I think the most precious thing we have is time, not money, because our time is finite. When you consider the potential of the human race and computing power to help spare daily genocide, there is clearly an opportunity to do better. If a person is driven to spend ever more time on pursuing the innovations that could theoretically lead to a singularity, what would that person say to a stadium full of children who are going to die the next day? I wouldn't know what to say. I'm not sure they'd be comforted by assurances that a byproduct of the pursuit of the singularity results in economic momentum that employs people, as good as that may be.

Perhaps though the attendant momentum of deep mind projects might result in AI or II be putting to the task of humanitarian relief. But my guess is that any such system would probably ask, "what should the priority be for preserving life?" -- and if the prioritization were done by consensus, I'm guessing that most people would prioritize preserving life over pursuing the singularity. For example, I think most people would want a self-driving AI government to prioritize their own survival over the singularity. And if that were the case, and AI were tasked with helping to "load balance" priorities of ethics, efforts, solutions and systems, I wonder if it might not admonish us to make changes in our life.

I'm not self-righteous, I'm self-unrighteous. I'm just beginning to question my general acceptance of wherever technology goes, wherever I spend my time. I don't presume to tell people what to do, but I do propose that the ethic of choosing whether to relieve a suffering child right in front of you may be self-evident to some people -- and if so, that realizing children are at arm's length, that we can do something about it, may convince some people, myself included, to think about "re-balancing" priorities.

I read fiction regularly. I would be a hypocrite to judge anyone for "not spending enough time relieving suffering". Yet overall I question how content and comfortable I am with life. I guess in a portfolio of effort, I hope that the allocation of assets in my own life and others would place a primary emphasis on sustainability that includes the relief of suffering. I think that's what 20k kids dying each day says to me. I think that's what they'd post to Hacker News, if they could.