carado.moe

tammy's blog about
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an argument against misanthropy

in the face of imminent AI doom, some people go "humanity is reaping its fuckup", "humanity deserves to die of AI actually", "AI is better than humanity so it's good for it to kill everyone", etc.

i don't expect that the people emitting those kinds of statements are particularly open to having their minds changed, but i'll emit an opposing argument anyways, because i feel like it.

let's consider a woman called aisha.

aisha is a teacher somewhere in india. she's quite into painting. her last relationship ended painfully, but she's trying really hard to make things work with her new partner, and things are going well.

aisha isn't particularly aware of imminent AI doom. she certainly wouldn't be happy about it if only she knew how bad things really are.

in fact, the immense majority of humans are similar to aisha, in that they aren't responsible for, or related to, imminent AI doom. they're kind of just trying to build an okay life for themselves and people around them.

personally, i have a profound love for humanity-as-a-thing. i shan't make a calculation about whether {doing many millenia of art and philosophy and human connection and culture and science} was worth {doing many millenia of slavery and genocide and animal farming everywhere}, but i expect that in the long run, should we survive, we'll end up at a massively-worth-it balance.

but if you don't, you don't have to save everyone for the sake of humanity-as-a-thing. you can merely do it for the sake of each of the billions of people who are just like aisha.

do it for her.