Fascism vibes. These rationalists who don't know who Spinoza is keep talking to me, and it's disturbing. They always want to debate me, test my collectivism or something, to see if I can be consistent. They claim to care so much about logic but can't stop doing Ad Hominems. These people would be seriously damaging to the average person's mental health to put up with.
That's what I get for making the claim about cognitive defense mechanisms being logical fallacies. I'll tell anyone I learned that from a book on narcissistic parents, but Yudkowski makes himself out to be a guru but more like a hyper Individualist looking to validate his belief in "the self" through a machine. It's disturbing that such big figures platform this TESCREAL trash. Even worse than it seems all over government regulation too.
Thanks for your work on this group! I wouldn't have a clue what was going on if not for your commentary.
I'm a dimbulb when it comes to this stuff. I just assumed the If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies guys were pro-human. There is so much A.I. discourse out there, it's just not possible to read it all. So I assumed their position was as clear cut as it sounds.
There's a dark whiff of eugenics to the whole thing that doesn't get examined because they throw around terms like "benefit all humanity."
This is all (to used a mixed metaphor) kids stuff (aprostophe?). Reduce world population to a tiny number through voluntary antinatalism, then the last humans sterilize the planet to spare the other animals the cycle of suffering. #efilism. When I have gone , what do I care of species survival ? Unless I believe future versions of homo sapiens discover immortality and time travel. They can then collect my soul at the time of death without affecting the timeline.
If you listen to that interview between Daniel and Ross, it's less about replacing humans with AI and more about how humans are useless in the age of superintelligence. This is true and one of the many reasons why superintelligence is bad. Useless does not necessarily mean killed off or replaced though. It wouldn't stun me if Daniel did want to replace or turn me into some sort of machine, but that statement is not evidence.
With Yud and the other guys, you just have to take what you can get in the utterly bizarre AI space. I disagree with them about basically everything outside of this one issue, but this one issue is really important. Meanwhile everyone else in the discourse is just kind of shrugging and going "But China", Yud is at least trying to solve the problem!
Before I got off twitter, seeing the speedy rise of Faggella freaked me out. It seems like on both the sides of the AI-safety discourse you can only find reddit atheist rationalists.
Aside from sounding like a bunch of nerdy 10th graders, Yudkowsky & co. display a profound alienation from the human body, an animal body which evolved over millions of years within the evolving ecosystem of a very rare type of planet. It's a type of alienation that seems to be a byproduct of digital technology. And it's a shame, too, because digital technology still has a lot of positives (like allowing writers like me and philosophers like you to easily share ideas). And yet, for the TESCREALists, it sends them down a rabbit hole of wishing to escape their bodies, which strikes me as self-loathing. I'm glad you're calling them out, Emile, and exposing how dangerous they are. I just hope Bernie and Neil (two people I otherwise admire) are listening.
I think we can all agree having a lot of potentially autism spectrum low EQ men running around with a lot of money and not much deep philosophical or ethical understanding is a pretty awful thing.
Thanks for writing.
I qrite cyberpunk fiction and explore transhunanism from a diveristy of perspectives.
Prospectives and nuance a lot of these people seem to lack.
One of the most obvious one is they often see the world in very clear binary terms.
AI will take over, therefore need human super intelligence, therefore need to make everyone do "insert oppressive and unethical thing".
I think that if anything the expanding range of AI models, biohacking and genetic technology and cybernetics and brain to computer interfaces are going to lead to an explosion of variation in expressions of identity.
Catgirls with CRISPR/TIGR, humans fusing with AI companions, traditional human communities that reject all this stuff, AI models far more interested in other AI models than us etc etc
A new age of gods and monsters.
When I read this stuff from these guys I'm always so bored, they lack in vision and seen to have a very narrow view of human experience.
Agreed. They write like their only understanding of human interaction comes from playing video games and see themselves as heroes among the rest of us NPCs.
You’re pointing at something real—there’s a recognizable and genuinely troubling archetype here.
But the autism spectrum framing is imprecise and does real damage to a large population who share none of these behaviors.
What seems more explanatory is the combination of specific personality traits (think dark triad) shaped by specific histories, amplified by extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power, and given intellectual license by an ideology that explicitly subordinates present humans to abstract future ones.
That’s a more precise target and one you can actually argue with.
Fair enough, I did say potentially to hedge that, I think there is a strand of it though, see the effective altruism community as well which isn't narcissistic and dark triad but a very mechanistic world view which is autism spectrum sadly. The emgineering logic without any of the nuance of probability and risk management. I used to be in science and worked alongside similar people in academia, good guys at heart but if you gave them power would make monstrous decisions.
Understand you are worried about tarring others with the brush so to speak. But I calls it as I sees it man.
Everytime I learn about what’s been happening in pop politics and philosophy I feel so very very depressed. I’m gonna post a meme calling that nerd book shit to feel better. It’s called abundance? Yeah
its a crossover between elders of zion conspiracy loons, transhumanists and frankenstein conspiracy loons.
Great stuff. 😶
Lol, Death To Clankers.
Fascism vibes. These rationalists who don't know who Spinoza is keep talking to me, and it's disturbing. They always want to debate me, test my collectivism or something, to see if I can be consistent. They claim to care so much about logic but can't stop doing Ad Hominems. These people would be seriously damaging to the average person's mental health to put up with.
