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They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

theguardian.com

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Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#61

Post by GeoAtreides »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #19
ryao wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be th…

Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.

You lie:

"From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Reputation

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#62

Post by FrustratedMonky »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #61
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.

You lie: "From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Reputation

lie is really strong term in this case.

in his time he was not 'literature', it was pulp, common, 'popular'.

is Stephen King today, 'literature' or just 'pulp fiction'?

this is a subjective thing. authors that are 'popular' sometimes aren't considered 'literature'.

in your very own citation:::

"Among fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens. Poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850), thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work, while novelist George Meredith (1828–1909), found Dickens "intellectually lacking"."

"Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him "the greatest of superficial novelists":

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#63

Post by CaffeineLD50 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #28
CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #21

The cult elements of isolation (boat/van life), alienation from self (trans, split brain), false moral superiority (vegan), demands for purity in action (vegan), sense of false higher purpose (AI basilisk), false possession of method for empowerment (rationalism) are there. The hatred of landlords et al (anarchism) and use of drugs (psychedelic, others?) seems to be my guess for the violence part. Lots of highly expl…

I think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family but I know a lot of people use psychedelic drugs and don't resort to violence. With the hyperbolic rhetoric about false threats, I'm surprised we haven't seen more violence from "rationalists"; if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

Yes, agreed. Lots of drug using gay vegan anarchists don't assault landlords or kill people.

But drugs seem to be a way that people are destabilized outside of norms.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#64

Post by CaffeineLD50 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47
PaulHoule wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depend if you chose the right target, pretty clearly they didn't.

Start further back. Depends on whether you are actually in imminent danger. Then, if you are, then you have to choose the right target.

The fabrication of imminent danger as a means to break people out of the norm and into their matrix reality may make their ability to evaluate real imminent dangers perhaps?

They were terrified of some AI Roko's Basilisk they imputed some fantastic power to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#65

Post by CaffeineLD50 »

lupusreal wrote: post #54
PaulHoule wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depend if you chose the right target, pretty clearly they didn't.

They had issues with so many different groups and causes they may as well have been raging against society as a whole. A dozen or so kooks resorting to violence against the world will only ever end with their demise. They thought themselves rational but were in fact totally insane to think their course of action was anything other than elaborate suicide.

I don't think its necessarily suicidal if the leadership is competent.

Mao Tse Tung when he decided to become a "mountain bandit" and formed the basis for future Red Army may have had no greater advantage. Except he was a military genius and these guys were just geniuses.

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