I see, so this is why you seem to often bring up such discussion on LessWrong? Because you see it as a repository of smart, under-socialized, independent thinkers? I do to a certain extent and in this light, your most recent writing appears much more targeted rather than a overblown obsession.
In brief, I fear alt-right/technocratic ideas not because they’re in any way popular or “viral” at present, but because I have a nasty gut feeling that they—in a limited sense—do reflect “reality” best of all, that by most naive pragmatist reasoning they follow from facts of life, and that more and more people for whom naive reasoning is more important than social conventions will start to adopt such thinking as soon as they’re alerted to its possibility.
Do you think this might already be happening? The naive social conventions ignoring utilitarianism we often find ourselves disagreeing with seems to be remarkably widespread among baseline LessWrongers. One merely needs to point out the “techno-facist” means and how well they might work and I can easily see well over a third embracing them, and even more, should criticism of “Cathedral” economic and political theory become better understood and more widespread.
But again remember the “alternative right” has plenty of anti-epistemology and mysticism springing from a fascination with old fascist and to a lesser extent new left intellectuals, this will I think restrain them from fully coalescing around the essentially materialist ethos that you accurately detect is sometimes present.
And even if some of this does happen either from the new right people or from “rationalists” and the cognitive elite, tell me honestly would such a regime and civilization have better or worse odds at creating FAI or surviving existential risk than our own?
And, crucially, in the age of the internet and such, there will be more and more such under-socialized, smart people growing up and thinking more independently
But recall what Vladimir_M pointed out, in order to gain economic or political power one must in the age of the internet be more conformist than before, because any transgression is one google search away. Doesn’t this suggest there will be some stability in the social order for the foreseeable future? Or that if change does happen it will only occur if a new ideal is massively popular so that “everyone” transgresses in its favour. Then punishment via hiring practices, reputation or law becomes ineffective.
Also: a third of LWers embracing technofascism? Is that a reference to a third of angels siding with Lucifer in Paradise Lost? Or was this unintended, a small example of our narrative patterns being very similar from Old Testament to Milton to now?
tell me honestly would such a regime and civilization have better or worse odds at creating FAI or surviving existential risk than our own?
Surviving existential risk, probably. But, unlike today’s inefficient corrupt narrow-minded liberal oligarchy, such a regime would—precisely because of its strengths and the virtues of people who’d rise to the top of it (like objectivity, dislike of a “narrative” approach to life and a cynical understanding of society) - be able to make life hardly worth living for people like us. I don’t know whether the decrease in extinction risk is worth the vastly increased probability of stable and thriving dystopia, where a small managerial caste is unrestrained and unchallenged. Again, democracy and other such modern institutions, pathetic and stupid as they might be from an absolute standpoint, at least prevent real momentous change.
And their “F”AI could well implement many things we’d find awful and dystopian, too (e.g., again, a clean ordered society where slavery is allowed and even children are legally chattel slaves of their parents, to be molded and used freely) - unlike something like this happening with our present-day CEV, it’d be a feature, not a bug. In short, it’s likely a babyeater invasion in essense.
I’m a moral anti-realist through and through, despite believing in god(s). I judge everyone and their lives from my own standpoint. Hell, a good citizen of the Third Reich might’ve found my own life pointless and unworthy of being. Good thing that he’s shot or burnt, then. There’s no neutral evaluation.
I judge everyone and their lives from my own standpoint… There’s no neutral evaluation.
You sound like a subjectivist moral realist.
Possibly even what we tend to call “subjectively objective” (I think we should borrow a turn of phrase from Epistemology and just call it subject-sensitive invariantism).
I see, so this is why you seem to often bring up such discussion on LessWrong? Because you see it as a repository of smart, under-socialized, independent thinkers? I do to a certain extent and in this light, your most recent writing appears much more targeted rather than a overblown obsession.
Do you think this might already be happening? The naive social conventions ignoring utilitarianism we often find ourselves disagreeing with seems to be remarkably widespread among baseline LessWrongers. One merely needs to point out the “techno-facist” means and how well they might work and I can easily see well over a third embracing them, and even more, should criticism of “Cathedral” economic and political theory become better understood and more widespread.
But again remember the “alternative right” has plenty of anti-epistemology and mysticism springing from a fascination with old fascist and to a lesser extent new left intellectuals, this will I think restrain them from fully coalescing around the essentially materialist ethos that you accurately detect is sometimes present.
And even if some of this does happen either from the new right people or from “rationalists” and the cognitive elite, tell me honestly would such a regime and civilization have better or worse odds at creating FAI or surviving existential risk than our own?
But recall what Vladimir_M pointed out, in order to gain economic or political power one must in the age of the internet be more conformist than before, because any transgression is one google search away. Doesn’t this suggest there will be some stability in the social order for the foreseeable future? Or that if change does happen it will only occur if a new ideal is massively popular so that “everyone” transgresses in its favour. Then punishment via hiring practices, reputation or law becomes ineffective.
Also: a third of LWers embracing technofascism? Is that a reference to a third of angels siding with Lucifer in Paradise Lost? Or was this unintended, a small example of our narrative patterns being very similar from Old Testament to Milton to now?
I’m glad you caught the reference. :)
Surviving existential risk, probably. But, unlike today’s inefficient corrupt narrow-minded liberal oligarchy, such a regime would—precisely because of its strengths and the virtues of people who’d rise to the top of it (like objectivity, dislike of a “narrative” approach to life and a cynical understanding of society) - be able to make life hardly worth living for people like us. I don’t know whether the decrease in extinction risk is worth the vastly increased probability of stable and thriving dystopia, where a small managerial caste is unrestrained and unchallenged. Again, democracy and other such modern institutions, pathetic and stupid as they might be from an absolute standpoint, at least prevent real momentous change.
And their “F”AI could well implement many things we’d find awful and dystopian, too (e.g., again, a clean ordered society where slavery is allowed and even children are legally chattel slaves of their parents, to be molded and used freely) - unlike something like this happening with our present-day CEV, it’d be a feature, not a bug. In short, it’s likely a babyeater invasion in essense.
(more coming)
I want to hear more about the Moldbuggian dystopia. Should make excellent SF.
I’m writing it! In Russian, though.
I think your idea that for people’s lives to be worth living they need to have certain beliefs is one of your ugliest recurring themes.
I’m a moral anti-realist through and through, despite believing in god(s). I judge everyone and their lives from my own standpoint. Hell, a good citizen of the Third Reich might’ve found my own life pointless and unworthy of being. Good thing that he’s shot or burnt, then. There’s no neutral evaluation.
You sound like a subjectivist moral realist.
Possibly even what we tend to call “subjectively objective” (I think we should borrow a turn of phrase from Epistemology and just call it subject-sensitive invariantism).
You don’t sound like a moral anti-realist at all.