You could (will be) replaced by a robot coder

[xorcist at sigaint.org]

>
> My opinion of people like Musk and the rest of the technocrats is they
> ARE Darwin's finest example ... of "Marauders and Pillagers".
>
> Any service to society is coincidental and unintentional and solely
> related to 'wealth accumulation'. Philanthropics too... It's for the
> writedown. Not because they really care.
>
> Rr

I certainly won't argue with that. I would point out, however, that these
sorts of ulterior motives are essentially always present in any group
purportedly trying to "help humanity." Your observations about mega-rich
philanthropists is well-noted.

But for example, among the religious there are those that say "our way is
the only real truth."  These groups then go on to try to convert others,
ostensibly for their own good, but really because "winning souls" becomes
a competitive game. Then you have the religious that say "Oh, we believe
there are many paths to God" .. they are playing a game too, this game
simply being "I'm more tolerant than you are" and this allows them to
believe that they are more loving than their intolerant opposites.

Likewise, amongst the political activist community, one sees the same
holier-than-thou mentality. So-and-so is *REALLY* committed, because they
will live in a squat, or will intentionally get arrested, or whatever.

All of this is an expression of the effects of simple human ego.
Certainly, we can agree that some of these are less problematic than
others, but I think that they all share the same difficulty at scale, and
so we see all types of oppression by oligarchs, theocrats, and political
purges whenever one of these groups gets any real control, or power.

I would say that any system or ideology which contains some type of metric
for measuring one person better than another will always suffer from these
types of problems in some way or another. Which is a very thorny problem,
it seems, because it is very natural to look at a rapist and say "Yes,
well OBVIOUSLY, I - who would never rape - am BETTER than this bastard."

My personal solution, which I will admit I often fail at, is to try to see
such people not as lessers that I am superior too, but rather as sick
people whom I am healthier than. This helps in the way of compassion, but
may not - in the end, really even solve the problem. As one can see the
egoist perspective at work in the "healthy living" fad popular these days
already.