Sometimes I really feel like just go talking to people, or carefully try to become an activist, because no one else is doing it, no one is giving ted talks about s-risks. It’s so hopeless though… Is the FRI and the likes even doing anything of substance?
Talking to people is really hard. The social world is very confusing to me. I don’t think “becoming an activist” does anything; you’re really committed, but to what? The thing to do is understand first. I think in the social world, the algorithm you’re following is just as important as the object-level thing you’re doing. Like, if you go around shrieking about S-risk, you’re just as much saying “Let’s all go around and shriek about each of our believies” as you are saying “hey, if we make minds that gain strength really fast they’ll overpower us and then do whatever they want, including torturing us in order to understand their environment”. If you want people working on AGI to be like “hey, maybe I’m doing something that’s alien to my values”, it might help to go around visibly investigating how you’re doing something that’s alien to your values. (IDK, probably wouldn’t help, but maybe worth trying.)
Talking to people is really hard. The social world is very confusing to me. I don’t think “becoming an activist” does anything; you’re really committed, but to what? The thing to do is understand first. I think in the social world, the algorithm you’re following is just as important as the object-level thing you’re doing. Like, if you go around shrieking about S-risk, you’re just as much saying “Let’s all go around and shriek about each of our believies” as you are saying “hey, if we make minds that gain strength really fast they’ll overpower us and then do whatever they want, including torturing us in order to understand their environment”. If you want people working on AGI to be like “hey, maybe I’m doing something that’s alien to my values”, it might help to go around visibly investigating how you’re doing something that’s alien to your values. (IDK, probably wouldn’t help, but maybe worth trying.)