Comment by bluefirebrand
18 hours ago
> It’s exactly the same set of questions and challenges as with nuclear power
I'm not sure "provide cheap and plentiful power that may be risky if not managed correctly" is really on the same level as "replace all human labor we possibly can"
I agree with you that ideally we would coordinate and cooperate better, but the sad problem (the prisoner's dilemma, really) is that some (many? most? all?) people will not coordinate or cooperate no matter what, especially if they have an opportunity to get ahead by not cooperating. As long as people like that exist we have to find ways to work with them or work around them
It doesn't help that people with the most wealth seem like they mostly have that sort of personality
Most people are reasonable. Most people will not screw you over if you just give them an inch. Living in society would be hell if this was not the case.[1] Living day-to-day is just fine in my experience. Because most people are not assholes.
But a lot of society is run by asshole sociopaths which (who) unfortunately lack some pretty fundamental wiring. And that creates some far-away problems, global even, that don’t really have anything to do with normal people that you meet daily. But you can notice how when these concrete problems are pointed out that someone will want to retreat back to generalities. Human nature. That’s IMO from a concerted effort to spread this talking point that asshole-caused problems are really human-caused problems. Because the asshole sociopaths (AHS) in charge are not AHS. They are not just human. And any human would do what they are doing. And in fact by going to war with X we are just stopping them from doing Y to us—
It is a coordination problem for normal, reasonable people. There’s too many key AHS personell disrupting the information flow. So those reasonable human beings have to make more of an effort.
[1] Some poorer societies (as have been told to me) have problems with vile opportunism of the sort where you help some apparently in need person get home and you get gutted and robbed by a gang of thugs. So I asked, okay so you can’t trust anyone then? No, they said. There’s a small and real chance that that could happen. But not to the point that you have to shun strangers. You can still choose to help.