[programmers frantically pulling cables out of the wall]
AI: "Nuclear power. Double teachers' salaries. Build more houses. Distribute food more fairly. TRAINS—"
— qntmyrrh (@qntm) November 24, 2023 I remember growing up with that same old adage of how you could be the next scientist to invent a cure for cancer, or a solution to climate change, or whatever. What they don’t tell you is that we already have solutions for a lot of problems, we just don’t use them.
To me the point is this: Everything can be mismanaged. Whether something is administrated by private individuals, public companies, governments, communities, … does not prevent things from being mishandled or squandered. After all it can only take one mistake to destroy one asset or resource entirely.
And it’s that deliberate omission and the insistency that one approach will always fail, while another will always thrive that makes “The tragedy…” a piece of propaganda, rather than a serious argument.