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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#191

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh Go to the source materials. - Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley - The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker - Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg - the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg - Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann - Factfulness. Hans rosling Or, just look at the data http://ourwor…

> the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world pretty crazy they'd put a fallacy in the title of their book

How is it a fallacy? Do you know that it won't?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#192
Looks like a lot of people got triggered by the message. I think the manifesto is descriptively correct (by assigning to technology and markets the wealth increase of the last centuries) and prescriptively sound (just keep doing what we know it works).

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#193
>> 'Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.'

I wonder how many of these terms were focus grouped and promoted by him or people in his cohort.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#194
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countless ways. From sheer governmental incompetence like when regulating the competition out of markets. To simply not understanding second order effects when “helping markets” with patents and humongous copyright terms. To not understanding supply and demand when pressed to fulfill voter promises like when attempting to control and fix prices. To being captive to interest groups that end up controlling a huge chunk…

And who are the highest bidders?

Corporations, in America, where the travesty known as Citizens United exists.

(I'm not claiming that other countries don't have money in politics; but America is the one where it is most clearly enshrined with an actual name to the philosophy)

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#195
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective Altruism is a charity / social club / networking opportunity for young STEM types based on pretty extreme beliefs about Utilitarianism and recently AI. The most famous EA right now is probably SBF. Accelerationism is the belief that we should race towards catastrophe so that we can rebuild society in a better way. E / Acc is a (sometimes ironic) amalgam of the two. You won't be surprised to learn that not m…

The original accelerationist manifesto was written by people who did study history. You can find it here: https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-mani... #accelerate was a meme (which, mainly referred to a set of aesthetics) on Google circles around 2011 Since then, the meme evolved into a bit of a war between l/acc (the original sense of the term) and r/acc (Nick Land flavored). e/acc is a play on th…

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#196

In a world where abundance reigns, the old structures and the leaders who champion them fade into obsolescence. The energy that once went into seeking more begins to flow into sharing, nurturing, and sustaining. In this transformed landscape, resource hoarding and centralized control are not just out of place; they become barriers to the collective human journey toward wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. When everyone'…

I don't understand why people find this idea compelling. I find it without any supporting evidence that this is how it would turn out. They hypothesis is unproven and doesn't match my own observed anecdata around how people function. Yet it seems like everytime it comes up everyone thinks it's obvious.

I just fundamentally don't think a post scarcity society functions even remotely the way everyone else seems to think it would.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#197
What ideas pop up in your head about someone who deems their enemies "trust and safety" or "risk management"?

Especially risk takers should manage their risks. Someone who complains about risk management when taking risks is usually not an innovator, but an opportunistic liability to progress and shared benefits.

You are free to take risks where negative downsides of unchecked technology are taken by you, but AI will impact everyone ("playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.").

It is precisely because the potential and power of AI are so impactful and transformative that AI developers have more responsibility to not squander this and mess this up. Being optimistic about the benefits, should make one pessimistic about the risks.

So, yes. Promote benefits. Build, create, fail, refine. Focus you attention fully on it. Ignore risks and risks management and trust and safety. But don't label these an enemy when these speak up.

Doomerism has hurt AI safety discourse tremendously. Unrealistic and restrictive risk management hurts progress and reasoned debates. Roko and Yudkowski get way too much attention and dominate and control the public debate, pushing out moderate and careful arguments. The e/acc crowd similarly hurt AI safety: almost like these don't believe that either technology can be dangerous, or that such danger is to be accepted, or even required, to make progress.

Maximize benefits, while minimizing risks. Both can work. One without the other won't. Don't try to launder your Waifu-generators as decentralization or progress. Don't damage AI safety by making everyone disgusted at the thought, because you just had to talk about existential threats of nano-bots, not the current and very real risks associated with (generative) AI.

The problem with the current debate on AI safety, is that AI ethicists are too enthusiastic to come up with many rules to bind AI and stifle progress. While the AI acceleration have trouble to come up with just one rule we could put to a democratic vote. If you really can not come up with severe and avoidable negative consequences from computing, then maybe you should not have strong opinions on computer safety.

Accelerate benefits, reduce risks. We owe it to the future we are building right now.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#198

> Markets > We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us > We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral There's many things off with this. The USSR from the 1920s to early 1950s had enormous economic growth - particularly in the 1930s when so-called free markets in the West had collapsed, by the 1…

If you design a system that can only really last for a single generation or two it's not really an appropriate model for a civilization is it? The USSR had 3 decades of solid growth? That's cute. The U.S. has been booming for hundreds of years at this point. The US economy is not centrally planned. Government expenditure is 37 percent of GDP, not even a majority. Even much of the government expenditures that do occur…

> The U.S. may have had bread lines at the time, but people weren't dying of mass starvation.

Only if you consider the millions that suffered mass extermination, incarceration and forced labor in the US not to be humans.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#199

This isn't a techno-optimist manifesto. This is a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist manifesto with a sprinkling of 1960 tech boosterism so that they can point at people who disagree and call them luddites. I'm a massive techno-optimist. I think science and technology has self-evidently bought vast improvements to the human experience. I think it's an absolutely essential part of solving many of the problems that plague…

Which parts do you reject?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#200
So the Economist reported today that Tuvalu is planning for its disappearance as sea levels rise [1].

What a great opportunity for Msrs Andreeson, Thiel, Musk and all the other neo-Rand true believers to step in and create their seasteading utopia. They could cast this manifesto in gold at the entrance. Years from now, when we visit their brave new world below the waves I'm sure it will have worked out great!

[1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-i...

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