Clearly this would not affect instrumental rationality much, as striving to succeed is what people do.
And yet, if the theory of evolution is banned, you’re probably not going to succeed at biology. If you are a very intelligent person in certain cultures you might succeed at memorising the entirety of the holy scriptures, which probably won’t leave much time for science.
Almost every time it was a setback, but only a temporary one.
I disagree that this happening in the future would only be a temporary setback. The takeover of Islam would not be purely demographic and bloodless. Even if the NRxers are right, and the western world is becoming too weak to defend itself, the east would not go down without a fight. The world burns, and as autonomous killing machines stalk the radioactive ruins of cities the survivors start cutting corners on safety in order to desperately hack together some sort of superintelligence before they are overrun.
Assuming humanity survives the nukes and genetically engineered bioweapons or even, at a stretch, nanoweapons, could advanced technology create a panopticon surveillance society? A dystopia that can never be recovered from? Could people read the papers on lie detection and neural corrlates of beliefs, put people inside advanced futuristic brain scanners, and simply kill everyone who’s thoughts betray them?
We’ve never seen humanity recover from a global singleton even without advanced technology.
Of course, we would all be dead, whether from war or from old age when the singularity is delayed.
I would imagine they would reply with their usual metaphors, about the Cathedral, Cthulhu’s swimming habits and so on.
“What do rationalists think of X?”
“Oh, I imagine they reply with their usual talk about cognitive biases, negotiating with beings that don’t exist, and so on”
Simply dismissing the outgroup isn’t exactly the most rational form of discussion.
The world burns, and as autonomous killing machines stalk the radioactive ruins of cities the survivors start cutting corners on safety in order to desperately hack together some sort of superintelligence before they are overrun.
You mean a time machine to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the past, right? X-D
We’ve never seen humanity recover from a global singleton
You mean a time machine to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the past, right? X-D
I actually mean sticking together the technology for driverless cars, image recognition and ballistics. The first generation have already been built.
I do hope Arnie becomes president in time for the AI debate to enter politics.
“Mr President, the expert opinion is that reliquishment is impossible. There are too many commercial uses for proto-AI, there is no hard line between mathematics and AI, and finally it is simply not possible to ban computers nor to monitor all code written on them”
“So… what you are saying is that judgement day is inevitable?”
Have you seen a global singleton to start with?
Nope. But shminux was saying that we’ve seen humanity recover from local dytopias, and I was pointing out that this line of argument doesn’t hold for global singletons.
And yet, if the theory of evolution is banned, you’re probably not going to succeed at biology. If you are a very intelligent person in certain cultures you might succeed at memorising the entirety of the holy scriptures, which probably won’t leave much time for science.
I disagree that this happening in the future would only be a temporary setback. The takeover of Islam would not be purely demographic and bloodless. Even if the NRxers are right, and the western world is becoming too weak to defend itself, the east would not go down without a fight. The world burns, and as autonomous killing machines stalk the radioactive ruins of cities the survivors start cutting corners on safety in order to desperately hack together some sort of superintelligence before they are overrun.
Assuming humanity survives the nukes and genetically engineered bioweapons or even, at a stretch, nanoweapons, could advanced technology create a panopticon surveillance society? A dystopia that can never be recovered from? Could people read the papers on lie detection and neural corrlates of beliefs, put people inside advanced futuristic brain scanners, and simply kill everyone who’s thoughts betray them?
We’ve never seen humanity recover from a global singleton even without advanced technology.
Of course, we would all be dead, whether from war or from old age when the singularity is delayed.
“What do rationalists think of X?”
“Oh, I imagine they reply with their usual talk about cognitive biases, negotiating with beings that don’t exist, and so on”
Simply dismissing the outgroup isn’t exactly the most rational form of discussion.
You mean a time machine to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the past, right? X-D
Have you seen a global singleton to start with?
I actually mean sticking together the technology for driverless cars, image recognition and ballistics. The first generation have already been built.
I do hope Arnie becomes president in time for the AI debate to enter politics.
“Mr President, the expert opinion is that reliquishment is impossible. There are too many commercial uses for proto-AI, there is no hard line between mathematics and AI, and finally it is simply not possible to ban computers nor to monitor all code written on them”
“So… what you are saying is that judgement day is inevitable?”
Nope. But shminux was saying that we’ve seen humanity recover from local dytopias, and I was pointing out that this line of argument doesn’t hold for global singletons.