Seems like there are a lot of possibilities, some of them good, and I have little time to think about them. It just feels like a red flag for everything in your life to be swapped for other things by very powerful processes beyond your control while you are focused on not dying. Like, if lesser changes were upcoming in people’s lives such that they landed in near mode, I think they would be way less sanguine—e.g. being forced to move to New York City.
I agree it’s very jarring. Everything you know is going to stop and a ton of new things will be happening instead. I can see being upset over the things that ended (friendships and other joys) and it hurting to learn the new ways that life is just harder now.
That said, I note I don’t feel bothered by your example. In the current era of video calls and shared slacks and LW dialogues I don’t think I’d personally much mind being forced to move to New York and I might actually be excited to explore that place and its culture (acknowledging there will be a lot of friction costs as I adjust to a new environment).
Even without that, if I was basically going to live more than a trillion lifetimes, then being forced to move cities would just be a new adventure!
I have a possibly-related not-bothered attitude in that I am not especially bothered about the possibility of my own death, as long as civilization lives is to live on.[1] I am excited for many more stories to be lived out, whether I’m a character in them or not. This is part of why I am so against extinction.
I can’t speak for Katja, but the impression I get is that she thinks some of the challenges of slow takeoff might be impossible or unreasonably difficult for humans to overcome.
I’ve written about clown attacks and social media addiction optimization, but I expect resisting clown attacks and quitting social media to be the fun kind of challenge.
I’d guess maybe @Katja Grace doesn’t expect improvements to power (in the sense of human agency) in the default non-extinction future.
I would be interested in slightly more detail about what Katja imagines that world looks like.
Seems like there are a lot of possibilities, some of them good, and I have little time to think about them. It just feels like a red flag for everything in your life to be swapped for other things by very powerful processes beyond your control while you are focused on not dying. Like, if lesser changes were upcoming in people’s lives such that they landed in near mode, I think they would be way less sanguine—e.g. being forced to move to New York City.
I agree it’s very jarring. Everything you know is going to stop and a ton of new things will be happening instead. I can see being upset over the things that ended (friendships and other joys) and it hurting to learn the new ways that life is just harder now.
That said, I note I don’t feel bothered by your example. In the current era of video calls and shared slacks and LW dialogues I don’t think I’d personally much mind being forced to move to New York and I might actually be excited to explore that place and its culture (acknowledging there will be a lot of friction costs as I adjust to a new environment).
Even without that, if I was basically going to live more than a trillion lifetimes, then being forced to move cities would just be a new adventure!
I have a possibly-related not-bothered attitude in that I am not especially bothered about the possibility of my own death, as long as civilization lives is to live on.[1] I am excited for many more stories to be lived out, whether I’m a character in them or not. This is part of why I am so against extinction.
Not that I wouldn’t leap on the ability to solve aging and diseases.
I can’t speak for Katja, but the impression I get is that she thinks some of the challenges of slow takeoff might be impossible or unreasonably difficult for humans to overcome.
I’ve written about clown attacks and social media addiction optimization, but I expect resisting clown attacks and quitting social media to be the fun kind of challenge.
Mitigating your agency loss from things like sensor exposure based influence and human lie detection will not be so fun, or even possible at all.