Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> How do you feel about antibiotics? How do you feel about medical advances that reduced infant mortality from more than 20% in the 19th century to less than 1%? How about the elimination of smallpox or how fertilizer and other agricultural technologies have eliminated most famines. Now how about possible cures for cancer or alzheimer’s?

Like everything else, it's only good up to a point!

- I believe in basic medical care, but medical technology that permits immortality is bad.

- Likewise, is reducing mortality always good? Now we have extreme overpopulation. In short, reducing OUR mortality has also INCREASED the mortality of non-human animals, which I believe have just as much right to live as us.

- Fertilizer and agriculture? Most industrial fertilizer poisons the land and agriculture has eliminated millions of acres of wild forest and destroyed a lot of ecosystem. Agriculture is also responsible for the huge population growth that is causing global warming.

- Cure for cancer? Maybe good, maybe bad IF that cure results in significantly extended lifetimes due to how it works.

I do have MANY more nuanced answers. That is why I believe in looking at each of your points AND others individually. My answer was specifically directed at AI, which I believe to be universally bad.

Most of the technologies you listed have significant negative consequences, and it's not clear to me that those are outweighed by the positives, especially if our modern society results in the destruction of the phytoplankton of the ocean producing half our oxygen.

I suspect in the long term, it would be better to have more mortality, smaller populations, and less technology than our current world. It's not a popular view because people are emotional about such things, but it's hard to imagine how a world with 8+billion and mass eco-destruction to be better IN THE LONG TERM.

Yes, strangely, people get emotional about being asked to let their kids die of scarlet fever and other bacterial infections. I’m a birder too, but some new luddism isn’t going to save the environment. If we stop where we’re at, we’re stuck burning fossil fuels, stuck with slash-and-burning the Amazon. If you want save to animals, you need better messaging than “maybe cancer isn’t bad.” Look around the world, places with great longevity have lower population growth, not higher. Places with better economies and more technology are also greener. When you say things like “AI is universally bad” you’re making an ethical judgement about a means rather than an end and ruling out many possible good ends. You’ve read Peter Singer, now go read Hans Rosling.

My message isn't that "cancer isn't bad". It's that medical research into cancer may lead to other outcomes which are definitely not good.

Yes, I am making an ethical judgment about the means of AI, because after some analysis I do believe that the negative effects will be far worse than the positive. True, there are good applications of it. I never denied that.

Of course, my line of reasoning is far more vast than what I wrote here. I'm just arguing a specific point here, not presenting a thesis. I do think there is more to saving animals than arguing against human growth. Of course, people need incentives.

I wholeheartedly disagree with your assertions on mortality. Global population growth is slowing and is set to peak in the 2060s and will decline afterwards. We're more at risk of not having enough hands to take care of an aging population. An educated populace has fewer children and many countries are already feeling the strain of being below the replacement rate.

You says you have nuanced view yet you make universal statement don't you see a contradiction?

Take your stand on AI, which is more diverse than the LLMs and diffusion models that are currently making the news. Would it be bad to replace peoples by computer vision and robotics in a waste sorting center, enabling more recycling and less microplastics in the environment due to a better sorting of the waste stream ?

I see that as a good thing enabled by AI.

AI for me is an exception to my nuance, simply because it's too powerful and has too many horrible consequences. Yes, your application could be considered good. But what happens if there are people at the waste recycling plant who can't get other jobs? It's not a nice job but we have to first figure out what those people can do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com