Comment by naming_the_user
2 months ago
The barriers/boundaries thing I think is interesting.
I've never really been able to identify with this sort of "make money and then fix the world" stuff because I feel that everyone hugely simplifies every issue and looks only at first or maybe second order effects.
You fix malaria/give to the poor/raise the minimum wage/etc. Cool, now we have a wealthier population with more people doing more stuff to modify the environment. We accelerate biosphere collapse and global warming. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
I think that if you're being truly logical about these things you could just as easily come up with a grand solution that's something like drawing a graph of social connections from you, go out a few layers, and then press the button to delete everyone else on the planet and rewild most of it. Or go back in time and don't discover oil (or was the suffering of the pre-industrial era worse? maybe it was, probably it was...!).
I don't think I'd be chosen to go to Elysium but I can't really see the logical flaw in the argument either. Why should the super rich care about the rest? Move forward a few years/decades; why should superintelligent AI care about humans? We don't care about mosquitoes.
Making a company that makes a prettier table or a faster car or whatever feels like it's directly solving a problem. Making a company that aims to "improve the world" just seems like a fool's errand to me, second law of thermo, that sort of thing.
Big waffle.
Raising the standard of living for the poorest people in the world does very little to increase the rate of climate change since these people have very little impact on the environment and consume so little in the first place. I'd argue that we also owe it to them because the poor are also least capable to handle the consequences of climate change and the other issues facing developing nations. I don't know why this needs to be said but those are real issues.
The flaw in Elysium is moral and practical. You have to accept that humans by virtue of being human deserve some consideration, and the well being of society deserves consideration. If a rich person don't believe this then they are irresponsible. Too much inequality in society makes it shittier for everybody for plenty of reasons.
Nonsense, you’re engaging in first order thinking as I stated.
China is a great counterexample of this, or just the life story of anyone who goes from rags to riches.
You may as well say that a broken down car has no emissions so let’s fix it. Once you fix it it does.