Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready • Hacker News Board

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#71

Post by ph0rque » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

Felz wrote: post #53

XorNot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you barred the doors to a theater and tossed a few gallons of bleach and vinegar in you could also just gas hundreds of people, but it doesn't happen. We worry a lot about technology because the attacks sound novel, but not about the conventional ones which still (mostly) don't happen because the reality is that the actual logistical challenges of implementing them without security services noticing still h…

I think the real limiter is people willing and stable enough to murder indiscriminately at scale in novel ways. Mowing down crowds of people with a truck is bizarrely recent, and the peak of mass murder is still one guy sniping at a concert from a nearby hotel. Everyone was relatively surprised that passenger planes could be used as destructive weapons. The really effective means of mass murder I think would be subtl…

Death by obesity! Oh wait...

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#72

Post by peteradio » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #66

defen wrote: post #9

> In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone. So you "only" need 10 million drones and 10 million grams of plastic explosive? An attack of that magnitude probably requires the resources of a nation-state, so I doubt it will happen. Targeted assassinations seem more plausible.

10000kg of explosives. Or 22,000lb for us Americans. 11 tons of high explosive. Good luck with that.

First you program the 1,000,000 drones to mine for the raw materials. It's genius!

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#73

Post by noonespecial » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #11

tedajax wrote: post #2

Literally nothing in this article seems like something that will actually come to pass. It's like a bad Black Mirror fanfic.

Really? I'm just waiting for some dumbass to take a cheap chinese drone, attach a blasting cap with a shape charge laced with sodium cyanide. Anybody nicked with fragments would die. And it'd cost what, $80-$100 ? It's the endgame of asymmetric warfare.

I'm actually quite a bit more worried about some dumbass tossing things off the overpass at my car. Rocks are free.

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#74

Post by isoprophlex » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

defen wrote: post #9

> In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone. So you "only" need 10 million drones and 10 million grams of plastic explosive? An attack of that magnitude probably requires the resources of a nation-state, so I doubt it will happen. Targeted assassinations seem more plausible.

Not to mention that the fucking things will fall from the sky after ten minutes, because of our battery tech...

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#75

Post by CryptoPunk » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

As the cost of offensive technology decreases, so does the cost of defensive technology. The 10 million drones could be countered by a larger number or AI-powered defensive drones.

The real threat of technology comes from the power it gives to governments. Bad actors can do more damage through the political process than any other.

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#76

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #47

trentnix wrote: post #6

Bostrom is well-aware of the downsides—corrupt actors in a state could exploit this surveillance for totalitarian ends, or hackers could blackmail unsuspecting victims. Yet the fact is that it may still be a better option than suffering one global catastrophe after another. Aspiring fascists are always trying to save us from ourselves.

I don't like this "panopticon" but I don't think suggesting it as a solution makes the author an "aspiring" fascist.

If your best idea is to refashion the world as a giant prison camp, that's pretty fascist whether or not one likes to think of oneself that way; if Bostrom thinks it's a necessity but doesn't believe it to be fascist because he personally does not wish to wield power over people then that's just idiotically fascist. (There's a viable side argument here about the difference between totalitarianism and fascism as one kind of totalitarianism, so if you prefer just use the latter term).

Now that I recall, Bostrom is the guy who came up with the 'simulation hypothesis' that was so in vogue a decade or so ago, and basically argued against the reality of the world on the theory that the possibility of sufficiently advanced simulations made the probability and ubiquity of such inevitable to the point that we were statistically more likely to be living in one. This struck me as a warmed-over version of the literary conceit that we're all just characters in a particularly elaborate-seeming novel or stage play. So now he's gone from reanimating a literary corpse to reanimating the economic corpse of Jeremy Bentham.

To be frank, I think we should stop listening to this guy. He's terribly clever but also deeply neurotic, like a pessimistic Ray Kurzweil (whose prediction record is rather better than he gets credit for, but similarly dwells a little too much in his own imagination). Utilitarianism aspires to be a benign philosophy but its proponents tend to overestimate their capacity for foresight and moral reasoning and end up creating deeply inhumane systems which are arguably worse than the problems they set out to solve.

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#77

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #29

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I'm just waiting for some dumbass to take a cheap chinese drone, attach a blasting cap with a shape charge laced with sodium cyanide. Anybody nicked with fragments would die. And it'd cost what, $80-$100 ? It's the endgame of asymmetric warfare.

Drone + cluster bomblet, cheep. That sort of thing scares me more than weapons of mass destruction. Because they are usable by non-nation state actors and rouge nation state actors. It's not that I'm worried anyone's going to try to take me out (like why?). It's I'm worried what sort of society we end up with when people like Larry Ellison are terrified of the above.

It's I'm worried what sort of society we end up with when people like Larry Ellison are terrified of the above.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Do you by chance have a manifesto I could peruse?

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#78

Post by tjr225 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

ph0rque wrote: post #71

Felz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real limiter is people willing and stable enough to murder indiscriminately at scale in novel ways. Mowing down crowds of people with a truck is bizarrely recent, and the peak of mass murder is still one guy sniping at a concert from a nearby hotel. Everyone was relatively surprised that passenger planes could be used as destructive weapons. The really effective means of mass murder I think would be subtl…

Death by obesity! Oh wait...

Really had to laugh out loud at this one. To point out the obvious and make my comment more substantive- this article is concerned about the type of murder that isn't happening, when corporations kill us off every day for money. Hello, freedom.

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#79

Post by CryptoPunk » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #24

Abstract of a different work by the same author: >the only plausible escape from this conundrum, at least from our present vantage point, is the creation of a “supersingleton” run by a friendly superintelligence, founded upon a “post-singularity social contract.” I didnt read the paper, but that abstract sounds firmly rooted in sci-fi with a toe in nonfiction, instead of the other way around as im sure the author bel…

The organizing of any neural network training program to create AI that can identify targets would also be a very laborious process.

Re: Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready

#80

Post by bilbo0s » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #45

"Will emerging technologies make the state system obsolete? It’s hard to see why not." Yeah, it's hard to see why not if your view of technology is something like that of medieval demonology, which appears to be the thesis of this article. Meanwhile, in reality land, you can make explosives and poison gas out of stuff in your kitchen, automobiles put a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy in the hands of individuals,…

>automobiles put a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy in the hands of individuals, this has been true for 100 years, and somehow "the state system" has done just fine; strengthened even in that period of time.

Yep.

States figured out how to turn automobiles into tanks, essentially strengthening their power. Yet the article implicitly posits that somehow the same won't happen with microprocessors and nanomachines? The entire article seems a bit fanciful. States aren't going anywhere.