6 ms·

I have only read a few passages (and some of the excellent quotes others have shared here), but I find the underlying message here so much more compelling than

by bem94 4mo ago

I have only read a few passages (and some of the excellent quotes others have shared here), but I find the underlying message here so much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley. I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) and where values other than "intelligence" (in whatever guise) are on an equal footing. Even writing that makes me feel naive (and to an extent I know it is) but I think it would be inconsistent for someone who cheers for humanity's efforts to solve/chip away at "impossible" problems (like LLMs were thought to be not so long ago) to shirk from the challenge of making the world better for _everyone_.

bluesign 4mo ago
The thing is why that this feels so good future is; it is a system with no constraints. A bit like Star Trek universe in Roddenberry's imagination. This kind of utopia can only be achieved with all honest actors, but in reality systems are usually designed around bad actors. Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.
- mapt 4mo ago
  To get from here to Roddenberry's communism, according to Roddenberry's lore, we passed through the Eugenics Wars, the Second Civil War, and then fifty years of World War Three and the 'post-atomic horror' before coming to our senses.
- energy123 4mo ago
  It's probably more predictive to model actors as being neither good nor bad but constrained by various collective dilemmas, such as prisoners dilemma, the security spiral, tragedy of the commons, race dynamics, collective action or first mover problems, information asymmetries, the commitment problem, among others. Those are the hardest problems to solve because they're pathologies that result from the global, largely amoral structure rather than consequences of the individual exercise of morality. In the AI case, each firm is in an arms race, and nobody can slow down without effectively collapsing due to positive gross margins only being viable with a frontier model that attracts marginal demand. An appeal to morality might have an impact but more effective action would be to address the structure that the AI companies are situated in that causes this dynamic in the first place. In practice, thats going to be a global agreement to slow down, and global regulations.
  - bluesign 4mo ago
    Yeah but this is a system problem; if we had this utopic system from the beginning we would not even have AI probably.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
  This sort of rationalization of evil is a core of technocratic support for Trumpism, I find, and has parallels to the evangelical prosperity gospel. Choice tenets: - Fuck you, got mine - If I don’t do it, someone else will - Might makes right - Greed is good It’s always cloaked in a veil of realism, but it’s just the classic 14-year-old-boy-just-got-introduced-to-the-prisoners-dilemma situation. There’s nothing philosophically interesting about it. Ironically, these are often the same people denouncing multiculturalism, yet the culture they strive for is completely morally bankrupt.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    And it's funny because the "realism" has been proven wrong over and over and over again for millennia. People do all sorts of selfless and generous things all the time! The entire premise is trivially disprovable by just going and asking a neighbor for some help with something. That's not to say we should be naive about greed or malice existing or being powerful motivators (especially the former), but it is obviously not true that they're the only forces at play and therefore you are "just doing the logical thing" by succumbing to them. It's just the more destructive version of the same naiveté.
    - datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
      Seems you and I have together struck a nerve. Maybe our sentiments would have been better received in an alternate subthread, but it’s all I could think about while reading the parent / cousin comments. I haven’t read the full Magnifica Humanitas yet, but I would be pleasantly surprised if he touched on not just dehumanization of the other, but dehumanization of the self. Expanding on your thought, succumbing to those forces under the guise of just doing the logical thing is in a way self-dehumanization - to believe you are only capable of the “logical” thing instead of the moral thing.
  - bluesign 4mo ago
    This was not my point at all. Maybe I could explained better, but main criticism I have is: you can bundle together objectives ( which are inherently good ) and create an utopia. But those cannot always be achievable. Everything in life in trade-offs. Simple example is speed/quality/cost. I can tell easily: - services should be cheap - services should be fast - services should be high quality Now I created an utopia. Obviously this is amazing to listener. They agree. But is it achievable? It is not saying greed is good or might makes right. But system means you need to construct from this ideals best outcome ( which comes at some trade offs)
exceptione 4mo ago
