Can we finally talk about this site, and how it relates to these cults? There's a number of lesswrong, e/acc, and other pseudo "rationalist" blogs that get shared and upvoted on this site. Most of their assumptions go unchallenged. Not saying they shouldn't be read, or debated. But their writing should be viewed in context - it's fringe stuff, written by people from a peculiar subculture with values out-of-whack with most people.
I'd like to make some modest assertions, to push back on fringe ideas I've seen repeated here:
1. For "the singularity" to happen, we probably need something more to happen than just chatGPT to ingest more data or use more processing power.
2. Even if, somehow, chatGPT turned into skynet, we'd hopefully be able to unplug the computer.
3. If you want to save lives, it's probably more useful to think about lives saved today than hypothetical lives you could save 100 years from now. Not that you shouldn't consider the long term, but your ability to predict the future gets worse and worse the farther you project out.
4. If you want to save lives, it's probably more useful to save actual lives, than say, hypothetical simulated lives that exist inside of a computer.
5. The argument that "we're killing more people by delaying time inventing the hypothetical life saving technology" is not very useful either, because you can't actually say how many lives would be saved versus harmed. And mostly it just sounds like a front for "give me more money and less regulations".
6. Reading a bunch of science fiction and getting into fights on an internet forum is not a substitute for education and experience. Unless you've spent a good time studying viruses, you are not a virologist, and while the consensus among virologists can be wrong, you should have the intellectual humility to realize that you are probably not equipped to tell, unless you have expertise in the field.
7. Anything that smacks of eugenics is most likely pseudoscience.
8. If someone talks like a racist / sexist / nazi, or acts like a racist / sexist / nazi, they probably are one. It's probably not a joke, or a test.
I'd like to make some modest assertions, to push back on fringe ideas I've seen repeated here:
1. For "the singularity" to happen, we probably need something more to happen than just chatGPT to ingest more data or use more processing power.
2. Even if, somehow, chatGPT turned into skynet, we'd hopefully be able to unplug the computer.
3. If you want to save lives, it's probably more useful to think about lives saved today than hypothetical lives you could save 100 years from now. Not that you shouldn't consider the long term, but your ability to predict the future gets worse and worse the farther you project out.
4. If you want to save lives, it's probably more useful to save actual lives, than say, hypothetical simulated lives that exist inside of a computer.
5. The argument that "we're killing more people by delaying time inventing the hypothetical life saving technology" is not very useful either, because you can't actually say how many lives would be saved versus harmed. And mostly it just sounds like a front for "give me more money and less regulations".
6. Reading a bunch of science fiction and getting into fights on an internet forum is not a substitute for education and experience. Unless you've spent a good time studying viruses, you are not a virologist, and while the consensus among virologists can be wrong, you should have the intellectual humility to realize that you are probably not equipped to tell, unless you have expertise in the field.
7. Anything that smacks of eugenics is most likely pseudoscience.
8. If someone talks like a racist / sexist / nazi, or acts like a racist / sexist / nazi, they probably are one. It's probably not a joke, or a test.