Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Aligns the Aligners?

prestonbyrne.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 104 posts

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#71

Post by timr »

fwlr wrote: post #64
timr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, literally any ridiculous supposition must be taken seriously, because you can’t prove a negative.

I’m not sure what logic you have imputed to my comment, but I’m having trouble connecting what you wrote to anything I was saying. I am criticising the argument “every past apocalyptic prediction was wrong, therefore this future apocalyptic prediction is wrong” (specifically, that it carries exactly 0 weight, because the counterfactual world where at least one past apocalyptic prediction was true, is also a world tha…

> I am criticising the argument “every past apocalyptic prediction was wrong, therefore this future apocalyptic prediction is wrong”

That is not the argument being made. That is the straw man version you are presenting. Read the full paragraph, and the one after, and it's obvious:

> There are myriad policy responses. Whatever we do, those responses will require popular consent and careful deliberation. No one person, or one company, or one movement, knows the answer and history is no guide, save that apocalyptic predictions about new technologies have, to date, all been wrong.

> History does provide a great deal of guidance, however, about the use and misuse of government power. It tells us that the state is in fact likely the worst possible custodian for the most powerful publication and data analysis technologies.

Emphasis mine.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#72

Post by weberer »

biophysboy wrote: post #15

> As my regular readers will be aware, I have been engaged, on behalf of my clients, in legal combat with Internet censors around the world, agencies who think that they have both the standing, the competence, and the right to tell American companies what software they can write and run, for the better part of 18 months. Is this supposed to make me trust their opinions on tech regulation?

A lawyer who has been in the weeds for years dealing with the downstream affects of such regulations? Absolutely!

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#73

Post by applfanboysbgon »

timr wrote: post #68
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a grevious misuse of Russell's Teapot. You realise your assertion, if followed to its logical conclusion, is that because civilization has existed for this long, it can never collapse no matter what. > In that quote, the author is telling you that all of your past predictions of teapots have been wrong Past predictions have zero influence on future ones. If you flip a coin 10 times and get heads every time, t…

You're making a ridiculously improbable prediction that can never be falsified -- akin to beliefs in a vengeful God . Russell's Teapot is exactly the correct metaphor. The philosophical burden of proof lies on the person making empirically unfalsifiable claims. That is the point of Russell's Teapot.

> The philosophical burden of proof lies on the person making empirically unfalsifiable claims.

You appear not to understand what a prediction is. "I believe X will likely happen because Y" is different from an assertion of fact that "X will happen". A prediction cannot even be empirically proved! You are simply suggesting that nobody is allowed to make a prediction, ever. Russell's Teapot, too, is not an argument that you cannot believe in God. It is an argument that the unfalsifiability of a claim is not a basis to assert that God exists.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#74

Post by jerf »

loopies wrote: post #70
jerf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the civilization-scale Quantum Immortality argument... no civilization can be around that witnessed the end of civilization. (I refer to it that way rather than a "variant" because Quantum Immortality should always be parameterized by an acceptance function... for any given acceptance function, that function will be preserved in the quantum multiverse, and scoping the precision of the function affects the per…

>Quantum Immortality argument I never really understood what is the explanation for ... old people that we notice as dying. In today's times you might have an argument that some kind of life extension could pop up and some of the people alive today could have that as an excuse. But like 100 years ago? How would people dying of old age "continue living"?

From the point of view of the old people, exponentially large injections of improbability.

This is also where it is important to understand the argument is parameterized. If your acceptance function is "a full human body living a full human life in the way I'm used to", then you're asking for a huge whackload of improbability to keep that body alive. If, on the other hand, you merely ask for "the minimum system that stays conscious", while that is still a huge whackload it is exponentially smaller, by a very substantial factor.

Anyone who takes any sort of comfort in the argument doesn't understand it. It preserves minimal consciousness, for any and all definitions of "minimal consciousness". It does also preserve bodies, but at an exponentially smaller probability. You can even use as your acceptance function "civilization exactly as we know it today, with everyone currently living still alive in 1000 years" and that comes at a yet smaller exponential probability. All of these "exponential probabilities" as separated by numbers of zeros that themselves require exponential notation to write. But the universe itself is making so many splits and branches all the time that it has the "budget" for these probabilities to be true, somewhere in the quantum multiverse.

Or, put another way, any event that you can draw a non-zero probability pathway for occurs. It is not impossible for me to spontaneously have my particular genetic defect reversed in every cell in my body, so there are branches where that happens... they're just exponentially unlikely compared to what we actually experience. It can literally be in %10^(-10^1,000,000,000) of the universes... but if it's not zero, it will happen, if the quantum multiverse is the correct view.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#75

Post by neuroticnews25 »

fwlr wrote: post #5

> Nobody knows the answer and history is no guide, save that apocalyptic predictions about new technologies have, to date, all been wrong. If any past apocalyptic prediction had been true, you would not have been around to write this sentence and we would not have been around to read it. It’s not a very convincing argument when we cannot in principle observe the counterfactual.

I always struggle to understand such an anthropic principle type of reasoning.

>If any past apocalyptic prediction had been true, you would not have been around to write this sentence and we would not have been around to read it

So what? How is this [proportion of possible universes in which we can read the failed prediction] logically relevant to our universe?

