Very curious what this spooky scary AGI will run on (*inevitably* so, even) if the internet is permanently down and huge chunks of the world's circuits are fried
Anticipating your attempt to take it down by EMP, the great-and-powerful-AI deployed super intelligent anti-EMP mind-over-matter to stop you in your tracks.
But 99% of what makes up the resulting "internet" is not designed like that, and in fact most of it is built and managed by people looking to cut corners.
Various towns in my tiny country lose internet access every day for far more mundane reasons than a nuclear apocalypse and i doubt it's any different elsewhere, whether the underlying network is sturdy is really immaterial when there are so many other weak links
[A message from the future](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D92FmYqXYAIiMic?format=jpg&name=small)
And [the followup](https://twitter.com/i/status/1143217641101897728)
([source](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093777/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1))
going to need [a AGI alignment grid thing.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Foqvh4OAhacdzr6G0RramRTMNZIn4WYzOTFsj7hwDc6k.png%3Fwidth%3D960%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Ddd4460e6594bbb9100ae4bfc8c5efab543311aa4&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=feceb6d6b4fb08029144bc9e41e205f9d127b3bae4613e3d3d19f8fe5b903f22&ipo=images) (linked to one for tanks).
Have you seen The Crazies?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNnmDFFt\_OE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNnmDFFt_OE)
(not only did this get really relevant, but Carpenters politics show up hard - this is like winter soldier era so note that 'yeah man we were in the army' line).
edit: just realized this was Romero. derp. Still a wonderfully political movie tho!
I’d say most of it is in sneer territory but too banal to excite the
face muscles sneer-wise. The use of ‘black swan’ as a verb, though -
that cinched it for me.
AI cultists shouting for 40 years that the robotgod will be there in
20 years without any selfawareness of what the cultists said before them
is always sneerworthy imho.
I just hope it doesn’t end up like a lot of other doomsday cults do.
Apparently there are some signs of it all turning a bit suicidal (but I
have not looked deeply into that).
In fairness, some of the original optimistic timelines for fusion were the "best case, maximum funding level" ones. They were still too optimistic, but we did also not really fund fusion research at desired/needed levels for decades.
**Edit** https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png
I read about a few very depressed lw posts, and iirc even Yud wrote one of those a while back. Sorry don't have links nearby atm.
e: [right for example](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EvKa7EakoXreCkhC6/a-way-to-be-okay) See the author worrying about the Rationalists having an existential dread problem. (which considering the whole attraction behind a lot of LW Rationalism is a fear of death isn't that strange)
E2: [Yud casually dropping a 'if we are still alive in 2-4 years'](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/wz01bx/four_years_to_live/) like he doesn't have a large influence on his followers.
Nah not that heavy yet, but it could end up badly. Esp when the Rationalist agi fear gets more and more ignored while the false promise of the gpts gets more and more media hype after crypto hype starts being last years shit.
[You ask, we provide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Predictions) (sadly the written predictions of his previous books are not listed on wikipedia)
E: [And of course from Big Yud himself](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/zs2t04/yudkowsky_originally_predicted_that_the/)
Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 in *The Age of Spiritual Machines* included the following:
* “Unused computes on the Internet are harvested, creating … human brain hardware capacity.”
* “The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments…with full visual realism.”
* “Interactive brain-generated music … is another popular genre.”
* “the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
* “Diagnosis almost always involves collaboration between a human physician and a … expert system.”
* “Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle.”
* “Despite occasional corrections, the ten years leading up to 2009 have seen continuous economic expansion”
* “Cables are disappearing.”
* “grammar checkers are now actually useful”
* “Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel.”
* “The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) software”
* “Autonomous nanoengineered machines … have been demonstrated and include their own computational controls.”
And for 2019, the list includes:
* "A $1,000 computing device (in 1999 dollars) is now approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain."
* "Three‐dimensional virtual reality displays, embedded in glasses and contact lenses, as well as auditory ʺlenses,ʺ are used routinely as primary interfaces for communication with other persons, computers, the Web, and virtual reality."
* "Three‐dimensional nanotube lattices are now a prevalent form of computing circuitry."
* "Most interaction with computing is through gestures and two‐way
natural‐language spoken communication."
* "High‐resolution, three‐dimensional visual and auditory virtual
reality and realistic all‐encompassing tactile environments enable people to do virtually anything with anybody, regardless of physical proximity."
* "ʺPhoneʺ calls routinely include high‐resolution three‐dimensional images projected through the direct‐eye
displays and auditory lenses. Three‐dimensional holography displays have also emerged. In either case, users feel as
if they are physically near the other person. The resolution equals or exceeds optimal human visual acuity. Thus a
person can be fooled as to whether or not another person is physically present or is being projected through electronic
communication."
* "Paper books or documents are rarely used and most learning is
conducted through intelligent, simulated software‐based teachers."
* "Automated driving systems are now installed in most roads."
The first time I ever read about Ray Kurzweil was in an article right around that time, and what stood out to me was the article’s mention—mostly in passing—that he kept a box of his deceased father’s possessions, and that a related prediction of his was that AI would be so powerful that it could recreate dead people in their entirety using details of their lives. Since then, I’ve seen that same detail mentioned frequently in writings about, but always as just some interesting side detail, not anything crucial.
