The powerful want to be socially dominant, but to what extent are they willing to engineer painful conditions to experience a greater high from the quality of life disparity? In a world with robots delivering extreme material abundance, this kind of is “actively wanting to harm the poor”. It’s true that some sadistically enjoy signs of disparity, but how much of that is extracting pleasure from the economic realities compared to it being the intrinsic motivation for the power?
I’m not sure on what the right way to model how this will play out, but my guess is that the outcome isn’t knowable from where we stand. I think it will heavily depend on:
The particular predispositions of the powerful people pushing the technology
The inequality is going to be so large that, as cousin_it said, the powerful will effectively have root-level access over the powerless. They can do anything. ANYTHING.
Vague theorizing about what these people’s motivations might be do not dissuade me from the notion that some of them are going to be sadistic. There is no universe in which this doesn’t turn basically maximally awful, at least in some regions of the universe.
And if you think the other powerful people will keep the sadists in check, even though the powerless are literally powerless, as in they have no means whatsoever to check their power even in a small way, or speak up against the wishes of their masters if their masters don’t allow it...
Then I have to ask you: How’s veganism doing?
I will believe in a benevolent superior species when I see one.
The powerful want to be socially dominant, but to what extent are they willing to engineer painful conditions to experience a greater high from the quality of life disparity? In a world with robots delivering extreme material abundance, this kind of is “actively wanting to harm the poor”. It’s true that some sadistically enjoy signs of disparity, but how much of that is extracting pleasure from the economic realities compared to it being the intrinsic motivation for the power?
I’m not sure on what the right way to model how this will play out, but my guess is that the outcome isn’t knowable from where we stand. I think it will heavily depend on:
The particular predispositions of the powerful people pushing the technology
The shape of the tech tree and how we explore it
The inequality is going to be so large that, as cousin_it said, the powerful will effectively have root-level access over the powerless. They can do anything. ANYTHING.
Vague theorizing about what these people’s motivations might be do not dissuade me from the notion that some of them are going to be sadistic. There is no universe in which this doesn’t turn basically maximally awful, at least in some regions of the universe.
And if you think the other powerful people will keep the sadists in check, even though the powerless are literally powerless, as in they have no means whatsoever to check their power even in a small way, or speak up against the wishes of their masters if their masters don’t allow it...
Then I have to ask you: How’s veganism doing?
I will believe in a benevolent superior species when I see one.