5 ms·

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason w

by caseyy 1y ago

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things, not the least of which will be that the world is doomed (with no hope), that our societies and way of life are in the "late stage" and moments from collapse, and so on. And it's a bit of a tragedy. If we took only the energy that people spend evangelizing those doom beliefs and put that energy into productive efforts, that alone could probably prevent whatever disaster is being evangelized. But maybe that'd not be good for engagement on social media or something.

ARandomerDude 1y ago
Fed
awanderingmind 1y ago
Good insight, thanks. I've been struggling with existential dread related to https://ai-2027.com/ https://ai-2027.com/ - trying to refute the arguments is exhausting, I should probably just ignore it and get on with my life.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  Fears about AI misalignment look like a modern, secular Pascal's Wager. It's hedge against a low-probability, infinite-cost outcome. The Rationalist version builds a matrix where one cell is -inf, and from that, derives an imperative to act, regardless of how speculative the premise is. However, once you admit infinite utilities and epistemic humility about probabilities, you can justify literally anything. The same construction could obligate you to worship simulation overlords, or to develop interstellar missile defense in case of hostile alien AIs. That's not a rational risk model, it's theological reasoning dressed up in Bayesian costume. This stuff operates on the boundary of plausibility, the intelligent paranoid mind generates scenarios that can't be conclusively ruled out but also can't be grounded in anything falsifiable. That's not where productive engineering lives. The escape hatch here is the same one we used for Pascal's Wager: you reject the premise. You don't hand the keys of your threat model over to speculative infinities. You work on problems you can see, measure, and influence. You don't respond to every "what if?" with a fire drill. Recognizing that this is a failure mode in human cognition is enough to avoid it. Yes, there are real risks with AI: bias, misuse, surveillance capitalism, economic displacement. These are all tractable, all human-driven. But the misalignment discourse? It's less a bet against an existential outcome and more a projection of philosophical anxieties onto a technical domain. And once you frame it that way, it's clear: this isn't engineering. Folks doing this are playing metaphysics in front of a terminal emulator.
  - notarobot123 1y ago
    AGI does sound a lot like a "psychological crutch" when it is pointed at as the answer for wicked problems like climate change. With faith in AGI, nothing else really matters because we can eventually surrender ourselves to the superior direction and interventions of this god we have created. There's no point worrying about anything else. Human technology has evolved significantly in the last few thousand years but we are all the same religious fruitcakes we've always been, whether or not we can see it.
    - trod1234 1y ago
      This is wrong, and follows aspects of nihilism.
  - awanderingmind 1y ago
    The comparison to Pascal's Wager is apt - I came to the same conclusion when I first read about Roko's Basilisk, but the insight somehow slipped from my mind. It's like an epistemic tarpit attractor.
- azemetre 1y ago
  You’re having existential dread over pure science fiction written by people who have something to gain from LLM companies becoming profitable? You have it right. Just ignore the grifters. These companies are burning billions and are realizing they don’t have an exit strategy so they’re becoming desperate. Just ignore the grifters.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- trod1234 1y ago
  Existential dread is not unwarranted but you do need to choose the arguments that are most likely to happen, and focus your energies on those rather than be sidetracked by spurious outcomes that may never come to pass. There are many false narratives meant to distract, and you'll have to discern which ones are true and it can be exhausting if you let it. This is how 5th-Generation-Warfare (5GW) is. I'll tell you right now, its highly unlikely that AGI will occur, because the properties required for computation make it nigh impossible. It doesn't need to do this to be an existential threat. All it needs to do is disrupt the economic cycle sufficiently to stall economic activity, and it does so quite easily. An economic cycle stalling leads to chaotic socio-economic collapse and a loss of order. Current population levels are only made possible by dependencies which have been made brittle over time, relying on continued order for survival just to produce enough food. I'm sure you've heard of the Malthusian Trap, you may not have revisited later works touching on Malthus by Catton in the 90s. The economic cycle is a circular cycle between workers and producers. We exist today because of an equitable distribution of labor which is compensated. There is also the issue of money printing, which is too long to discuss here. Needless to say there are two requirements that must be met to continue the cycle