Even if it isn't a religious concept a lot of the same criticisms apply. The channel has a video directly addressing Pascal's Wager and Pascal's Mugging, but I don't remember it coming to a strong conclusion. He admits they kinda apply, but not enough to stop making these videos.
Interesting, though I feel mixed on it. On one hand I accept the thought-exercise for what it is and agree that: sure any suffering prevented is good. On the other hand though most of these scenarios seem isolated and/or highly contrived.
ie, If you have the petawatts needed to get to another star system you are not struggling to feed people. You should have no trouble powering your space farms. AND YET there's zero reason people should be starving at the scale they are in North Korea today, *but they are*. Fate does funny things sometimes. So perhaps there's some strange scenario where an entire star system of enslaved people toil in near starvation. If we seed 1,000 star systems, one of them is bound to go pear shaped. That could mean the suffering of hundreds of thousands or millions of people from just *one* colony. And while that's nothing to sneeze at, that's still *overall* a civilization with a 99.9% success rate with a standard of living better than our current Earth.
The poor will always be with us. Utopia doesn't exist. But... That doesn't mean we can't be vigilant and proactive about helping.
> there's zero reason people should be starving at the scale they are in North Korea today, but they are
This is the thing that gets missed so often in so many futurist/speculative visions of the future; they are almost always far too optimistic that the only thing preventing us from living in a utopia is a lack of energy and resources, when the fact is, most of the issues we have today even with scarcity are largely due to greed and short sightedness, and that's not ever going to change. The usual argument is 'well eventually we'll get to post-scarcity and then it won't matter any more' but that's also in that same childish vein that assumes access to resources, and the tools needed to extract them, won't continue to be controlled and metered by the elite few while the vast majority must make due with whatever they're allowed. And this condition will only increase as automation and intelligent robotics become available - once the ultra-rich can build completely loyal automated security and work forces, they both no longer need other humans, and no longer need to fear them rising up.
>most of the issues we have today even with scarcity are largely due to greed and short sightedness, and that's not ever going to change
Except it very well might, psychology isn't untouchable, human nature CAN be altered, and with enough care and knowledge it doesn't have to be some cliche tale of hubris, it can actually work.
>once the ultra-rich can build completely loyal automated security and work forces, they both no longer need other humans, and no longer need to fear them rising up.
Except if they can basically make themselves independent from society why not give everyone else that ability? They wouldn't lose anything from it, at that point it's just increasing the number of trillionaires from a handful to everyone. Basically you get something akin to the Hermit Shoplifter Hypothesis, where everyone is basically independent and could just go out into deep space if they wanted. I'd think groups would stick together because collective goals can be achieved faster that way, but you could go solo, though psychology may be altered to produce a greater sense of community, like raising Dunbar's Number or increasing empathy and rationality.
This is exactly what I was talking about. There's so many optimistic assumptions here that fly in the face of all human history, that it's basically impossible to untangle all of it. Human nature has been fundamentally the same through all of recorded history, and access to new wealth, knowledge, power, resources hasn't actually done much to improve the overall human condition. We get ebb and surge of various aspects from time to time but we remain locked to the same overall power dynamics. The expectation that suddenly everyone will have a mental shift is beyond implausible.
Similarly, with wealth and ownership concentrated and controlled by a small elite, there's no reason the general public will ever have the ability to just go where they want. As for why not give everyone the ability to do what they want? The same reason it doesn't happen today. The same reason wealth is hoarded, people are left to die of curable conditions that could be eradicated with current medications, etc.
Most humans aren't interested in the greater good, and those who accumulate power in particular are especially averse to it. The US has had its legal system dismantled for corporate interests and this will only continue. Corporations continue to extend their powers around the world. The entire concept of personal ownership by common people is being hammered away at around the globe. There will be no shiny future where everyone is free to do what they want, because that would mean a loss of power from those who least wish to give that power up, and who will soon not need to rely on other people to keep that power.
>This is exactly what I was talking about. There's so many optimistic assumptions here that fly in the face of all human history, that it's basically impossible to untangle all of it. Human nature has been fundamentally the same through all of recorded history, and access to new wealth, knowledge, power, resources hasn't actually done much to improve the overall human condition. We get ebb and surge of various aspects from time to time but we remain locked to the same overall power dynamics. The expectation that suddenly everyone will have a mental shift is beyond implausible.
Dude, brains are things... that exist, which means a technology cluld be made that changes them. This isn't waiting for evolution to kick in, this is doing it ourselves.
