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Depression is not about the world. It's about your own internal state - the way your own brain is wired up. To a first approximation, "I am depressed" is a stat

Depression is not about the world. It's about your own internal state - the way your own brain is wired up. To a first approximation, "I am depressed" is a statement about a particular neuron not getting stimulated, which is only related to how your life is going in indirect ways that - like all proxies - leak a lot. If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. I'm great at being helpful! I suck at being fun. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) But we're not all healthy creatures. We live our lives as the people we are in each moment, including the ways in which we're dumb and flawed and insecure.

MonkeyClub 2y ago
> that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever If Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments are anything to go by, such a seemingly idyllic situation would spell out humanity's death in very real terms.
- soperj 2y ago
  Calhoun's utopia was about overpopulation, not about idyllic situations.
csdvrx 2y ago
> I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) Since you are wondering about the healthiness of that emotion, try to read C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves": the Need love/Gift love opposition may have answers for you.
boredhedgehog 2y ago
> If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. But surely the Shepherd would be aware of your soul's needs as well, and could pretend that your help is required somewhere in the system.
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  Perhaps so! I thought about writing a story of an AI like that - something that cures diseases and prevents war and gives you all the tools to be smarter and healthier and more virtuous, but otherwise says "nope, humanity, you gotta figure this out yourself if you want the reward". It'd be an interesting sci-fi setting.
  - teamonkey 2y ago
    Many books in Iain M Banks’ Culture series describe how humans find meaning or otherwise entertain themselves in an AI-led post-scarcity utopia
- chongli 2y ago
  But surely the Shepherd would be aware of your soul's needs as well, and could pretend that your help is required somewhere in the system. I think most people wouldn’t be fooled by this. People intuitively understand when their work is superfluous. They see that even if they slack off nothing blows up, no alarm bells sound, no production lines grind to a halt, no one dies.

MonkeyClub 2y ago

> that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever If Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments are anything to go by, such a seemingly idyllic situation would spell out humanity's death in very real terms.

soperj 2y ago
Calhoun's utopia was about overpopulation, not about idyllic situations.

csdvrx 2y ago

> I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. I don't know what I would do in a world where that was no longer needed. Is that healthy? Probably not. (It's actually something I'm working through at the moment, that I increasingly understand as a consequence of both personal and societal-level abuse.) Since you are wondering about the healthiness of that emotion, try to read C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves": the Need love/Gift love opposition may have answers for you.

boredhedgehog 2y ago

> If tomorrow the greatest dream of AI was achieved, and we had a perfect benevolent AI that would shepherd humanity to comfort and safety forever, that would be just about the best outcome imaginable in material terms. But I think I'd be unhappy with it, because I derive a lot of my personal sense of worth from what I do - from what I build and for what I contribute to other people. But surely the Shepherd would be aware of your soul's needs as well, and could pretend that your help is required somewhere in the system.

rachofsunshine 2y ago
Perhaps so! I thought about writing a story of an AI like that - something that cures diseases and prevents war and gives you all the tools to be smarter and healthier and more virtuous, but otherwise says "nope, humanity, you gotta figure this out yourself if you want the reward". It'd be an interesting sci-fi setting.
- teamonkey 2y ago
  Many books in Iain M Banks’ Culture series describe how humans find meaning or otherwise entertain themselves in an AI-led post-scarcity utopia
chongli 2y ago
But surely the Shepherd would be aware of your soul's needs as well, and could pretend that your help is required somewhere in the system. I think most people wouldn’t be fooled by this. People intuitively understand when their work is superfluous. They see that even if they slack off nothing blows up, no alarm bells sound, no production lines grind to a halt, no one dies.