sustainably (avoiding chaotic whipsaw and stalling). Producers must make a profit in purchasing power, People must make a profit supporting a wife and three children sufficient so that one makes it to have children themselves, also in purchasing power. Money printing eventually causes money to lose its store of value (property), and when that happens medium of exchange is lost as well. Stalling of the economy, and same issue. There are at least 6 other avenues by which this same outcome occurs, and they are in systems we can no longer change, its runaway. Solutions like UBI fail for other equally impossible problems, albeit they are more indirect but still end in chaotic whipsaws, distortions (artificial supply constraint), etc. AI doesn't need to be AGI. All it needs to do is disrupt and eliminate the majority of entry level positions of the career development pipeline. Within a 10 year cycle, collapse will become unavoidable as a matter of math. The output of a pipeline depends upon the input of the pipeline, it is always less for all values above 0. 0 in 0 out. Man ages out of careers and die eventually. No people to mentor, that knowledge dies with them.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- caseyy 1y ago
  That's very interesting. It seems to assume AI agents will have the same evolutionary imperative as other species. But without the ecological context, it looks like an unfounded premise. Why would AI play the 4X game, considering the infinity of alternative imperatives it could follow?
ranyume 1y ago
What you just described is an idea that's around intellectual circles about the nature of power in this era. It's the idea behind the book "Ipnocrazia" (not yet released), which gained fame around europe and south america. Citing from the top of my head: "Simulation isn't imitating the real anymore, simulation precedes the real" If I understand it right, tragedy is first simulated. Once the simulation is bought by the population, it gives the ruling class a reason to act how they really want to act, and the tragedy is made real. In other words. It's population control without coercion. A narrative puts people in a trance (they're hypnotized), inhibiting their cognitive capacity. The narrative is the simulation. The goal is to make people fearful and disoriented so they delegate their cognitive capacity to "illuminated" rulers, accepting the simulation as real. If i were to put it in real terms. Let's spread the narrative of an incoming world war 3. Once it's settled, the population will just accept world war 3 as a matter of fact, unavoidable. This would allow us, the ruler class, to extend trump's presidency even beyond.
- whattheheckheck 1y ago
  Us? Lol
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Isn’t that Baudrillard?
  - williamcotton 1y ago
    Yup, sounds like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
- Retric 1y ago
  That assumes a level of structure and control to society that simply doesn’t exist. I don’t know why people so often fall into the trap of assuming someone or something is running things, but chaos seems to be anathema to how people perceive the world. God(s), fate, luck, karma, magic etc have been supplanted by the everything from hidden cabals, aliens, etc but I don’t think the underlying psychology is really any different.
brulard 1y ago
You don't need to be brainwashed to be pessimistic today.
dreamlayers 1y ago
I think there is a fundamental difference between such social phenomena and the seemingly solitary delusions that happen in recognized mental illness such as schizophrenia.
- trod1234 1y ago
  There doesn't appear to be. There is actually quite a bit of older literature on this. Many of the books reference the observation that schizophrenia symptoms are commonly seen in victims of torture, specifically in returning PoWs during the Korean Conflict. Joost Meerloo, and Robert Lifton are two well established authors that come to mind, and while there are other diagnostic criteria its fairly safe to say that mass delusion it seems occurs more regularly when the population is tortured. The 4 elements needed for torture are isolation, cognitive dissonance, coercion with real or perceived loss, and lack of agency to remove. These things naturally occurs where all communication channels have been jammed with misinformation. These things fall under 5th Generation Warfare. Mao came up with some very clever ways of structuring and clustering the elements of torture into trauma loops utilizing all of the psychological blindspots we have. Cialdini's book on influence covers most of the blindspots if you are unaware, except distorted reflected appraisal. Technically the phone-based dopamine triggers of today through associative priming could be considered a form of targeted Narcosynthesis/Narcoanalysis which has impacts on the ability to resist torture.
trod1234 1y ago
