this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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This actually brings up a good point, which we are sleeping on a bit. As a person who is a bit more 'we should sacrifice a little bit so the future can still have good things' side. The whole 'but why should we, in a scarcity environment, sacrifice this much for a post-scarcity one' thing had not really occurred to me.
Ow god I did a Rationalism, I evaluated how my own bias was holding me back. Am I out of touch? No, it's the Rationalists who are wrong.
I guess the logical response is that this presupposes the inevitable existence of a post-scarcity environment, when such a state is arguably not a certainty, or even a likelihood. We've been hovering at a kind of societal tipping point since the Cold War where a few different decisions could have effectively hit the reset button on society - and there's no guarantee that any survivors in the aftermath would have sufficient access to coal, iron ore, fossil fuels etc. to rebuild even our current level of society, let alone a utopian one.
So I think given our awareness of the relative fragility of human society, taking steps to secure it's stability and growth is a rational choice to secure the possibility for the post-scarcity world to exist. Then it's a question of certainty - if were 80% sure that our distant descendants will live in bliss, we could calibrate our personal sacrifices accordingly and justify more consumerist behaviour in the present.
Through this lens the excessive consumerism of previous generations can be forgiven, as what they lacked was awareness of the consequences of their actions - they didn't act immorally, just ignorantly. But now that we "know better" there's a moral responsibility to do better. As much as that sucks.
Sure trying to improve things is good. But that isn't what I'm talking about here.
My issue is with throwing all the poor people into the capitalist meatgrinder so we can have our iHeaven which giving utilitarian consideration to all possible posthumans leads to.