• BotsRuinedEverything@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    2 days ago

    We have always feared a robot uprising that would take over the world and subjugate humans, as though robots will replace us as the ultimate alpha predators.

    We’ve already been replaced by our own creation. Money itself is the dominant species on this planet. Capitalism is the metabolic process of the organism. The stock market is its circulatory system. Politicians are its organs. Billionaires are its reproductive system. The individual workers are the mitochondria. This is a planet scale life form that is ready to reproduce itself onto surrounding bodies in space.

    If you want the solution to the Fermi paradox there it is. Once a civilization is infected with economics it’s only a matter of time before it is consumed by its own creation.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      Money is power in a form transferable over time and space.

      Long before capitalism, people considered money to be the root of all evil. Many religions have restrictions on what can be done with money, especially asking for interest.

      • blarghly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Weird coming from a religion that said the root of all evil was also a fruit.

        Restrictions on lending can be explained by the fact that when those rules were made, almost no one knew math much better than counting on their fingers.

        • aow@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          20 hours ago

          The metal traders and other businessmen in ancient Mesopotamia (2000+ years before your fruit) absolutely knew “math better than counting on their fingers”.

          Usury restrictions may have had a lot to do with the social cost of loans among tight knit groups (such as, don’t loan money to your cousin, it’ll cause problems) or because they were rejecting “normal” behavior from a society they wanted to distance themselves from.

          Also, the fruit was an allegory, like most ancient mythical stories. Even if you reject mythology outright, try not to belittle the moral and traditional bases for religions that billions of people on Earth follow. You aren’t better than them for it.

    • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      We just need to speedrun capitalism. People had it worse, tbh. Now we need to make our species survive the mass extinction. Or die trying. Here we gooooo

        • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          I’m not talking about accelerationism in any way. Accelerationism would be like capitalism speedrun 100%, I’m talking more about any%