I fear a singularity in the frequency and blatant stupidness of self-inflicted wounds.
Is it linked to the AI singularity, or independent bad luck? Maybe they’re both causally downstream of rapid technological change, which is simultaneously increasing the difficulty of governance (too many new challenges with no historical precedent), and destabilized cultural/institutional guardrails against electing highly incompetent presidents?
Technological progress leading to ever-better, ever-more-flexible communication technology, which serves as an increasingly more efficient breeding ground for ever-more-viral memes – and since virality is orthogonal to things like “long-term wisdom”, the society ends up taken over by unboundedly destructive ideas?
I think there’s a worldwide trend toward more authoritarian leaders, which contributed to both these events. And it should raise our probability of e.g. Turkey or China doing something silly. But where this trend comes from, I’m not sure. It certainly predates the current AI wave. It could be due to social media making people more polarized or something. But then again there were plenty of worse dictators in history, long before social media or electricity. So maybe what’s happening now is regression to the mean, and nice democracy was an anomaly in place and time.
I fear a singularity in the frequency and blatant stupidness of self-inflicted wounds.
Is it linked to the AI singularity, or independent bad luck? Maybe they’re both causally downstream of rapid technological change, which is simultaneously increasing the difficulty of governance (too many new challenges with no historical precedent), and destabilized cultural/institutional guardrails against electing highly incompetent presidents?
Technological progress leading to ever-better, ever-more-flexible communication technology, which serves as an increasingly more efficient breeding ground for ever-more-viral memes – and since virality is orthogonal to things like “long-term wisdom”, the society ends up taken over by unboundedly destructive ideas?
I think there’s a worldwide trend toward more authoritarian leaders, which contributed to both these events. And it should raise our probability of e.g. Turkey or China doing something silly. But where this trend comes from, I’m not sure. It certainly predates the current AI wave. It could be due to social media making people more polarized or something. But then again there were plenty of worse dictators in history, long before social media or electricity. So maybe what’s happening now is regression to the mean, and nice democracy was an anomaly in place and time.