4 ms·

What Is Going on in the World?

systemvoltage 6y ago
I feel like the Pandemic has screwed up optimism from the world. This post would be less depressing if it was written a year ago. I feel optimistic - once travel and economic machine starts booting up, protests/riots will become less frequent. Countries will open up and things will get better. This post IMO is a knee-jerk reaction on the scale of year.
- kypro 6y ago
  If you're optimistic abut the future you're in a minority – at least in the West. https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/people-western-countries-pessimistic-about-future-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/people-western-countr...
amelius 6y ago
Article reads like a bunch of random comments on HN. It needs to focus on concrete problems, not abstract things like: > Nothing we do matters for any of several reasons (moral non-realism, infinite ethics, living in a simulation, being a Boltzmann brain, ..?)
- ithkuil 6y ago
  Don't know where you live and what your age group, but optimism has been sucked out of my generation two decades ago (I'm ~40, southern europe)
AYBABTME 6y ago
I couldn't grasp anything actionable from this, aside from believing the author should take a step back from the last 12 month's circumstances. Some points appear to be the start of a line of thoughts that could expand to be useful, but the majority of the snippets are stating not so useful stuff like "nothing we do matters". Yeah, we know, and then?
- mnd999 6y ago
  It reads like someone suffering with depression. Obviously that’s not something that can be diagnosed by me, or anyone else from a blog post but I would advise the author look into that, just in case.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lcall 6y ago
  Really, things are stressful for many now, but they can be OK if we do what is right. A few specifics: I deeply believe, with some reasons, that the US Constitutional principles and some other good things will continue to be in place in the long run, in spite of difficulties. Among the very most important things we can do are to be good to our families, and continuing to practice at honesty and treating others the way they would want to be treated. Those things seem essential for maintaining anything, long-term. (cf. the "Anna Karenina principle" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_karenina_principle ), for families or cultures that last across many generations.) (Tolstoy said something like "All happy families are alike, and all miserable families are miserable in their own way". I think there is much to that: multigenerational unselfish service to others, in a widening circle, brings greater sustainability and peace. Seeing what families' and/or cultures' traits allow them to persist over time is interesting.) Jesus Christ said "love your enemies", & more ( https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/5.3 https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/5.3... [churchofjesuschrist.org] ). (And: "By their fruits ye shall know them": Matt 7:11-21; and see D&C52: https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testamen https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testamen... [churchofjesuschrist.org] .) This means treating others with respect, for starters, and the way you would want (or they would want) to be treated. Please, along with seeking wisdom & kindness, let's try to get info and news from reliable, trustworthy sources. (Many; refs avail.) Honesty, principles in the US Constitution and rule of law seem much more important than other policies, even ones we care about deeply (per some of my Church's scriptures, such as D&C98). Let's pray for our country/ies! (Trust, in anyone, is earned, not a right -- by behavior over time, not just promises & piles of words.) And really, we all can learn, help & encourage each other, grow & be better if we keep trying. And yes, things can be OK.
superbcarrot 6y ago
This piece would be better if it didn't mix concepts from science fiction and philosophical thought experiments with more real problems like societal changes and the overall lack of meaning that people experience.
- weregiraffe 6y ago
  It's LessWrong, what else did you expect?
skywhopper 6y ago
This weirdly omits the entire world other than the US and “Western civilization”, besides being internally contradictory. Harnessing any significant resources from space would require huge new infrastructure on Earth, which the author says is impossible and anyway they say everyone is going to die. So who’s going to build it? There’s also essentially no attempt to frame any of this in a historic context. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a huge confluence of massively destabilizing political and economic events in the past 120 years, or the second, or the third... Add in evidence-free assertions about AI and the best philosophy of personal behavior and the difficulty of good government, but no mention of the toxic influence that a huge class of transnational extra-governmental billionaires with an exponentially growing portion of global wealth has over global politics... and I think the author lost the thread over “what is going on in the world” a little too quickly.
dvh 6y ago
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. --Socrates
- DonaldFisk 6y ago
  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/
librexpr 6y ago
The article says "It’s a draft" at the bottom. I don't think this article was meant to be widely shared.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> AI agents will control the future, and which ones we create is the only thing about our time that will matter in the long run. Every time there's a big story in the news about a new thing achieved by an AI system, someone will lose their shit and go on social media to say how it's a sign of the end times where Terminators will roam the Earth and humans will hide in caves. At least the article has the common indicency of placing this inevitable eventuality "in the future", with all the precision typical of palm readers and popular entertainers. For perspective, here's an article I found by following the wikipedia links on Gary Kasparov's 1997 defeat by Deep Blue in chess: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/be-afraid-9802 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/be-afraid... The article is titled "Be Afraid" (!) and it includes passages like the following: In Game Two, Deep Blue passed the Turing test. Yes, of course, it was for chess only, a very big caveat. But, first, no one was ever quite sure that a machine ever would pass even this limited test. And second, if a computer has passed the Turing test for chess, closed logical system though it may be, that opens the possibility that computers might in time pass the Turing test in other areas. Besides the typical abuse of the Turing test to mean anything anyone wants it to mean, as long as it means something as vague and fuzzy as it is irrelevant, I remind the esteemed reader that the year is 1997 and people are raising the alarm about AI going superintelligent and taking over the world a long time before Eliezer Yudkowski or Elon Musk and OpenAI. And if you look further back, you'll find similar predictions of AI being "just around the corner" since 1957. Maybe we need to build guns that can shoot behind corners, to protect ourselves from evil superintelligences, eh? So hold your horses and don't lose your mind. AI today is just as limited as it was in 1997 and in 1957. We have more data and bigger computers but we still don't understand intelligence and our best bet to reproduce it on a digital computer remains the hope that it will somehow arise, magickally, unexpectedly, on its own, fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, if only we throw more big data and more big computers at narrow tasks in irrelevant domains- like chess, Atari, Dota 2... or, indeed, protein structure prediction (not quite a hallmark of intelligence that).
ibn_khaldun 6y ago
This appears to be an existential crisis played out in bullet points against the backdrop of current events. And rightfully so, one should be experiencing this. The author’s thoughts are a result of a worldview that many of you are responsible for nurturing and amplifying.
imtringued 6y ago
The first two bulletpoints are spot on. After bulletpoint 2 everything started getting dumber and dumber. We are basically back to the early 20th century but without the propensity to kill each other (yet). People are showing a complete lack of rationality even when facing the most basic problems. They are willing to believe anything as long as it plays into their biases and doesn't hurt them in the short term. The solutions don't require any meaningful sacrifices. The sacrifices are insignificant compared to the benefits.

