Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

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Actually, I believe it was my education in pure mathematics (PhD), computer programming, and technology, as well as living in three countries and seeing the word that allowed me to truly realize how damaging AI can really be. Believe it or not, I was heavily into technology when I was in my 20s.

But after seeing environmental damage, reading widely in philosophy and sociology, writing about it to clarify it, I came to a different conclusion: that technology is not all it's cracked up to be, especially when it is plugged into a system of global capitalism whose ultimate aim is consumerism.

Just think: one of the biggest companies in the world (Google/Alphabet) has as its primary goal to promote unsustainability. If that doesn't make you think, what will.

And let me ask you this: are you so sure about technology, given that you were raised in a world that praises it like a religion? I think the fanatical religious witch hunters also thought they were right, simply because they were raised in such an environment.

Loving technology is the default position of the rich. Is that just a coincidence?

I'm 30, you sound older. I did my education in philosophy and physics and I'm a data engineer at a F200. I think you couldn't be more wrong, and out of touch. You sound like Kaczynsky.

I love technology because it's interesting, who cares what rich people think. I can't understand this oldhead defeatist mentality a lot of people here seem to have similar to yours.

"who cares what rich people think" is an astoundingly politically naive statement.

You sound incredibly naive. Good luck enjoying technology when all you get to do is manual labor to feed the machine. Everything else will be done "for us", with the rich people in charge of it all.

I sound naive? Have you even read any Marx?

Are you going to reply to the comment, or just keep slinging vague personal attacks?

I did reply to the comment, you didn't even ask a question. What is your point? Also, I will vaguely attack people. I don't care. Stupid people and things annoy me and I don't have a filter for it. Sue me.

I love wildlife and the natural world, and technology is utterly dependent on destroying it via mining. The directions we go in shouldn't be determined based on just whether they are interesting. They also need to be constrained based on whether they are sustainable. You obviously don't care much about the negative environmental effects of technological development.

By the way, I am not defeatist because:

1. I think we can make great progress, only progress towards rewilding nature

2. I only consider technology a dead-end, not humanity! I believe we can move past arbitrary technological development and discard our consumerist ways.

A mine is just as natural as an antill. It's your perspective that is the unnatural one.

Humans are not separate from the nature we exist in.

In that case, we should just eradicate all life on this planet because any action we do is natural....

...or, we could actually evaluate the transition of life from natural to technological. Yes, in a philosophical sense, you are right, what we do is "natural". But then if we just say everything we do is natural, then we might as well just do nothing. But there are still meaningful distinctions between the technological human organization (even if natural) and the rest of the world, and we would do well to examine if what we are doing is really harmonious with everything-but-us -- because if not, then I reject it outright even if it is natural in the sense that you describe.

Your wordplay is really not very impressive.

Indeed, we aren't separate; that does not mean that swimming in an acid mine lake is equivalent to swimming in a clear glacial lake... one is more likely to kill you than the other.

You mentioned studying philosophy, you're confusing your ontological and epistemological positions.

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