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I can't tell if this comment is a spoof?
Sure, go back to your farm and use tools like tractors, fertilizers, modern crop rotation techniques, plates, silverware, cups, etc which have been created by the larger society. Created, distributed and improved by people who are supposedly 'mining the good out of society.'
Society is a team effort, bud. Your fantasies of living scott-free totally 'independent' on your plot of land are just that - fantasies. You wouldn't make it a week without the collective wisdom and knowledge society has gifted you and your family. Have some respect for the people who came before you, and the people who help you live a cushy life now.
I say:
And you internet this as “isolate yourself from society and pay no respect to the people who came before you”?
Just to be clear when i say “go to church”, I mean specifically a Catholic Church. There could not exist another institution on planet earth that is more of a strong indicator that you should stand in the shoulders of the people who came before you.
The people mining the good out of society are people running porn websites, and AB testing headlines and algorithmic content feeds to see which ones make people hate each other more, and then buy the products that they’re selling. Onlyfans is mining the good out of society, blackrock is mining the good out of society, McKinsey consulting is mining the good out of society
Porn websites and management consulting agencies did not invent pottery, crop rotation, iron smelting, or anything else. The fact that you either think otherwise or think that “go to church and start a family” somehow means “throw away every good discovery ever made by mankind” is certainly telling of something.
I think this comment is an example of "inferential distance." Your meaning of "people mining the good out of society" is porn sites, investors, and engagement-optimizers, whereas Dag's interpretation was "all the smart people who brought us modern technology."
@firmamenti also engaged in the classic Motte and Bailey to my mind. His Bailey is:
Basically claiming that anyone who relies on the Internet is gonna get fukt, and they should cry about it.
Then when challenged he retreated to the much more specific claim of:
I'm not impressed with this sort of rhetoric.
You cut one of my sentences in half to make your point, and then you accused me of bad faith argument.
The rest of the statement which you cut off was: "not an apocalypse for the people who understand computer programming from first principles."
This is not a motte and bailey. You either didn't read the rest of my comment, or you are being deliberately misleading in your characterization of it.
Either way: don't do this.
Eh, I cut it out for brevity but I see where you’re coming from. Either way I see you slicing the populace into such a chunk as to be making a ridiculously callous and egotistical statement.
I’m happy to discuss further which chunk of humanity deserves to have their lives be destroyed and suffer unnecessarily, but I generally find that type of rhetoric to be unsavory. I apologize if I mischaracterized your stance.
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Just pointing out, your interpretation there doesn't quite check out logically. It would only be a motte/bailey when mischaracterized like that.
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Those people will be doing more of all that and better (or rather "more efficiently" - nothing about it will be better for the audience), with higher profit margin since they'll no longer need to pay the grunts in call centers.
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This is a small fraction of people in modern society, and if history tells anything I'd imagine they will be hurt less by AGI because this class of people is good at finding BS niches to milk value out.
I'm just not a fan of broad statements talking about how an ill-defined outgroup is milking everything from society while you and yours are the ones building it. Thanks for clarifying.
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