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Comment by lordkrandel | Hacker News Reader

This article speaks of ruthlessness of the machine for 99% of the time, and then with absolutely no logical reasoning, says at the end that ruthlessnes is inherently oppressive. Because it has the power to be it. In reality, it's the opposite: it's human flawed moral compass that makes a machine a weapon. Until we understand and address this, we will find no peace.

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We will never understand and address this as a group as long as the underlying environment is the uncontrolled capitalistic one in which the ideas and technologies that are selected for (evolutionarily) are the ones that net the greatest profit in the shortest-term without regard to long-term consequences. As long as we have this and the ability to abuse the commons, we will never deviate from our abusive and violent use of technology.

I truly believe the only solution is to bring down the current system, which includes the technology that enables it.

And replace it with what? The scary part of suggestions of “tear it all down” is how do we know that the replacement will be any better? In the grand scheme of things the West is in a state of abundance and luxury. Much more so than the communist experiments ever achieved. Additionally global poverty has been trending down for decades. While global literacy has greatly increased.

The key strength of a free-market seems to be that it assumes people will act in their own self interest and it creates a space where we can a get a roughly ‘win-win’ situation. That while you act in your self interest both you and the community are rewarded. So starting a bakery would give you a financial reward and others baked goods at a competitive price. Assuming that changing the system will force people to stop acting in their self interest seems to be how alternatives go wrong.

This.

"Things are bad. They shouldn't be like this." OK, could be. "We should destroy it all." Yeah, will that make things better, or worse. To not have the current set of problems doesn't mean you have no problems. You can have far worse problems. So before we agree to tear it all down, you have to convince us that 1) your replacement will actually be better, and 2) you have a realistic plan to actually bring that about. Otherwise, you're just one more vandal, destroying but not building.

I think anything that ends ecological destruction and rising CO2 levels will be better than what we have now. We will just have to be brave and work within such a new system instead of being scared children surrounded by our technology.

We have solved nuclear fission power, created vaccines for COVID, and went to the moon. Surely we can go back to a world of greater sustainability than now.

Plenty of older societies had more strict regulations to soften the devastating effects of the free market. At the very least we should reinstitute customs that prevent unfettered economic growth and more sustainable population levels.

If you "bring down the current system", do you think what results is going to be less destructive to the environment? Or will 8 billion people all do whatever they have to in order to survive, regardless of the damage it causes?

You have to have a realistic replacement for the current system, and a realistic plan to get there. Without that, bringing down the current system won't lead to something better, but to something worse.

We have a model for what happens when you “bring down the system”. Do you think it would be better if we were all living in the equivalent of Somalia? It can be very difficult to engineer a stable revolution and all too often it ends up in chaos.

> We have solved nuclear fission power, created vaccines for COVID, and went to the moon. Surely we can go back to a world of greater sustainability than now.

I'm not sure about that at all. These three things you listed are just science/technical problems, while the latter is a governance problem. Governance is much harder than science and technology.

So you don't actually want to "tear it all down", yes? That would indeed be very stupid. Revolutionaries almost always make things worse, and often has wicked motives. Reformers can make things better.

Unfettered capitalism is certainly worth criticism. A just economic arrangement is one that rests on a sound philosophical anthropology. Of course, a good portion of those raging against "the system" are driven less by moral concerns and more by envy masquerading as moral concern.

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