That's what I get for making the claim about cognitive defense mechanisms being logical fallacies. I'll tell anyone I learned that from a book on narcissistic parents, but Yudkowski makes himself out to be a guru but more like a hyper Individualist looking to validate his belief in "the self" through a machine. It's disturbing that such big figures platform this TESCREAL trash. Even worse than it seems all over government regulation too.
Thanks for your work on this group! I wouldn't have a clue what was going on if not for your commentary.
People are underinformed about "that side of the AI stuff",
thanks to Emile for tirelessly trying to document the unpleasant space that largely gets put into the grey area of
"but those people know a lot and are smart, so we should probably listen to them",
without due diligence of what their motives or destinations actually are.
Welp, duped again.
I'm a dimbulb when it comes to this stuff. I just assumed the If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies guys were pro-human. There is so much A.I. discourse out there, it's just not possible to read it all. So I assumed their position was as clear cut as it sounds.
There's a dark whiff of eugenics to the whole thing that doesn't get examined because they throw around terms like "benefit all humanity."
Yeah. Fuckk those guys.
Just don’t listen to them. Why pander to them?
This is all (to used a mixed metaphor) kids stuff (aprostophe?). Reduce world population to a tiny number through voluntary antinatalism, then the last humans sterilize the planet to spare the other animals the cycle of suffering. #efilism. When I have gone , what do I care of species survival ? Unless I believe future versions of homo sapiens discover immortality and time travel. They can then collect my soul at the time of death without affecting the timeline.
If you listen to that interview between Daniel and Ross, it's less about replacing humans with AI and more about how humans are useless in the age of superintelligence. This is true and one of the many reasons why superintelligence is bad. Useless does not necessarily mean killed off or replaced though. It wouldn't stun me if Daniel did want to replace or turn me into some sort of machine, but that statement is not evidence.
With Yud and the other guys, you just have to take what you can get in the utterly bizarre AI space. I disagree with them about basically everything outside of this one issue, but this one issue is really important. Meanwhile everyone else in the discourse is just kind of shrugging and going "But China", Yud is at least trying to solve the problem!
Before I got off twitter, seeing the speedy rise of Faggella freaked me out. It seems like on both the sides of the AI-safety discourse you can only find reddit atheist rationalists.
Love this. Looking forward to reading the whole book!
Aside from sounding like a bunch of nerdy 10th graders, Yudkowsky & co. display a profound alienation from the human body, an animal body which evolved over millions of years within the evolving ecosystem of a very rare type of planet. It's a type of alienation that seems to be a byproduct of digital technology. And it's a shame, too, because digital technology still has a lot of positives (like allowing writers like me and philosophers like you to easily share ideas). And yet, for the TESCREALists, it sends them down a rabbit hole of wishing to escape their bodies, which strikes me as self-loathing. I'm glad you're calling them out, Emile, and exposing how dangerous they are. I just hope Bernie and Neil (two people I otherwise admire) are listening.
I think we can all agree having a lot of potentially autism spectrum low EQ men running around with a lot of money and not much deep philosophical or ethical understanding is a pretty awful thing.
Thanks for writing.
I qrite cyberpunk fiction and explore transhunanism from a diveristy of perspectives.
Prospectives and nuance a lot of these people seem to lack.
One of the most obvious one is they often see the world in very clear binary terms.
AI will take over, therefore need human super intelligence, therefore need to make everyone do "insert oppressive and unethical thing".
I think that if anything the expanding range of AI models, biohacking and genetic technology and cybernetics and brain to computer interfaces are going to lead to an explosion of variation in expressions of identity.
Catgirls with CRISPR/TIGR, humans fusing with AI companions, traditional human communities that reject all this stuff, AI models far more interested in other AI models than us etc etc
A new age of gods and monsters.
When I read this stuff from these guys I'm always so bored, they lack in vision and seen to have a very narrow view of human experience.
Agreed. They write like their only understanding of human interaction comes from playing video games and see themselves as heroes among the rest of us NPCs.
Does seem to be a fair analogy!
You’re pointing at something real—there’s a recognizable and genuinely troubling archetype here.
But the autism spectrum framing is imprecise and does real damage to a large population who share none of these behaviors.
What seems more explanatory is the combination of specific personality traits (think dark triad) shaped by specific histories, amplified by extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power, and given intellectual license by an ideology that explicitly subordinates present humans to abstract future ones.
That’s a more precise target and one you can actually argue with.
Fair enough, I did say potentially to hedge that, I think there is a strand of it though, see the effective altruism community as well which isn't narcissistic and dark triad but a very mechanistic world view which is autism spectrum sadly. The emgineering logic without any of the nuance of probability and risk management. I used to be in science and worked alongside similar people in academia, good guys at heart but if you gave them power would make monstrous decisions.
Understand you are worried about tarring others with the brush so to speak. But I calls it as I sees it man.
Everytime I learn about what’s been happening in pop politics and philosophy I feel so very very depressed. I’m gonna post a meme calling that nerd book shit to feel better. It’s called abundance? Yeah
Too bad you have a child like view of political science 😔
What?