7 ms·

> an incentive to make their technology seem transformative and powerful I have no frame of reference to process this. Humans species perhaps 300,000 years, w

> an incentive to make their technology seem transformative and powerful I have no frame of reference to process this. Humans species perhaps 300,000 years, we are essentially the same. Transistor, 79 years, explosive growth in numbers and power. Integrated circuit, 68 years, explosive growth in numbers and power. "Attention is all you need", 9 years. ChatGPT, 4 years, explosive growth in instances and power. Humans species, not getting smarter. [0,1,2,3] There is a syndrome where many people seem unable to perceive or reason about rates of change in technology. We are going to spend the vast majority of our future lives without the intelligence crown. In terms of verbally expressible knowledge, models are passing many people completely, and passing all of our individually respectively weak reasoning areas. Other modalities are progressing very quickly. There will be short periods where progress happens quickly, but the impact feels slow. There will be radical changes that feel slow too, because if something anticipated or important isn't instant, we tend to perceive it as slow. But it won't be slow. And it won't be long. We are smart in a kind of pick the-best-of-us at the-best-of-times way. We are rarely consistently or broadly smart individually. We are not in the same galaxy as "ready". What would that look like? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model

dbspin 4mo ago
Agree with most of this, it's well articulated and captures how we react to change. However - 'Humans species perhaps 300,000 years, we are essentially the same' is an enormous misconception. That fact that we lack gross anatomical changes during this period, ignores everything we now know about punctuated equilibrium and rapid evolution. It's highly probably we've had an enormous number of evolved psychological changes during the last few hundred, and even tens of thousands of years. Changes that relate to our capacity to live in large groups, adapt to urban environments, resist disease and so on. We know that's the case simply because acute pandemics become epidemics through herd immunity, and through the acquisition of lactose tolerance etc. It seems highly unlikely that adaptations stop there. Altering the environment (in the last 10K years that means the built environment) alters the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. It seems likely that we've essentially domesticated out much of our propensity for violence and increased our capacity for mood regulation. Obviously it's incredibly tricky to pair these specific behavioural changes to genetic changes -> protein synthesis -> behaviour. Bearing in mind though we're only 20 years out from the first study to link allele variant to behaviour (the COMT Val/Met polymorphism), and the potential controversy around such research, this shouldn't be surprising.
- Nevermark 4mo ago
  Good point. The rate of cognitive improvements would be slow, imperceptible even over many generations, and virtually non-existent over the less than 100 years of digital automation. It would be interesting to know how much we changed cognitively since our species bifurcated, and also since civilization scaled up social density. Relative to the discussion, AI tech is progressing in time frames that are a fraction of a human generation. So we are at a complete standstill in that context.
randusername 4mo ago
You're applying broad, long-term, and high-level reasoning to motivations that are more likely short-term and driven by simplistic incentives. Begging for regulation (and input into precisely what that regulation is) relieves competition, consolidating dependency among the established players, and spreads a very effective fear narrative that what these companies are doing will change everything and therefore they are worthy of mind-boggling capex and valuations. We have to quit seeing humanist visionaries where the evidence shows businessmen with access to the best strategy and PR counsel around.
- Nevermark 4mo ago
  Except everything is happening in the "short" time frame. That is the point. We are at an unusual time, where companies might "hype", but it is unlikely their hype is actually overshooting near-term reality.

dbspin 4mo ago

Agree with most of this, it's well articulated and captures how we react to change. However - 'Humans species perhaps 300,000 years, we are essentially the same' is an enormous misconception. That fact that we lack gross anatomical changes during this period, ignores everything we now know about punctuated equilibrium and rapid evolution. It's highly probably we've had an enormous number of evolved psychological changes during the last few hundred, and even tens of thousands of years. Changes that relate to our capacity to live in large groups, adapt to urban environments, resist disease and so on. We know that's the case simply because acute pandemics become epidemics through herd immunity, and through the acquisition of lactose tolerance etc. It seems highly unlikely that adaptations stop there. Altering the environment (in the last 10K years that means the built environment) alters the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. It seems likely that we've essentially domesticated out much of our propensity for violence and increased our capacity for mood regulation. Obviously it's incredibly tricky to pair these specific behavioural changes to genetic changes -> protein synthesis -> behaviour. Bearing in mind though we're only 20 years out from the first study to link allele variant to behaviour (the COMT Val/Met polymorphism), and the potential controversy around such research, this shouldn't be surprising.

Nevermark 4mo ago
Good point. The rate of cognitive improvements would be slow, imperceptible even over many generations, and virtually non-existent over the less than 100 years of digital automation. It would be interesting to know how much we changed cognitively since our species bifurcated, and also since civilization scaled up social density. Relative to the discussion, AI tech is progressing in time frames that are a fraction of a human generation. So we are at a complete standstill in that context.

randusername 4mo ago

You're applying broad, long-term, and high-level reasoning to motivations that are more likely short-term and driven by simplistic incentives. Begging for regulation (and input into precisely what that regulation is) relieves competition, consolidating dependency among the established players, and spreads a very effective fear narrative that what these companies are doing will change everything and therefore they are worthy of mind-boggling capex and valuations. We have to quit seeing humanist visionaries where the evidence shows businessmen with access to the best strategy and PR counsel around.

Nevermark 4mo ago
Except everything is happening in the "short" time frame. That is the point. We are at an unusual time, where companies might "hype", but it is unlikely their hype is actually overshooting near-term reality.