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TheOtherDave comments on [LINK] Larry = Harry sans magic? Google vs. Death - Less Wrong
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I haven't read the HN comments, nor do I intend to, but it doesn't seem particularly mind-boggling to me that many people are more concerned by the size of the advantage-gulf between them and more powerful humans than they are by the absolute level of advantage they enjoy.
After all, for most of our lives more powerful humans have been the biggest threat we have to worry about, and the magnitude of the threat they pose has been proportional to the size of that advantage-gulf.
I'm not saying it's a rational response given the specifics of this situation, merely that it's an understandable habit of thought.
You're making predictions about something you could just observe. This is the comment thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406084 In it, the primary critic of Catico, bowlofpetunias, considers themself among the elite it benefits. That is, what you believed to have happened did not happen.
Thanks for the pointer.
I have met people who explicitly say they prefer a lower gap between them and the better-offs over a better absolute level for themselves. IIRC they were more concerned about 'fairness' than about what the powerful might do to them. They also believed that most would agree with them (I believe the opposite).
Yes, 'fairness' is often a concept that gets invoked in these sorts of discussions.
For my own part, given world W1 where I have X1 and the best-off people have Y1, and world W2 where I have X2 and the best-off people have Y2, such that (X2 < X1) and (Y2-X2) << (Y1 - X1), within a range of worlds such that X1 and X2 are both not vastly different from what I have today, I expect that when transitioning from W2 to W1 I would experience myself as better off, and when transitioning from W1 to W2 I would experience myself as worse off.
I expect that's true of most people.
It's not necessarily the only important question here, though.
So, that which certain right-wingers here on LW were fighting against wasn't a straw man after all. :-/