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Elon Musk Melts Down Over Perfectly Normal Questions in Wild New Interview (gizmodo.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] 46 points 3 months ago (10 children)

He suggested that everyone read Iain Banks for a vision of the future, and Beddoes pointed out that Banks was a socialist. Musk insisted he wasn’t.

Criticizing a thing as socialism when it's actually capitalism. Describing a socialist utopia and insisting it's not socialism. This isn't a thing unique to Musk. Why are people like this?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    socialist utopia

    As someone who has read all the books in Culture series I would (and will if provoked) argue that, as most books about utopias, it's actually describing a dystopia. No idea if it's socialist or not, but in the society Banks is describing people are reduced to the role of pets, not equal partners of AI.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Not really, human agents are still highly valued, hence the combo of human+drone team. If what you said was correct then they're have just used avatars for everything. Djan Seriy Anaplian for example was a fucking badass.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yes really.

    1. Straight out in the first book Culture is shown as the bad guy, civilization that is not alive and has to be destroyed. It wins eventually but the point stands: Culture kind of like the Borg, absorbing humanoid species and growing without limits.

    2. No other civilization relies on AI as much. In Hydrogen Sonata you have good description of other civilization that uses digital constructs that are still based on humans, not pure AI. There's clear distinction between AI controlled Culture and other civilizations. Why other civilizations don't use AI as much? Because they don't want be controlled by it.

    3. It's clear AI likes to use people so it manipulates them to do what it wants. Player of Games is clear example of that. In State of the Art AI straight out assassinates a guy who doesn't want to follow its orders.

    4. In State of the Art Culture is also shows as sterile and boring. Everyone behaves because they don't have a choice, their actions are meaningless, they don't really control or anything or advance the civilization.

    5. People have more of a sentimental value for AI. It does recognize human as intelligent the same way we recognize that animals are alive. People are sure taken care of but everything is run by AI. People are just pets.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Some interesting points! Not sure why you're being downvoted for having an opinion, even if it's not the same as some others, but I appreciate you taking the time to discuss the series. Such a shame he didn't get to write more.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    The Culture is described as a libertarian utopia (EDIT: libertarian socialist? I think I misremember. At least socialism as a word doesn't appear), except that the habitat minds are benevolent and you have practically socialism because nothing costs anything. Not even land really because they can build as many orbitals as they want. They have zero laws. You can also see it as an anarchist utopia. You have no market and no capitalism. Basically once you have AGI and full abundance, economic systems like capitalism/socialism don't mean anything any more.

    Only ethics matter then, which Musk is incapable of because he's a malignant narcissist. And he has been actively trying to create a malignant (anti-woke) AI.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    The Culture is some sort of quasi-anarchic non-capitalist thing, though it's hard to say for sure. It certainly is not capitalist, though, as the role of profitable production is not to increase the capital of those who already have it. Nothing is really socialized, though, and private property does seem to exist, so I don't know that I would consider the Culture socialist or even communist. Maybe some sort of anarchic post-communist utopia.

    In any case, Musk is a fucking idiot. Just a genuinely foolish person. And, like, yeah, Banks himself was a socialist.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Right it would be called revisionist. The idea that socialism is one rigid set of prescriptive ideals is a misconception, at least to most political scientists. There are of course Orthodox Marxists, but nobody really takes them seriously outside of their little internet fiefdoms. For most other political philosophers, socialism is a range of beliefs and practices loosely tied together by the desire for, or belief in a post capitalist world. How you get there and what it exactly looks like is the topic of much debate, to the point where it usually feels counterproductive to even get tied up in labels. This "proper noun" philosophy is a good way to get oriented out of the gate, but the real work comes in how those labels get reduced to first principles more than the labels themselves.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago*

    A simplified and opinionated explanation:

    During the red scare, the boomers were programmed to be scared of anything remotely communist. The middle class was allowed to exist as 'muricas bling mostly to distract from the societal improvements theorized by socialist philosophers. In the 50s in America, they gave us just enough for people to shut up and try to be happy for 50 years while the underlying systems were being broken even worse than before. Some people are particularly susceptible to this and would trade their freedom for a tide pod, a stick of gum and a pocket constitution while rabidly denouncing socialists (even those who advocate for the benefit and fair treatment of non-socialists and socialists alike). Socialism is painted with the brush of it's biggest failures; capitalism is only painted from the angles that make it look good and hide it's collateral fallout.

    Tl:Dr 50+ years of social conditioning and societal sculpting done to ensure scary communists from the 1940s and 50s don't call you comrade.

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