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Comment by manoDev | Hacker News Reader

"Social media should bring people together instead of being used to set them apart."

"Economy should improve allocation of resources universally, instead of allowing a handful to hold what many are lacking."

And so on...

Society has advanced in technology but didn't progress the same way in philosophy.

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> Economy should improve allocation of resources universally, instead of allowing a handful to hold what many are lacking

I 100% take your point here, but it's worth saying the modern economy has improved resource access in a lot of ways. It's also worth saying that wealth distribution looks very different between countries[0].

None of this goes against what you've said really, but I think it's important to point out that there our multiple societies, with different values. We can shape and change the ones we're in.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...

I'm no fan of social media and I'm not even a big fan of capitalism, but isn't this kind of reductive? You can always point out bad things and try and extrapolate that outward.

We live in a time with an extremely low murder rate (historically speaking), a very high literacy rate, the ability to keep in touch with family members across the world extremely cheaply, eradication or near-eradication of lots of diseases. If I were to extrapolate that outward then I could do the same kind of logic to talk about how great everything is.

I guess I just find this kind of doomerism to be extremely tempting but ultimately just reductive.

Humanity's doom would be failing to recognize how amazing advancements in one area don't necessarily translate to another – not the opposite.

We're still human, and have human tendencies. I feel like the tools are out there for us to be great, but they certainly gently push us toward being degenerates :/

That's why philosophy (in the original sense of "striving for wisdom") is important. We're thinking animals after all, and can be more than dumb consumers, victims of our instincts.

Well at least you for yourself can be aware of the danger that AI could assimilate your thinking, I think that's the message of this post.

The risk is the next generation, who will not have lived in a pre-AI world, won't know the difference to compare.

"Our technology is meant to bring people together - so they can fight about a gold-drenched ballroom they will never set foot in, and hate each other".

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