[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

[John Clark]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:


*>>..I can tell you exactly how to get the money to pay for UBI, borrow it…*


>
>
> *> No need, we just use the word just.  Example: Just pay for it.*
>

*I can't comment on that because I don't have enough information, it's the
same reason I couldn't comment on Nancy Reagan's proposed solution to the
illegal drug problem, "just don't do drugs". *


*>  the risk that the Singularity doesn’t actually happen and fails to
> cause the end of the world. *


*With UBI the **Singularity won't end the world and might not end the human
race. Without UBI the world will continue to exist just fine but the human
race will certainly be extinct. At least with UBI we have a chance. And
even without the singularity I can't imagine any way a dollar today won't
be far FAR FAR more valuable than a promise for a dollar in six years.   *

>
> *> Then we must just pay back the funds we just borrowed.*


*That would be an unpleasant scenario, but far less unpleasant then if the
singularity does happen and the vast majority of human beings on this
planet starve to death as a result.  *


*> What if that generation is us, and we realize the world didn’t end and
> now we are left with the bill from the 1990s, *
>

*Then we simply borrow some more. That's the strategy we've used during the
21st-century and during most of the 20th, and it seems to have worked
pretty well. The only time the US has had a balanced budget was four years
during the Clinton administration, and one year during the Linden
Johnson administration. Before that you have to go back to the late 1920s
just before the great depression, but that's not a very good advertisement
for having a balanced budget. *

*John K Clark*
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