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This is a useful thought experiment but it ignores the fact that the balls are more like a tangled mass of burrs, all variously interwoven Try to pull one out

This is a useful thought experiment but it ignores the fact that the balls are more like a tangled mass of burrs, all variously interwoven Try to pull one out and you get a web of affordances and side effects and unforeseen interactions stuck to it If we were to be wiped out by our technology I see no guarantee some extradimensional coroner would be able to point definitively to just one Say it's climate heating, rapid-onset Venus mode. Was it the internal combustion engine? The coal plant? The automobile? The wheel? Language? Money? Industrialism? The limited liability corporation? How do you pick one? No technological form exists in a vacuum, likewise Technology is neither a monolith nor a ball pit of functionally independent atoms

gfodor 5y ago
Some balls are more webby than others. Your counterpoint is valid but it is additive: the discrete balls exist too in cases where there are significant stepwise breakthroughs.
- walleeee 5y ago
  Fair point, yes, the urn's contents are mereologically weird, neither wholly discrete nor continuous, liable to coalesce into orbs of manual or digital or social or intellectual utility which evolve in our minds and hands Also some balls (e.g. nuclear weapons, stray asteroids) make it a lot easier to point to something immediate and mostly unambiguous
h0l0cube 5y ago
> No technological form exists in a vacuum, likewise Technology is neither a monolith nor a ball pit of functionally independent atoms I agree the analogy isn't perfect, but one can say that despite technologies not having a discreet origin, we can reason about them in retrospect. So maybe modern artificial neural networks were initially made possible by improvements in microscopy and experiments in cell culture to deduce the mechanisms of biological neurons, but we can reason about ANNs as a technology that is changing what is possible by a machine. I imagine Nick would also be inclined to be fatalistic about technological progress, in that these "black balls" will inevitably be found. His main stance is that we should be enacting the global ethical frameworks around these technologies much quicker.
- walleeee 5y ago
  > despite technologies not having a discreet origin, we can reason about them in retrospect Yes, agreed, good point I also agree about Nick's probable fatalism, and I think his work is brilliant and valuable, however one thing irks me. He's made a successful career out of hypothetical "black ball" speculation while saying little about the potential for blackness of the tech we already have. He frames existential risk as if we are on the cusp of dramatic danger but still relatively safe. In truth we are already over the cliff & falling rapidly Take his paperclip maximizer. They already exist! We need not wait for some future AI to realize a badly misaligned objective function. We're already determined to transmute the remains of our homeworld's long dead into plastic and atmospheric carbon
egypturnash 5y ago
IIRC, when atomic bombs were first tested, there was some moderately compelling theorizing that they would set the entire planet's atmosphere on fire. That's a black ball.
- Nadya 5y ago
  >there was some moderately compelling theorizing that they would set the entire planet's atmosphere on fire. A very popular story but it was also primarily 1 of the 8 scientists working on the Manhattan project and only because he hadn't had all the math showing how incredibly unlikely it would be shared with him. It was already a settled "No, not going to happen." before the first test was conducted. The story ends up being a popular soundbite but with no real teeth on it. [0] [0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/bethe-teller-trinity-and-the-end-of-earth/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/bethe-telle...
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    I think the idea is, if the math had worked out the opposite way, then nuclear tech would be a black ball. If there was a bomb we could make and if it went off it would ignite the atmosphere and kill everyone - that would be a black ball.

gfodor 5y ago

Some balls are more webby than others. Your counterpoint is valid but it is additive: the discrete balls exist too in cases where there are significant stepwise breakthroughs.

walleeee 5y ago
Fair point, yes, the urn's contents are mereologically weird, neither wholly discrete nor continuous, liable to coalesce into orbs of manual or digital or social or intellectual utility which evolve in our minds and hands Also some balls (e.g. nuclear weapons, stray asteroids) make it a lot easier to point to something immediate and mostly unambiguous

h0l0cube 5y ago

> No technological form exists in a vacuum, likewise Technology is neither a monolith nor a ball pit of functionally independent atoms I agree the analogy isn't perfect, but one can say that despite technologies not having a discreet origin, we can reason about them in retrospect. So maybe modern artificial neural networks were initially made possible by improvements in microscopy and experiments in cell culture to deduce the mechanisms of biological neurons, but we can reason about ANNs as a technology that is changing what is possible by a machine. I imagine Nick would also be inclined to be fatalistic about technological progress, in that these "black balls" will inevitably be found. His main stance is that we should be enacting the global ethical frameworks around these technologies much quicker.

walleeee 5y ago
> despite technologies not having a discreet origin, we can reason about them in retrospect Yes, agreed, good point I also agree about Nick's probable fatalism, and I think his work is brilliant and valuable, however one thing irks me. He's made a successful career out of hypothetical "black ball" speculation while saying little about the potential for blackness of the tech we already have. He frames existential risk as if we are on the cusp of dramatic danger but still relatively safe. In truth we are already over the cliff & falling rapidly Take his paperclip maximizer. They already exist! We need not wait for some future AI to realize a badly misaligned objective function. We're already determined to transmute the remains of our homeworld's long dead into plastic and atmospheric carbon

egypturnash 5y ago

IIRC, when atomic bombs were first tested, there was some moderately compelling theorizing that they would set the entire planet's atmosphere on fire. That's a black ball.

Nadya 5y ago
>there was some moderately compelling theorizing that they would set the entire planet's atmosphere on fire. A very popular story but it was also primarily 1 of the 8 scientists working on the Manhattan project and only because he hadn't had all the math showing how incredibly unlikely it would be shared with him. It was already a settled "No, not going to happen." before the first test was conducted. The story ends up being a popular soundbite but with no real teeth on it. [0] [0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/bethe-teller-trinity-and-the-end-of-earth/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/bethe-telle...
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I think the idea is, if the math had worked out the opposite way, then nuclear tech would be a black ball. If there was a bomb we could make and if it went off it would ignite the atmosphere and kill everyone - that would be a black ball.