My thinking about this is that it is a neglected research area with a ton of potential, and also a very bad idea for only ~1 person to be the only one doing it, so more people working on it would always be appreciated, and it would also be in their best interest too because it is a gold mine of EV for humanity and also deserved reputation/credit. So absolutely take it on.
Also, I think this post does have substantive argument and also sources. The argument I’m trying to make is that we’re entering a new age of human manipulation research/capabilities by combining AI with large sample sizes of human behavior, and that the emergence of that kind of sheer power would shift a lot of goalposts. Finding evidence of a specific manipulation technique (clown attacks) was hard, but it was comparatively much easier to research the meta-process that generates techniques like that, and that geopolitical affairs would pivot if mind control became feasible.
To be frank trevor, you don’t seem to have referenced or cited any of the extensive 20th century and prior literature on memetics, social theory, sociology, mass movements, human psychology in large groups, etc…
Which is likely what the parent was referring to.
Although I have read nowhere close to all of it, I’ve read enough to not see any novel substantive arguments or semi-plausible proofs.
Most LW readers don’t expect anything at the level of a formal mathematical or logical proof, but sketching out a defensible semi-plausible path to one would help a lot. Especially for a post of this length.
It also doesn’t help that your taking for granted many things which are far from decided. For example, the claim:
...like cryopreservation; everyone on earth happens to be doing it catastrophically wrong and its actually a super quick fix, less than a few days or even a few hours and your entire existence is substantially safer.
Sounds very exaggerated because cryopreservation itself does not have that solid of a foundation as your implying here.
Since no one has yet offered a physically plausible solution to restoring a cryopreserved human, even with unlimited amounts of computation and energy, with their neural structure and so on intact. (That fits within known thermodynamic boundaries.)
It’s more of a ‘there is a 1 in a billion chance some folks in the future will stumble on a miracle and will choose to work on me’ or some variation. And people doing it anyways since even a tiny tiny chance is better than nothing in their books.
not see any novel substantive arguments or semi-plausible proofs.
Most LW readers don’t expect anything at the level of a formal mathematical or logical proof, but sketching out a defensible semi-plausible path to one would help a lot. Especially for a post of this length.
That was my mistake, when I said “mathematically provable”, I meant provable with math, not referring to a formal mathematical proof or logical proof. I used that term pretty frequently so it was a pretty big mistake.
The dynamic is pretty fundamental though. I refer to it in the “taking a step back” section:
If there were intelligent aliens, made of bundles of tentacles or crystals or plants that think incredibly slowly, their minds would also have zero days that could be exploited because any mind that evolved naturally would probably be like the human brain, a kludge of spaghetti code that is operating outside of its intended environment, and they would also would not even begin to scratch the surface of finding and labeling those zero days until, like human civilization today, they began surrounding thousands or millions of their kind with sensors that could record behavior several hours a day and find webs of correlations.
My thinking about this is that it is a neglected research area with a ton of potential, and also a very bad idea for only ~1 person to be the only one doing it, so more people working on it would always be appreciated, and it would also be in their best interest too because it is a gold mine of EV for humanity and also deserved reputation/credit. So absolutely take it on.
Also, I think this post does have substantive argument and also sources. The argument I’m trying to make is that we’re entering a new age of human manipulation research/capabilities by combining AI with large sample sizes of human behavior, and that the emergence of that kind of sheer power would shift a lot of goalposts. Finding evidence of a specific manipulation technique (clown attacks) was hard, but it was comparatively much easier to research the meta-process that generates techniques like that, and that geopolitical affairs would pivot if mind control became feasible.
To be frank trevor, you don’t seem to have referenced or cited any of the extensive 20th century and prior literature on memetics, social theory, sociology, mass movements, human psychology in large groups, etc…
Which is likely what the parent was referring to.
Although I have read nowhere close to all of it, I’ve read enough to not see any novel substantive arguments or semi-plausible proofs.
Most LW readers don’t expect anything at the level of a formal mathematical or logical proof, but sketching out a defensible semi-plausible path to one would help a lot. Especially for a post of this length.
It also doesn’t help that your taking for granted many things which are far from decided. For example, the claim:
Sounds very exaggerated because cryopreservation itself does not have that solid of a foundation as your implying here.
Since no one has yet offered a physically plausible solution to restoring a cryopreserved human, even with unlimited amounts of computation and energy, with their neural structure and so on intact. (That fits within known thermodynamic boundaries.)
It’s more of a ‘there is a 1 in a billion chance some folks in the future will stumble on a miracle and will choose to work on me’ or some variation. And people doing it anyways since even a tiny tiny chance is better than nothing in their books.
That was my mistake, when I said “mathematically provable”, I meant provable with math, not referring to a formal mathematical proof or logical proof. I used that term pretty frequently so it was a pretty big mistake.
The dynamic is pretty fundamental though. I refer to it in the “taking a step back” section: