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> Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. I feel like this is the prototype of Roko's b

> Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. I feel like this is the prototype of Roko's basilisk.[0] I mean the rent-seeking part isn't new. That's been around since the beginning of time. Rent-seekers are going to rent-seek. But the application of the latest modern technology to optimize it. This whole gig economy. That's new and feels like it's getting out of control. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
The central point of Roko's basilisk is that the "basilisk" is only dangerous to people who understand/agree with it, and thus, for LessWrong advocates, are vulnerable to acausal extortion from a malevolent future AI. To be a "victim" of the basilisk you must subscribe to various axioms, and if you wind up being correct, acting in accordance with your hypothetical singularity AI's hypothetical desires is paramount. For example, you must assume that the AI will come into being, can simulate copies of people derived from "first principles", and that "timeless decision theory" makes sense to both human beings and the AI to the extent that acausal motivation is viable. Some people are very convinced of these ideas, but there is hardly overwhelming consensus. Runaway optimization of rent-seeking is more like a ponzi scheme "as advertised": the later you get in on the action, the harder you get screwed. It is uniformly bad for anyone who didn't have a combination of luck and capital in the early stages. The risk and payoff of not being able to afford housing in the forseeable future is much more concrete, universally applicable, and requires only extrapolating from trends; a far smaller series of logical leaps. I'm not seeing the connection you're attempting to draw. Care to clarify?

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

The central point of Roko's basilisk is that the "basilisk" is only dangerous to people who understand/agree with it, and thus, for LessWrong advocates, are vulnerable to acausal extortion from a malevolent future AI. To be a "victim" of the basilisk you must subscribe to various axioms, and if you wind up being correct, acting in accordance with your hypothetical singularity AI's hypothetical desires is paramount. For example, you must assume that the AI will come into being, can simulate copies of people derived from "first principles", and that "timeless decision theory" makes sense to both human beings and the AI to the extent that acausal motivation is viable. Some people are very convinced of these ideas, but there is hardly overwhelming consensus. Runaway optimization of rent-seeking is more like a ponzi scheme "as advertised": the later you get in on the action, the harder you get screwed. It is uniformly bad for anyone who didn't have a combination of luck and capital in the early stages. The risk and payoff of not being able to afford housing in the forseeable future is much more concrete, universally applicable, and requires only extrapolating from trends; a far smaller series of logical leaps. I'm not seeing the connection you're attempting to draw. Care to clarify?