We will never agree about AI until we agree on what it means to live a good life

and everyone's trying to fix their lives to remove all the bad parts. But there's a ying/yang thing going on where that's not possible. So a good life isn't even possible by the definition most people give it.

IMO, a good life is one with purpose and meaning. People have had these in the past, and these days, many substitute the means to happiness (money, notoriety, power, libido, etc) with actual happiness itself. [0]

I personally find a good life to be one of gratitude, harmony with nature (I live in the foothills near Yosemite) and of rich human relationships with family and others, where the goal is to create happiness for myself and others equally.

How this is done is different for each person, and mostly irrespective of technology, though I am very grateful for the cell phone, especially since the day my Mom arrived at SFO and I couldn't find her for hours. That was 315 "tech years" ago.

But it gets back to human relationships. I have always viewed technology as liberative and supportive,[1] not manipulative and divisive as it has gone horribly wrong in the hands of power and money-hungry sociopaths.

I hold the Buddhist belief that "It's not the money and influence; it's what you do with them that matters".

[0] David Loy, Money, Sex, War and Karma, free chapter 1 (PDF)

https://www.davidloy.org/downloads/Loy-Money_Sex_War_Karma_C...

[1] Kevin Kelley, What Technology wants

https://kk.org/thetechnium/what-technology/