The null hypothesis for why the growth rate of humans has slowed is simply that we’ve reached our new technological carrying capacity in some way. The pure exponential growth phase we experienced in the last hundred years is similar what happens when you introduce an invasive species to a new area. Huge explosion, and you end up with startlingly high population numbers, but they do eventually stabilise.
It’s of course more pleasant to live in that explosive growth phase, because that means there’s abundance to enjoy, but I think it’s foolish to think we can do that forever. Eventually you run out of atoms in the universe. It has to stop somewhere.
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It’s a bit ironic this written from the perspective of “alignment” because a human inclination towards IGF is exactly the sort of loop that gets thrown when you try to align AGI with human moral intuition. A lot of our moral intuition has to do with what’s good for our children (IGF) and community due to reciprocity (so IGF again). You’re never going to be able to align AGI with human moral intuition without factoring in that humans care a lot of about IGF (ultimately, not proximately.)
Personally, I think if you try to better align humans to maximise IGF you’ll find a lot of morally repulsive exploits in the system. Probably the human in history who maximised IGF the most was Ghengis Khan and that sure involved a lot of rape and murder. (It’s probably not an ESS though)
I agree, although I’m not sure it’s entirely due to the “metoo world order.”
It’s probably partly that, but it’s also partly that it’s considered impolite to point out when someone is mentally ill. In part this is because unfortunately doing so can strengthen a paranoid person’s feeling of persecution.
When a friend of mine suffered a psychotic break, she had many technology related delusions, and she reached out to me for advice because I work in technology. I wasn’t sure how to handle it so I consulted a professional. Under their advice, I gave her general advice on how to protect herself from breaches (strong passwords, HTTPS everywhere extension, etc.) and didn’t otherwise try to disillusion her. My role as a friend was to stay her friend, not try to break her delusions. Paranoid people already have enough enemies, imaginary though they may be.
Of course, once delusions have been put into print, it’s now a public forum. (One might question the ethics of publishing such an article). But politeness norms often extend into public forums.
Agreed. Take the unhappy pregnant parent raising the hypothetically future happy child—unfortunately I just couldn’t decouple this.
As an unhappy parent, my unhappiness gets transmitted to my children, and their unhappiness feeds back to me in a negative feedback loop. We’re all unhappy. (And, indeed, the literature on postpartum depression and its resultant effects on children are quite clear on this as well—it’s not just my personal experience.)
My rationalisation of this is that I’m a negative utilitarian and I’m not a longtermist—I don’t think the future child’s theoretical happiness can outweigh the the mother’s present unhappiness.But in actuality I think it’s probably a decoupling issue.
We did the traditional marriage ceremony. Neither of us particularly cared nor paid attention to the exact wording of it. It’s not legally binding, unlike the papers we signed, which were.
There are so many more practical reasons to not get divorced I can’t imagine the exact wording matters to most people—especially given we were largely hearing it for the first time that day, only to promptly forget it.
I wonder if being too creative with your wedding could in theory lower the social pressure. The more it moves away from “traditional,” the less others consider it a marriage, maybe. Or not!
I would go one step further and say that even if you enjoy babysitting, that doesn’t mean parenting is for you. I babysat a lot as a teenager, and I can say it did not properly prepare me for having children.
Babysitting is a lot more fun because you’re just there for a few hours and then you leave. Parenthood is far more demanding.
Parenting is basically a mixture of being a nanny, teacher, psychologist/social worker, and housekeeper all rolled into one. These are all things I’m especially bad at and would never take an actual job in.
In retrospect (though it is too late now!) having kids was the wrong choice for me.
You can’t expect a truly selfish agent to answer any of these questions honestly. Admitting you would steal in certain circumstances would cause them reputational damage. Most of us have programming in place to prevent us from incriminating ourselves morally.