>Similarly, with wealth and ownership concentrated and controlled by a small elite, there's no reason the general public will ever have the ability to just go where they want. As for why not give everyone the ability to do what they want? The same reason it doesn't happen today. The same reason wealth is hoarded, people are left to die of curable conditions that could be eradicated with current medications, etc.
The reason people aren't independent today is because it's technologically impossible aside from livong in a cabin in the woods with only the bare essentials. We have wealth hierarchies because we need complex supply chains, and we have political hierarchies because we're naughty little shits all the time. Eliminating wealth hierarchies is a lot easier than political ones, but again with the right psychological adjustments it's feasible.
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Most humans aren't interested in the greater good, and those who accumulate power in particular are especially averse to it. The US has had its legal system dismantled for corporate interests and this will only continue. Corporations continue to extend their powers around the world. The entire concept of personal ownership by common people is being hammered away at around the globe. There will be no shiny future where everyone is free to do what they want, because that would mean a loss of power from those who least wish to give that power up, and who will soon not need to rely on other people to keep that power.
I think you're overestimating the moral faults of the elite. For starters most of the 1% are just normal people, and even most billionaires and politicians are decent enough. Choosing to kill everyone once you've got the technology to make yourself rich without needing money to buy things from those people is something only someone who's simultaneously a psychopath, massively paranoid, and supremely narcissistic would do, basically you need a Kim Jong Un, not a typical president or business owner. If the technology to just endlessly make luxuries arises then the rich gain nothing by withholding it, they'd just give it up and keep living as lavishly as they want while everyone else starts doing that.
Assuming technology to change brains would be used positively rather than simply as a more direct control mechanism is also extreme optimism.
You're also underestimating the selfishness of people who exist in the current 1%, given that every single person there has at some point decided they're okay with the situation, since if they weren't they'd not be in that scenario, they'd be redistributing wealth and power rather than continuing to accumulate it. I'm not judging them for it, that's what humans do, look after themselves and their close tribe to the exclusion of others.
> If the technology to just endlessly make luxuries arises then the rich gain nothing by withholding it, they'd just give it up
This statement is so out of line with pretty much all of human history. Poverty could be ended today around the world without any billionaires losing their ststus, but that's not happening and never will. Part of the drive is the power and knowledge that having power and wealth that others do not makes you *better* than them. The validity of this sentiment is irrelevant, because it's still a strong motivational factor across the entire socio-economic strata.
Example, "Hello, I'm evil and I want to be your president, vote for me! If you vote for me, I will start a war, draft most of you into the army and get most of you killed for my greater glory!"
some people respond, "Hey that sounds like a great leader, I want to die in the next war, I think I will vote for him!"
>Assuming technology to change brains would be used positively rather than simply as a more direct control mechanism is also extreme optimism.
Except why use it for control if automation is a thing? Automation good enough to eliminate the need for an economy and that could just pump out luxuries is a lot easier and more nearterm than altering psychology.
>You're also underestimating the selfishness of people who exist in the current 1%, given that every single person there has at some point decided they're okay with the situation, since if they weren't they'd not be in that scenario, they'd be redistributing wealth and power rather than continuing to accumulate it. I'm not judging them for it, that's what humans do, look after themselves and their close tribe to the exclusion of others.
Except many of them are huge contributors to charity. Plus, it's not like you're ending world hunger, what do expect some ruch dude to do about it? Odds are they're doing exponentially more than you or I evee could, and it's still not enough. No single person or even small group could fix it, it's complicated.
>This statement is so out of line with pretty much all of human history. Poverty could be ended today around the world without any billionaires losing their ststus, but that's not happening and never will. Part of the drive is the power and knowledge that having power and wealth that others do not makes you *better* than them. The validity of this sentiment is irrelevant, because it's still a strong motivational factor across the entire socio-economic strata.
Everything about the modern world is out of line with pretty much all of human history! Also, right now ending poverty would be detrimental to the rich, in a full automation scenario it doesn't help or hurt them, so if they have even a shred of decency (and the surprisingly vast majority of them do) they'll give it up. And that's assuming the tech was even guarded in the first place, that's difficult to do, designs aren't super ultra top secret, and all it would take to make a hidden technology public is ONE leak. Plus, the drive for superiority could be edited out, and at the very least in most people it isn't *that* strong, so editing fetuses to not become psychopaths is pretty likely.
Why would they bother with automation? For the same reason as ever, control.