The tragedy is in the flawed thinking this type of article promotes to the layperson. A professional has a duty of care to diagnose correctly, delusion by its very definition is a false belief that is believed to be true. The professional may lose their license if they do not diagnose correctly. The layperson will read this and say, global catastrophe, fear of poisoning, persecution etc, and discount/nullify these entire categories regardless of whether they may be true or false given the circumstances. They choose to ignore it, and worse through nullification compulse others towards that false belief. Now when it does happen to be true because hey, WW2 happened, and hey Hitler's rise to power followed milestones which Trump has been following, or better yet the collapse of the currency which is a known fact to happen and based in science and history when money-printing gets out of control... these fears are warranted, and should be listened to and inspire action to correct, but these type of articles condition people to discount and nullify such things and by extension ensuring those things happen when the circumstances are true because they have blinded themselves. That's how evil works in people. It is a self-blinding to the consequences of destructive acts, to the point where those acts are repeated until they are forcefully stopped. A fear of poisoning may be quite relevant in cases of new technology where we have no frame of reference for adequate safety because its new, like those who are part of the vaccine injured. I think its quite important for every one today to objectively revisit their sentiment and beliefs, following Descartes Method. Many of the things believed today by many are quite delusional, and mass delusion does happen in systems where the people have been exposed to torture whether they know it or not. The delusional don't base their measure in objective external reality. Robert Lifton, Robert Cialdini, Joost Meerloo, are well established authors who touch on the elements of torture, structure, and clustering. If you've been significantly downvoted for a personal opinion, technically you've been exposed to torture. Few in fact realize this though because its indirect, and most people won't follow the indirections back. It takes advantage of a strategy which Nazi's, and Mao used, but also the Stasi perfected, and really everyone uses today in sensitive positions. The separation of objectionable concerns. As for why we see this in so many online platforms. Its 5GW, and the platform maintainers are complicit, either through a corruption by dependency scheme, or just improper priorities believing its better to do or provide something than nothing even if they can't solve the problem. There is a financial interest towards this which drives this forward. Either way, action or inaction is a choice they made. Regardless of initial hope, destructive outcomes (negligence) and intent (choice to act or not) turn this into malice/malevolence. Even if they have isolated themselves so they don't know willfully, they are still accountable for their actions and choices.
sysrestartusr 1y ago
so we are completely ignoring the science, now, ey? someone always has more data. 50 years for you might be a lot but someone else will tell you they are gone faster than you think. a) doomers are just buffs, superficial or nerdy. b) never forget that due to how the web and social hierarchies are build, some people have an ugly information flow, are constantly lied to, and bots flood their feeds with the worst shit just because they had a bit of moment, once. some people are stilled told EV's are shit, buy a diesel. they are told so by some sort of "authority". or: "don't get a credit for "solar" if you don't have half the money right away" ( even though you'd start to save/make money after 10 years but you don't know math and that person is some sort of "authority" ) the world is full of mostly sub-average competence in positions or with the status of some sort of "authority" and these sub-average competent people, some of them saved and domesticated dogs, absolutely need others to have it worse then them so they will feed them lies whenever those people need advice. and these dogs usually work in collectives. truthy information flow is imperative but even the German state media slaps incomplete or outright misinformation into their audience brains' all the freaking time. it's ugly, especially if you read and watch news from a bunch of international and national sources, which is why the educated youth stopped caring long ago and gladly joins Ponzi narratives ... written and played by people who rely on misinformation, polarization and some sort of ... "show" ... it's boring until the future arrives and there's nothing but obedience and or confusion and or drugs to cope with either or both. critical thinking is a dying idea, a skill soon extinct. defense mechanisms against it are hard-wired into languages and schools of thought ... the whole "just doin' my job" thing got outta hand because a bunch of other people were sabotaged just doing their jobs ... but someone makes you feel cool, or luxury does ... and that's that.
alganet 1y ago
The anxiety spreaders are a political phenomena. It's mostly about blaming the "other side" and framing it as the cause for world collapse. Those people don't actually believe a catastrophe is going to happen. They already think they are being productive by hacking the political spectrum. In other words, imbecile automaton panfleteers. What you described has nothing to do with schizophrenia. You are mixing up two distinct behaviors by a single theme (world ending catastrophes).