I feel like the Pandemic has screwed up optimism from the world. This post would be less depressing if it was written a year ago. I feel optimistic - once travel and economic machine starts booting up, protests/riots will become less frequent. Countries will open up and things will get better. This post IMO is a knee-jerk reaction on the scale of year.

kypro 6y ago
If you're optimistic abut the future you're in a minority – at least in the West. https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/people-western-countries-pessimistic-about-future-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/people-western-countr...

amelius 6y ago

Article reads like a bunch of random comments on HN. It needs to focus on concrete problems, not abstract things like: > Nothing we do matters for any of several reasons (moral non-realism, infinite ethics, living in a simulation, being a Boltzmann brain, ..?)

ithkuil 6y ago
Don't know where you live and what your age group, but optimism has been sucked out of my generation two decades ago (I'm ~40, southern europe)

AYBABTME 6y ago

I couldn't grasp anything actionable from this, aside from believing the author should take a step back from the last 12 month's circumstances. Some points appear to be the start of a line of thoughts that could expand to be useful, but the majority of the snippets are stating not so useful stuff like "nothing we do matters". Yeah, we know, and then?

mnd999 6y ago
It reads like someone suffering with depression. Obviously that’s not something that can be diagnosed by me, or anyone else from a blog post but I would advise the author look into that, just in case.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lcall 6y ago
Really, things are stressful for many now, but they can be OK if we do what is right. A few specifics: I deeply believe, with some reasons, that the US Constitutional principles and some other good things will continue to be in place in the long run, in spite of difficulties. Among the very most important things we can do are to be good to our families, and continuing to practice at honesty and treating others the way they would want to be treated. Those things seem essential for maintaining anything, long-term. (cf. the "Anna Karenina principle" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_karenina_principle ), for families or cultures that last across many generations.) (Tolstoy said something like "All happy families are alike, and all miserable families are miserable in their own way". I think there is much to that: multigenerational unselfish service to others, in a widening circle, brings greater sustainability and peace. Seeing what families' and/or cultures' traits allow them to persist over time is interesting.) Jesus Christ said "love your enemies", & more ( https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/5.3 https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/5.3... [churchofjesuschrist.org] ). (And: "By their fruits ye shall know them": Matt 7:11-21; and see D&C52: https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testamen https://churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testamen... [churchofjesuschrist.org] .) This means treating others with respect, for starters, and the way you would want (or they would want) to be treated. Please, along with seeking wisdom & kindness, let's try to get info and news from reliable, trustworthy sources. (Many; refs avail.) Honesty, principles in the US Constitution and rule of law seem much more important than other policies, even ones we care about deeply (per some of my Church's scriptures, such as D&C98). Let's pray for our country/ies! (Trust, in anyone, is earned, not a right -- by behavior over time, not just promises & piles of words.) And really, we all can learn, help & encourage each other, grow & be better if we keep trying. And yes, things can be OK.

