Regarding:

> The hope of the Elons and Sams of the world is that this will come to fruition well enough that we only have to bother sustaining the "cream of the crop" in the labor force […]. So basically the plan here is to let things go to shit, and when billions of people die as a natural consequence of that, things will keep running as desired.

For one, I don’t think that Sam Altman can be characterized as MAGA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman#Political_engagemen...). Secondly, I’d be interested in sources substantiating a plan that explicitly includes billions of people dying as a necessary factor for the plan to work out.

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Supermancho an hour ago | parent [-]

> I don’t think that Sam Altman can be characterized as MAGA

He is not usually associated with MAGA. The reference was not directed at the heads of the most well know tech companies, despite the quote about "Elons and Sams". This wouldn't make sense in context. It was a reference to the ruling political regime.

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layer8 an hour ago | parent [-]

Why would “the Elons and Sams of the world” refer to a political regime? That doesn’t make sense.

	▲	Supermancho 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> So why are many of the very same sociopaths who are driving us toward climate destruction now suddenly so concerned about the "danger" posed by AI, and seemingly acting in defiance of their fiduciary duties to warn us that we must slow down development and seek regulation? Of course the reasons are entirely self-serving, which you should almost exclusively be able to determine from their history of narratives! They're combining this "threat to the species" narrative with a "we must stay ahead of China for the sake of our babies and all of Western Civilization" (this is incredibly ironic, I'll explain why in a bit) narrative, while milking the shit out of every perceived accomplishment (especially their highly publicized and highly distorted mathematical "victories"); it's important to understand that these narratives are directly linked to each other, in order to understand the reasons behind them. This is the paragraph in the entirety. While previous sections referred to “the Elons and Sams of the world”, this section that was specifically called out: > The connection made to climate change in the latter part of the article is new to me, and would be interesting if true. However, I wish the author would cite supporting evidence for their conclusions. Does not refer to them explicitly (many of the very same), although it could be believed that the second clause of the first sentence refers to Sam, et al. Elon doesn't fit as he has no fiduciary duty nor has he called for slowdown, nor are there "many" in this demographic, which is a sign that this is more stream of thought. I believe the narrative only fits if you consider this to be a tangent about political sociopaths that was muddled by a very human runaway train of thought intruding, on an otherwise straightforward observation.