> And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies.
For an environmentmaxxer, eliminating upper-middle class jobs is extremely effective, as this group consumes the lion's share of resources and bears the greatest impact on carbon emissions. Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.
Not endorsing this world view, just noting that the wealthiest 1% of people in the world (encompasses most US citizens) have an enormously outsized impact on climate.
The "upper middle class" is not strictly defined, but they are pretty clearly the folks below the wealthiest 1%. You can't be in the middle without something on either side.
They certain consume far more than the poor, on account of having resources, but they also consume far less than the wealthiest 1%.
You are almost certainly in the global 1% of the wealthy [1]. Compared to developing nations' residents, we have an order of magnitude greater impact on the environment.
>Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.
People forget this. Oil companies may have dug up the oil, but they did so because we paid them to, so we could use the energy for good and useful things.
Climate change isn't 'evil billionaire companies are ruining the world', it's 'these things we did to improve our lives turn out to have side effects'.
This is backwards. If it weren't for 'eliminating jobs' we'd both be peasant farmers right now. Automation has improved the standard of living and raised wages for everyone, rich and poor alike.
This is just a very casual, even pop cultural characterization of how these two thinkers are commonly seen. I would expect people to have come across more substantive characterizations during an early high school history class, but perhaps I'm overgeneralizing my experience.
In any case, if you're looking for an approachable yet good book, I recommend reading Edward Feser's "Locke"[0]. The focus is obviously on Locke, but you can't really appreciate Locke without also getting into some Hobbes, which the books does.
GP here, I agree with you, my characterizations were both pretty casual to the point of flippancy. I could write y’all a deeper essay on this stuff, but hey, I have LLMs to herd, the 17th century wasn’t my period anyway, and there is already a massive amount of insightful writing about these two thinkers to dive into.
I would say Hobbes in particular is a complex and difficult and frankly eccentric thinker; don’t make the mistake of believing you understand him; he is weird. If you really want to grok the guy in the context of his culture and historical moment, you should just read Quentin Skinner. That’s hardcore intellectual history though; for the basics I’d just go for the clear and brief and informative Oxford Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction.
To continue this discussion and to tie it into the original link, worth looking at this YouTube Video where "Jon Pike interviews Quentin Skinner about Thomas Hobbes' masterpiece Leviathan"...
Machiavelli. Not just the Prince but his other works. He reads remarkably modern. There are many "Machiavelli Readers" that will provide a curated selection.
I was going to say similar. Fair enough that you need ongoing learning and current LLMs don't cut it but not in the next 30 years seems dubious. The hardware seems adequate so what we need is some new software ideas and who knows how long that will take?
If something went wrong / explosion etc, then they wouldn’t want to broadcast it.
Something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing someone else.
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