> much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley. Whenever I hear these "tech overlords", I am always baffled at the total lack of culture, the absence of taste, the empty visions and the implied complete subjugation of humans to ideals of "efficiency" or "quick and easy". Maybe they would have been more interesting people if they had been brought up in beautiful towns and cities, if they had lived in a rich cultural environment instead of being raised as consumer of cheap and flashy pop culture. Maybe we should tax bad architecture, it gives me headaches but others might incur heavier damage. As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  We lost the “liberal education” (not the political one, but the “freeing” classical one) and it’s starting to show. When you compare the robber barons to Google and Meta it’s kind of embarrassing- they build massive empires of iron horses screaming across the world and covered cities in magnificent buildings (stations, libraries, etc). G&M built an empire of advertising and … not much else?
  - muttonette 4mo ago
    Google makes phones and phones are somewhat good. Better search had some value for humanity. Meta has no redeeming qualities or achievements, other than helping Trump get into office and defeat Iran.
  - exceptione 4mo ago
    Indeed. The current crop doesn't have an idea for what they hoard their billions, it's just...emptiness. I propose we explain the tech's attachment to Accelerationism as a profound boredom and lack of purpose. "What does it mean to be human"--they don't value that question. Peter Thiel got interviewed a month or two ago, and he could not be brought to say that he sees value in preserving humanity. He would rather turn himself into a robotic contraption to extend his life. When power fears death, some strange things happens. EDIT: link to the interview with Thiel <https://xcancel.com/rcbregman/status/2036113528126394834#m https://xcancel.com/rcbregman/status/2036113528126394834#m>
snikeris 4mo ago
> I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.
- aleph_minus_one 4mo ago
  > I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago. The Amish rather came to a different conclusion (which I don't want to judge on, but on which I nevertheless have a different opinion than the Amish).
  - 46493168 4mo ago
    What is that conclusion which differs from the post you replied to? The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption.
    - aleph_minus_one 4mo ago
      > The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption. The central idea concerning the Amish's relationship to technology is that only technology is allowed if it does not destroy their community. My personal values are much less based on upholding a community, but rather are much more rooted in individual freedom and independence. This means that I (likely) come to very different conclusions regarding this class of problems than the Amish do: For example, I am less opposed to various kinds of technology that Amish would likely consider as as "community-destroying". On the other hand, I guess I am much more opposed to technology that can be used to surveil the user and/or makes the user dependent on the whims of big tech companies than I guess the Amish are (i.e. the Amish would likely consider this as a much smaller problem concerning which technology to allow vs disallow; as I wrote: by my understanding their central concern is which consequences some technology has for keeping their community together). To give evidence for the previous point: (by my impression - I am not US-American) you will rather not find many Amish people at political rallys against surveillance laws. The people who attend such rallys typically also have strong opinions on which technology to use or not to use (just talk to such people who are very strongly opinionated :-) ), but - as I pointed out - these technology choices come from very different basic premises than those of the Amish.
Curosinono 4mo ago
[flagged]
- brookst 4mo ago
  Does that mean that nothing of value can come from the church, and we should ignore all ideas they put forth out of some kind of spite?
  - Curosinono 4mo ago
    Spite? Its not spite. The church creates a believe system which indoctrinates all of us and took our cultures away. The germanic tribes were believers in nature, church removed all of this. Church also doesn't see woman as equal. Just because they might sometimes also say postive things or things we might align, doesn't mean i need their oppinion. And especially not on hn
    - parasubvert 4mo ago
      Indoctrination and cultural erasure isn't unique to the church. With Germanic tribes - the Saxons, Angles, Normans, etc., while women's rights ebbed and flowed over the centuries, they were rife with double standards and were still quite patriarchal. They didn't just believe in nature, they believed in the same pagan gods as the Nordic peoples. The point is that times change, and institutions change, and holding grudges for long ago sins and policies is ineffective.
      - Curosinono 4mo ago
        This is not true. The number of believers and official people in the church is continuesly declining around the globe. 1990 there were nearly 60 Million people in the church in germany (nearly everyone) now we are down to under 40 Million which crossed the line of 50% This is real tangable progress. The only downside is, that we do not sit together and formulate something which might give people hold who are not ready to be self stable mentally and might need something like this. And we also do not try to align together on rituals which help us to live better together. I'm also still affected by the indoctrination of the church. As you can see, i argue against church not just because I like to argue, but because i really really hate religion and especially the christian church in germany, due to my own values and experience. This is not old i'm only 36.