by caseyy 1y ago

ARandomerDude 1y ago

Fed

awanderingmind 1y ago

Good insight, thanks. I've been struggling with existential dread related to https://ai-2027.com/ https://ai-2027.com/ - trying to refute the arguments is exhausting, I should probably just ignore it and get on with my life.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
Fears about AI misalignment look like a modern, secular Pascal's Wager. It's hedge against a low-probability, infinite-cost outcome. The Rationalist version builds a matrix where one cell is -inf, and from that, derives an imperative to act, regardless of how speculative the premise is. However, once you admit infinite utilities and epistemic humility about probabilities, you can justify literally anything. The same construction could obligate you to worship simulation overlords, or to develop interstellar missile defense in case of hostile alien AIs. That's not a rational risk model, it's theological reasoning dressed up in Bayesian costume. This stuff operates on the boundary of plausibility, the intelligent paranoid mind generates scenarios that can't be conclusively ruled out but also can't be grounded in anything falsifiable. That's not where productive engineering lives. The escape hatch here is the same one we used for Pascal's Wager: you reject the premise. You don't hand the keys of your threat model over to speculative infinities. You work on problems you can see, measure, and influence. You don't respond to every "what if?" with a fire drill. Recognizing that this is a failure mode in human cognition is enough to avoid it. Yes, there are real risks with AI: bias, misuse, surveillance capitalism, economic displacement. These are all tractable, all human-driven. But the misalignment discourse? It's less a bet against an existential outcome and more a projection of philosophical anxieties onto a technical domain. And once you frame it that way, it's clear: this isn't engineering. Folks doing this are playing metaphysics in front of a terminal emulator.
- notarobot123 1y ago
  AGI does sound a lot like a "psychological crutch" when it is pointed at as the answer for wicked problems like climate change. With faith in AGI, nothing else really matters because we can eventually surrender ourselves to the superior direction and interventions of this god we have created. There's no point worrying about anything else. Human technology has evolved significantly in the last few thousand years but we are all the same religious fruitcakes we've always been, whether or not we can see it.
  - trod1234 1y ago
    This is wrong, and follows aspects of nihilism.
- awanderingmind 1y ago
  The comparison to Pascal's Wager is apt - I came to the same conclusion when I first read about Roko's Basilisk, but the insight somehow slipped from my mind. It's like an epistemic tarpit attractor.
azemetre 1y ago
You’re having existential dread over pure science fiction written by people who have something to gain from LLM companies becoming profitable? You have it right. Just ignore the grifters. These companies are burning billions and are realizing they don’t have an exit strategy so they’re becoming desperate. Just ignore the grifters.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
trod1234 1y ago
Existential dread is not unwarranted but you do need to choose the arguments that are most likely to happen, and focus your energies on those rather than be sidetracked by spurious outcomes that may never come to pass. There are many false narratives meant to distract, and you'll have to discern which ones are true and it can be exhausting if you let it. This is how 5th-Generation-Warfare (5GW) is. I'll tell you right now, its highly unlikely that AGI will occur, because the properties required for computation make it nigh impossible. It doesn't need to do this to be an existential threat. All it needs to do is disrupt the economic cycle sufficiently to stall economic activity, and it does so quite easily. An economic cycle stalling leads to chaotic socio-economic collapse and a loss of order. Current population levels are only made possible by dependencies which have been made brittle over time, relying on continued order for survival just to produce enough food. I'm sure you've heard of the Malthusian Trap, you may not have revisited later works touching on Malthus by Catton in the 90s. The economic cycle is a circular cycle between workers and producers. We exist today because of an equitable distribution of labor which is compensated. There is also the issue of money printing, which is too long to discuss here. Needless to say there are two requirements that must be met to continue the cycle sustainably (avoiding chaotic whipsaw and stalling). Producers must make a profit in purchasing power, People must make a profit supporting a wife and three children sufficient so that one makes it to have children themselves, also in purchasing power. Money printing eventually causes money to lose its store of value (property), and when that happens medium of exchange is lost as well. Stalling of the economy, and same issue. There are at least 6 other avenues by which this same outcome occurs, and they are in systems we can no longer change, its runaway. Solutions like UBI fail for other equally impossible problems, albeit they are more indirect but still end in chaotic whipsaws, distortions (artificial supply constraint), etc. AI doesn't need to be AGI. All it needs to do is disrupt and eliminate the majority of entry level positions of the career development pipeline. Within a 10 year cycle, collapse will become unavoidable as a matter of math. The output of a pipeline depends upon the input of the pipeline, it is always less for all values above 0. 0 in 0 out. Man ages out of careers and die eventually. No people to mentor, that knowledge dies with them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
caseyy 1y ago
That's very interesting. It seems to assume AI agents will have the same evolutionary imperative as other species. But without the ecological context, it looks like an unfounded premise. Why would AI play the 4X game, considering the infinity of alternative imperatives it could follow?

