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Comment on the agent's argument in the matrix

Smith’s argument conflates humanity and society as being the same thing, because as a machine he has no concept of individuality - to him, humans as a single unit blighted the planet, and therefore are a plague, because he can’t conceive of the idea of free will.

Things can be fucked up on a macro level, with war and selfishness and greed and destruction, while still being comprised on a micro level of essentially good, unique, interesting people who care for each other. Smith doesn’t see this, because in his eyes humans are all the same - just like him. He is arguing against his own existence

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hightime@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

while still being comprised on a micro level of essentially good, unique, interesting people who care for each other.

So as long as you find someone decent you close your eyes to the rest of the bullshit that is happening? I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to be honest.

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cmeu@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This perspective is really interesting to me

I have admit,I tend to agree. I make comments like “individual people are smart, but people at large… they’re idiots” it’s the way I can rationalize how we’re facing a rematch of Biden v Trump in the US the year… And other things that defy reason

But in weighing the positives and the negatives of the totality of our impact - how many good small acts does it take to overcome a Khmer Rouge? What about when those loving families are torn apart by religion, patriotism, morality etc and the angels fight? Conflict, like death and taxes, seems undeniable - maturity, much less so

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- RegalPotoo@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  how many good small acts does it take to overcome a Khmer Rouge?
  
  Ok, take the counter argument then - if I am an average person in, say, Russia right now, how much personal risk am I morally obliged to take in order to fight against the Russian state and the war in Ukraine? Stacking up the abstract evil being done elsewhere against the very concrete reality of my own mortality, if the angels are fighting and nothing I can do can have any real impact, then what good is it me getting in the middle of it?
  
  I’ve kinda stretched this beyond the absurd, and tbh I do think that individuals have some responsibility to not stand idly by and watch evil happen.
  
  To actually address your original question, I don’t think Smith’s characterisation of humans as a virus is terribly apt - viruses are mindless, selfish and greedy; they arrive in an area and consume and consume until there is nothing left, even if it kills them. Humans behave like this some times, but they are also capable of peace and cooperation and can learn - the fact that you have access to the internet using equipment and systems that took the collective efforts of hundreds of millions of people working across centuries, the fact that you didn’t die of smallpox or TB as a child, and the fact that on average you as less likely to die violently than you ever have been in history proves this.
  
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