by bem94 4mo ago

bluesign 4mo ago

The thing is why that this feels so good future is; it is a system with no constraints. A bit like Star Trek universe in Roddenberry's imagination. This kind of utopia can only be achieved with all honest actors, but in reality systems are usually designed around bad actors. Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.

mapt 4mo ago
To get from here to Roddenberry's communism, according to Roddenberry's lore, we passed through the Eugenics Wars, the Second Civil War, and then fifty years of World War Three and the 'post-atomic horror' before coming to our senses.
energy123 4mo ago
It's probably more predictive to model actors as being neither good nor bad but constrained by various collective dilemmas, such as prisoners dilemma, the security spiral, tragedy of the commons, race dynamics, collective action or first mover problems, information asymmetries, the commitment problem, among others. Those are the hardest problems to solve because they're pathologies that result from the global, largely amoral structure rather than consequences of the individual exercise of morality. In the AI case, each firm is in an arms race, and nobody can slow down without effectively collapsing due to positive gross margins only being viable with a frontier model that attracts marginal demand. An appeal to morality might have an impact but more effective action would be to address the structure that the AI companies are situated in that causes this dynamic in the first place. In practice, thats going to be a global agreement to slow down, and global regulations.
- bluesign 4mo ago
  Yeah but this is a system problem; if we had this utopic system from the beginning we would not even have AI probably.
datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
This sort of rationalization of evil is a core of technocratic support for Trumpism, I find, and has parallels to the evangelical prosperity gospel. Choice tenets: - Fuck you, got mine - If I don’t do it, someone else will - Might makes right - Greed is good It’s always cloaked in a veil of realism, but it’s just the classic 14-year-old-boy-just-got-introduced-to-the-prisoners-dilemma situation. There’s nothing philosophically interesting about it. Ironically, these are often the same people denouncing multiculturalism, yet the culture they strive for is completely morally bankrupt.
- estearum 4mo ago
  And it's funny because the "realism" has been proven wrong over and over and over again for millennia. People do all sorts of selfless and generous things all the time! The entire premise is trivially disprovable by just going and asking a neighbor for some help with something. That's not to say we should be naive about greed or malice existing or being powerful motivators (especially the former), but it is obviously not true that they're the only forces at play and therefore you are "just doing the logical thing" by succumbing to them. It's just the more destructive version of the same naiveté.
  - datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
    Seems you and I have together struck a nerve. Maybe our sentiments would have been better received in an alternate subthread, but it’s all I could think about while reading the parent / cousin comments. I haven’t read the full Magnifica Humanitas yet, but I would be pleasantly surprised if he touched on not just dehumanization of the other, but dehumanization of the self. Expanding on your thought, succumbing to those forces under the guise of just doing the logical thing is in a way self-dehumanization - to believe you are only capable of the “logical” thing instead of the moral thing.
- bluesign 4mo ago
  This was not my point at all. Maybe I could explained better, but main criticism I have is: you can bundle together objectives ( which are inherently good ) and create an utopia. But those cannot always be achievable. Everything in life in trade-offs. Simple example is speed/quality/cost. I can tell easily: - services should be cheap - services should be fast - services should be high quality Now I created an utopia. Obviously this is amazing to listener. They agree. But is it achievable? It is not saying greed is good or might makes right. But system means you need to construct from this ideals best outcome ( which comes at some trade offs)

exceptione 4mo ago

> much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley. Whenever I hear these "tech overlords", I am always baffled at the total lack of culture, the absence of taste, the empty visions and the implied complete subjugation of humans to ideals of "efficiency" or "quick and easy". Maybe they would have been more interesting people if they had been brought up in beautiful towns and cities, if they had lived in a rich cultural environment instead of being raised as consumer of cheap and flashy pop culture. Maybe we should tax bad architecture, it gives me headaches but others might incur heavier damage. As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.