ranyume 1y ago

What you just described is an idea that's around intellectual circles about the nature of power in this era. It's the idea behind the book "Ipnocrazia" (not yet released), which gained fame around europe and south america. Citing from the top of my head: "Simulation isn't imitating the real anymore, simulation precedes the real" If I understand it right, tragedy is first simulated. Once the simulation is bought by the population, it gives the ruling class a reason to act how they really want to act, and the tragedy is made real. In other words. It's population control without coercion. A narrative puts people in a trance (they're hypnotized), inhibiting their cognitive capacity. The narrative is the simulation. The goal is to make people fearful and disoriented so they delegate their cognitive capacity to "illuminated" rulers, accepting the simulation as real. If i were to put it in real terms. Let's spread the narrative of an incoming world war 3. Once it's settled, the population will just accept world war 3 as a matter of fact, unavoidable. This would allow us, the ruler class, to extend trump's presidency even beyond.

whattheheckheck 1y ago
Us? Lol
selimthegrim 1y ago
Isn’t that Baudrillard?
- williamcotton 1y ago
  Yup, sounds like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
Retric 1y ago
That assumes a level of structure and control to society that simply doesn’t exist. I don’t know why people so often fall into the trap of assuming someone or something is running things, but chaos seems to be anathema to how people perceive the world. God(s), fate, luck, karma, magic etc have been supplanted by the everything from hidden cabals, aliens, etc but I don’t think the underlying psychology is really any different.

brulard 1y ago

You don't need to be brainwashed to be pessimistic today.

dreamlayers 1y ago

I think there is a fundamental difference between such social phenomena and the seemingly solitary delusions that happen in recognized mental illness such as schizophrenia.

trod1234 1y ago
There doesn't appear to be. There is actually quite a bit of older literature on this. Many of the books reference the observation that schizophrenia symptoms are commonly seen in victims of torture, specifically in returning PoWs during the Korean Conflict. Joost Meerloo, and Robert Lifton are two well established authors that come to mind, and while there are other diagnostic criteria its fairly safe to say that mass delusion it seems occurs more regularly when the population is tortured. The 4 elements needed for torture are isolation, cognitive dissonance, coercion with real or perceived loss, and lack of agency to remove. These things naturally occurs where all communication channels have been jammed with misinformation. These things fall under 5th Generation Warfare. Mao came up with some very clever ways of structuring and clustering the elements of torture into trauma loops utilizing all of the psychological blindspots we have. Cialdini's book on influence covers most of the blindspots if you are unaware, except distorted reflected appraisal. Technically the phone-based dopamine triggers of today through associative priming could be considered a form of targeted Narcosynthesis/Narcoanalysis which has impacts on the ability to resist torture.