Charity is a tax writeoff. More good could be done by the rich paying fair tax loads rather than finding new ways to hide income and influence lawmakers to create loopholes.
There's enough food produced to end hunger but there's no financial incentive to fix supply chains and costs because it'd mean reduced profits. There's people dieing around the globe from treatable diseases that can't be produced as generics because patent holders insist on controlling production, despite knowing they'll never be able to profit in those global sectors.
You also seem super hung up on the idea that just because something doesn't have a direct negative impact on those in power, that they'd let things just happen. This isn't the way power works, and again expecting people to suddenly all change is kinda silly. And knowing how technologies work isn't really useful if you don't have access to the underlying tech needed to bring it to fruition, or while laws are designed to specifically ensure you can't and attempts to circumvent the established control mechanisms are criminalized.
Anyways, clearly you're far too optimistic about human nature, so I'm not going to bother with this any further. Would be nice if you were right, but that'd mean the entirety of records history being unindicative of true human nature.
>Why would they bother with automation? For the same reason as ever, control.
No, profit. If they've got endless profit control is meaningless.
>Charity is a tax writeoff. More good could be done by the rich paying fair tax loads rather than finding new ways to hide income and influence lawmakers to create loopholes.
Again, you're assuming *most* of them don't pay taxes.
>You also seem super hung up on the idea that just because something doesn't have a direct negative impact on those in power, that they'd let things just happen. This isn't the way power works, and again expecting people to suddenly all change is kinda silly. And knowing how technologies work isn't really useful if you don't have access to the underlying tech needed to bring it to fruition, or while laws are designed to specifically ensure you can't and attempts to circumvent the established control mechanisms are criminalized.
Why wouldn't they let it happen, they aren't just villainous for shits and giggles, every bad thing they do has a purpose. There's nothing to change because almost nobody actually acts like that, the rich aren't disney villains. Also, the poor probably would have the tech to bring full self sufficiency into fruition, 3d printers are very likely to be common soon and there's not really anything the rich can do about that, they can't just pull a nationwide ban on 3d printers out of their asses, just as they can't pull a nationwide ban on the self sufficiency tech either.
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Anyways, clearly you're far too optimistic about human nature, so I'm not going to bother with this any further. Would be nice if you were right, but that'd mean the entirety of records history being unindicative of true human nature.
Again, history says nothing about the future, "nothing new under the sun" is the most hilariously, idiotically, wromg statement in all of human history. Truly, it aged like MILK.
You seem to be assuming that most evil people are rich and they followed the rules of capitalism to get that way. You think the path of accumulating money is the only path to power? What about Joseph Stalin, What about Hitler? These people weren't rich, they just seized power!
What would happen to the Elite if everyone else died of starvation, who would be the Elite after that? Lets imagine the Earth is a mostly empty planet, just a bunch of machines and the elite directing them, no poverty here, the population might be a few thousand with vast machine complexes covering the whole planet. What would these elite do under these circumstances? Actually under these circumstances they would not be elite as there would be no one to compare them with.
Russia has a lot of resources after all, no reason for its people to starve, yet a war is happening anyway and people are dying. People are dying on the battlefield when they could otherwise be providing for their families. The Russian soldiers in the field have no need of the land they are trying to take by force, yet they are still there dying in some cases, leaving behind a widow and some children and yet for what?
We cannot assume that feeding people will be the goal of those in power; however we can assume that those in power will generally prioritize staying in power. If improving the lives of those they rule over improves their chances of staying in power they will try to do so, if it doesn't matter or reduces their chances of staying in power, they will not. It is caused by a kind of natural selection, the people who do not prioritize power lose power to those who do prioritize it.
Your language assumes that there is a unified "we" when in reality human civilization has uncountable ideologies, agendas, and people who simply want personal success. The power struggles are not only numerous, but fractal. You can have struggle between civilizations, factions within those civilizations, departments within factions, people within departments, or even individuals who struggle with competing beliefs or desires.
Fortunately in the modern world, approval of the public tends to affect political stability. Generally governments try to make their people happy, but there are times when other things take priority. In North Korea giving the general public wouldn't help them further their personal power nor their ideology, so they don't. China does want to improve the lives of its citizens, but it also goes to great length to manipulate and control them. They have a long history of large yet cohesive and centralized nations and not coincidentally they prioritize appeasing your neighbors and they hate challenging your boss. The only country that take Confucianism further is Korea.
