I’m not convinced that radical transparency would save us from a black marble. Even with transparency, we might destroy ourselves before we see it coming, due to “failure of imagination”. And even in scenarios where we could have seen it coming, that doesn’t mean we will. Internet advertising is competing so hard for our attention right now that people are burning out from it. More information might just make that worse. Given the choice, people will look at what’s most interesting, even if it’s not the most important. Maybe we’d stop a few bad actors, but it only takes one that escapes notice for a while.
Regarding the overabundance of information, we should note that a lot of monitoring will be aided by a lot of automated processes.
The internet’s tendency to overconsume attention… I think that might be a temporary phase, don’t you? We are all gorging ourselves on candy. We all know how stupid and hollow it is and soon we will all be sick, and maybe we’ll be conditioned well enough by that sick feeling to stop doing it.
Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how lesswrong is the only place where people try to write content that will be read thoroughly by a lot of people over a long period of time. I don’t think we’re doing well, at that, but I think the value of a place like this is obvious to a lot of people. We will learn to focus on developing the structures of information that last for a long time, or at least, the people who matter will learn.
I don’t think LessWrong is unique in that regard. Wikipedia is strongly focused on it. The StackExchange network also has a lot of content that’s intended to be available in the future.
Also podcasts and video. Most of the population is not as literate as we are, but they can still digest audio. There are lots of video lectures on YouTube.
My point wasn’t that internet advertising in particular would be the cause of our inattention, but that humans have real limitations when it comes to processing information, with that being one salient example. We evolved in small bands of maybe fifty individuals. Our instincts cannot handle interactions in larger groups correctly. We have compensated to a remarkable degree via learned culture, but with some obvious shortcomings. More information would only amplify these problems.
I agree automation has a role to play in information processing, but that can amplify distortions on its own. Personalized search or divisive filter bubbles? Racist algorithms. Etc.
Did I say that? If so I didn’t mean to. The only vulnerabilities I’d expect it to protect us from fairly reliably are the “easy nukes” class. You mention the surprising strangelets class, which would do very little for.
A black marble is any invention that would kill the civilization that invents it by default, but perhaps not inevitably. Maybe you intended gradations of the concept beyond that? Maybe how much time it takes to build a weapon that kill how many? But I really doubt even the “easy nuke”-grade black marbles can be reliably stopped this way.
Your irregularly scheduled reminder that FAI solves these problems just fine.
So does magic. One might adapt one of Arthur C. Clarke’s laws: Every sufficiently speculative technology is indistinguishable from magic. Even more so than ACC’s “sufficiently advanced technology”: the latter is distinguished from magic by actually existing. But nobody knows how to make FAI.
While I took your point well, FAI is not a more plausible/easier technology than democratised surveillance. It may be implemented sooner due to needing pretty much no democratic support whatsoever to deploy, it might just as well take a very long time to create.
I’m not convinced that radical transparency would save us from a black marble. Even with transparency, we might destroy ourselves before we see it coming, due to “failure of imagination”. And even in scenarios where we could have seen it coming, that doesn’t mean we will. Internet advertising is competing so hard for our attention right now that people are burning out from it. More information might just make that worse. Given the choice, people will look at what’s most interesting, even if it’s not the most important. Maybe we’d stop a few bad actors, but it only takes one that escapes notice for a while.
Regarding the overabundance of information, we should note that a lot of monitoring will be aided by a lot of automated processes.
The internet’s tendency to overconsume attention… I think that might be a temporary phase, don’t you? We are all gorging ourselves on candy. We all know how stupid and hollow it is and soon we will all be sick, and maybe we’ll be conditioned well enough by that sick feeling to stop doing it.
Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how lesswrong is the only place where people try to write content that will be read thoroughly by a lot of people over a long period of time. I don’t think we’re doing well, at that, but I think the value of a place like this is obvious to a lot of people. We will learn to focus on developing the structures of information that last for a long time, or at least, the people who matter will learn.
I don’t think LessWrong is unique in that regard. Wikipedia is strongly focused on it. The StackExchange network also has a lot of content that’s intended to be available in the future.
Also podcasts and video. Most of the population is not as literate as we are, but they can still digest audio. There are lots of video lectures on YouTube.
My point wasn’t that internet advertising in particular would be the cause of our inattention, but that humans have real limitations when it comes to processing information, with that being one salient example. We evolved in small bands of maybe fifty individuals. Our instincts cannot handle interactions in larger groups correctly. We have compensated to a remarkable degree via learned culture, but with some obvious shortcomings. More information would only amplify these problems.
I agree automation has a role to play in information processing, but that can amplify distortions on its own. Personalized search or divisive filter bubbles? Racist algorithms. Etc.
Did I say that? If so I didn’t mean to. The only vulnerabilities I’d expect it to protect us from fairly reliably are the “easy nukes” class. You mention the surprising strangelets class, which would do very little for.
A black marble is any invention that would kill the civilization that invents it by default, but perhaps not inevitably. Maybe you intended gradations of the concept beyond that? Maybe how much time it takes to build a weapon that kill how many? But I really doubt even the “easy nuke”-grade black marbles can be reliably stopped this way.
That’s why I said “fairly reliable”. Which is not reliable enough for situations like this, of course, but we don’t seem to have better alternatives.
Your irregularly scheduled reminder that FAI solves these problems just fine.
So does magic. One might adapt one of Arthur C. Clarke’s laws: Every sufficiently speculative technology is indistinguishable from magic. Even more so than ACC’s “sufficiently advanced technology”: the latter is distinguished from magic by actually existing. But nobody knows how to make FAI.
FAI is more plausible than magic to the point that we don’t have to desperately try to make society transparent.
While I took your point well, FAI is not a more plausible/easier technology than democratised surveillance. It may be implemented sooner due to needing pretty much no democratic support whatsoever to deploy, it might just as well take a very long time to create.