And on a more poetic note, this is such a crappy time to be alive… Specially for the 1% of us who take s-risk seriously. When I take a walk, I look at the people… We could have been in a right path, you know? (At least as far as Liberal democracies are concerned). We could have been building something good, if it wasn’t for this huge monster over our heads that most are too dumb, or too coward, to believe in.
Maybe start telling people that we can’t play God is a good start. (Not at least until hundreds of years from now till we have the mathematical and the social proof to build God).
Evolution might have not been perfect, allowing things like torture due to an obsolete-for-humans (and highly abusable) survival mechanism called pain. But at least there are balances. It gave us compassion, or more skeptically the need to vomit when we see atrocities. It gave us death so you can actually escape. It gave us shock so you have a high probability of dying quick in extreme cases. There is kind of a balance, even if weak. I see the possibility of that balance being broken with AGI or even just nano by itself.
If only it was possible to implement David Pearce’s abolitionist project of anihilating the molecular substrates of below 0 hedonic level, with several safeguards. That used to be my only hope but I think chaos will arrive way first.
Why is it crappy to be alive now? If you want a nice life, now’s fairly okay, esp. compared to most of history. If you’re worried about the future, best to be in the time that most matters, which is now, so you can do the most good. It does suck that there’s all that wasted potential though.
And hey, by the Doomsday anthropic argument, we’re probably the people who take over the universe! Or something.
And on a more poetic note, this is such a crappy time to be alive… Specially for the 1% of us who take s-risk seriously. When I take a walk, I look at the people… We could have been in a right path, you know? (At least as far as Liberal democracies are concerned). We could have been building something good, if it wasn’t for this huge monster over our heads that most are too dumb, or too coward, to believe in.
Maybe start telling people that we can’t play God is a good start. (Not at least until hundreds of years from now till we have the mathematical and the social proof to build God).
Evolution might have not been perfect, allowing things like torture due to an obsolete-for-humans (and highly abusable) survival mechanism called pain. But at least there are balances. It gave us compassion, or more skeptically the need to vomit when we see atrocities. It gave us death so you can actually escape. It gave us shock so you have a high probability of dying quick in extreme cases. There is kind of a balance, even if weak. I see the possibility of that balance being broken with AGI or even just nano by itself.
If only it was possible to implement David Pearce’s abolitionist project of anihilating the molecular substrates of below 0 hedonic level, with several safeguards. That used to be my only hope but I think chaos will arrive way first.
Why is it crappy to be alive now? If you want a nice life, now’s fairly okay, esp. compared to most of history. If you’re worried about the future, best to be in the time that most matters, which is now, so you can do the most good. It does suck that there’s all that wasted potential though.
And hey, by the Doomsday anthropic argument, we’re probably the people who take over the universe! Or something.