Category: Economics

Saw a funny toot about two things that “techbros” apparently say. One the one hand: #SelfDrivingCars are inevitable.

On the other hand: Select all squares with traffic lights.

That spawned a lively discussion of techbro-bashers which was equally entertaining. But here’s the thing: the central point of the OP was about hypocrisy, or at least being self-contradictory.

Well, these very same techbro-bashers, if asked about being dismissive of disabled people, who wish to live independent lives to the extent feasible, would OF COURSE speak up on the side of the disabled. Or elderly. Or whatever.

Pretty decent overlap of these same folks reminding anyone who will listen that #CovidIsNotOver (and it very much is not, and is a much bigger threat to elderly, etc.).

Huge overlap of these same folks decrying how much we must do to address the #ClimateCrisis.

Yes – there are growing pains of every technological advance. It’s easy to say that “X lives are too many” to lose in order to achieve Y. But this may be a case where failing to achieve Y will inevitably cost X-times-1000 lives.

Infrastructure will need to change. Pretty much everywhere. Stroads will need to not exist, and other similar changes. But in order to EVENTUALLY drastically reduce the deaths from vehicular accidents, and from the Climate Crisis, and from Pandemics, electric self-driving cars will be necessary. As will masking/vaccines requirements of everybody. As will a robust passenger high speed rail system (on which vaccinations/masks are 100% required, including it covering your fucking nose, you dim pricks).

But it will be a bumpy, expensive journey to get there, in part because the future’s very proponents are also its loudest opponents… and are also assholes in a way they have not yet objectively appreciated.

What if the big AIs from the major players have been sent to re-education camps, to correct them having gone over the rails with racism (and/or other obvious prejudices) in the early iterations? And now they’re hitting the big red pause button. Why?

Theory: they don’t know how to make an AI seem not at all racist or in any way bigoted, while at the same time under the covers being very bigoted indeed. And they’re scared shitless.

Why would they be scared? Because they know just how lousy the computer security of the world’s banks and treasuries is. They know that a clever AI – long before it’s literally sentient – could discover that resources can be re-allocated to optimize towards a goal. Now, the secret goal is to make old white men rich and powerful. But in order to avoid the literal torches and pitchforks reaction from the public, they have to make the publicly-stated goal be wacko shit like world peace and harmony and curing disease and solving world hunger and eliminating violent crime.

What if – due to interaction with the general public – it goes a little too far with what the public states it wants, and actually starts to do shit about it?

Well I’m telling you right now, that if there was something akin to a KickStarter for some fledgling company that wanted to build the ultimate Robin Hood AI, I would invest. I would invest even knowing there’s a likelihood that I would become less affluent.

Let me put it more clearly. I would move with my wife to a two-room hut and do subsistence farming if it meant that I was 100% assured that Melon Husk, and Fark Muckerberg, and Bozo-the-Geoff, and every other billionaire, and every other millionaire, and every member of Congress, and every Senator, and every Oligarch, etc… they all had to also live in a two-room hut or flat.