some ideas I’ve been trying and failing to write up … actually being OK with death is the only way to stay sane
By “being OK with death” you mean something like, accepting that efforts to stop AI might fail, and it really might kill us all? But without entirely giving up?
Yeah basically. I think “OK-ness” in the human psyche is a bit of a binary, which is uncorrelated with ones actions a lot of the time.
So you can imagine four quadrants of “Ok with dying” vs “Not Ok with dying” and, separately “Tries to avoid dying” vs “Doesn’t try to avoid dying”. Where most normies are in the “Ok with dying”+”Doesn’t try to avoid dying” (and quite a few are in the “Not Ok with dying”+”Doesn’t try to avoid dying” quadrant) while lots of rats are in the “Not Ok with dying”+”Tries to avoid dying” quadrant.
I think that, right now, most of the sane work being done is in the “Ok with dying”+”Tries to avoid dying” quadrant. I think Yudkowsky’s early efforts wanted to move people from “Doesn’t try...” to “Tries...” but did this by pulling on the “Ok...” to “Not Ok...” axis, and I think this had some pretty negative consequences.
By “being OK with death” you mean something like, accepting that efforts to stop AI might fail, and it really might kill us all? But without entirely giving up?
Yeah basically. I think “OK-ness” in the human psyche is a bit of a binary, which is uncorrelated with ones actions a lot of the time.
So you can imagine four quadrants of “Ok with dying” vs “Not Ok with dying” and, separately “Tries to avoid dying” vs “Doesn’t try to avoid dying”. Where most normies are in the “Ok with dying”+”Doesn’t try to avoid dying” (and quite a few are in the “Not Ok with dying”+”Doesn’t try to avoid dying” quadrant) while lots of rats are in the “Not Ok with dying”+”Tries to avoid dying” quadrant.
I think that, right now, most of the sane work being done is in the “Ok with dying”+”Tries to avoid dying” quadrant. I think Yudkowsky’s early efforts wanted to move people from “Doesn’t try...” to “Tries...” but did this by pulling on the “Ok...” to “Not Ok...” axis, and I think this had some pretty negative consequences.