[crystal_revenge]

AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing. We see the escalating effects of climate change impacting day-to-day life in ways we were told would only happen in the far future, witnessing genocide become a normal part of the news critique of which can mean serious personal consequences, we're watching the United States transform into State Capitalism [0] making our country far more like modern day China than many of us would have ever imagined possible.

And we deeply need to believe something wonderous, whether delightful or terrifying, is also happening. I honestly think AI is largely mass hallucination which is supported by a system that is able to extract tremendous wealth from this hallucination continuing.

We can no longer believe that everything happening is normal, so we need to inject some, slightly less horrific, explanation for what we're experiencing.

0. https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-u-s-marches-toward-state-cap...

[uncircle]

Excellent insight, would explain why opinions of an AI-driven future tend to be very extreme. Assuming the vast majority of us see a world in rapid collapse, that not even politicians have a decent answer to [1], either AI is the shining technological hope that drives us to a better future, or it is yet another acceleration towards the singularity of shit our modern societies have been crumbling towards.

As an extreme AI doomer, I can now respect and understand the position of AI optimists: they are both expressions of the same critique towards the status quo. What scares me then are those that feel the world is fine, we’re not collapsing, and AI is just another technology that is here to stay but won’t amount to much, and we’re all gonna be alright.

1: see HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

[tempodox]

> And we deeply need to believe something wonderous, whether delightful or terrifying, is also happening. I honestly think AI is largely mass hallucination which is supported by a system that is able to extract tremendous wealth from this hallucination continuing.

+∞. Hardly anyone wants to acknowledge that. Humans never really stopped wanting to believe in miracles and “AI” is the perfect idol.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

China manages to have long term planning. The only planning Trump and co do is planning how to line their own pockets.

[uncircle]

A good, albeit controversial, argument in favour of monarchy I’ve heard recently is that a monarch has to plan ahead for decades, if not centuries, to ensure them and their dynasty can keep ruling over a prosperous country.

A democratic politician only has to care about the next 4 years, at best; if any issue requires long-term planning, all you can do is hope it fixes itself.

[eru]

China is a country. Lots of people live there. Some of them have long term planning for some aspects. Some of them don't.

[TrnsltLife]

I agree about China. Probably Russia too and other countries with... longer term leadership.

Remind me of some of the things that Biden himself planned during his presidency.

[eru]

> AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing.

We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about?

Yes, climate change is gonna knock a few percent points off global GDP, but it's not gonna be the end of the world. It's no worse than living in the UK rather than the US in these terms.

Keep in mind that this impact comes super imposed the our regularly scheduled growth.

We also also plenty of relatively low cost mitigation strategies. (Though many of them are not currently politically feasible.)

> [...] we're watching the United States transform into State Capitalism [...]

Hard to believe, but luckily there's more than one country on the planet.

Please vote with your feet!

[politelemon]

> We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity.

Golden ages are fictional constructs, applied retroactively as part of an agenda. There is no such thing as living in a current golden age without knowing the future.

I also doubt the statements about peace and prosperity. These just sound like pithy phrases to dismiss concerns.

[eru]

> Golden ages are fictional constructs, applied retroactively as part of an agenda. There is no such thing as living in a current golden age without knowing the future.

That's a weird self contradiction. I just contemporarily applied the Golden Age moniker, so your assertion is just plain wrong.

People have never been as rich as today, even poor people. Wars are a bit bursty, but if you smooth it out a bit, but the probability for an average human to become a casualty in a war has been going down over the centuries, and is still going down over the last decades.

[mna_]

>We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about?

War in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflict, the recent India-Pakistan conflict, China rapidly ramping up its military and openly carrying out drills that are clearly designed to be practise runs for a Taiwan takeover, China asserting its presence near the Phillipines militarily, European countries ramping up defense spending, and so on, are clear indicators that the world is not going through a golden age of peace.