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Comment by anthonypasq | Hacker News Reader

are you under the impression life was better before capitalism?

That's a false-dichotomy. Capitalism was good for artisanal workers before the industrial revolution, and then it became pretty goddamn bad for them. We're worried we're staring down the barrel of that right now - just saying 'well it was even worse before capitalism' does nothing for us.

yes it does, it says that trying to prevent technology in order to protect the interests of some special class up people at the expense of everyone else is dumb and shortsighted.

If if people actually listened to the people wailing "but what about the horse carriage business!!!" in the 20th century, it would have been a disaster.

Sure, but AI pessimism is allowed to be personal. Am I supposed to be optimistic that I feel I'm about to get shafted? Should I be less concerned that I need to provide for my family, because in the long term this is going to be a great step forward for humanity?

youre allowed to be personally pessimistic, but if you actually do anything to prevent it from happening i think that is incredibly selfish.

it would be like an oncologist trying to stop an anti-cancer pill because theyd be out of a job.

You are addressing something totally different to the original claim - which tried to say that capitalism is inherently exploitative on labour which is just outdated Marxism

To be frank, I thought trying to twist this into an argument about whether capitalism is inherently exploitative was a complete waste of time and I replied as such. If you'll recall what we were originally talking about here - "AI, should HN users be optimistic?"

That's a good idea and FWIW I agree that as a person who might lose their job to AI, you do deserve to feel apprehensive, even if it might lead to some good later.

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