Someone should make a post for the case “we live in a cosmic comedy,” with regards to all the developments in AI and AI safety. I think there’s plenty of evidence for this thesis, and exploring it in detail can be an interesting and carthartic experience.
The AI safety field founded on Harry Potter fanfic
Sam Altman and the “effective accelerationists” doing more to discredit AI developers in general, and OpenAI specifically, than anything we could hope to do.
The Manichaean version is similar to the one found in Qumran, only adapted to Mani’s story of the cosmos. The fallen angels are here archontic demons escaped from their prisons in the sky, where they were placed when the world was constructed. They would have caused a brief revolt, and in the process, two hundred of them escaped to the Earth.21 While most given names are simply transliterated into Iranian language, Ohyah and Hahyah are renamed Sam and Nariman.
Hmm, those are interesting points, but I’m still not clear what models you have about them. it’s a common adage that reality is stranger than fiction. Do you mean to imply that something about the universe is biased towards humor-over-causality, such as some sort of complex simulation hypothesis, or just that the causal processes in a mathematical world beyond the reach of god seem to produce comedic occurrences often? if the latter, sure, but seems vacuous/uninteresting at that level. I might be more interested in a sober accounting of the effects involved.
I assume the “disagree” votes are implying that this will help get us all killed.
It’s true that if we actually convinced ourselves this was the case, it would be an excuse to ease up on alignment efforts. But I doubt it would be that convincing to that many of the right people. It would mostly be an excuse for a sensible chuckle.
Someone wrote a serious theory that the Trump election was evidence that our world is an entertainment sim, and had just been switched into entertainment mode from developing the background. It was modestly convincing, pointing to a number of improbabilities that had occurred to produce that result. It wasn’t so compelling or interesting that I remember the details.
Someone should make a post for the case “we live in a cosmic comedy,” with regards to all the developments in AI and AI safety. I think there’s plenty of evidence for this thesis, and exploring it in detail can be an interesting and carthartic experience.
@the gears to ascension To elaborate, a sample of interesting points to note (extremely non-exhaustive):
The hilarious irony of attempted interventions backfiring, like a more cerebral slapstick:
RLHF being an important component of what makes GPT3.5/GPT4 viable
Musk reading Superintelligence and being convinced to found OpenAI as a result
Yudkowsky introducing DeepMind to their first funder
The AI safety field founded on Harry Potter fanfic
Sam Altman and the “effective accelerationists” doing more to discredit AI developers in general, and OpenAI specifically, than anything we could hope to do.
Altman’s tweets
More generally, how the Main Characters of the central story are so frequently poasters.
That weird subplot where someone called “Bankman-Fried” talked a big game about x-risk and then went on to steal billions of dollars.
They had a Signal group chat called “Wirefraud”
The very, very, very… ah strange backstory of the various important people
Before focusing on AI, Demis Hassabis (head of Google DeepMind) was a game developer. He developed exactly 3 games:
Black And White, a “god simulator”
Republic: A Revolution, about leading a secret revolt/takeover of a East European country
Evil Genius
(He’s also a world champion of diplomacy)
Anthropic speedrunning through all the mistakes and suss behavior of OpenAI and DeepMind
Nominative determinism everywhere
Most recently, Mr. Ashburner trying to generate enough electricity to feed the sand god.
The aforementioned “Bankman-Fried”
The inconsistently candid “Altman”
Did I mention that both Bankman-Fried and Altman are named Sam?
If all of this was in a novel, we’d probably be criticizing the authors for being too heavyhanded with their metaphors.
I referenced some of these things on my website, but I’m sure there’s much more to be said.
Potential addition to the list: Ilya Sutskever founding a new AGI startup and calling it “Safe Superintelligence Inc.”.
Oh no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Giants#Manichaean_version
Hmm, those are interesting points, but I’m still not clear what models you have about them. it’s a common adage that reality is stranger than fiction. Do you mean to imply that something about the universe is biased towards humor-over-causality, such as some sort of complex simulation hypothesis, or just that the causal processes in a mathematical world beyond the reach of god seem to produce comedic occurrences often? if the latter, sure, but seems vacuous/uninteresting at that level. I might be more interested in a sober accounting of the effects involved.
Yes, name of the show is “What on Earth?”
I assume the “disagree” votes are implying that this will help get us all killed.
It’s true that if we actually convinced ourselves this was the case, it would be an excuse to ease up on alignment efforts. But I doubt it would be that convincing to that many of the right people. It would mostly be an excuse for a sensible chuckle.
Someone wrote a serious theory that the Trump election was evidence that our world is an entertainment sim, and had just been switched into entertainment mode from developing the background. It was modestly convincing, pointing to a number of improbabilities that had occurred to produce that result. It wasn’t so compelling or interesting that I remember the details.
Oh I just assumed that people who disagreed with me had a different sense of humor than I did! Which is totally fine, humor is famously subjective :)