[qcnguy]

Agree that it's ridiculous to talk about banning AI because some people misuse it, but the word preventable is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that argument. Preventable how? Chopping down all the coconut trees? Re-establishing the prohibition? Deciding prayers > healthcare?

Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that death is inevitable. We've lost a lot of the rituals and traditions over the centuries that made facing it psychologically endurable. It probably isn't worth trying to prevent deaths from coconut trees.

[joshtbradley]

Not fully preventable, of course not. But reducible, certainly. Better cars aided by AI. Better diagnoses and healthcare aided by AI. Less addiction to cigarettes and alcohol through AI facilitated therapy. Less obesity due to better diet plans created by AI. I could go on. And that’s just one frame, there are plenty of non-AI solutions we could, and should, be focused on.

Really my broader point is we accept the tradeoff between technology/freedom and risk in almost everything, but for some reason AI has become a real wedge for people.

And to your broader point, I agree our culture has distanced itself from death to an unhealthy degree. Ritual, grieving, and accepting the inevitable are important. We have done wrong to diminish that.

Coconut trees though, those are always going to cause trouble.

[rahidz]

>but for some reason AI has become a real wedge for people

Well yeah, for most other technologies, the pitch isn't "We're training an increasingly powerful machine to do people's jobs! Every day it gets better at doing them! And as a bonus, it's trained on terabytes of data we scraped from books and the Internet, without your permission. What? What happens to your livelihood when it succeeds? That's not my department".

[code_for_monkey]

AI people are like "HAHAHAHAH were gods! Were gods and you PEASANTS are going to be jobless once my machine can fire you!" and then wonder why people have negative feelings about it. The Ipod wasnt coming for my livelihood it just let me listen to music even more!

[fragmede]

The iTunes music store sold music for your iPod, but we'd be ignoring history if we didn't at least acknowledge that was also the era of Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, and DCC. Pirate Bay, and later, Waffles.fm. Metallica sued Napster in 2000, the first ipod was released in 2001. iPod people laughed at the end of record companies and the RIAA while pretending to work with them. We all know that's not how it ended though.

[ssl-3]

I, for one, would be on-board with erasing coconut trees from the planet.

Why, one might ask?

Well, simple: Nobody really needs them, do they? And I, for one, don't enjoy the flavor of a coconut: I find that the taste lingers in my mouth in ways that others do not, such that it becomes a distraction to me inside of my little pea brain.

I find them to be ridiculously easy to detect in any dish, snack, or meal. My taste buds would be happier in a world where there were no coconuts to bother with.

Besides: The trees kill about 150 people every year.

(But then: While I'd actually be pretty fine with the elimination of the coconut, I also recognize that I live in a society with others who really do enjoy and find purpose with that particular fruit. So while it's certainly within my wheelhouse to dismiss it completely from my own existence, it's also really not my duty at all to tell others whether or not they're permitted to benefit in some way from one of those deadly blood coconuts.

I mean: It's just a coconut.)

[goatlover]

Also it's a living organism in it's own right and other non-humans make use of it, like coconut crabs. Nature doesn't exist just for us. Humans kill a lot more coconut trees (or sharks) than they kill us.

[ssl-3]

Don't care.

It's not useful to me. It can go away.

(Yes, this may mean that I am short-sighted. I'm allowed to be as short-sighted as anyone else is.)

[dahart]

The vast majority of traffic deaths are preventable. Whether we’re willing to accept that as a goal and make the changes needed to achieve that goal remains to be seen. Industrial accidents, and cancer from smoking are both preventable, and thankfully have been declining due to prevention efforts. Reducing pollution, fixing food supply issues, and making healthcare more available can prevent many many unnecessary deaths. It certainly is worth trying to prevent some of the dumb ways to die we’ve added since losing whatever traditions we lost. Having family & friends die old from natural causes is more psychologically endurable than when people die young from something that could have been avoided, right?

[myvoiceismypass]

> Chopping down all the coconut trees? ... It probably isn't worth trying to prevent deaths from coconut trees

Would "not walking under coconut trees" count as prevention? Because that seems like a really simple and cheap solution that quite anyone can do. If you see a coconut tree, walk the other way.