I Think Rutger Bregman and the School for Moral Ambition Are Full of Shit

I'm glad to hear someone else calling out Bregman.

His work is very flimsy, and I have been a hater for close to 10 years [1].

I think Bregman skirts close to the "Effective Altruism" movement and his work has similar problems of choosing flashy, exciting, elitist projects over boring, uncomfortable, policy changes.

His enamourment with "AI!!!" (exclamations mandatory) is par for the course. Basically a fantasy that if AI leads to enough layoffs, the rest of society will accept a transition to UBI (against their own interests)

Bregman has been going on about UBI for decades and I've never seen him do the actual maths. In Utopia for Realists he argued the budget deficit can be completely made up by the cost savings of having fewer benefit systems. It's fantasy

[1] https://www.breck-mckye.com/review-utopia-for-realists-rutge...

The basic message is sound. Bregman himself seems a bit more confused than the (moral) clarity he attempts to project. This is fine.

Interesting that the guy who rightly criticizes billionaires for not paying their fair share of taxes thinks those same billionaires are going to use AI for maximizing the common good. Already there is much evidence that they are not.

> AI will create an utopia where people can actually work less hours

well if you're unemployed, how many hours are you working

at the bottom of the page is a read out from the solar pv system that powers the blogs server, which is working fine under a significant load, but I have to wonder if the HN hug of death might prove real if this were to stay on.the first page for long

> He is dismissing the work of people like Ed Zitron who has unearthed a ton of evidence that AI doesn't deliver (or not nearly as much as is widely claimed) and there's a bubble that may collapse at some point

This is a complaint from the article. I read the article in good faith but I think it’s whiny and complainy and comes from some arrogance.

This authors take on AI is childish and also a bit frightening because normal educated seeming people can be this dismissive about AI.

When I look at society, I always think that the term 'moral' is used when you have nothing particularly superior to the other person.

After reading the entire article, I agree with the criticisms about Bill Gates funding, receiving large sums of money from Trump supporters, and the organization becoming increasingly elitist.

However, linking AI skepticism with climate change denial is a false equivalence. I'm positive about AI, but I'm also positive about the reality of the climate crisis. Anyway, the article went off track in the middle, but here's my take:

At the core of these social gatherings and moral consciousness, it usually becomes about elitism and networking for elite students who lack connections. I tend to agree with the author's concerns.

Seeing this makes me think about how criticism of the mainstream generally goes as follows:

People usually invoke 'morality' and, in order to raise their own name recognition and reputation, they look for counter-arguments based on morality—safe points of criticism. Issues like 'taxing billionaires' sound very attractive and revolutionary when declaimed at places like Davos, but in reality, they are extremely safe agendas that don't harm the speaker at all. Truly dangerous criticism is strongest when it comes from within one's own world. Bregman's logic is the typical kind that avoids extreme, raw truths, says 'the macro system is the problem,' and lands safely. Bregman simply finds refined answers that the public will like, without threatening his own privileges (fame, network).

Morality is pure. And it is good. But it is also the most convenient way to secure one's own superiority in social competition.

'I have produced something great' can be proven because it's visible right away, but saying 'I am more righteous' is difficult to prove—it cannot be proven.

I'm not saying that moral consciousness is the problem. It's just that morality often becomes the language of status competition.

But is that bad? It's not bad. Everyone desires fame, everyone is driven by greed. The problem is just that her fault is that her hypocrisy was exposed too quickly.

It is the incompetence that got caught before symbolic capital could be converted into real power—that is what makes the author angry.

Bill Gates' money? You can take it. Getting caught with crypto billionaires and the elite reproduction system? That can happen. The real problem is getting caught while selling public lectures and books. If you're going to deceive, you need to be thorough about it.

The author has a problem with Rutger Bregman thinking there exists "talented" people. Lol you can't make this stuff up

>In interviews I've noticed that Bregman talks a lot about 'talented' people. For him, talented people are highly educated people. To get a fellowship with SMA, there are all kinds of criteria a candidate needs to hit and one of them is academic credentials, work experience and so on.

How ridiculous is it to take an issue with this? The author believes in a folk Labour Theory of Value where everyone is stateless and born equal. I have noticed that these particular kind of individuals think that EVERY ONE is the same and one can't notice differences. Except, I'm sure they think they personally are much smarter yet they won't admit it.

The whole article is whiny and nonsensical and has complaints that a grown person shouldn't have. One of the author's complaints is: the author takes AI seriously. What.

> Bregman also believes that stopping AI or 'shutting it down' doesn't make sense. Because if we shut AI down in our countries, other countries or regimes will build AI and get an advantage over us (he shows China as an example). The age old "if we don't, somebody else will", that has excused bad behaviour for all of eternity

Like... this is at least consistent? He believes that AI is powerful and that you have adversaries you can't really coordinate with. So what else should one do? I think the author is sitting in some idealistic place where real hard decisions can't be made and the rest of us are idiots.