You can simultaneously make the claim that the emergence of the US is a net good for known life, but you don’t necessarily have to say the trail of tears etc. is worth it unless you are proposing that these (or other bottlenecks akin) are required to get yourself a US.
The counterfactual I am engaging with here is “should you have stayed involved in the American project, potentially trying to fix it, maybe even spending all of your resources creating justice and accountability within it, or should you have left it in horror, and tried to create something new somewhere else?”.
This parallels my own uncertainty about how to feel about much of the work going on in this ecosystem! My friends are building the AI systems that I am seriously worried will end all of humanity’s legacy! Should I, when I see that, leave and disavow it all, or should I stay, because even that is something that can be overcome and fixed?
This is cool because it gets into something I hold deeply potentially as a theological stance: that Hope is the most useful human concept. My basic gist is “if we consider Hope to be the idea that, even if a solution doesn’t exist now, we might be able to come up with one, then it is a concept that induces a species whose primary advantage is group computation to keep computing. To not halt.”
I did care about AI alignment before I became a parent. I was in the physics lounge nerding out about Wait But Why’s article like 13 years ago or whatever with the other kids, but post-parent, it’s a whole different game. I don’t know if it’s universal, but it feels like being a parent entirely removes the “or walk away” option. Many never have that option to begin with given their temperament I suspect, but it’s interesting to think of what a poll would find. I’m sure there are some out there
What’s your leaning? Stay and grind, or wash your hands?
The counterfactual I am engaging with here is “should you have stayed involved in the American project, potentially trying to fix it, maybe even spending all of your resources creating justice and accountability within it, or should you have left it in horror, and tried to create something new somewhere else?”.
This parallels my own uncertainty about how to feel about much of the work going on in this ecosystem! My friends are building the AI systems that I am seriously worried will end all of humanity’s legacy! Should I, when I see that, leave and disavow it all, or should I stay, because even that is something that can be overcome and fixed?
This is cool because it gets into something I hold deeply potentially as a theological stance: that Hope is the most useful human concept. My basic gist is “if we consider Hope to be the idea that, even if a solution doesn’t exist now, we might be able to come up with one, then it is a concept that induces a species whose primary advantage is group computation to keep computing. To not halt.”
I did care about AI alignment before I became a parent. I was in the physics lounge nerding out about Wait But Why’s article like 13 years ago or whatever with the other kids, but post-parent, it’s a whole different game. I don’t know if it’s universal, but it feels like being a parent entirely removes the “or walk away” option. Many never have that option to begin with given their temperament I suspect, but it’s interesting to think of what a poll would find. I’m sure there are some out there
What’s your leaning? Stay and grind, or wash your hands?