthrow entrenched interests, given what we’ve seen of the increasing dysfunctionality of public political discourse.

>If we're talking about toppling the current system, then we have to admit that means losing its positives as well as its negatives.

Except you could have a free (as in freedom) market instead of a free (as in free of costs) market. The former doesn't even look that different to "capitalism" except die hard capitalists would accuse you of artificial redistribution or some other nonsense.

>The alternatives to capitalism aren't just 'avoiding capitalism's problems' -- they've historically also been 'rampant inefficiency to the extent that it decreases standard of living.'

Historically, the best alternative to capitalism has worked pretty well. In fact it worked so well, the capitalists shut it down because they were concerned that unlike the communists, someone actually came up with a competitive and superior system. In fact, the capitalist system at the time generated such a rampant inefficiency and unemployment that a man named Adolf Hitler has risen to power who had to channel that unused output in a war to maintain full employment, because capitalism is a demand starved system and therefore warmongering is a popular remedy.

Meanwhile some dinky little town in Austria "printed" 10000 shilling (about 3 shilling per resident) worth of "labor confirmation vouchers" and solved their problems without war.

The trick? The money forces participants to maintain an equilibrium economy that follows Says Law. Suddenly all the research neoclassical economists made about equilibrium economies becomes applicable. Meanwhile in Capitalism? Capitalism is a disequilibrium economy so why would you expect any of the outcomes that neoclassical economists predict? It's like expecting a car to fly.

We do love inventing gods to escape our responsibility

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