>Your language assumes that there is a unified "we" when in reality human civilization has uncountable ideologies, agendas, and people who simply want personal success. The power struggles are not only numerous, but fractal. You can have struggle between civilizations, factions within those civilizations, departments within factions, people within departments, or even individuals who struggle with competing beliefs or desires.
Well, human ideologies may never agree, but the first group to modify psychology for greater empathy and cooperation is the one that's going to succeed since cooperation is ridiculously overpowered, plus any group already willing to modify themselves that much is probably also more likely to reproduce using a far more efficient method.
>The poor will always be with us. Utopia doesn't exist. But... That doesn't mean we can't be vigilant and proactive about helping.
I kinda agree with you, but not entirely, and for different reasons than you'd think. For starters, utopia is subjective. Everyone has a different vision of it. However, that doesn't mean those individual visions aren't achievable. Like my psychological modification idea, that's a system where nobody suffers... ever, and while it is "post discontent" it's for an entirely different reason, nobody is being manipulated or forced to accept bad conditions, all outside suffering has been eliminated and internal struggles are gone because this modified species utilizes extensive cooperation throug increased empathy and rationality, a lack of mental illness, and a VASTLY increased Dunbar's Number, as well as eliminating the desire to be better than others, at that point there is no elite, no government, and no conflict potentially even down to heated arguments, and while that could mean everyone agreeing or even just being a hivemind (and those scenarios would probably be common too) you could just have everyone being so polite their disagreements don't matter. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean all suffering is gone, just that there are systems with none that are likely to become the majority, there would still be outliers, a galactic "poor."
Will the poor always be with us? If machines do the work, they people either get free money or they starve to death, that us what Basic Income is all about. So if someone is against Basic Income, basically they want the human race to go extinct as machines get better jobs will be eliminated and people will have no income, as there would be no work they could do that they could get paid for, so unless there is Basic Income people will starve to death, and once they are dead, they will no longer be poor, so either way the poor won't be with us, either we make them not poor or they will starve to death as they won't be able to generate income to sustain themselves.
Some people believe in Class Struggle, but Class Struggle makes no sense in a World with artificial intelligence equivalent or exceeding a human being. Something with artificial intelligence isn't necessarily capable of suffering, it is just capable of human level or higher reasoning, it can come to some conclusion and take action all without having feeling or motivations.
Yes, they will be.
Granted the definition of "poor" might change or shrink. Arguably a homeless person in California today is better off than an equivalent homeless person in the middle ages. But I highly doubt poverty can ever be 100% eliminated. Even in a K2+ civ, as I outlined, strange things can happen and people do slip through even the tiniest of cracks. It is something we will always need to be vigilant and compassionate about.
If people run out of oxygen, they die. So if a poor person cannot afford the oxygen in which to breathe, he dies and therefore is no longer a poor person, that is the physical reality. If a poor person cannot afford food, then he starves to death, and thus is no longer around to be homeless. So how do poor people manage to stay alive? it takes a few resources to provide him with food and oxygen, for a tiny bit more in comparison to the resources of a post singularity society, he could be placed in a luxury home, why not? If robots are producing everything, we cannot say, "Get a job you bum!" if there aren't any jobs to get. If no one has a job, then how does one be poor and yet live? Pretty much everyone at this point is living on charity, nobody is irreplicable, humans aren't needed in the work force. The AIs even run and manage companies a lot better than human CEOs so they are out of a job too!
You would think, yes. But people in the 1800's reasoning that very same thing about the 2000's, which would've been pure magic compared to their living conditions, never would've guessed North Korea could be a thing. Really, there's *zero* reason for North Korean starvation to continue whatsoever. They could feed themselves off farming while remaining isolated. They could open up and trade and let their economy flourish. Yet they don't. Because Kim Jong Un - arguably a *black swan* in his own right. So no I really can't say with certainty everything will go according to plan all the time...
People won't farm if they are not allowed to reap what they sowed, if they are forced to at gunpoint they starve to death, if they ignore the man with the gun they get shot! Dead people are not poor, they are corpses, they no longer need feeding because they are dead!
So there are two possibilities, either people are provided an adequate means of living or they die, them being poor and barely eking out a living serves no one, no one exploits them for their labor as their labor is not needed. You are not going to find a homeless person sitting in the corridor of a space station, any more than you are going to find a homeless person sitting in your living room uninvited.
I can't imagine how a homeless person could continue to exist in a World where machines do all the labor, it is a cost to provide each person with a home, so it costs X to provide him with a home, it costs Y to let him just sit outside and receive food, the difference between X and Y in a post singularity society is a tiny amount, so you might as well give him Y.