superbcarrot 6y ago

This piece would be better if it didn't mix concepts from science fiction and philosophical thought experiments with more real problems like societal changes and the overall lack of meaning that people experience.

weregiraffe 6y ago
It's LessWrong, what else did you expect?

skywhopper 6y ago

This weirdly omits the entire world other than the US and “Western civilization”, besides being internally contradictory. Harnessing any significant resources from space would require huge new infrastructure on Earth, which the author says is impossible and anyway they say everyone is going to die. So who’s going to build it? There’s also essentially no attempt to frame any of this in a historic context. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a huge confluence of massively destabilizing political and economic events in the past 120 years, or the second, or the third... Add in evidence-free assertions about AI and the best philosophy of personal behavior and the difficulty of good government, but no mention of the toxic influence that a huge class of transnational extra-governmental billionaires with an exponentially growing portion of global wealth has over global politics... and I think the author lost the thread over “what is going on in the world” a little too quickly.

dvh 6y ago

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. --Socrates

DonaldFisk 6y ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/

librexpr 6y ago

The article says "It’s a draft" at the bottom. I don't think this article was meant to be widely shared.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> AI agents will control the future, and which ones we create is the only thing about our time that will matter in the long run. Every time there's a big story in the news about a new thing achieved by an AI system, someone will lose their shit and go on social media to say how it's a sign of the end times where Terminators will roam the Earth and humans will hide in caves. At least the article has the common indicency of placing this inevitable eventuality "in the future", with all the precision typical of palm readers and popular entertainers. For perspective, here's an article I found by following the wikipedia links on Gary Kasparov's 1997 defeat by Deep Blue in chess: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/be-afraid-9802 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/be-afraid... The article is titled "Be Afraid" (!) and it includes passages like the following: In Game Two, Deep Blue passed the Turing test. Yes, of course, it was for chess only, a very big caveat. But, first, no one was ever quite sure that a machine ever would pass even this limited test. And second, if a computer has passed the Turing test for chess, closed logical system though it may be, that opens the possibility that computers might in time pass the Turing test in other areas. Besides the typical abuse of the Turing test to mean anything anyone wants it to mean, as long as it means something as vague and fuzzy as it is irrelevant, I remind the esteemed reader that the year is 1997 and people are raising the alarm about AI going superintelligent and taking over the world a long time before Eliezer Yudkowski or Elon Musk and OpenAI. And if you look further back, you'll find similar predictions of AI being "just around the corner" since 1957. Maybe we need to build guns that can shoot behind corners, to protect ourselves from evil superintelligences, eh? So hold your horses and don't lose your mind. AI today is just as limited as it was in 1997 and in 1957. We have more data and bigger computers but we still don't understand intelligence and our best bet to reproduce it on a digital computer remains the hope that it will somehow arise, magickally, unexpectedly, on its own, fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, if only we throw more big data and more big computers at narrow tasks in irrelevant domains- like chess, Atari, Dota 2... or, indeed, protein structure prediction (not quite a hallmark of intelligence that).

ibn_khaldun 6y ago

This appears to be an existential crisis played out in bullet points against the backdrop of current events. And rightfully so, one should be experiencing this. The author’s thoughts are a result of a worldview that many of you are responsible for nurturing and amplifying.

imtringued 6y ago

The first two bulletpoints are spot on. After bulletpoint 2 everything started getting dumber and dumber. We are basically back to the early 20th century but without the propensity to kill each other (yet). People are showing a complete lack of rationality even when facing the most basic problems. They are willing to believe anything as long as it plays into their biases and doesn't hurt them in the short term. The solutions don't require any meaningful sacrifices. The sacrifices are insignificant compared to the benefits.