Ask HN: Where is tech leading us if our humanity is sacrificed for profit?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32624628

by rblion • 4 years ago

17 13 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

smt88• 4 years ago

I wonder about this whenever OpenAI is discussed. I don't see a significant upside, and I see a potentially society-ending downside.

rblion3• 4 years ago

Me too. Meta is also very scary. TikTok is a Trojan horse that siphons data while getting billions of people addicted, both could ultimately cause more harm to society than cigarettes.

badrabbit2• 4 years ago

What are you talking about? Honestly, I want to add more to my comment but I have no clue what the topic of the post is. In general, technology enables it does not lead, people do that.

rblion3• 4 years ago

What about when tech is designed to feed off human nature and steer it in directions that serve the creators/investors/shareholders?

jschveibinz• 4 years ago

Are cars good or bad? People love to go fast and cars are so convenient.

But then again, they pollute the planet and kill innocent animals—and sometimes people.

But wait, cars save lives, like when someone needs to get to the hospital quickly. Or, they provide a way to visit family or get to an important event. And thank goodness we don’t ride horses anymore-horses probably didn’t get a vote on that whole thing.

In summary, it is probably not possible to label anything as either just good or just bad. One could argue that everything, including technology, is really just a good-bad sandwich.

I believe that Eastern philosophy has nailed this concept.

badrabbit2• 4 years ago

That's not tech that is its execution by people. Nuclear fission is tech, nuclear bombs are its execution as are nuclear power plants. Fire is technology, burning a house and cooking a meal with fire are its execution.

kjhughes• 4 years ago

Mu.

(The best answer to such a fundamentally flawed question is that it should be un-asked.)

leashless• 4 years ago

Tech isn’t particularly leading us anywhere. Could go lots of different places.

Bastards are leading us into hell, if they can wrestle us there.

kelseyfrog2• 4 years ago

This is good actually. Think of it as an opportunity to employ capital realism. If you can do that, then your problems simply cease to exist.

rblion3• 4 years ago

Can you please elaborate? I am genuinely curious. I asked this question to open my mind, not because I have an agenda.

kelseyfrog2• 4 years ago

It's easier to redefine what you think of as good than it is to make any progress toward changing capitalism. Once you simply define good in terms of the fruits of capitalism[profit] then the two become one and the problem ceases to exist. The kids today would probably call it being $-pilled or something.

gsatic• 4 years ago

We have 6 inch chimp brains, and tech has reached a point where its easy to have unpredictable and uncontrollable effects at large scale. So expect more chaos. Whether the chimp is motivated by money, power or boredom hardly matters. Lessons will be learnt the hard way as they always have been.

Gtex555• 4 years ago

Look into psychohistory.

Ask HN: Where is tech leading us if our humanity is sacrificed for profit?

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