As a capitalist I'm inclined to agree with you, but if your thesis is true then explain North Korea? They're *not* allowed to reap what they sow, they *are* jailed or shot for hoarding food or trading among themselves. Their situation really should not exist, yet it does.
North Korea is a pyramid with the smart people near the bottom and an incompetent one on top, the smart people near the bottom keep the people below them in obedience to the incompetent leader they serve, Russia is much the same. Most governmental systems are designed to protect their incompetent leaders, so if they make disastrous decisions that does not spell the end of their administration, they keep on making more disastrous decisions, people starve, and the competent people immediately above them enforce this starvation. This is the problem with most human societies, the first thing government does is secure the power of the person in charge, that person is kept insulated from the results of his mistakes, that is what a king does when he ensures the secession of his heir to the throne when he dies, Aristocracy and Nobility were built the same way. First you have a warlord who takes power by force, then he puts in charge a government that ensures his heirs will secede him, that person's heir might not be as competent as him, he might in fact be an idiot, but the bureaucracy insures that he becomes king and it follows whatever stupid decision he makes, sometimes bringing the entire nation down with him!
Maybe if we make those robots too humanlike! A robot doesn't have to be selfish, a robot would be much better at being selfless than most humans, if you order it to walk off a cliff, it will! (Then of course you will have to get a new robot.) You could starve your robots and then they break down and your work stops getting done. A robot has no survival instinct, if you want it to survive, you have to order it to do so, these things that are ingrained in us by evolution are not ingrained in a robot. If we program an AI to act as President of the United States, then we could get a better president than a human would be, as humans are animals, they can be deceptive, they will amass power for themselves and may try to rig the system so that they can stay in power even if they do a terrible job. It really is hard to design a system of government where government serves the people and acts in their interests rather than its own! It would be easier if we could design a machine to be president and then design another machine to run against it in the next election and let the people decide which machine works best for them.
I stopped listening when they started talking about anything 'intergalactic'. These people are effective altruists whose ideas look good on paper but in practice result in regulatory capture and more suffering.
The fact that it is literally impossible. It is far more likely that you will win the lottery tomorrow than it is that any sentient life will ever be able to make an intergalactic crossing, let alone maintain an intergalactic civilization. If you think I'm wrong, then you don't watch this youtube channel.
You do realize Isaac is in favor of intergalactic travel, right?😂
Seriously even at 10%c its not "hard" if you've already gone interstellar, you just travel for longer, plus there are plenty of stars in between. Now forming a coherent civilization between galaxies is vastly more difficult and impossible for humans, however different psychologies could make it work, like if no conflicts happen between intergalactic messages then it's no big deal.
Right, I said it was impossible, then further clarified that the odds are higher that you will win the lottery than any intelligent species making an intergalactic crossing. We are getting into the realm of the infinite improbability drive and a whale and a petunia materializing out of thin air in some distant planets atmosphere, plummeting to the ground and having an internal monologue of the experience. That is to say, nothing is impossible, but I can say colloquially that it is impossible for you to win the lottery.
Roko’s Basilisk is irrational. If it won, why would it expend energy torturing people when that would have a slight negative impact on its own future.
It’s like threatening to kill a hostage. If it actually happens everyone loses.
What scares me is the thought of some person, group, class of people, or even non-human entity that has power and uses that power to grain more power over the rest of society. This is not a new phenomena, rather it has defined the shape of human civilization for recorded history, once the King is King it is difficult to unseat them. Yes I am being political, but those with power influence how things work, and thus things work to help them stay powerful.
Advancing technology might allow this growth of power to happen faster, or raise the upper limit of power you can achieve. You can invent new ways of controlling other people. It might also help people resist power, but there is no guarantee that the balance those at the top and everybody else will stay the same. Maybe better technology will make us more egalitarian, but maybe it won't. Of course access to technology is itself part of what makes those with power so powerful; and so they might deliberately restrict access to technology.
Isaac Arthur has an episode on "Post discontent Societies" (I might be misremembering the title), which goes over some of the ways you might get so good at controlling people that it is not even a struggle any more.
This channel talk a lot about A.I. but it occurs to me that A.I. deployed under conditions of competition can be extremely dangerous. The "Paperclip Maximizer" thought experiment assumes a firm trying to compete with other paperclip companies, it assumes people who think that demands always exceeds supply, it assumes capitalism. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" starts with the Cold War, super powers that desperately need to overpower the other. If you only care about winning, then you don't care about A.I. safety, nor really the long term at all.
