TL;DR:

I rant a bunch about how the silly eschatology of Yudkowsky and his cult have been hijacked by monopolistic corporate goons to push generative AI. Figured y’all might be interested.

  • @selfMA
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    61 year ago

    I finally got to reading this through after work and there’s so much good stuff in there! one thread I wanted to pick at in particular:

    All of this AI doomer ideology being used? We can trace all of it back to the SFF community. To the delightful Singularity novels of the 80s, 90s, and naughts. (To their credit, all of the singularity fiction writers I’ve seen mention the topic are pretty repulsed by the Rationalists and their ilk.)

    it’s really reassuring to see a science fiction and fantasy industry perspective on TESCREAL ideas alongside a deep dive into the history of how the rationalists took ideas they got from sci-fi and twisted them into a cult. to be honest, ever since rationalist ideas started capturing large portions of my industry (programming), I’ve felt kind of foolish reading the sci-fi I used to be a big fan of. I feel like reading the perspective in your post actually went a ways towards repairing my relationship with that fiction.

    • David GerardMA
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      61 year ago

      it’s good to know that e.g. our good friend Charlie has the correct perspective on these bozos

      • @gerikson
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        61 year ago

        Another one who has written critically about the Singularity is Ken MacLeod, in his Fall Revolution series. Basically, the 1%-eters upload, eff off to Jupiter, and EMP-bomb the rest of the solar system in when their simulations run amuck.

        • @Soyweiser
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          31 year ago

          Sigh added to the list. (I already enjoyed his corp wars stories, the addition of reactionaries including the minority reactionary felt so topical)

          • @gerikson
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            41 year ago

            The Fall Revolutions books are quite old. I didn’t really get into the Corp War trilogy.

            Newton’s Wake is also a nice commentary on a hard takeoff singularity where the dominant faction is a Glaswegian crime gang.

      • @JohnBierceOP
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        41 year ago

        Yeah, I thought about bringing his ideas up more as examples (definitely seen him pop in Sneerclub a few times), but I’ve got no idea if he would want to be even more prominent in this conversation than he already is. And the post was already more than long enough.

      • @selfMA
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        41 year ago

        Charlie always comes to mind when I say I want to read better sci-fi — he’s very high on my reading list once I get through the stack of material I’ve gathered for the next draft of A Brief Primer on Technofascism

    • @JohnBierceOP
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      51 year ago

      I mean, a lot of that fiction is just really good! Frankly, the rationalists tend to miss the point so hard, hyperfocusing on the cool gadgets and missing the commentaries on civilization, society, history, human nature, etc. Don’t let their awful beige California ideology ruin your fondness of some genuinely entertaining, thought-provoking literature.