And if the so-called democracy —where it truly exists— is a heuristic method for distributing power across such a broad base that the level of corruption per capita remains below a critical threshold, a point at which moral and cultural antibodies can still function?
Who knows.
I cannot fathom going out of my way to create chaos, to be cruel, to make lives miserable for millions of people, and worst of all, call it "progress". I just don't understand how these people think. Maybe I am just too poor, too dumb...
It's the job of the rest of us to restructure the system to prevent this kind of pathological runaway power accumulation. It means new laws, but also a more enlightened culture.
What's left are the folks for whom power and influence is a game. If they were to fuck off to the sunset and live a quiet life which harms nobody, they'd be abandoning the game. And it's become such a part of their identity that they can't live without that anymore.
Ironically, these folks are the best argument for replacing human decision making with machines. Cold, logical, emotionless machines that don't have identities or a need to win the game. Then all the folks whose sole purpose in life is controlling others would either need to find another purpose or off themself.
So the best way forward is to succumb to the tech oligarchs' plan?
I strongly disagree. Machines aren't neutral nor fair. They exist to impose the will of the people operating them. Have you already forgotten what social media algorithms, that "cold, logical, emotionless machines" that you speak so highly of, did to our society?
I would buy a small house near forrest & mountains.
A lot of it stems from EA (effective altruism) - paraphrased very roughly, it could argue that you are being immoral or selfish by not using the million dollars to invest and make a humanity changing discovery (FWIW I don't believe this, I'm explaining how they view things).
If they harm a billion people, but it benefits trillions in some theoretical glorious future, then it's the right thing to do. Of course it's all bullshit and they bake in a ton of assumptions at the core of their arguments that make the math of greed 'feel' okay, or at least palatable.
By the same logic, if harming one billionaire benefits million normal people, will they be okay with it? None of this makes any sense. Who gave them the right to decide all of this anyway?
So peacefully sitting on millions and not billions may be winning strategy even from sociopath's point of view. Those people who wants billions likely have some other mental differences (getting adrenaline rush from power they can't get from other activities, etc)
better way is regulated capitalism. Its just citizens don't stand ground when capitalists compromise regulation, and our regulated capitalism becomes not regulated.
Computers getting more powerful in a Moore's law like way has been going on for decades and if human brains are something like computers of somewhat constant abilities it's inevitable the computers would overtake at some point. It's not really sci fi or an oligarch plan or especially new - I wrote about it for my uni entrance exam 45 years ago and the ideas go back at least to Turing.
Most of the stuff mentioned will inevitably happen, oligarchs or not and we should plan to make the best of it. Some of the things - merge, immortality and super intelligence could be quite cool. I imagine it'll be voluntary and some people will live traditionally, some will embrace the tech.
But it's also different this time because these maniacs come with the power of perverse amounts of money and control over actual technology.
We let them become that big and powerful and I have an inkling we might come to regret it.
Imagine if that been mass culture! Imagine Doubleclick never getting off the ground, so it would have been unable to kill Google and walk around wearing its skin as a costume. Imagine if when all of the tech companies wanted profitability, they had to ask for subscription fees in exchange for providing actual value, rather than merely optimizing for "engagement" (aka time wasted).
We can’t even solve 1 year problems as a nation, so the probability of global human community aligning to stall our breakneck self destruction via AGW or war is zero.
Humans have only dominated the planet for 250,000 years, who says we’re supposed to continue that?
Dinosaurs dominated for millions and they are gone there’s no universal mandate that humans are the final form of intelligence and no reason to believe we are.
Last I checked we’re all extinct within 1Billion years and humans can’t survive mass migration off of earth because there’s nowhere to go.
This is the only option
You are free to delete yourself. Don't impose it on others.