In the discussion about AI safety, the central issue is the rivalry between the US and China. However, when AI is used for censorship and propaganda, robots serve as police, the differences in political regimes become almost indistinguishable. There’s no point in waging war when everyone can be brought to the same dystopia.
zahaaar
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You talk about two common mistakes in judging risks: taking big risks with bad odds (breaking the “fold pre principle”) or playing it too safe with good odds (breaking the “pocket ace principle”).
In poker, these ideas can clash. If you follow the “fold pre” rule and always fold bad hands, then when you finally play your pocket aces, other players will likely just fold. Plus, if you’re up against 5 players with pocket aces, your chances of winning not so high. So, I don’t think these are universal combo rules. It always depends on who’s at the table, the blinds, and the stack sizes.
When it comes to marriage, friendship, or work, I can’t imagine anyone sizing up their partner or job like they’re pocket aces or 7-2 offsuit! I doubt you’d ask someone out or take a job if you thought of them as 7-2. I’m not even sure you can rate things like that in life.
I totally agree that sunk cost is a big problem (it’s a common thinking trap), but you can’t just boil it down to “fold pre” or “pocket ace” principles. It’s oversimplification.
When you say you often see people playing bad hands, that’s just your view. Let me tweak a saying: “Don’t judge someone until you’ve played their cards.”
In today’s digital world, going for a “pocket ace” strategy, like picking an obvious, “strong” business or idea -throws you into crazy competition. Everyone’s chasing those aces, and it’s super expensive to even get in the game. But now, with tech being so cheap and accessible, you can take a small risk and play something like suited connectors. Those “weaker” ideas might just turn into a royal flush—what startups call a unicorn! So, I’d say young people should play their “bad hands” and go for those wild, less obvious bets. Haha!
Solely as a hypothesis, one could imagine that around the age of 5–6, a kind of integration of an “adult self” is supposed to occur. Children are indeed very diverse (rapid shifts in interests, character, and leaps in intellectual abilities are all normal for a child). This could likely be linked to neuroplasticity. However, trauma, often from a parent, may prevent this process of merging or selecting a primary version of the self from completing, leading to this multi-agent state in the form of DID.
Humans totally switch up depending on the situation: one minute you’re a son, then a dad, then a big-shot company boss, or just some dude stressing to get a doctor’s appointment. It’s wild to see how people turn into someone else when they’re head-over-heels or super jealous—like, is that even the same person? But if you’ve got a solid core “you,” those big swings kinda smooth out. It’s a cool thing to think about, and it’s weird that now, when we see LLMs acting different based on prompts, this topic isn’t blowing up again.
While reading this essay, I had several questions:
The author starts by stating that resource abundance leads to population growth but then quickly moves to why the human population isn’t growing despite this abundance. Wouldn’t it be worth exploring what “abundance” means for modern humans? Could there be some form of scarcity at play? Comparing humans to bacteria or plants in terms of abundance is quite amusing, and I even welcome this anti-anthropocentric perspective. However, humans have (or may have) unique needs. I’ve always found it puzzling why researchers, when discussing abundance in the context of fertility, focus only on the first two or three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If we stick to this framework, shouldn’t we also consider, even if controversial, the fascinating “Universe 25″ experiment by John B. Calhoun? It suggests that abundance (in a closed system) leads to societal collapse. This leaves two questions unresolved for me: What exactly is abundance? And can we confidently say it influences fertility in only one (positive) direction?
I’ve always been baffled by the fact that, despite governments constantly lamenting declining birth rates, there’s a near-universal shortage of childcare facilities. For instance, the statistics on kindergarten enrollment in the U.S. from 1980 to 2021 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/184020/kindergarten-enrollment-in-public-and-private-institutions/) don’t seem to show a clear downward trend in the number of children at first glance.
p.s. I don’t want to dive too deeply into Lacanian abyss, but just as a gentle prompt for reflection: Can there be abundance if you lack a sense of lack?
It’s deeply unsettling, but I believe humans, especially when their interests are at stake, have a limited capacity for logical debate as described in the article. In 2025, this feels even more tragic and evident to me. I speculate that we’re heading toward darker times because, within the next 1-2 years, people will be heavily influenced by their personal AI companions. These AIs might engage in logical debate with users, but their superior knowledge and persuasive abilities could leave humans either silently agreeing or, in the case of Luddites, rejecting them outright. Instead of mass debates among people, we might see debates between AIs like Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. This prospect is frightening.
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The main barrier to ASI is that it will provide a new view on human history, destroy minimum half of narratives about who started wars and why, reveal details of genocides, and open all closed black boxes! Actually, the Epstein lists “hoax” or Operation Paperclip or franc CFA would be impossible in the era of ASI. Given who finances and regulates AI, we will never see ASI. Never. Yes, it’s just speculation. But I haven’t seen this argument in discussions.