I don’t emphasize this because I care more about humanity’s survival than the next decades sucking really hard for me and everyone I love.
I’m flabbergasted by this degree/kind of altruism. I respect you for it, but I literally cannot bring myself to care about “humanity”’s survival if it means the permanent impoverishment, enslavement or starvation of everybody I love. That future is simply not much better on my lights than everyone including the gpu-controllers meeting a similar fate. In fact I think my instincts are to hate that outcome more, because it’s unjust.
But how do LW futurists not expect catastrophic job loss that destroys the global economy?
Slight correction: catastrophic job loss would destroy the ability of the non-landed, working public to paritcipate in and extract value from the global economy. The global economy itself would be fine. I agree this is a natural conclusion; I guess people were hoping to get 10 or 15 more years out of their natural gifts.
Thank you. Oddly, I am less altruistic than many EA/LWers. They routinely blow me away.
I can only maintain even that much altruism because I think there’s a very good chance that the future could be very, very good for a truly vast number of humans and conscious AGIs. I don’t think it’s that likely that we get a perpetual boot-on-face situation. I think only about 1% of humans are so sociopathic AND sadistic in combination that they wouldn’t eventually let their tiny sliver of empathy cause them to use their nearly-unlimited power to make life good for people. They wouldn’t risk giving up control, just share enough to be hailed as a benevolent hero instead of merely god-emperor for eternity.
I have done a little “metta” meditation to expand my circle of empathy. I think it makes me happy; I can “borrow joy”. The side effect is weird decisions like letting my family suffer so that more strangers can flourish in a future I probably won’t see.
catastrophic job loss would destroy the ability of the non-landed, working public to paritcipate in and extract value from the global economy. The global economy itself would be fine.
Who would the producers of stuff be selling it to in that scenario?
BTW, I recently saw the suggestion that discussions of “the economy” can be clarified by replacing the phrase with “rich people’s yacht money”. There’s something in that. If 90% of the population are destitute, then 90% of the farms and factories have to shut down for lack of demand (i.e. not having the means to buy), which puts more out of work, until you get a world in which a handful of people control the robots that keep them in food and yachts and wait for the masses to die off.
I wonder if there are any key players who would welcome that scenario. Average utilitarianism FTW!
At least, supposing there are still any people controlling the robots by then.
Survival is obviously much better because 1. You can lose jobs but eventually still have a good life (think UBI at minimum) and 2. Because if you don’t like it you can always kill yourself and be in the same spot as the non-survival case anyway.
I’m flabbergasted by this degree/kind of altruism. I respect you for it, but I literally cannot bring myself to care about “humanity”’s survival if it means the permanent impoverishment, enslavement or starvation of everybody I love. That future is simply not much better on my lights than everyone including the gpu-controllers meeting a similar fate. In fact I think my instincts are to hate that outcome more, because it’s unjust.
Slight correction: catastrophic job loss would destroy the ability of the non-landed, working public to paritcipate in and extract value from the global economy. The global economy itself would be fine. I agree this is a natural conclusion; I guess people were hoping to get 10 or 15 more years out of their natural gifts.
Thank you. Oddly, I am less altruistic than many EA/LWers. They routinely blow me away.
I can only maintain even that much altruism because I think there’s a very good chance that the future could be very, very good for a truly vast number of humans and conscious AGIs. I don’t think it’s that likely that we get a perpetual boot-on-face situation. I think only about 1% of humans are so sociopathic AND sadistic in combination that they wouldn’t eventually let their tiny sliver of empathy cause them to use their nearly-unlimited power to make life good for people. They wouldn’t risk giving up control, just share enough to be hailed as a benevolent hero instead of merely god-emperor for eternity.
I have done a little “metta” meditation to expand my circle of empathy. I think it makes me happy; I can “borrow joy”. The side effect is weird decisions like letting my family suffer so that more strangers can flourish in a future I probably won’t see.
Who would the producers of stuff be selling it to in that scenario?
BTW, I recently saw the suggestion that discussions of “the economy” can be clarified by replacing the phrase with “rich people’s yacht money”. There’s something in that. If 90% of the population are destitute, then 90% of the farms and factories have to shut down for lack of demand (i.e. not having the means to buy), which puts more out of work, until you get a world in which a handful of people control the robots that keep them in food and yachts and wait for the masses to die off.
I wonder if there are any key players who would welcome that scenario. Average utilitarianism FTW!
At least, supposing there are still any people controlling the robots by then.
That’s what would happen, and the fact that nobody wanted it to happen wouldn’t help. It’s a Tragedy of the Commons situation.
Survival is obviously much better because 1. You can lose jobs but eventually still have a good life (think UBI at minimum) and 2. Because if you don’t like it you can always kill yourself and be in the same spot as the non-survival case anyway.
Not to get too morbid here but I don’t think this is a good argument. People tend not to commit suicide even if they have strongly net negative lives
Why would that be the likely case? Are you sure it’s likely or are you just catastrophizing?