The average human doesn't do much on his own, and definitely doesn't uproot society or risk siphoning/leeching wealth from every person on this planet.
Yes, the whole IT sector is built on it. Robbing jobs, money, power, opportunities from billions of people and delegating them in to shitty jobs.
Average human on his own...why draw the line there? It doesn't matter much what one human does...but what many/collective/society do and society has been "ripping off", "uprooting", "leeching (read: creating)" wealth since dawn of time. It is called PROGRESS.
There is no such thing as PROGRESS for progress' sake.
And FYI, agriculture is a wonderful invention.
Yet for about 5000 years after its introduction the average human had worse nutrition than the average hunter gatherer, which led to such things as height decreases for those 5000 years.
Industrial agriculture is another wonderful invention. Yet 150 years later we're not sure it's sustainable and it's likely many of its aspects aren't, which will raise some sticky issues soon ("which billion people do we decide to let starve since we can't make enough food for everyone after most of our soil eroded?"). Repeat this for industrial textile production, mining, etc.
I won't even go into climate change.
And again, scale matters. Most individuals can only control what they do, and what they do generally doesn't impact much. But companies can impact a whole lot.
Let's not be 100% cynical here. A lot of what humanity has achieved has been genuine wealth creation and distribution/re-distribution. I would say more wealth has been created than leeched off.
* * *
And before you think I'm some starry eyed teen, I'll play the game. At the end of the day, me and mine have to outrun you in the face of PROGRESS.
Next time can you please start with stuff like this: "Climate change? Lmao." so that everyone reasonable can ignore you? The science beihnd climate change is accepted by freaking BP and Esso.
Does more CO2/Greenhouse gasses etc raise temp? Yeah duh.
Does not using those bad refrigerant gasses is good? Yeah duh!
EVs are better for environment than ICE? Oh yeah!
But climate is not just a first order effect. It has more orders and complications than we can calculate. Our models are horribly incorrect, predictions further than a few years are always wrong. But that's science. We do our best and try to correct asap.
What's wrong is zealots who spreads doom and gloom about this. Makes predictions like my country will go under water by year 2000. Do you know how frightening it was for a science interested kid to read that? Kilimanjaro snow will be gone within decade. One extra decade gone by already, why is there still snow? 96 months to climate/ecosystem collapse? Double 96 months gone by, where's the collapse?
EU shot its own economy to pieces chasing these garbage. Wealth creation is the answer. Look at China. Didn't give one shit about it, built up wealth and power. Now they have the resources and they are rapidly cleaning up. In 50 years, China will be more green than US/EU while Germany killed the cheap nuclear power that was the backbone of their economy.
The REAL climate change is not tiny amount of co2 or whatever humans are doing; it is earth and sun. Orbital geometry, solar output, ice sheets, oceans, volcanoes and tectonics.
You can remove 100% of "environmental damage" from earth by humans from start of humanity, and it will not make a dent if/when earth/sun decides it is time to warm up. And we know for a fact that earth goes thru high temperature times and right now it is in an ice age.
What we need is even faster pace of generating wealth, power, and technology that helps us to clean up the air and water. Not be regressive out of premature fear.
Suddenly, mega corporations were allowed to digest(sometimes by illegally pirating “data”, and sometimes by achieving their training corpus and subsequently destroying the copies) and digest this information in a novel way, without any discussion or law making.
You may argue it’s beneficial (it very well could be, I use ChatGPT and Claude all the time), but let’s not pretend it’s the same as learning from your history teacher…
Social conventions are regressive and are followed blindly by luddites. Real progress comes from doing what is right and breaking idiotic conventions.
Pirating is fine.
Subsequently destroying is bad but it is the result of screeching from people lacking foresight who support the idea of training LLM on book copies is wrong. So now corps found "legal" way to do it by destroying it. Again, idiotic social conventions.
Without discussing? Law making? What are you, German? There's a reason EU is shit while USA is center of the progress of the world: laws follow innovation; not the other way around.
It is shit compared to what it could have been. It is diverse in language (which is a negative), food (yet mostly boring) yet common in one thing: regulate to suffocate. Kill (most) innovation. Live in borrowed times. Spend money that we don't have. Fuck future generations even more. Then wonder why far right is flapping their wings.
When society becomes a free-for-all of people with haves making it impossible for the people with have little to have anything at all, it begins to collapse. People have no incentive to treat anyone else with dignity and respect. They no longer take care of one another.
Competition does not have to mean kill or be killed. We can still be decent, helpful, charitable while competing.
You are just bullshitting without any understanding of "people who have little". I'm one of those who came from "have little". As a consequence, almost everyone I knew growing up, were also "have little/have nothing" people. Among 100s of people in my super extended family (tree), among 100 of my "have little" classmates from school, it was always clear from early age who will "succeed." The ones who had grit, dedication, focus, and a shine in their eyes.
The ones who complained about wealth and society, are still in the have little group. The ones who didn't care, heads down worked hard, are living in luxury.
Taking care of one another is mostly a privilege afforded in society with wealth that leads to high trust situation. I grew up in a place without it; so I know how valuable (and desirable) "taking care of one another" is.
Current western generation (esp far left) has no idea how good they have it and are actively destroying wealth that will lead them to the chaos they have no idea about.
I don't want that "way down" just like you. But unlike you, I don't believe in fairy tales. Reality is capitalism works, wealth creation works, we all end up in better places (not equal...but overall better). Much better than road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Scale matters.
The average human doesn't do much on his own, and definitely doesn't uproot society or risk siphoning/leeching wealth from every person on this planet.
