I lived in “nihilistic materialist hell” from the ages of 5 (when it hit me what death meant) and ~10. It—belief in the inevitable doom of myself and everyone I cared for and ultimately the entire universe to heat death—was at times directly apprehended and completely incapacitating, and otherwise a looming unendurable awareness which for years I could only fend off using distraction. There was no gamemaster. I realized it all myself. The few adults I confided in tried to reassure me with religious and non-religious rationalizations of death, and I tried to be convinced but couldn’t. It was not fun and did not feel epic in the least, though maybe if I’d discovered transhumanism in this period it would’ve been a different story.
I ended up getting out of hell mostly just by developing sufficient executive function to choose not to think of these things, and eventually to think of them abstractly without processing them as real on an emotional level.
Years later, I started actually trying to do something about it. (Trying to do something about it was my first instinct as well, but as a 5 yo I couldn’t think of anything to do that bought any hope.)
But I think the machinery I installed in order to not think and not feel the reality of mortality is still in effect, and actually inhibits my ability to think clearly about AI x-risk, e.g., by making it emotionally tenable for me to do things that aren’t cutting the real problem—when you actually feel like your life is in danger, you won’t let motivated reasoning waste your EV.
This may be taken as a counterpoint to your argument invitation in this post. But I think it’s just targeted, as you say, at a subtly different audience.
I lived in “nihilistic materialist hell” from the ages of 5 (when it hit me what death meant) and ~10. It—belief in the inevitable doom of myself and everyone I cared for and ultimately the entire universe to heat death—was at times directly apprehended and completely incapacitating, and otherwise a looming unendurable awareness which for years I could only fend off using distraction. There was no gamemaster. I realized it all myself. The few adults I confided in tried to reassure me with religious and non-religious rationalizations of death, and I tried to be convinced but couldn’t. It was not fun and did not feel epic in the least, though maybe if I’d discovered transhumanism in this period it would’ve been a different story.
I ended up getting out of hell mostly just by developing sufficient executive function to choose not to think of these things, and eventually to think of them abstractly without processing them as real on an emotional level.
Years later, I started actually trying to do something about it. (Trying to do something about it was my first instinct as well, but as a 5 yo I couldn’t think of anything to do that bought any hope.)
But I think the machinery I installed in order to not think and not feel the reality of mortality is still in effect, and actually inhibits my ability to think clearly about AI x-risk, e.g., by making it emotionally tenable for me to do things that aren’t cutting the real problem—when you actually feel like your life is in danger, you won’t let motivated reasoning waste your EV.
This may be taken as a counterpoint to your
argumentinvitation in this post. But I think it’s just targeted, as you say, at a subtly different audience.