> 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 fatalis

> 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