I’m unsure why no one else seems to reach the conclusion that Kurzweil is a man whose beliefs are largely driven by grief over the death of his father and a desire to resurrect him somehow, rather than dispassionate scientific investigation and reasoning.
I vaguely remember a documentary about Kurzweil in which he described an insane regimen of vitamins and supplements intended to get him to live to the point at which age-reversing treatments are invented, while also mentioning that he was getting close to the age at which his dad died.
And quite fun, people claim 'he got 90% of his predictions right'
Yeah if you massage language and ignore the spirit of things we do indeed all have 'computers in our jewelry', sure lets count earplugs and phones as jewelry now, see! He Was Right!
It is the bland predictions which are mostly right, but the technofuturist ones which are wrong. (predicting in 1999 there would be less cables and better grammar checkers in the future is not an impressive thing).
And thanks
Wait, are we counting less cables as correct? I'm pretty sure that is wrong, unless he includes some huge divisor, like "per seat" or "per device" or something.
I read it as Predicting in 1999 that there would be more wifi, so if we take that, and more bluetooth shit (which imho you shouldn't use as it is horribly insecure, and the whole 'only usable inside a few meters' thing is a lie. I have connected to televisions while waiting on highways. Sorry for the paranoid ranty sidenote). So yeah, I'm counting it as correct. I have still wired my pc and im not using wifi for that. [My utp cable](http://www.quickmeme.com/img/c9/c966bf2af463853292cee44fa9293aa994f7486bd1f6491a282e129e2378206c.jpg)
And of course he will not include a huge divisor, the idea behind these kinds of predictions is to seem like a superpredictor, not going 'well yeah, sure there are less cables now re wifi etc. But I had actually imagined it would go via a different method so my prediction is wrong'.
> “the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
The 90s really were a heady time for certain Americans, huh.
Mostly, the reason I wouldn’t see this as really fitting the sub (OP)
is because it’s low-engagement content from half a year ago. It’s just
not as interesting when it’s easily dismissed as a random person with no
level of real impact; it feels like taking a recording of someone
preaching on the street and trying to have a serious discussion over it.
I don’t know them, maybe they’re just unwell. The typical sneering
targets, whatever we think of them, have large audiences, at least the
pretense of expertise, and some history or sway in a community. It’s not
the same picking up a stray comment from someone who could just be a
high schooler regurgitating phrases and laughing at them.
This is called a “Fermi estimate” isn’t it? I’ve noticed a lot of
these so called rationalistd relie on it. It sounds like a completely bs
methodology for assessing something’s likelihood. Is there a “right” way
to use this?
I don't think this is precise enough to be a Fermi estimate. Tthe technique there is to break whatever you're trying to estimate into relatively simple ratios (how many ping-pong balls per cubic foot, etc.) and multiply them. Usually this gets you within an order of magnitude. The famous one is asking for how many ping-pong balls fit in a Boeing 737 cabin (or something like that) which was probably a pretty good interview question for software engineers until word got out and everyone started doing it.
I don't see enough numbers in the linked tweet for that to make sense. Also, Fermi estimates usually require the parts to be simple and familiar to work: trying to multiply a 10^(-100) chance of an AI torturing everyone for eternity by the -10^(100000) utils it will create is neither.
I think the most common example of Fermi estimation I've seen is the "how many piano tuners are there in NYC" one. As you say it involves breaking the complicated problem into smaller more manageable ones that you can make a more reasonable guess at. More important from a methodology perspective is that when you have some kind of consistent error you can work backwards from a real answer and see where it came from. The reason for the surprising accuracy is that when you're making reasonable estimates based on actual things in the world (where i.e. numbers like 10^-100 are reduced to 0) it's likely that error in one area gets cancelled by error in the other. So if you overestimate how many pianos there are but underestimate how long it takes to tune each one then x*y still works out to roughly the right answer. But if there are areas where you're systemically wrong that can also be interesting and significant.
“Even nuclear armageddon won’t be able to save us from the imminent AGI apocalypse” seems pretty sneerable to me, yes.
I’d say most of it is in sneer territory but too banal to excite the face muscles sneer-wise. The use of ‘black swan’ as a verb, though - that cinched it for me.
AI cultists shouting for 40 years that the robotgod will be there in 20 years without any selfawareness of what the cultists said before them is always sneerworthy imho.
I just hope it doesn’t end up like a lot of other doomsday cults do. Apparently there are some signs of it all turning a bit suicidal (but I have not looked deeply into that).
I want to see this same thing except with what people said 10 years ago.
Mostly, the reason I wouldn’t see this as really fitting the sub (OP) is because it’s low-engagement content from half a year ago. It’s just not as interesting when it’s easily dismissed as a random person with no level of real impact; it feels like taking a recording of someone preaching on the street and trying to have a serious discussion over it. I don’t know them, maybe they’re just unwell. The typical sneering targets, whatever we think of them, have large audiences, at least the pretense of expertise, and some history or sway in a community. It’s not the same picking up a stray comment from someone who could just be a high schooler regurgitating phrases and laughing at them.
This is called a “Fermi estimate” isn’t it? I’ve noticed a lot of these so called rationalistd relie on it. It sounds like a completely bs methodology for assessing something’s likelihood. Is there a “right” way to use this?