China's Plan for World Domination in AI Isn't So Crazy
Of course it&#x27;s crazy. Just like the guy on HN who told me they have to build AGI in the shadows because people just wouldn&#x27;t understand, and with the other corner of their mouth talked about how &quot;we&quot; should go into &quot;oblivion&quot; peacefully once AGI makes us obsolete, is crazy. High-functioning, probably a model citizen who helps the elderly across the street, but still batshit insane on the level where push comes to shove.<p>&gt; <i>The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call &quot;idolatry&quot; is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man&#x27;s own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: &quot;Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear,&quot; etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act.</i><p>-- Erich Fromm, who also said<p>&gt; <i>The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.</i>