With our boy Yud in the intro ofcourse. Pretty interesting to hear
religious scholars consider this idea seriously that I had only seen
mentioned flippantly here.
I hang around this sub and keep up on Rationalists specifically because I am fascinated by the possibility that we’re witnessing the infancy of another (American Christian) Religious ‘Awakening’. The ease in which the ‘secular’ aspects of the movement can be refit into appealing, marketable evangelical interpretations is astounding. It may be developing/evolving in the most areligious metro area in the nation right now but that’s a proof of concept if anything, sooner or later it’ll truly burst into the zeitgeist
The pipeline from 2012 r/atheism power user to right-wing culture warrior is already so well-worn that they'll be visible in centuries the way Oregon Trail wagon ruts are now. See how people thought Godless Bastard Trump would move the Republican Party away from the religious right but then he doubled down on all the same Reagan-era tropes and so on. But its more recent dovetailing with Musk, Thiel, and their ilk and horseshoeing with the "dirtbag left" and other subcultures like LessWrong/EA that define themselves in reaction to some established culture and then, quelle surprise, become hotbeds for reaction*ary* thought, is fascinating to see in real time as an extension of that.
Makes me wonder how the Pastafarians did, re the whole culture wars.
(A quick look on their subreddit(s) seem they did alright, they didn't seem to have falling into the pipeline and are just carrying on like it is still 2005).
I mean, I think people tend to _be flippant about it_ here, because to be honest it's pretty funny, but IMO there's no doubt AI-apocalypticism has prominent religious characteristics. Lesswrong is pretty clearly some type of cult, so it makes sense.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but when I refer to rationalism as a religion - which I do very often - it might *sound* like I am joking, but I absolutely am not. It just happens to be true both that rationalism is a religion *and* that it can be (and often is) hilarious.
Although, it's often hilarious in the "if I weren't laughing then I'd be despairing" sense. It is very disappointing that people are creating religious beliefs around something that we actually do understand and which is actually very cool.
It's like if you explained to someone how an airplane works and they said "sorry i wasn't paying attention. oh so it's literally magic? great I'll create an alter to it and worship it". Like, holy shit dude, you're missing out on some of life's greatest pleasures here because you're being too fucking thick-headed and you'd rather just make stuff up. It's like the intellectual equivalent of drug abuse.
I think the link between AI apocalypitism and intellectual jobs is
weaker than the video makes out… up until the most recent wave of AI I
think the prediction was that AI would replace physical jobs first while
creative jobs would last until full AGI?
On the other hand… Eliezer’s scenario being an unintentional
subconscious reflection of anxieties about capitalism makes a lot of
sense, although it is extremely ironic given the large libertarian
streak of Lesswrong.
The science fiction writer Ted Chiang [made a similar point](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-ted-chiang-transcript.html), saying "I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish the two." He also adds these fears are "an indication of how sort of completely some people have sort of internalized either capitalism or a certain way of looking at the world, which also sort of underpins capitalism, a way of looking at the world as an optimization problem or a maximization problem. Yeah, so that might be the underlying common element between capitalism and a lot of this A.I. doomsday kind of scenario, making this insistence on seeing the world as an optimization problem."
Speaking of science fiction writers, I was surprised to see the quote by Charles Stross about the plausibility of the singularity at 9:45 in this video since I've known him as pretty skeptical about the "rapture of the nerds" and [also about AI hype in general](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/02/place-your-bets.html)...I checked and it turns out the quote isn't from Stross at all, but rather from a commenter on [a 2008 Stross post](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/06/that-newtime-religion.html) where Stross himself was again very skeptical but the commenter "Coltrane" wrote "Yes, trust in the inevitability of a Singularity can be a religious belief, however, unlike most religions, it's based on a prophecy that may ACTUALLY be true. I think it's far more likely that I will one day be able to upload my consciousness into a virtual construct of my own liking for all eternity, than that if I die I will go to heaven." (comment #61 on that thread) I tried to add a comment mentioning that they were misattributing this quote to Stross but whoever runs the channel deleted it.
> I tried to add a comment mentioning that they were misattributing this quote to Stross but whoever runs the channel deleted it.
You have been marxbroed! (Marxbro was banned from slatestarcodex when he pointed out somebody important to their community was misquoting Marx by leaving out the context, and was banned after he didn't let it go).
I think that was the excuse he used. Only via his own rules, the niceness rules get overriden if you have evidence. Which marxbro had, a lost more than the rightward annoying dudes bring.
Came here to post this. Saw this video and was ready to be
disappointed after the host called EY an “AI researcher”, but was
pleasantly surprised with the rest of the video.
Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t really use reddit because I have
a life, but why is it that the people here feel like they have a better
understanding of this issue than the various experts who take the risk
of existential threats from AI seriously? I haven’t seen a lot of well
formulated arguments, just some narcissistic sneering. Is there a good
argument, or is this just a circle j***?
This isn't about the general possible negative effects of AI but the pop science idea of AI alignment that's gaining traction and is really, really stupid.
It is partly a circlejerk, but also most of the people we talk about here aren't actually experts, and even a lot of the "experts" have a long history of making completely wrong predictions, misunderstanding basic science, and not thinking through their arguments.
For instance, Drexler is "an expert," but he was wrong about nanotech. Yet his ideas are still influential among rationalists.
This kinda thing is what I nerd out on believe it or not. I may be able to share some goodies.
https://censamm.org these guys have some good talks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray_Spear this guy was basically the Yud of the 19th century. I highly recommend the book on him by Buescher.
With our boy Yud in the intro ofcourse. Pretty interesting to hear religious scholars consider this idea seriously that I had only seen mentioned flippantly here.
Please no one show Yud that one Final Fantasy game with the evil whale religion
I think the link between AI apocalypitism and intellectual jobs is weaker than the video makes out… up until the most recent wave of AI I think the prediction was that AI would replace physical jobs first while creative jobs would last until full AGI?
On the other hand… Eliezer’s scenario being an unintentional subconscious reflection of anxieties about capitalism makes a lot of sense, although it is extremely ironic given the large libertarian streak of Lesswrong.
Came here to post this. Saw this video and was ready to be disappointed after the host called EY an “AI researcher”, but was pleasantly surprised with the rest of the video.
Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t really use reddit because I have a life, but why is it that the people here feel like they have a better understanding of this issue than the various experts who take the risk of existential threats from AI seriously? I haven’t seen a lot of well formulated arguments, just some narcissistic sneering. Is there a good argument, or is this just a circle j***?