My thinking is aligned with what you have written here. It is disappointing to see rationalists put up a straw man to confidently tear it down and consider the case closed. No matter what is going on it’s clear that the best way to control a narrative is to manufacture a cultural taboo surrounding what would otherwise be a subject open to scientific inquiry.
James Blaha
Karma: 19
This is a good summary. I’ve been thinking about doing a comprehensive assessment of the evidence with respect to three major categories of theories explaining this legislation, recent events, and the history of thousands of sightings, images, video, etc:
There is at least one non-human intelligence (NHI) present on Earth
There has been one or more decades long international disinformation campaigns to fake evidence for NHI on Earth
Other explanations (sensor glitches, psychological/cultural phenomena, wishful thinking, etc.)
Most evidence I look at reduces my probability of 3 while remaining consistent with both 1 and 2. At this stage either 1 or 2 is pretty wild and I’d like to know which one it is.
AGI doesn’t need understanding, intention, or consciousness in order to kill us, only intelligence
That is extremely interesting to me. I’ve had the experience of gaining a new qualia (depth) alongside gaining a new skill (depth perception). I’ve talked to quite a few people who lack the qualia of depth but have some amount of the skill of depth perception. Some people can score a certain value on tests of depth perception while reporting that they don’t have the experience of depth, while others score that same amount and do report that they have the qualia. Whether or not you can do the task seems related but not always connected to whether or not your brain assigns that qualia to the task.
Before I was able to compute stereo depth from binocular disparity, I never remember experiencing the qualia of depth. For me, as soon as I was able to learn the skill, the qualia came with it for free. But, for many people, this does not seem to be the case, and no amount of the skill brings them the qualia. Or maybe the first and second groups are just not communicating well, it is hard to tell for sure!
Hey, I found this super interesting and looks like you’ve done your research. I know the good folks over at IndieBio and I think you are at a really good stage to have a chat with them. I think they could be helpful in helping you find a co-founder and initial and follow-on funding for the company. I’m sure there are a number of other synthetic bio accelerators that would be helpful as well, but I have personal experience with them.