trod1234 1y ago

The tragedy is in the flawed thinking this type of article promotes to the layperson. A professional has a duty of care to diagnose correctly, delusion by its very definition is a false belief that is believed to be true. The professional may lose their license if they do not diagnose correctly. The layperson will read this and say, global catastrophe, fear of poisoning, persecution etc, and discount/nullify these entire categories regardless of whether they may be true or false given the circumstances. They choose to ignore it, and worse through nullification compulse others towards that false belief. Now when it does happen to be true because hey, WW2 happened, and hey Hitler's rise to power followed milestones which Trump has been following, or better yet the collapse of the currency which is a known fact to happen and based in science and history when money-printing gets out of control... these fears are warranted, and should be listened to and inspire action to correct, but these type of articles condition people to discount and nullify such things and by extension ensuring those things happen when the circumstances are true because they have blinded themselves. That's how evil works in people. It is a self-blinding to the consequences of destructive acts, to the point where those acts are repeated until they are forcefully stopped. A fear of poisoning may be quite relevant in cases of new technology where we have no frame of reference for adequate safety because its new, like those who are part of the vaccine injured. I think its quite important for every one today to objectively revisit their sentiment and beliefs, following Descartes Method. Many of the things believed today by many are quite delusional, and mass delusion does happen in systems where the people have been exposed to torture whether they know it or not. The delusional don't base their measure in objective external reality. Robert Lifton, Robert Cialdini, Joost Meerloo, are well established authors who touch on the elements of torture, structure, and clustering. If you've been significantly downvoted for a personal opinion, technically you've been exposed to torture. Few in fact realize this though because its indirect, and most people won't follow the indirections back. It takes advantage of a strategy which Nazi's, and Mao used, but also the Stasi perfected, and really everyone uses today in sensitive positions. The separation of objectionable concerns. As for why we see this in so many online platforms. Its 5GW, and the platform maintainers are complicit, either through a corruption by dependency scheme, or just improper priorities believing its better to do or provide something than nothing even if they can't solve the problem. There is a financial interest towards this which drives this forward. Either way, action or inaction is a choice they made. Regardless of initial hope, destructive outcomes (negligence) and intent (choice to act or not) turn this into malice/malevolence. Even if they have isolated themselves so they don't know willfully, they are still accountable for their actions and choices.

sysrestartusr 1y ago

so we are completely ignoring the science, now, ey? someone always has more data. 50 years for you might be a lot but someone else will tell you they are gone faster than you think. a) doomers are just buffs, superficial or nerdy. b) never forget that due to how the web and social hierarchies are build, some people have an ugly information flow, are constantly lied to, and bots flood their feeds with the worst shit just because they had a bit of moment, once. some people are stilled told EV's are shit, buy a diesel. they are told so by some sort of "authority". or: "don't get a credit for "solar" if you don't have half the money right away" ( even though you'd start to save/make money after 10 years but you don't know math and that person is some sort of "authority" ) the world is full of mostly sub-average competence in positions or with the status of some sort of "authority" and these sub-average competent people, some of them saved and domesticated dogs, absolutely need others to have it worse then them so they will feed them lies whenever those people need advice. and these dogs usually work in collectives. truthy information flow is imperative but even the German state media slaps incomplete or outright misinformation into their audience brains' all the freaking time. it's ugly, especially if you read and watch news from a bunch of international and national sources, which is why the educated youth stopped caring long ago and gladly joins Ponzi narratives ... written and played by people who rely on misinformation, polarization and some sort of ... "show" ... it's boring until the future arrives and there's nothing but obedience and or confusion and or drugs to cope with either or both. critical thinking is a dying idea, a skill soon extinct. defense mechanisms against it are hard-wired into languages and schools of thought ... the whole "just doin' my job" thing got outta hand because a bunch of other people were sabotaged just doing their jobs ... but someone makes you feel cool, or luxury does ... and that's that.

alganet 1y ago

The anxiety spreaders are a political phenomena. It's mostly about blaming the "other side" and framing it as the cause for world collapse. Those people don't actually believe a catastrophe is going to happen. They already think they are being productive by hacking the political spectrum. In other words, imbecile automaton panfleteers. What you described has nothing to do with schizophrenia. You are mixing up two distinct behaviors by a single theme (world ending catastrophes).