Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and it killing us all

Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics

Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all!

My take on this entire genre: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Story-Logic_Bias

And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s more eloquent precursor: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...

To be more accurate to what we've been seeing for a decade, it would have to be something like

     Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and this GeneKiller bacteria killing protesters to the regime

     Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics. We call it GeneKiller and we offer it to the regime to start testing on protesters first

     Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all!

The problem I have with this is not that I disagree with it, it's a good observation, it's that it ignores humans are very example biased and we really don't have many good positive examples, there's a dearth of positive / utopian perspective in fiction and it's absence sets the overton window handily

I mean the Jetson's is one of the examples that comes to mind when I'm reaching for a positive example of future robots, the Jetsons! A cartoon from the 1960s is in my top 10 examples of "Positive AI / Robot having futures"

Having a more positive takes on the future would go a long way to helping people understand what they're place in it might be, we did used to have periods of history where things were more positive, right now we're really lacking that perspective

You're missing the point of the meme, which is not "technology is bad", but "technologists theming their new poorly-tested invention after a popular story where the invention hurts people is gross".

If your tech company calls its product "The Genophage™" it's fair to ask if they're taking the safety/ethics implications very seriously.

Tech company: "We will now lobby the government to allow us to keep astronomically high insulin prices through large scale collusion with insurance companies"

Look, the issue is two fold:

1) The Zuckerbergs class are insulated naive boys who've never spent time in the real world. So they do not understand that thier actions might have consequences.

2) every fucking tech giant starts out promising liberty, then gradually creates either a blood sucking money printer, or some hellish sock puppet system that props up their warped world view.

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