[fao_]

> Are you implying Google did it on purpose to prevent this super-intelligence from taking over?

Why are you reading that from what I said? I wasn't responding to the superintelligence thing (as I hadn't quoted it), and that seems like the weirdest reading from what I responded to.

The claim was: "Can any single person turn off the internet or prevent everyone else from using their phones/screens for hours every day?"

And I responded with proof that that is marginally possible. Probably not a single person, but a well-trained well-connected group could do it very easily.

[aaron695]

> but a well-trained well-connected group could do it very easily.

Yes, but we would send in armed troops to stop them and reverse their actions.

I guess your point is the Super Intelligence has fully infiltrated our government, military and law enforcement.

It is far more than just the internet.

[fao_]

I feel like everyone stating that "the superintelligence is around, and has already won" in this thread is acting based on what they wish to be true, rather than what we can see based on fact.

You have turned a potentiality for which there is as yet no evidence, into a certainty. A rational mindset in general tends to frown on such things.

[fao_]

I feel I should clarify, for the sake of anyone that bothers to browse my profile / lurkers, I don't mean Rationality inasmuch as Jordan Peterson does[0], or any of the alt-right. I mean Rationality in the Humanist sense, i.e. the progressive Rational Wiki's left-wing approach.

[0]: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-d... | skip to "Having safely established Jordan Peterson is an intellectual fraud" for a dissection of his proposed philosophies and why they are suitably shitty.

[ta1234567890]

> I guess your point is the Super Intelligence has fully infiltrated our government, military and law enforcement.

> It is far more than just the internet.

Very well put. I guess we've already lost.

[ta1234567890]

I understand. However, what I'm saying is that even if that capability exists, in practice it doesn't matter, as it is something that we will never act on becauae we've already been taken over.

That outage example shows that people will immediately act to restore, preserve and expand the system, never destroy it.

[fao_]

This is a rather spurious assumption, that you have there.

'The system' that you're referring to in most likelyhood is just an aspect of science fiction, as such there is no provable threat from the internet, and it doesn't make any kind of capitalistic sense to turn off the infrastructure upon which rests, for example, the stock market, the banking infrastructure, a small portion of the communications infrastructure.

Now, if there were a provable, tangible threat to these systems remaining, and it was seen to likely be a GH-0 'Dead Greenhouse' scenario[0], then I think it would push people to take action.

But I don't think you can claim that "people will never turn off the internet, ever", simply because as-such they have never done it. With that line of logic the USSR would never have got humanity to space[1].

[0]: http://www.scpwiki.com/k-class-complete-list

[1]: The USSR won "the space race", by getting humans into orbit first (Which is why it's called "the space race" and not "the moon race")