bombcar 4mo ago
We lost the “liberal education” (not the political one, but the “freeing” classical one) and it’s starting to show. When you compare the robber barons to Google and Meta it’s kind of embarrassing- they build massive empires of iron horses screaming across the world and covered cities in magnificent buildings (stations, libraries, etc). G&M built an empire of advertising and … not much else?
- muttonette 4mo ago
  Google makes phones and phones are somewhat good. Better search had some value for humanity. Meta has no redeeming qualities or achievements, other than helping Trump get into office and defeat Iran.
- exceptione 4mo ago
  Indeed. The current crop doesn't have an idea for what they hoard their billions, it's just...emptiness. I propose we explain the tech's attachment to Accelerationism as a profound boredom and lack of purpose. "What does it mean to be human"--they don't value that question. Peter Thiel got interviewed a month or two ago, and he could not be brought to say that he sees value in preserving humanity. He would rather turn himself into a robotic contraption to extend his life. When power fears death, some strange things happens. EDIT: link to the interview with Thiel <https://xcancel.com/rcbregman/status/2036113528126394834#m https://xcancel.com/rcbregman/status/2036113528126394834#m>

snikeris 4mo ago

> I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.

aleph_minus_one 4mo ago
> I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago. The Amish rather came to a different conclusion (which I don't want to judge on, but on which I nevertheless have a different opinion than the Amish).
- 46493168 4mo ago
  What is that conclusion which differs from the post you replied to? The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption.
  - aleph_minus_one 4mo ago
    > The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption. The central idea concerning the Amish's relationship to technology is that only technology is allowed if it does not destroy their community. My personal values are much less based on upholding a community, but rather are much more rooted in individual freedom and independence. This means that I (likely) come to very different conclusions regarding this class of problems than the Amish do: For example, I am less opposed to various kinds of technology that Amish would likely consider as as "community-destroying". On the other hand, I guess I am much more opposed to technology that can be used to surveil the user and/or makes the user dependent on the whims of big tech companies than I guess the Amish are (i.e. the Amish would likely consider this as a much smaller problem concerning which technology to allow vs disallow; as I wrote: by my understanding their central concern is which consequences some technology has for keeping their community together). To give evidence for the previous point: (by my impression - I am not US-American) you will rather not find many Amish people at political rallys against surveillance laws. The people who attend such rallys typically also have strong opinions on which technology to use or not to use (just talk to such people who are very strongly opinionated :-) ), but - as I pointed out - these technology choices come from very different basic premises than those of the Amish.

Curosinono 4mo ago

[flagged]

brookst 4mo ago
Does that mean that nothing of value can come from the church, and we should ignore all ideas they put forth out of some kind of spite?
- Curosinono 4mo ago
  Spite? Its not spite. The church creates a believe system which indoctrinates all of us and took our cultures away. The germanic tribes were believers in nature, church removed all of this. Church also doesn't see woman as equal. Just because they might sometimes also say postive things or things we might align, doesn't mean i need their oppinion. And especially not on hn
  - parasubvert 4mo ago
    Indoctrination and cultural erasure isn't unique to the church. With Germanic tribes - the Saxons, Angles, Normans, etc., while women's rights ebbed and flowed over the centuries, they were rife with double standards and were still quite patriarchal. They didn't just believe in nature, they believed in the same pagan gods as the Nordic peoples. The point is that times change, and institutions change, and holding grudges for long ago sins and policies is ineffective.
    - Curosinono 4mo ago
      This is not true. The number of believers and official people in the church is continuesly declining around the globe. 1990 there were nearly 60 Million people in the church in germany (nearly everyone) now we are down to under 40 Million which crossed the line of 50% This is real tangable progress. The only downside is, that we do not sit together and formulate something which might give people hold who are not ready to be self stable mentally and might need something like this. And we also do not try to align together on rituals which help us to live better together. I'm also still affected by the indoctrination of the church. As you can see, i argue against church not just because I like to argue, but because i really really hate religion and especially the christian church in germany, due to my own values and experience. This is not old i'm only 36.