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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

I have a much more positive outlook on humanity and I don't share the same doomsday scenario. For me, I made the conscious decision to turn off the news after covid. Something obviously flipped in that period where the negativity just compounded, and it just feeds into itself. I watch my own family sucked into the cycle of "what did trump do now!" kind of stuff and I found it really wasn't healthy for my own mental being. Ignorance is bliss.

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Negativity exists outside of your own perception of it, or in your terms, ignorance is bliss.

You can always choose to believe things will be good, but after a certain point it stops being a belief and is moreso a mental illness that requires medication. When reality and your perception diverge too much, you can believe anything.

In the current economic systems, AGI would bring about mass starvation, war, and enslavement. We would require a complete destruction of capitalism to make AGI not the worst thing to happen to humanity since the black plague. Now, look at our leaders. How likely is that?

I need medication because I'm happy? Wow, that's a new one.

If you're happy because your perception of reality is very far off from reality, yes. That is psychosis. If I see myself in a mansion and I'm currently in a box under the freeway that is an hallucination.

You're conflating an emotion (happiness) with perception (living somewhere you don't live).

You certainly can give someone medication because they have a negative emotion, but you don't typically give them medication for positive emotions. Unless, it is affecting their life in a negative way.

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