I read it because I’m interested both in buddhism and AGI risk.
I think this isn’t coming to grips with the fundamental tension between Buddhism and the Western worldview: giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.
As such, I think it’s extraordinarily bad advice for the current moment in history. This is the time for maximum effort, as we sit at a crux of history: the birth of AGI. The outcome could be very good or very bad by any measure, and it is not yet out of our hands.
I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised. I didn’t read it all, just the start and end as I do for things that seem maybe-important but long and unclear about what they might offer.
The start: Why do I want this sort of enlightenment? Why is it worth giving up hope? Hope has produced civilization. Life was perhaps largely “suffering” or “wanting” in in the Buddha’s time, and to many why enjoy civilzation; but there is less wanting and more enjoyment now. And there could be much, much more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI.
The end: we should give up hope for a better future and write stuff, and hope that an LLM-based AGI will carry nontrivial parts of that identity into the future, like our children do?
We can still do better. It’s not time to lie down and die and just hope that some of us is carried forward.
I have hope that we can live alongside our offspring, and bring out the best in our values. I have plans for making that happen, and many others do too. It is not time for quietus or cessation of suffering. It is time for hope and struggle.
Yes, thank you—this is exactly the pain-point of the LW community I anticipated this would trigger. And I think it’s a dogma—just a really deep one most of us aren’t willing to honestly confront. So thanks for bringing this up to the surface!
> “giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.” - this is “real progress” only according to the materialist and Western value system—not some fundamental “true value.” We’re just so used to this paradigm we can’t imagine stepping outside of it—it’s the water we swim in. I explored this a bit in this post
> “there is less wanting and more enjoyment now” - another assumption take for granted too much, a variant of historian’s fallacy. It’s hard to claim or even study this objectively since we don’t have access to subjective experience, especially of those that lived before us—so we tend to infer their subjective states using our values. Here I like the approach “of whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent” (Wittgenstein)
> “more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI” - nice hope—if this works out, then perhaps this will be an example of “ultimate material success” bringing “unshakable bliss and safety”—sort of materialist enlightenment, restoring the symmetry between materialism and idealism
> “lie down and die” - this is the most common misconception about Buddhism—that having no hope, no pain, no motivation, no need to change anything leads to inaction. Actually in the tradition, and also with specific people I’ve met who are high on the spiritual attainment—people without all these worries end up working more than I could ever imagine possible, and don’t seem to get tired or even sleep much. It seems paradoxical to our Western minds steeped in the idea that the only reason to move is to try to change things.
> “It is time for hope and struggle.” - that is an implicit assumption that hope and struggle are instrumentally effective for reducing chances of apocalypse. Buddhism would argue otherwise—that hope and struggle will be precisely the cause of apocalypse. Looking at the poly-crisis materialism brought us to so far, this seems plausible to me.
> “I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised.” - thanks for the suggestion—will add a TLDR in a moment
Wait now what?
I read it because I’m interested both in buddhism and AGI risk.
I think this isn’t coming to grips with the fundamental tension between Buddhism and the Western worldview: giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.
As such, I think it’s extraordinarily bad advice for the current moment in history. This is the time for maximum effort, as we sit at a crux of history: the birth of AGI. The outcome could be very good or very bad by any measure, and it is not yet out of our hands.
I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised. I didn’t read it all, just the start and end as I do for things that seem maybe-important but long and unclear about what they might offer.
The start: Why do I want this sort of enlightenment? Why is it worth giving up hope? Hope has produced civilization. Life was perhaps largely “suffering” or “wanting” in in the Buddha’s time, and to many why enjoy civilzation; but there is less wanting and more enjoyment now. And there could be much, much more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI.
The end: we should give up hope for a better future and write stuff, and hope that an LLM-based AGI will carry nontrivial parts of that identity into the future, like our children do?
We can still do better. It’s not time to lie down and die and just hope that some of us is carried forward.
I have hope that we can live alongside our offspring, and bring out the best in our values. I have plans for making that happen, and many others do too. It is not time for quietus or cessation of suffering. It is time for hope and struggle.
Yes, thank you—this is exactly the pain-point of the LW community I anticipated this would trigger. And I think it’s a dogma—just a really deep one most of us aren’t willing to honestly confront. So thanks for bringing this up to the surface!
> “giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.”
- this is “real progress” only according to the materialist and Western value system—not some fundamental “true value.” We’re just so used to this paradigm we can’t imagine stepping outside of it—it’s the water we swim in. I explored this a bit in this post
> “there is less wanting and more enjoyment now”
- another assumption take for granted too much, a variant of historian’s fallacy. It’s hard to claim or even study this objectively since we don’t have access to subjective experience, especially of those that lived before us—so we tend to infer their subjective states using our values. Here I like the approach “of whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent” (Wittgenstein)
> “more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI”
- nice hope—if this works out, then perhaps this will be an example of “ultimate material success” bringing “unshakable bliss and safety”—sort of materialist enlightenment, restoring the symmetry between materialism and idealism
> “lie down and die”
- this is the most common misconception about Buddhism—that having no hope, no pain, no motivation, no need to change anything leads to inaction. Actually in the tradition, and also with specific people I’ve met who are high on the spiritual attainment—people without all these worries end up working more than I could ever imagine possible, and don’t seem to get tired or even sleep much. It seems paradoxical to our Western minds steeped in the idea that the only reason to move is to try to change things.
> “It is time for hope and struggle.”
- that is an implicit assumption that hope and struggle are instrumentally effective for reducing chances of apocalypse. Buddhism would argue otherwise—that hope and struggle will be precisely the cause of apocalypse. Looking at the poly-crisis materialism brought us to so far, this seems plausible to me.
> “I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised.”
- thanks for the suggestion—will add a TLDR in a moment