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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

When next government become worse than the previous one, such technologies become handy for new emperor to keep power and crush dissent.

What today is used for good, tomorrow can be used for evil.

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Man, why are you copy-pasting comments from the 90s? The current government is maximally evil and interested in using technology to keep power and crush dissent. You don't need to introduce hypotheticals!

> The current government is maximally evil and interested in using technology to keep power and crush dissent. You don't need to introduce hypotheticals!

No no, I assure you, it's quite capable of getting very much worse.

Yeah this administration may have some of the worst intent imaginable, but at least they're bad at hiding it and hitting opposition at every corner... Absolutely more room for evil in this world.

I think the way to understand the objection here is that it's rhetorical flair (grandparent's dictum) that feels like it's intent is to assuage -- because it's a conditional that is implicitly loaded with an assumption about the current state of affairs ("not today") --, but that reasonably speaking, already things are bad enough to make such a conditional disingenuous. "Maximally evil" is just stressing it, though not technically true, because obviously things can always get worse. Personally, (and the reason I reply here since it hasn't been raised elsewhere in the thread), I have always objected to said conditional but on grounds of the principle that it leaves an opening to argue against what should be an absolute right (the standard for excellent conduct should not be "don't worry, we're not the worst so it's alright when we do it").

> The current government is maximally evil

Wow. That's incredibly optimistic. Imagine, for example, the next 'no kings' protest is met with machine gun fire, rather than ice sporadically killing activists. And then start adding on stuff.

Today, the people at the top need people at the bottom to sustain their lifestyle. Put on your billionare sociopath hat for a moment and ask yourself: If AI ever becomes sufficient to run an economy, why should you care about whether they live or die?

Then, ask yourself why the wealthy are so obsessed with AI.

> why the wealthy are so obsessed with AI

Because they want to be more wealthy, and AI is the draw for investors now.

Things could be a lot better than they are now, but “maximally evil”? Come on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

This is just such a weird comment to make. Like just so weird. We have minority death squads and concentration camps. Steven Miller wants to "get rid" of 60 million people. His friend Curtis Yarvin advocates turning poor people into a slurry. If the argument is that this administration is not particularly good at carrying out their absolutely maximally evil intent, that's one thing. What you have put out here is nonsense and reflects a grievous lack of moral character.

I am not yet waiting for my turn into the gas chamber.

It could be used for good in a possible future to track down all the former Flock/Palantir/Anthropic/OpenAI employees when it's time for the trials.

It's not neutral until everyone has equal access to it.

You as a nobody, should be able to use it right now, to strip away all privacy and see the very thoughts of all those people, since that is what they can do to you right now.

> What today is used for good, tomorrow can be used for evil.

Unfortunately we aren't even starting from good.

What today is used for evil, tomorrow can be used for eviler.

it won't be used for good today though.

I think the current government having these technologies is bad enough, given their authoritarian impulses and unpredictable whims.

I don't see those crooks using anything for good, unless you define good as "their own personal gain".

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