Bostrom’s conclusion is that we should colonize the universe as soon as possible
Always funny how this sort of transhumanist utilitarianism was already argued against in sid meiers alpha centauri (1999) (also called SMAC).
“Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None, I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.”
CEO Nwabudike Morgan
It is prob interesting in general that so many transhumanist etc ideas are already in SMAC, which predates a lot of stuff. Shows how much of it was already science fiction before the various tescrealists came around and tried to give it the wrapper of being new actually scientific ideas.
(That ingame there also is the game mechanic where doing something turn n is always better than doing it turn n+x is also interesting, makes you wonder just how much of this all is video game thinking (the best strategy ingame is to be the human hive and to build as much cities as close together as possible as fast as possible (infinite city sprawl))).
So in this article Yudkowsky comes off looking better than Bostrom… </shakes head/>
Minor point, but I do want to spotlight this footnote for how clearly it echoes the opposite (and superior) attitude to Bostrom’s:
- Note that there is no such thing as a “supervolcano,” despite what Wikipedia says. There are, however, some volcanoes capable of producing supereruptions. I was corrected by one of the leading volcanologists in the world after he read portions of my 2024 book!
Not gonna lie: I have definitely taken advantage of various academic’s (including some of our regulars here) patience and willingness to write out elementary explanations of the stuff they do with a similar “omg senpai noticed me” kind of glee.
Nick Bostrom Took Many of His “Best” Ideas from Other People
My first reaction was that many thinkers and academics synthesize ideas from older sources and that this doesn’t sound that bad (well except for some of the ideas being eugenics or AI doomerism)… some of the examples Emile points out look like just straight up plagiarism.
I agree that being a self-aggrandizing dick is probably on the lower end of the harms Bostrom has inflicted upon the world, but I think it’s worth calling out, especially because it runs counter to the narrative that the people who are working to advance the bigger harms use to advance their agenda.
Also, Bostrom is an academic writing for serious publications. The standards are higher than when Yudkowsky was rewriting pop-science books without sufficient attribution on his private blog, because Yudkowsky is a self-published autodidact.
Yeah, definitely. Even if you are heavily modifying an idea or synthesizing multiple ideas, not citing your sources is still major academic misconduct.
I did not know that Bostrom boasts of being an undergraduate prodigy like Yudkowsky and Geoff Anders boast of being child prodigies. Doing impressive things is not enough, they have to rank themselves against the vulgar masses.
The idea that industrial civilizations tend to destroy themselves was a commonplace during the Cold War. The Paperclip Maximizer is a lot like the magic broom in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and bureaucracies in the literature of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
