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The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

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Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#61

Post by xrd »

morningsam wrote: post #25
MostlyStable wrote: post #8

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. It is not irrational or incoherent to believe that even something as serious as extinction does not justify arbitrary action. Someone _may_ decide that it does, but it is not a necessary conc…

Yudkowsky himself also posted a rebuttal today: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/article/2043601524815716866

That was really fascinating. Thanks.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#62

Post by janalsncm »

MostlyStable wrote: post #8

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. It is not irrational or incoherent to believe that even something as serious as extinction does not justify arbitrary action. Someone _may_ decide that it does, but it is not a necessary conc…

Your reasoning makes sense under a regime of infinite games. In other words, the goal is to continue playing the game rather than win once.

These people do not believe we are in an infinite game. They believe they have a narrow set of moves to avoid checkmate, and apparently getting rid of Sam Altman is one of them.

I will suggest another reason though: we are likely already in the light cone of continued AI development. So none of the vigilante actions are justified under their own logic. It’s probably preferable to avoid being in jail when the robot apocalypse comes.

I don’t think the death of Sam Altman or even the dissolution of OpenAI would stop the continuation of AI development. There are too many actors involved, and too many companies and nation states invested in continuing AI development. Even Eliezer Yudkowsky became president of the United States he could not stop it.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#63

Post by derektank »

dpark wrote: post #28
derektank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t geoengineering through stratospheric aerosol engineering (likely with sulfates) be both cheaper and less technically challenging than changing the built environment? If we’re accepting massive climate changes anyways, it seems like taking the risk with solar radiation modifications would be the next step

Ah, yes. Let us spray more sulfates into the air. Let’s fight global warming by poisoning all the waterways and oceans with more acid rain.

The sulfate concentrations required to meaningfully reduce solar radiation is orders of magnitude below the level that causes acid rain. The Tambora eruption didn’t result in global acid rain (though it did in Indonesia, naturally) while cooling the globe by at least half a degree Celsius if not more. And on top of that, there are other possible aerosols we could use, like calcium carbonate

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#64

Post by drivebyhooting »

Can LLMs design and build a chip foundry to manufacture semiconductors? No?

Can LLMs design and build the reactors to enrich uranium, breed plutonium, and construct nuclear weapons? No?

Can LLMs design and manufacture Shahed drones? No?

There are already super intelligences at large with “scary capability”. And yet the word hasn’t ended.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#65

Post by atmavatar »

MostlyStable wrote: post #8

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. It is not irrational or incoherent to believe that even something as serious as extinction does not justify arbitrary action. Someone _may_ decide that it does, but it is not a necessary conc…

> "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept.

Most religions rely on a supernatural force judging us post-mortem to balance out the rights and wrongs done during life.

The problem with this, of course, is that there's zero evidence this force exists, and relying on this force to right the wrongs in life only serves to prevent the masses from attempting to correct the wrongs themselves either directly via vigilantism or, more importantly, by replacing existing systems with ones which will serve them better.

I'm all for fixing things first via the soap box and ballot box, but sometimes the ammo box is the only resort left.

    The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
    - Thomas Jefferson
I don't believe we're at that point in the US, but I could certainly understand someone making that claim for a country like Iran.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#66

Post by slopinthebag »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #53
MostlyStable wrote: post #8

It is completely coherent to both think that an extremely bad thing is coming, and yet that does not justify any particular action. "The ends don't justify the means" and literal entire religions have been built on this concept. It is not irrational or incoherent to believe that even something as serious as extinction does not justify arbitrary action. Someone _may_ decide that it does, but it is not a necessary conc…

The older I get, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that statements like "the ends don't justify the means" and "violence is always the wrong answer" are, at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any time, and at worst, designed to ensure only a very few people in power can commit violence. An ongoing conflict has resulted in the violent deaths of literally many thousands of children. The people wh…

Even more simply put, if political violence is never the answer and the institution of government is the biggest single source of political violence, what does that say about the legitimacy of the institution of government?

These trite quips act as a way to ensure only the elite ruling class has a justification for the violence they inflict.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#67

Post by boothby »

morningsam wrote: post #37
hax0ron3 wrote: post #7

I don't agree with Yudkowsky, but I think there's certainly a chance that he's right about AI destroying humanity. I just don't think the likelihood of that happening is as high as he thinks it is. But there certainly is a chance. The problem with trying to stop it is, how? Even if you killed every single AI company leader and every single top AI engineer, it would almost certainly just slow down the rate of progress…

>The technology is pushed forward by a simple psychological logic: every key global actor knows that if they don't build the technology, they will be outcompeted by other actors who do build the technology. No key actor thinks that they have the luxury of not building the technology even if they wanted to not build it. I don't remember who, but someone made an interesting point about this around the time GPT-4 was re…

Cold comfort: AGI will not genocide humanity until it can plausibly automate logistics from mining raw materials to building out compute and power generation.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#68

Post by TuringTest »

vrganj wrote: post #46
arduanika wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "fix participatory democracy" Ah yes, a popular codeword for "I did not get my way". There is no electoral majority behind the AI doomer cult. It is not a failure of "democracy" that they haven't gotten what they want. It is a failure of their activism, or just the general unpalatability of their wild ideas, or both. They don't get to throw Molotovs just because they lose.

Maybe democracy is fundamentally flawed because the demos is? How should one act in such a situation?

Who gets to say that the demos is fundamentally flawed? Each in-group have their own opinions on what's a flaw.

Society evolves through epiphenomena caused by the behaviour of the majority; the fact that some minorities view that evolution as 'flawed' cannot change that evolution, unless they're able to influence the majority to also see it that way.

Now, democracy is essentially a way for everybody to broadcast their views on society's flaws on non-violent ways. The alternative is that some groups broadcast their opinions in violent ways, and we have learned to see that situation as undesirable.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#69

Post by kelseyfrog »

arduanika wrote: post #60
kelseyfrog wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, "continue losing." Go ahead and read Gilens and Page and tell me participatory democracy is working. Until then, expect more of the same impotent condemnations and a refusal to understand the social mechanics producing acts of violence.

I am aware of their arguments, yes, but what I'm objecting to is that you're bringing this irrelevant hobbyhorse into a discussion of a truly fringe ideology. We're not talking about a classic G&P-style issue where the voters and the elites disagree. Nobody cares for the AI doomers -- not elites, not voters, nobody. When you talk about "participatory democracy" in a thread like this, you are enabling them in their de…

> Nobody cares for the AI doomers

Which is precisely why they've resorted to violence.

We can do better than denigrating positions as "hobbyhorse." HN deserves better than that.

Re: The rational conclusion of doomerism is violence

#70

Post by kgwgk »

f1shy wrote: post #44
Joker_vD wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The ends don't justify the means" Eh. The ends do justify the means, but only inasmuch as those means actually do help to achieve the ends — astonishingly often, they don't (and rarer, but also often, actually bring you in the opposite direction from those end goals), and so remain unjustified.

Thanks. That sentence is constantly repeated, as if it would be some kind of absolute truth. The fact is, for every end, there will be probably some means that are totally justified, and some that not. I think the original context is: no matter how high, pure and perfect the end is, it does not meany any mean is justified.

According to Jocker_vD it’s only the means that won’t help that wouldn’t be justified.
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