Well - yes - I should maybe stipulate competitive hierarchy.

Though I would tend to argue that hereditary hierarchy is relatively likely to go the same way, if for different reasons. The problem there isn’t that sociopaths and psychopaths win, since there is no competition forcthem to win… Instead the problem is that they’re bred by drawing from a pool that’s provileged and shielded from harsh realities and eventually entirely lises touch with thecrest of humanity.

If I had my way about it, we’d have Athenian democracy starting this very moment. Even with the very real threat of poor choices being made by random assortments of assholes, idiots and lunatics, it still could not possibly be worse than government by people eager to sell their influence and people eager to buy it.

Yes, it does.

(This is actually one of the topics I tend to beat to death, so…)

It’s not unique to AI or to any other industry or organization.

Broadly, in the competition to climb the ladder of success in a hierarchical system, an individual must continually make choices.

A person with honor, integrity and/or empathy will have some number of possible choices that they’ll eliminate immediately, even if they’re strategically superior, simply because their moral standards won’t allow for them.

People without any of those qualities, which is to say psychopaths and sociopaths, are not similarly constrained. They’re wholly willing and able to choose the most personally beneficial course of action, entirely regardless of the harm it might do others.

So all other things being more or less equal, psychopaths and sociopaths actually have a competitive advantage in hierarchical systems, so for all intents and purposes, hierarchical systems actually reward and effectively select for antisocial personality disorder.

More precisely, it depends on the moral compass of five psychopaths.

I think people pick sides far less often than the internet likes to presume that they do.

And it’s also possible that that’s the exact position already held by the person you’re lecturing.

Not just suppress us - I tend to think more all the time that the oligarchs want to kill us.

I think it’s essentially a form of eugenics. The technofascists are expecting a significant human die-off, and trying to engineer who will die.

First they eliminated DEI, and did it so aggressively that even people who want to hire minorities are afraid to, lest the weaponized Labor Department comes down on them for following DEI policies. Then you start crippling or even eliminating every agency that protects peoples health and well-being, while also discouraging immunization. Then you remove health insurance subsidies, cut back Medicaid and Medicare and make it harder to qualify (which is the real purpose of the work requirement). Meanwhile you inflate housing costs, then criminalize homelessness.

The result is an entire layer of “undesirables” who are in generally poorer health, poorly fed, more prone to disease and less able to get medical care, which means that a whole lot of them die. And a whole lot of the ones who don’t will end up homeless, and eventually in prison, serving as corporate slave labor.

That’s just too many things that fit too neatly together to believe that it’s a coincidence that they all lead to more poor people dying.

Deliberate cause and effect.

Discord benefits the oligarchs.

Of course.

Science can provide benefit for humanity as a whole, and the fascist project cannot allow that - benefit must be reserved for the wealthy and empowered few, so that the rest of humanity is relegated to being nothing more than resources to be exploited.

Awww… Uncle Google just wants what’s best for me! So what’s the harm in getting into his van? What’s the worst that could happen?

Trump might as well have been created from scratch by China for the sole purpose of guaranteeing that they will become the world leader in science and technology, and thus the dominant superpower, while the US fades into obscurity.

He couldn’t have done a better job of it.

Um… no. I’m an anarchist.

And you sound like a helicopter parent who’s balanced on that fine line between hysterical tears and explosive rage because somebody at the playground said something mean about their darling USSR.

It didn’t. And I’m an anarchist.

If you’re going to rely on ad hominems, you should at least try to make them somewhat accurate and relevant.

Stalin was the leader of the world’s first socialist state

Socialist state is a contradiction in terms.

Stalin was CEO of USSR Incorporated.

Funny that this is the exact same “logic” the libs use to try to defend running a pro-zionist, pro-corporate, pro-billionaire slimeball in the last US presidential election - “But Trump was worse!”