It just doesn't click for me, it smells like some additional premise is smuggled, possibly the same as in the simulation hypothesis argument.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#76

Post by loopies »

petcat wrote: post #49

I think there is a more nuanced perspective to take on this debate than just profit motive. If they believe that this version of "AI" is actually becoming so dangerous that there is a real risk of it falling into the wrong hands , then it makes sense that the American labs would try to convince the US government to work on a joint "AI non-proliferation" agreement with China much the same way that nuclear weapon techn…

I think in all of these debates people lose track of one of the major vectors of threat, as you said, other humans. From my point of view this is an ever bigger problem with this tech, like orders of magnitude bigger.

The current setup we find ourselves in is based on a very important detail that is easily lost because it is so old we don't really think about it. There is, or rather was, an incentive for more people to exist, because they are valuable for work and defense.

Some people wrongly use the industrial revolution to argue against AI completely replacing human work, but that is very wrong. What is happening with AI has nothing to do with the industrial revolution, as equivalence. Back then you'd just free up humans for higher level work. Now, theoretically, anything you could ever think a human could do, AI would theoretically do better. So no matter what job you come up with, using AI instead of a human gives a better outcome, cheaper, more reliable, faster.

Coming back to initial subject, one thing that kept everyone in check was our inability of actually wiping everyone out. Sure, we had nukes but they ruin the Earth so nobody can inhabit it if they all go off. But with AI, centralizing so much power up top, and taking it away from regular people...that is the biggest danger in this scenario, by far. Not some rogue AI, rather rogue human groups that have the power and technology to do away with basically everyone else, or a good bit of everyone else.

This threat is way bigger and never addressed. Like...suspiciously never addressed.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#77

Post by win311fwg »

BirAdam wrote: post #25
BariumBlue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US governmental system does have it's issues (first past the post and it's effects being the most glaring), but isn't it the longest continuous democracy alive right now? > They are also less likely to start random wars EU lack of aggression, to defend themselves physically, economically, or otherwise, has been criticized constantly - slow and late to react to the Russian invasion, slow and late to react to new t…

The US government is only the longest continuous democracy only if one believes that the US is still a democracy. I've read some decent arguments that the US stopped being a democracy with the McKinley administration, and others that the US ceased to be a functional democracy during the Second World War. In both cases, the claim was that the USA became an imperial oligarchy. It is questionable whether any democracy t…

> I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state.

To be fair, I've seen no nation where the people make their will known. Does a democracy depend on actual action or only theoretical possibility? It seems from my observance that most people consider democratic nations to be democratic not because they practice as such but because it is believed that the people have the opportunity to exercise democracy if they ever choose to.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#78

Post by weberer »

BirAdam wrote: post #25
BariumBlue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US governmental system does have it's issues (first past the post and it's effects being the most glaring), but isn't it the longest continuous democracy alive right now? > They are also less likely to start random wars EU lack of aggression, to defend themselves physically, economically, or otherwise, has been criticized constantly - slow and late to react to the Russian invasion, slow and late to react to new t…

The US government is only the longest continuous democracy only if one believes that the US is still a democracy. I've read some decent arguments that the US stopped being a democracy with the McKinley administration, and others that the US ceased to be a functional democracy during the Second World War. In both cases, the claim was that the USA became an imperial oligarchy. It is questionable whether any democracy t…

Switzerland is a true democracy. I'm not sure if any others exist.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#79

Post by knome »

jerf wrote: post #74
loopies wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quantum Immortality argument I never really understood what is the explanation for ... old people that we notice as dying. In today's times you might have an argument that some kind of life extension could pop up and some of the people alive today could have that as an excuse. But like 100 years ago? How would people dying of old age "continue living"?

From the point of view of the old people, exponentially large injections of improbability. This is also where it is important to understand the argument is parameterized. If your acceptance function is "a full human body living a full human life in the way I'm used to", then you're asking for a huge whackload of improbability to keep that body alive. If, on the other hand, you merely ask for "the minimum system that…

Quantum immortality is just an absurd quasi-religious pretense of physics that caters to those that fear death but feel embarrassed to participate in the traditional socially approved coping mechanisms.

Re: Who Aligns the Aligners?

#80

Post by loopies »

jerf wrote: post #74
loopies wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quantum Immortality argument I never really understood what is the explanation for ... old people that we notice as dying. In today's times you might have an argument that some kind of life extension could pop up and some of the people alive today could have that as an excuse. But like 100 years ago? How would people dying of old age "continue living"?

From the point of view of the old people, exponentially large injections of improbability. This is also where it is important to understand the argument is parameterized. If your acceptance function is "a full human body living a full human life in the way I'm used to", then you're asking for a huge whackload of improbability to keep that body alive. If, on the other hand, you merely ask for "the minimum system that…

I mean sure, in the end you can have some heaven, some benevolent alien species reaching back into some field and copying all of your material structure data right at time of death and rebuilding you in some kind of resurection center. The space of what is possible is wildly vast, we know or can think of very little by comparison. If you give up some day to day coherence then you can almost always find something that would work and make sense once there.

It could even be us, future us, being able to somehow recover past data and literally reassemble all of the humans that ever lived. They aren't as many as you'd think, in the grand scheme of things.

Post reply on HN