alt.hn

5/19/2026 at 5:22:45 PM

AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome: A Communications Intervention

 https://www.personfamiliar.com/p/ai-humanity-and-dr-manhattan-syndrome

by stalfosknight

5/19/2026 at 10:35:57 PM

> It means your CEO sitting across from a skeptical reporter and engaging with specific concerns about job displacement, creative rights, privacy—on those terms, not by retreating to the cosmos.

I suspect a big factor here is that there are multiple audiences. Many of the things a CEO might say to acknowledge consumers' concerns (let alone solve them) are also things that the investors might not appreciate hearing, and that endangers the principle of Line Goes Up.

Similarly, what employees of AI-adopting companies want to hear might not be what their managers want. One would rather their job become easier or more productive, and the other would rather cut positions or have a better bargaining position when discussing pay.

> Humanity, the concept, is an extraordinarily comfortable thing to care about. It’s theoretical. It’s malleable. [...] People, on the other hand, are a nightmare.

This reminds me of a short 2018 post that went viral, regarding how "the unborn" are an easy group of people to advocate for as long as they stay that way. [0]

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[0] Primary source seems to either require login or has link-rot, so a secondary would be: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10357009-the-unborn-are-a-c...

by Terr_

5/19/2026 at 10:04:22 PM

Pretty much all the worst crimes in history have come from idealists trying to create a utopia. The "true believers" are basically always wrong, and always make a mess for the pragmatists and worldly people to actually clean up.

by overgard

5/20/2026 at 4:30:42 AM

Idealists created everything worth anything.

by idiotsecant

5/19/2026 at 10:16:08 PM

> A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids.

G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

by leoc

5/19/2026 at 10:16:41 PM

It would seem to me that becoming ultra wealthy necessarily disconnects you from ordinary people. You have security concerns for yourself and family, you don’t want to be constantly peppered by requests for financial help.

Plus your resources allow consumption of things otherwise out of your reach: women, exotic travel, yachts, mixing with other elites. Also the darker things (Epstein elites).

So after a while you not only won’t mix with the hoi polloi, you literally can’t because you share nothing with them.

The trappings of wealth start to include political influence, which seems to encourage the idea that being wealthy makes you some kind of expert because important people listen to you and will do what you want with an appropriate consideration or contribution.

There is an argument in here for limiting wealth to avoid this descent into disconnected sociopathy.

by smackeyacky

5/20/2026 at 6:58:31 AM

absolutely right

by satisfice

5/20/2026 at 1:27:17 PM

So what about those with political influence or high placed in bureaucracy who are even more power and have even less in common? Worse yet, the positions select for those who are not only manipulators but have a malleable sense of reality. The infamous Karl Rove attributed quote about being an empire and making their own reality.

If we are going to avoid promoting sociopathy the first thing to do is not to make the sollipistic manipulators even more powerful.

by Nasrudith

5/20/2026 at 9:12:26 PM

Rove and his ilk were enabled by the ultra wealthy. Otherwise he’d be a divorce lawyer.

by smackeyacky

5/20/2026 at 6:09:31 AM

You are describing how leaders from the dawn of Homo sapiens need to detach themselves to think statistically. Yes it is like that always and inevitably. Nothing new with AI

by arisAlexis

5/19/2026 at 10:17:49 PM

(Post is 56% AI in Pangram.)

by gwern

5/19/2026 at 11:22:10 PM

This has very quickly become an uninteresting, and often even unconvincing critique. Especially on this site where it is levelled at essentially every blog post submitted.

Maybe true, maybe not. If it actually says something, which this one does, I just don't care. And I'm hardly an AI cheerleader

by gipp

5/20/2026 at 8:45:45 PM

Strange, I would have thought, if you had read even the title of OP, why it'd obviously be relevant to point this out.

by gwern

5/20/2026 at 8:16:46 AM

It’s one of those “you criticise society and yet you participate in society… curious” critiques. Also, I saw some AI detector flagging Bible passages as 97% AI generated. It doesn’t inspire confidence.

by naruhodo

5/19/2026 at 11:16:35 PM

Suspected so at midway reading.

Sad, because I think he has an interesting point but he started going too long on it and that's where I started to question the writing

by Gooblebrai

5/20/2026 at 9:38:35 PM

It did feel like it had that weird inhuman tone about it.

by Alive-in-2025