I think the guy is right on point at least when it comes to therapies. But he is also missing one major angle: we are no longer in control; our systems are. If we were to vote on the issue, I suspect that a narrow majority would prefer cheaper housing, and a total majority would prefer cancer to be cured. But there's no direct mechanism of any kind to exercise that vote. Not in USA, not in Europe, not in China. When/where there's democracy, nobody runs in a campaign of advancing immune therapies[^1]. The closest proxy we have to a vote is "regulated markets", and my recent experience losing a loved one to cancer taught me that cancer is not a disease for the streams of money moving through that system. Far from it.

I'm frankly pessimist that we will be able to fix those systems in a humanist way, at least not in my lifetime. If we were any good at it, we wouldn't have extreme inequality, nor our educations systems would be in tatters, and we wouldn't cast ballots propping up politicians whose best skill is ragebait.

However, if fixing the system is not an option, access to cheap technology and intelligence could help a lucky few circumvent those systems. And guess what the lucky few at the head of the AI companies will say then... Not necessarily the worst outcome, since most people will find more viable to equip a private biolab in the basement of their countryside manor than fixing the medical system of first world economies.

[^1] For the record, I think that would be better than running on xenophobic slogans.

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bunderbunder a day ago | parent | next [-]

Essence of Decision is a great book that explores this idea. It looks at different models for understanding how organizations make decisions, and arrives at broadly the same conclusion: a model that assumes people are particularly in control is inadequate for explaining real world events.

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RandomLensman a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just wanting to cure cancer doesn't mean it would be accomplished - vote or not.

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bluGill a day ago | parent [-]

I could build a house. With zero experience you can find a job in house building as they will pay you to learn on the job (depending on the economy you might or might not be able to find such a job today, in good years they will hire anyone who isn't disabled - but there are bad years). Many people who have never had a construction job build their own house (only a tiny %, but that is still a lot of people)

I suppose I could work on a cancer cure. However since I don't have a background in biology I would have to pay for several years of school to learn the required skills. Those classes are hard and there is no guarantee I will pass (I have an engineering degree, so my odds of passing should be above average).

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RandomLensman a day ago | parent [-]

Not sure how easy it is to create a connection to the main power grid without the required credentials.

	▲	bluGill an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Too late to edit, but I remembered overnight. The rule everyplace where I've been is the meter box and all the wires coming out of the box are owned by the customer. The meter and all the wires leading into the meter are the utilities. Creating the connection is easy in the best case: you hook up the wires from the meter box to what ever on your end, then call the utility to do their end. That is the best case. Every place I've ever lived requires an inspection in between. A few places the law won't allow me to do any of this work because I don't have credentials (even though I've done it all in other places and passed inspection - I'm not even allowed to try)
	▲	bluGill a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Depends. In rural areas the only part you can't do the power company will in five minutes. In other places only a licensed electrician is allowed to touch wires and do you can do much less

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gchamonlive a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Two possible assumptions here are that systems are actually in control and that there isn't anyone looking, while we saw that if things get too heated the US govt can sweep in and shut things down. The reasons for it might be debatable -- I'm more inclined to believe that that actually played nicely into the hype train launched by Anthropic around Mythos -- but there is always a bigger dog watching.

The other assumption is that these systems are failing by accident when in fact a stronger argument can be made that they are like this by design.

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notpachet a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> the guy

> he

Your gender biases are showing!