Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we all be worried?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Their success lies in avoiding anything unpredictable, and all the systems and processes they build leverage that kind of thinking. They call it Efficiency and Optimization. So its very narrow success.
If you have met people who have had to deal with unpredictability like financial crisis, epidemics, riots, war etc where problems just can't be handed of to Lawyers, PR and HR you see a very different breed from your avg tech leader.
So focusing on them is like focusing on sheltered circus animals sitting inside a disconnected popular circus tent, and what they think about what's happening outside the tent in the jungle.
Way before tech billionaires parts of the American evangelical Christian community routinely asserted the final judgement and second coming is days/weeks away ... and it's all BS - obviously. But if you're caught in the middle of in within your family especially if you're a minor ... it's a linear combo of surreal and emotionally manipulating.
Periodically we get a humerous stories out of it ex. Parents who doom prepped a bunker only for kids to find it, party over the weekend, and eat up all the food leaving a complete boozy mess.
Things to worry about: power corrupts absolutely and the other usual suspects.
Not true in the world of modern technology, both as replacement and control tools for human labor.
> working with metal and all other media, living off grid, and messing with the systems involved
The dream of individual survival is entrenched among the not-so-rich but it's a lot more illusionary than that of the rich.
Only organized survival, aka politics, has any chance of success, the rest is daydreaming.
>"The notion of Artificial General Intelligence is as absurd as the notion of an 'Artificial General Vehicle'"
I find very appealing, while this line
> I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own "bunker", who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking.
I found hilarious.
I don't hold homesteading for all that sensible, as a hedge again apocalypse. Our world is so connected, I think the idea of having a self-sustaining farm at the end of the world is just fantasy. Particularly for folks who have never spent a summer working a field.
"every plan lasts as long until the first enemey contact"
Good luck to those tech bros when everything is collapsing and the people protecting them will be paid in then-probably-useless dollars - will they still protect you? :-)
Here is an article of someone describing collapse during Bosnian war: https://de.scribd.com/document/458754826/One-Year-in-Hell
On the other hand, normal housing where potable water is used to flush toilets etc uses a large amount of precious water!