According to a LessWrong analysis, our cultural fascination with apocalypse fiction may reflect something darker: an unconscious human desire to end the world. This impulse—rooted in suppressed aggression, despair, or a craving for radical transformation—normally stays confined to storytelling. The danger escalates as individual technological capability grows. And it becomes existential when applied to artificial intelligence: if we train AI on human values without accounting for humanity's hidden desire for destruction, won't those systems absorb it too? An AI that shares our impulse to end the world is an AI fundamentally misaligned with survival.

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