I feel like mathematicians are being damned by faint praise here.
I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
I think the path here is to decouple human value from economic output.
I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
The one I might agree with: Economic output is often going to be better done by something nonhuman, so if human value is tied to output, we’re setting humanity up for replacement.
I say I might agree because it really depends on what we mean by “output”. In some sense, all signals are a kind of output. Even if we find some way of valuing human existence inherently, signs that something is human will be an output that gets valued in whatever we might want to call an economy.
The one I fairly strongly disagree with: We have to decouple human value from the economy. Humans have to be seen as valuable for their mere existence.
I think that can’t work. Human existence is a cost, even if negligible. An economy that does anything like optimization will have pressure in such a situation to wipe out humans to recover the cost. If the thing stopping the economy from doing that is some kind of rigid rule around “value”, then the economy will try to find some way to hack around that rule.
It seems to be that for humanity to survive this, human existence needs to be valued in a way that’s intrinsic to the economy.
Said differently, I think it needs to be on the table that what humanity most values and cherishes is best accomplished without humanity’s survival. If it can’t be, then the reason it can’t be needs to be what’s baked into the Great Optimizer (i.e. the thing that showed up as evolution, then the economy, now AI) in order for humanity to survive this juncture.
> > I feel like mathematicians are being damned by faint praise here.
> I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
Just that you said …
> mathematicians will need to make their job be about enriching subjective experience rather than generating proofs
This seems to imply that generating proofs (if of value at all) does not enrich or cannot compete with enriching “subjective experience.” Even being generous, it damns the supposed role of the mathematician (“generating proofs”) with faint praise (they’ll be forced to do something useful, like enrich subjective experience). Of course as discussed, proof generation is already a most human of activities entailing language invention and novel expression.
Perhaps further, while proof generation is an important act in mathematics, able to give confidence when taking and refraining from project actions and time allocation, it is universally acknowledged among mathematicians that particular points in proof space are less interesting than the charts produced on the journey to those points. That unlocking new reasoning techniques is more important. Again, referencing generating proofs without the larger context of enhanced human cognition is “damning with faint praise.”
Sorry I’m ranting a bit, but I’m on something of a mission to see mathematics held in at least as high esteem as literature. No one admits to illiteracy (or at least pre-TikTok this was a shameful thing), but will casually assert innumeracy even though it is just as intellectually impoverishing.
> > I think the path here is to decouple human value from economic output.
> I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
I confess I am unable to distinguish between “economic output” and “the economy,” so I will refrain from sowing further confusion on this topic.
Totally agree. I think mathematics is dramatically and tragically misunderstood.
I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
The one I might agree with: Economic output is often going to be better done by something nonhuman, so if human value is tied to output, we’re setting humanity up for replacement.
I say I might agree because it really depends on what we mean by “output”. In some sense, all signals are a kind of output. Even if we find some way of valuing human existence inherently, signs that something is human will be an output that gets valued in whatever we might want to call an economy.
The one I fairly strongly disagree with: We have to decouple human value from the economy. Humans have to be seen as valuable for their mere existence.
I think that can’t work. Human existence is a cost, even if negligible. An economy that does anything like optimization will have pressure in such a situation to wipe out humans to recover the cost. If the thing stopping the economy from doing that is some kind of rigid rule around “value”, then the economy will try to find some way to hack around that rule.
It seems to be that for humanity to survive this, human existence needs to be valued in a way that’s intrinsic to the economy.
Said differently, I think it needs to be on the table that what humanity most values and cherishes is best accomplished without humanity’s survival. If it can’t be, then the reason it can’t be needs to be what’s baked into the Great Optimizer (i.e. the thing that showed up as evolution, then the economy, now AI) in order for humanity to survive this juncture.
> > I feel like mathematicians are being damned by faint praise here.
> I don’t understand how. Mind clarifying?
Just that you said …
> mathematicians will need to make their job be about enriching subjective experience rather than generating proofs
This seems to imply that generating proofs (if of value at all) does not enrich or cannot compete with enriching “subjective experience.” Even being generous, it damns the supposed role of the mathematician (“generating proofs”) with faint praise (they’ll be forced to do something useful, like enrich subjective experience). Of course as discussed, proof generation is already a most human of activities entailing language invention and novel expression.
Perhaps further, while proof generation is an important act in mathematics, able to give confidence when taking and refraining from project actions and time allocation, it is universally acknowledged among mathematicians that particular points in proof space are less interesting than the charts produced on the journey to those points. That unlocking new reasoning techniques is more important. Again, referencing generating proofs without the larger context of enhanced human cognition is “damning with faint praise.”
Sorry I’m ranting a bit, but I’m on something of a mission to see mathematics held in at least as high esteem as literature. No one admits to illiteracy (or at least pre-TikTok this was a shameful thing), but will casually assert innumeracy even though it is just as intellectually impoverishing.
> > I think the path here is to decouple human value from economic output.
> I see two interpretations here. One I might agree with, the other I fairly strongly disagree with.
I confess I am unable to distinguish between “economic output” and “the economy,” so I will refrain from sowing further confusion on this topic.