Working with pure bytes is one option that's being researched. That way you're not really constrained by anything at all. Sound, images, text, video, etc. Anything goes in, anything comes out. It's hard to say if it's feasible with current compute yet without tokenizers to reduce dimensionality.
But then he'd have no money to give away. I don't see how it's this difficult to understand. Either you have Mr Beast as we do now - curing blindness and deafness, giving people houses and cars, raising millions for tangible, proven reforestation and sea cleanup efforts - or we don't have Mr Beast at all.
I also find his videos uncomfortable to watch for many of the same reasons stated here, but I don't find them harmful, and I can appreciate how he's helped these people.
But these videos only get watched exactly _because_ they are demeaning. So the problem is the nature of the videos itself and this alone disqualifies any good this guy supposedly does.
> Are "poors" too stupid to make decisions for themselves? Everyone in that video received thousands of dollars. I'm nowhere near poor, but if I was given an opportunity, I'd probably participate.
No one's saying they're stupid for participating. If I was offered thousands of dollars for peeing in my pants in public for a video, I'd very probably take the offer and no one would think I was stupid for it; it would still be a demeaning and exploitative offer to make.
Why do you get to be the arbiter of what's demeaning? Are "poors" too stupid to determine their own limits? Playing silly games is hardly comparable to peeing your pants in public.
It's about power imbalance. Using your power (in this case, wealth) to encourage other people to do actions they otherwise would not want to.
It's also not a topic that is easy to define as "right" or "wrong". Some game shows will be more empowering or enjoyable than others. Some contestants on the same show might find the experience more emotionally rewarding than other contestants. There's a very subjective, fuzzy, grey area here rather than a clear line in the sand defining what is morally good or bad.
From the odd Mr Beast video I've watched, it's felt like the driving factor was that the contestant didn't want to be there if it wasn't for the money. And that Mr Beast and his friends go out of their way to make the contestant want to leave. Mr Beast has all the power and makes his contestants perform like dancing monkeys to earn their prize. Now as long as the contestants do still find the overall experience more rewarding than demeaning (and that's for them to decide), then I'm fine with it being made as "entertainment". But like many of the others, I personally don't find it entertaining to watch -- I find it uneasy to watch. And that's fine too, people don't have to enjoy the same things. But it's hard not to claim that there is a massive imbalance of power in his videos. In fact that seems to be the point of his videos.
The earlier comparison with 80s cyberpunk seems quite apt. If you take away the fancy post production editing, there is something rather dystopian about the concept of his videos. Sure the stakes are significantly lower than, for example, Running Man, but the power imbalance isn't that dissimilar.
> It's about power imbalance. Using your power (in this case, wealth) to encourage other people to do actions they otherwise would not want to.
Like working at a sprocket factory? I think that somewhat fairly fits here. You could be describing how most of the world looks at their work. My point is that there might be deeper to look for the more "honest" objection.
There are laws (in Europe at least) to protect employees from being exploited due to that power imbalance.
Whereas it's not so clear cut, in my opinion at least, that contestants of Mr Beasts videos aren't being exploited. But as I said, the only people who can honestly answer that are the contestants themselves.
I haven't watched Mr Beast's videos to have an opinion. He popped up on my kid's screen once, we banned him and some associated channels and forgot him. It was clearly garbage content for us in our brief experience and not worth our time to identify why.
Again, no one is claiming that people who participate are stupid for doing so. Why are you insisting on the idea that others see people in financial difficulty as stupid?
Nor did I say I'm the sole arbiter of what's demeaning. We both seem to agree at least that peeing oneself in public is demeaning, but some third person might not see it that way at all.
Sorry. I didn't realize you were a different person. My point is that the only opinion who matters is the contestants. If I were a poor Mr. Beast fan, I would be offended by the original comments denial of my agency.
It's not about being stupid, it's about dependency and power. The offer alone is morally corrupted.
If they'd all get their equal share of money and could compete out of their own volition and quit anytime they'd want then this would be morally ok. But then nobody would watch it. And that there's exactly why this whole thing is morally wrong.
Why do they need to get equal share? This doesn't sound much different than game shows to me. People make money off of other people competing against each other to earn less money than the people organizing it. The difference is we view the contestants on Wheel of Fortune as earning it by playing a few minutes worth of games instead of whatever Mr Beast does. I don't watch his videos, I'm just piecing what it sounds like from the comments. It sounds like it could be a crude version of Survivor, Fear Factor, or Tough as Nails. People do unpleasant things, voluntarily, in the hopes of earning money.
So forcing people to either get a job or be poor is for their own good, then? Just because you don't agree with how people chose to spend their time in a very nerve-wracking situation? This sounds very condescending.
Work and purpose is good & a necessity. I'm suggesting through large cultural observation, many are poor at finding purpose in anything besides work and become destitute and negatively influence themselves.
A large number of retirees find themselves in this bucket as an example - if it happens there, why would it not happen no matter the life stage?
As a fellow pessimistic person, I'd like to share the idea that obstacles are not the end, they just mean one needs to be look harder.
I hope to switch you a bit from problem-finding to problem-solving mode.
You have identified some risks, great!
Now let's qualify and find solutions for theses in order to move forward.
For instance:
- assumptions check: young people adapt quicker than older people, so the retirees may not be representative of the others life stages
- solution proposal alpha1: education could teach people to look for purpose instead of teaching them a job
What are your solutions to the issues you've raised ?
Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown during a pandemic? Don't you think people dying in the hundreds of thousands due to disease has more to do with rise in depression than anything else?
Countless people die every day to all kinds of horrible diseases and most people were not even affected. Guess what there is even a war going on, tuberculosis, cancer and still covid.
No, of course not. I don't understand what you are imagining.
I'm talking about forming a non-profit mutual-benefit corporation and offering memberships which include services. Not forcing anyone to do or adopt anything.
> You don’t see a problem with forcing people to do something they don’t want?
I do see a problem with that. It's called "coercion" and I am against it in almost all of its forms. (I do recognize a pragmatic need for e.g. laws and police and the legal system, but by and large I'm in favor of freedom and self-determination for everyone.)
> This is scary, some people seem to be so gleeful at the idea of AI taking over everything they’re willing to resort to force to make it happen.
Again, I don't understand what you are imagining. I'm not sure how you got "forced adoption" from what I said, but I appreciate any feedback to improve my communications. Cheers!
Bring this back to the real world then, how can this happen? If it's possible then someone who doesn't care about profit would create this already. Therefore not possible without forced adoption.
> Bring this back to the real world then, how can this happen? If it's possible then someone who doesn't care about profit would create this already.
I'm doing it. I'm that "someone who doesn't care about profit". I literally went to start a normal corporation, saw this "non-profit mutual-benefit" corporate form, and realized that it aligned better with what I wanted to build, so I incorporated as that.
The idea is to acquire some land, lay in a kind of ecologically harmonious high-tech neighborhood combined with a 3D printing shop and other facilities (electric, ISP, food forest, etc.) and rent-to-own or something to members. It's a kind of economic time travel to a Star Trek-style techno-utopia (to the extent that such a thing is even possible, given human nature, eh? But that's not my problem. I'm just trying to keep from messing up the environment and/or becoming a peasant, you know?)
Check out https://www.riverbed-ranch.com/ for something like what I'm talking about (this is not my thing, but it's got some similarities.) These folks are basically treating Utah like a fresh alien planet and building a nice modern eco-friendly town out there.
