It seems to me that human society might go collectively insane sometime in the next few decades. I want to be able to succinctly articulate the possibility and why it is plausible, but I’m not happy with my current spiel. So I’m putting it up here in the hopes that someone can give me constructive criticism:
I am aware of three mutually-reinforcing ways society could go collectively insane:
Echo chambers/filter bubbles/polarization: Arguably political polarization is increasing across the world of liberal democracies today. Perhaps the internet has something to do with this—it’s easy to self-select into a newsfeed and community that reinforces and extremizes your stances on issues. Arguably recommendation algorithms have contributed to this problem in various ways—see e.g. “Sort by controversial” and Stuart Russell’s claims in Human Compatible. At any rate, perhaps some combination of new technology and new cultural or political developments will turbocharge this phenomenon. This could lead to civil wars, or more mundanely, societal dysfunction. We can’t coordinate to solve collective action problems relating to AGI if we are all arguing bitterly with each other about culture war issues.
Deepfakes/propaganda/persuasion tools: Already a significant portion of online content is deliberately shaped by powerful political agendas—e.g. Russia, China, and the US political tribes. Much of the rest is deliberately shaped by less powerful apolitical agendas, e.g. corporations managing their brands or teenagers in Estonia making money by spreading fake news during US elections. Perhaps this trend will continue; technology like chatbots, language models, deepfakes, etc. might make it cheaper and more effective to spew this sort of propaganda, to the point where most online content is propaganda of some sort or other. This could lead to the deterioration of our collective epistemology.
Memetic evolution: Ideas (“Memes”) can be thought of as infectious pathogens that spread, mutate, and evolve to coexist with their hosts. The reasons why they survive and spread are various; perhaps they are useful to their hosts, or true, or perhaps they are able to fool the host’s mental machinery into keeping them around even though they are not useful or true. As the internet accelerates the process of memetic evolution—more memes, more hosts, more chances to spread, more chances to mutate—the mental machinery humans have to select for useful and/or true memes may become increasingly outclassed. Analogy: The human body has also evolved to select for pathogens (e.g. gut, skin, saliva bacteria) that are useful, and against those that are harmful (e.g. the flu). But when e.g. colonialism, globalism, and World War One brought more people together and allowed diseases to spread more easily, great plagues swept the globe. Perhaps something similar will happen (is already happening?) with memes.
All good points, but I feel like objecting to the assumption that society is currently sane and then we’ll see a discontinuity, rather than any insanity being a continuation of current trajectories.
It seems to me that human society might go collectively insane sometime in the next few decades. I want to be able to succinctly articulate the possibility and why it is plausible, but I’m not happy with my current spiel. So I’m putting it up here in the hopes that someone can give me constructive criticism:
I am aware of three mutually-reinforcing ways society could go collectively insane:
Echo chambers/filter bubbles/polarization: Arguably political polarization is increasing across the world of liberal democracies today. Perhaps the internet has something to do with this—it’s easy to self-select into a newsfeed and community that reinforces and extremizes your stances on issues. Arguably recommendation algorithms have contributed to this problem in various ways—see e.g. “Sort by controversial” and Stuart Russell’s claims in Human Compatible. At any rate, perhaps some combination of new technology and new cultural or political developments will turbocharge this phenomenon. This could lead to civil wars, or more mundanely, societal dysfunction. We can’t coordinate to solve collective action problems relating to AGI if we are all arguing bitterly with each other about culture war issues.
Deepfakes/propaganda/persuasion tools: Already a significant portion of online content is deliberately shaped by powerful political agendas—e.g. Russia, China, and the US political tribes. Much of the rest is deliberately shaped by less powerful apolitical agendas, e.g. corporations managing their brands or teenagers in Estonia making money by spreading fake news during US elections. Perhaps this trend will continue; technology like chatbots, language models, deepfakes, etc. might make it cheaper and more effective to spew this sort of propaganda, to the point where most online content is propaganda of some sort or other. This could lead to the deterioration of our collective epistemology.
Memetic evolution: Ideas (“Memes”) can be thought of as infectious pathogens that spread, mutate, and evolve to coexist with their hosts. The reasons why they survive and spread are various; perhaps they are useful to their hosts, or true, or perhaps they are able to fool the host’s mental machinery into keeping them around even though they are not useful or true. As the internet accelerates the process of memetic evolution—more memes, more hosts, more chances to spread, more chances to mutate—the mental machinery humans have to select for useful and/or true memes may become increasingly outclassed. Analogy: The human body has also evolved to select for pathogens (e.g. gut, skin, saliva bacteria) that are useful, and against those that are harmful (e.g. the flu). But when e.g. colonialism, globalism, and World War One brought more people together and allowed diseases to spread more easily, great plagues swept the globe. Perhaps something similar will happen (is already happening?) with memes.
All good points, but I feel like objecting to the assumption that society is currently sane and then we’ll see a discontinuity, rather than any insanity being a continuation of current trajectories.
I agree with that actually; I should correct the spiel to make it clear that I do. Thanks!
Related: “Is Clickbait Destroying Our General Intelligence?”