[FRIAM] mind candy

[glen]

The Greek shipwreck was a horrific tragedy. Yet it didn’t get the attention of the Titanic story
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/22/the-greek-shipwreck-was-a-horrific-tragedy-yet-it-didnt-get-the-attention-of-the-titanic-story

By analogy with eye candy, where the Eloi get all the attention and the Morlocks spin the world, it's difficult to believe that any of us (well, most of us) actually value human life. When dorks like Yudkowsky fret over AI as an existential threat (and the only such intelligences we can see are birthed by immense wealth), are they fretting over, say, the 100 children below deck in the migrant ship? Is that what they're fretting over? I don't think so. It reminds me of the idea of elite overproduction <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction>. Yudkowsky is an elite, but of a different stripe than, say, Samuel Alito (rubbing shoulders with billionaires). When an elite like Musk calls for a "pause" and an elite like Microsoft barrels on like a bull in a china shop ... and most of what we see in The Media (stupid English) is those fighting elephants, where do the 100 children rank? Are we merely biomass, providing the scaffolding to a higher order life form, much like some of us think fungus and insects are scaffolding for us? If so, then who cares about a few dead bodies at the bottom of the ocean at all, whether millionaires or the forgettable poor?

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ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