Yes, the whole IT sector is built on it. Robbing jobs, money, power, opportunities from billions of people and delegating them in to shitty jobs.
Average human on his own...why draw the line there? It doesn't matter much what one human does...but what many/collective/society do and society has been "ripping off", "uprooting", "leeching (read: creating)" wealth since dawn of time. It is called PROGRESS.
> It is called PROGRESS.
There is no such thing as PROGRESS for progress' sake.
And FYI, agriculture is a wonderful invention.
Yet for about 5000 years after its introduction the average human had worse nutrition than the average hunter gatherer, which led to such things as height decreases for those 5000 years.
Industrial agriculture is another wonderful invention. Yet 150 years later we're not sure it's sustainable and it's likely many of its aspects aren't, which will raise some sticky issues soon ("which billion people do we decide to let starve since we can't make enough food for everyone after most of our soil eroded?"). Repeat this for industrial textile production, mining, etc.
I won't even go into climate change.
And again, scale matters. Most individuals can only control what they do, and what they do generally doesn't impact much. But companies can impact a whole lot.
> "ripping off", "uprooting", "leeching (read: creating)" wealth
Let's not be 100% cynical here. A lot of what humanity has achieved has been genuine wealth creation and distribution/re-distribution. I would say more wealth has been created than leeched off.
* * *
And before you think I'm some starry eyed teen, I'll play the game. At the end of the day, me and mine have to outrun you in the face of PROGRESS.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
[flagged]
Next time can you please start with stuff like this: "Climate change? Lmao." so that everyone reasonable can ignore you? The science beihnd climate change is accepted by freaking BP and Esso.
What science? Pray tell.
Does more CO2/Greenhouse gasses etc raise temp? Yeah duh.
Does not using those bad refrigerant gasses is good? Yeah duh!
EVs are better for environment than ICE? Oh yeah!
But climate is not just a first order effect. It has more orders and complications than we can calculate. Our models are horribly incorrect, predictions further than a few years are always wrong. But that's science. We do our best and try to correct asap.
What's wrong is zealots who spreads doom and gloom about this. Makes predictions like my country will go under water by year 2000. Do you know how frightening it was for a science interested kid to read that? Kilimanjaro snow will be gone within decade. One extra decade gone by already, why is there still snow? 96 months to climate/ecosystem collapse? Double 96 months gone by, where's the collapse?
EU shot its own economy to pieces chasing these garbage. Wealth creation is the answer. Look at China. Didn't give one shit about it, built up wealth and power. Now they have the resources and they are rapidly cleaning up. In 50 years, China will be more green than US/EU while Germany killed the cheap nuclear power that was the backbone of their economy.
The REAL climate change is not tiny amount of co2 or whatever humans are doing; it is earth and sun. Orbital geometry, solar output, ice sheets, oceans, volcanoes and tectonics.
You can remove 100% of "environmental damage" from earth by humans from start of humanity, and it will not make a dent if/when earth/sun decides it is time to warm up. And we know for a fact that earth goes thru high temperature times and right now it is in an ice age.
What we need is even faster pace of generating wealth, power, and technology that helps us to clean up the air and water. Not be regressive out of premature fear.
Theres a big difference.
We have social conventions regulating this.
Suddenly, mega corporations were allowed to digest(sometimes by illegally pirating “data”, and sometimes by achieving their training corpus and subsequently destroying the copies) and digest this information in a novel way, without any discussion or law making.
You may argue it’s beneficial (it very well could be, I use ChatGPT and Claude all the time), but let’s not pretend it’s the same as learning from your history teacher…
Social conventions are regressive and are followed blindly by luddites. Real progress comes from doing what is right and breaking idiotic conventions.
Pirating is fine.
Subsequently destroying is bad but it is the result of screeching from people lacking foresight who support the idea of training LLM on book copies is wrong. So now corps found "legal" way to do it by destroying it. Again, idiotic social conventions.
Without discussing? Law making? What are you, German? There's a reason EU is shit while USA is center of the progress of the world: laws follow innovation; not the other way around.
Have you been to "the EU"? It's a very diverse place and hardly "shit".
Yes, I live here.
It is shit compared to what it could have been. It is diverse in language (which is a negative), food (yet mostly boring) yet common in one thing: regulate to suffocate. Kill (most) innovation. Live in borrowed times. Spend money that we don't have. Fuck future generations even more. Then wonder why far right is flapping their wings.
When society becomes a free-for-all of people with haves making it impossible for the people with have little to have anything at all, it begins to collapse. People have no incentive to treat anyone else with dignity and respect. They no longer take care of one another.
See you on the way down.
Competition does not have to mean kill or be killed. We can still be decent, helpful, charitable while competing.
You are just bullshitting without any understanding of "people who have little". I'm one of those who came from "have little". As a consequence, almost everyone I knew growing up, were also "have little/have nothing" people. Among 100s of people in my super extended family (tree), among 100 of my "have little" classmates from school, it was always clear from early age who will "succeed." The ones who had grit, dedication, focus, and a shine in their eyes.
The ones who complained about wealth and society, are still in the have little group. The ones who didn't care, heads down worked hard, are living in luxury.
Taking care of one another is mostly a privilege afforded in society with wealth that leads to high trust situation. I grew up in a place without it; so I know how valuable (and desirable) "taking care of one another" is.
Current western generation (esp far left) has no idea how good they have it and are actively destroying wealth that will lead them to the chaos they have no idea about.
I don't want that "way down" just like you. But unlike you, I don't believe in fairy tales. Reality is capitalism works, wealth creation works, we all end up in better places (not equal...but overall better). Much better than road to hell is paved with good intentions.