A very necessary post in a place like here, in times like these; thank you very much for these words. A couple disclaimers to my reply: I’m cockily unafraid of death in personal terms, and I’m not fully bought into the probable AI disaster narrative, although far be it from me to claim to have enough knowledge to form an educated opinion; it’s really a field I follow with an interested layman’s eye. But I’m not exactly one of those struggling at the moment, and I’d even say that the recent developments with ChatGPT, Bing, and whatever follows them excite me more than they intimidate me.
All that said, I do make a great effort of keeping myself permanently ahead of the happiness treadmill, and I largely agree with the way Duncan has expressed how to best go about it. If anything, I’d say it can be stated even more generally; in my book, it’s possible to remain happy even knowing you could have chosen to attempt to do something to stop the oncoming apocalypse, but chose differently. It’s just about total acceptance; not to say one should possess such impenetrable equanimity that they don’t even care to try to prevent such outcomes, but rather understanding that all of our aversive reactions are just evolved adaptations that don’t signal any actual significance. In bare reality, what happens happens, and the things we naturally fear and loathe are just… fine. I take to heart the words of one of my favorite characters in one of the greatest games ever made… Magus from Chrono Trigger:
“If history is to change, let it change!
If this world is to be destroyed, so be it!
If my destiny is to die, I must simply laugh!”
The final line delivers the impact. Have joy for reasons that death can’t take from you, such that you can stare it dead in the eye and tell it it can never dream of breaking you, and the psychological impulse to withdraw from it comes to feel superfluous. That’s how I ensure to always be okay under whatever uncertainty. I imagine I would find this harder if I actually felt that the fall of humanity was inevitable, but take it for what it’s worth.
A very necessary post in a place like here, in times like these; thank you very much for these words. A couple disclaimers to my reply: I’m cockily unafraid of death in personal terms, and I’m not fully bought into the probable AI disaster narrative, although far be it from me to claim to have enough knowledge to form an educated opinion; it’s really a field I follow with an interested layman’s eye. But I’m not exactly one of those struggling at the moment, and I’d even say that the recent developments with ChatGPT, Bing, and whatever follows them excite me more than they intimidate me.
All that said, I do make a great effort of keeping myself permanently ahead of the happiness treadmill, and I largely agree with the way Duncan has expressed how to best go about it. If anything, I’d say it can be stated even more generally; in my book, it’s possible to remain happy even knowing you could have chosen to attempt to do something to stop the oncoming apocalypse, but chose differently. It’s just about total acceptance; not to say one should possess such impenetrable equanimity that they don’t even care to try to prevent such outcomes, but rather understanding that all of our aversive reactions are just evolved adaptations that don’t signal any actual significance. In bare reality, what happens happens, and the things we naturally fear and loathe are just… fine. I take to heart the words of one of my favorite characters in one of the greatest games ever made… Magus from Chrono Trigger:
“If history is to change, let it change!
If this world is to be destroyed, so be it!
If my destiny is to die, I must simply laugh!”
The final line delivers the impact. Have joy for reasons that death can’t take from you, such that you can stare it dead in the eye and tell it it can never dream of breaking you, and the psychological impulse to withdraw from it comes to feel superfluous. That’s how I ensure to always be okay under whatever uncertainty. I imagine I would find this harder if I actually felt that the fall of humanity was inevitable, but take it for what it’s worth.