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I've seen this idea float around r/singularity and r/collapse for years and it's probably responsible for a horrifying amount of suicides at this point.

It's not even that good of an argument. It makes some incredibly flimsy assumptions; reddit marxist priors of labor oppression being an inescapable invariant across all of human history, ultra-compliant superintelligences, a perfectly unitary elite without any desire to defect, all other societal variables staying the same somehow, etc.. It only exists because of upvote algorithms amplifying emotional action-suppressing doomer content. Really not that different from other hostile memes like QAnon.

I would really like if people stopped spreading this anti-agency garbage and actually made an effort to advocate for policy. It's something I have to give Luke Drago some points for, he actually cares about the problem rather than just saying the inevitable eternal stratification hypersuffering anti-singularity is inevitable and implying that death is preferable.



>reddit marxist priors of labor oppression being an inescapable invariant across all of human history

Not that I agree with all of Marx's ideas, but I think this is one of his less controversial ideas. There has always been a class struggle between business owners and workers, and there probably always will be.

>anti-agency garbage and actually made an effort to advocate for policy

An increasing amount of US citizens have little to no trust in our government to actually come up with a viable solution that helps the people in a world where AI automation is happening across multiple sectors at once.

You want to address the paranoia people feel? You have to also address that lack of trust in our government. That's a tall order.


All workable policy paths involve taxing capital and you're gonna call that Marxist even though it isn't, so we're at an impasse.


Using Marxist as a denunciation feels like a shibboleth considering how often it comes out of the mouths of conservative politicians in the USA when talking about stuff that is not remotely related to it.


Yep, exactly. The USA is in the fortunate position of having a solid historical example of how to re-balance an economy that let inequality cook out of control: FDR. We didn't have a far-right Hitler or a far-left Stalin because we had a Roosevelt. We should aim for that again -- but at the moment I'm afraid our aim is drifting to the right, a right that calls its own policy position from 6 months prior "radical Marxist lunacy" and will certainly do the same to any compromise struck in that historically informed center.


> We didn't have a far-right Hitler or a far-left Stalin because we had a Roosevelt. We should aim for that again...

I would much rather not have a repeat of the president who ran the federal government like he was a king, and the Constitution a bare semblance of a suggestion. FDR was one of the worst presidents in history, and many of the problems we face in our country today can be traced back to his immense executive branch power grab.


Wonder how many read that first sentence thinking it was referring to the current times… (;->


Yeah, the Republicans are very keen on the unitary executive, it's time for the Democrats to get their mojo back.


It isn't inevitable but it is where we are heading. We are basically in the early 1930s. Even fighting against it and winning is going to be extremely ugly. And that is the most optimistic scenario.




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