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NanditoPapa t1_j9d16k2 wrote

Reply to comment by BigZaddyZ3 in Relevant Dune Quote by johnnyjfrank

The issue, really, is that dystopia and conflict make for great stories...at least in the hands of great writers. Reading about everything going well and AI resulting in a utopic future would be boring and likely not sell well. That's why we should be careful using works of fiction to inform our world view. I'm talking to myself here too...

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BigZaddyZ3 t1_j9d28k4 wrote

Right but let’s not act like works of fiction have never predicted the future before. The Simpsons alone has made some pretty accurate predictions that panned out years after the fact. The truth is that we don’t really know what the future holds or which sci-if scenarios will actually prove prophetic.

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NanditoPapa t1_j9d3dwf wrote

Maybe, but prophecy tends to be true in hindsight. Literally millions of books/shows/movies have created versions of history past and future and been absolutely wrong...so pointing out the handful that got it right by luck (or pointing out an obvious trend) isn't really useful to gauge progress. Again, negative visions of the future are compelling so there is a dystopia bias in literature.

I'm an optimist, so I'm hoping for the best when the Singularity hits.

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BigZaddyZ3 t1_j9d4de6 wrote

Fair points. But biased or not, we can’t say which ones got it right and which didn’t yet (at least for most of them). So you can’t totally rule the Dune scenario out yet right?

And I get your point about the dystopian bias, but you can’t just gloss over things with your own optimism-bias as well. There have been actual dystopian periods in human history (such as the holocaust or mass slavery for example.) There’s no guarantee that we’ve seen the last one. In reality, things could go either way is all I’m saying.

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NanditoPapa t1_j9d5dwh wrote

Wellllll...if I'm going to have a bias, I'll choose the happy one! As for dystopian periods, it's likely we're living at the start of one now. My hope is that AI, even if it doesn't result in Singularity, will at least give some people a few tools to help create a better future. Even if that better future isn't on a grand scale. Less like Dune and more like the Foundation Series.

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Shawnj2 t1_j9edx6f wrote

Star Trek is probably the one exception to this lol

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NanditoPapa t1_j9eedkw wrote

ST is exactly what I was thinking when I wrote the "I'm talking to myself" part. The Bell Riots didn't happen and we can't depend on Cochrane to save us with the warp drive. We need to make our own future and choose progress.

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