That seems roughly right but I don’t think chaos/revolution is necessary for this thesis.
Imagine the world sitting in a deep basin. You’re trying to get it out. You can try a revolution: launch it up into the air and hold your breath waiting for it to land.
Or you can try, sisyphus-style, to roll it out. You might get a bunch of allies, who you try and lead along a narrow and precarious ridgeline to your destination. Then, when you’re halfway to the top, some might notice that there’s a much easier path requiring much less of a push, and so the world gets pushed down off your intended route along the mountain pass and into a new crater.
The latter seems to have been the case with environmentalism and AI Safety. They pushed the world fairly gradually, but it only takes a few individuals to push the world downwards into a new equilibrium, for the upward pushers to lose that fight.
(There’s a Yudkowsky tweet somewhere which says something like this, which I’ve basically based the entire metaphor here on)
That seems roughly right but I don’t think chaos/revolution is necessary for this thesis.
Imagine the world sitting in a deep basin. You’re trying to get it out. You can try a revolution: launch it up into the air and hold your breath waiting for it to land.
Or you can try, sisyphus-style, to roll it out. You might get a bunch of allies, who you try and lead along a narrow and precarious ridgeline to your destination. Then, when you’re halfway to the top, some might notice that there’s a much easier path requiring much less of a push, and so the world gets pushed down off your intended route along the mountain pass and into a new crater.
The latter seems to have been the case with environmentalism and AI Safety. They pushed the world fairly gradually, but it only takes a few individuals to push the world downwards into a new equilibrium, for the upward pushers to lose that fight.
(There’s a Yudkowsky tweet somewhere which says something like this, which I’ve basically based the entire metaphor here on)