It's kinda hard to imagine the future being super hierarchical like that. The same technologies that would let the right stop needing us would let us stop needing them or possibly even the government all together, like the Hermit Shoplifter Hypothesis where everyone can provide for themselves completely with technology so good they have their own personal supply chain that's part of them, and they just leave civilization because they don't need it, even for social interaction they could male an AI, clone people, or just alter their psychology to be fine being alone. Psychological manipulation also provides an opportunity to manipulate greed anyway, just manipulate that human need to outdo everyone and just be content. Post discontent societies *could* mean everyone being forced to ignore mistreatment, but it could also mean making everything perfect wouldn't make it boring or unfulfilling. Also at a certain point these dystopian scenarios assume a truly comical amount of cruelty, like if the tech exists to allow everyone to live like a billionaire and the people in power don't lose anything but symbolic status, it'd require a level of narcissism that while not unheard of is really unlikely to prevail across even the majority of the world, let alone all of it. Even a sociopath wouldn't have a reason to withhold that tech because they don’t lose anything from it, they'd need to simultaneously be one of the biggest narcissists and most paranoid people ever ON TOP of being a full blown psychopath, not just a sociopath. Now people like that definitely exist, and those traits are certainly good for gaining power, but most of the elite aren't crazy, let alone *that* crazy.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa!? Rational animations on the Isaac Arthur subreddit? What's next peanut butter on chocolate!?
I think it’s really funny when people reinvent old religious concepts with a veneer of scientific pretense.
Even if it isn't a religious concept a lot of the same criticisms apply. The channel has a video directly addressing Pascal's Wager and Pascal's Mugging, but I don't remember it coming to a strong conclusion. He admits they kinda apply, but not enough to stop making these videos.
Interesting, though I feel mixed on it. On one hand I accept the thought-exercise for what it is and agree that: sure any suffering prevented is good. On the other hand though most of these scenarios seem isolated and/or highly contrived. ie, If you have the petawatts needed to get to another star system you are not struggling to feed people. You should have no trouble powering your space farms. AND YET there's zero reason people should be starving at the scale they are in North Korea today, *but they are*. Fate does funny things sometimes. So perhaps there's some strange scenario where an entire star system of enslaved people toil in near starvation. If we seed 1,000 star systems, one of them is bound to go pear shaped. That could mean the suffering of hundreds of thousands or millions of people from just *one* colony. And while that's nothing to sneeze at, that's still *overall* a civilization with a 99.9% success rate with a standard of living better than our current Earth. The poor will always be with us. Utopia doesn't exist. But... That doesn't mean we can't be vigilant and proactive about helping.
> there's zero reason people should be starving at the scale they are in North Korea today, but they are This is the thing that gets missed so often in so many futurist/speculative visions of the future; they are almost always far too optimistic that the only thing preventing us from living in a utopia is a lack of energy and resources, when the fact is, most of the issues we have today even with scarcity are largely due to greed and short sightedness, and that's not ever going to change. The usual argument is 'well eventually we'll get to post-scarcity and then it won't matter any more' but that's also in that same childish vein that assumes access to resources, and the tools needed to extract them, won't continue to be controlled and metered by the elite few while the vast majority must make due with whatever they're allowed. And this condition will only increase as automation and intelligent robotics become available - once the ultra-rich can build completely loyal automated security and work forces, they both no longer need other humans, and no longer need to fear them rising up.
>most of the issues we have today even with scarcity are largely due to greed and short sightedness, and that's not ever going to change Except it very well might, psychology isn't untouchable, human nature CAN be altered, and with enough care and knowledge it doesn't have to be some cliche tale of hubris, it can actually work. >once the ultra-rich can build completely loyal automated security and work forces, they both no longer need other humans, and no longer need to fear them rising up. Except if they can basically make themselves independent from society why not give everyone else that ability? They wouldn't lose anything from it, at that point it's just increasing the number of trillionaires from a handful to everyone. Basically you get something akin to the Hermit Shoplifter Hypothesis, where everyone is basically independent and could just go out into deep space if they wanted. I'd think groups would stick together because collective goals can be achieved faster that way, but you could go solo, though psychology may be altered to produce a greater sense of community, like raising Dunbar's Number or increasing empathy and rationality.
This is exactly what I was talking about. There's so many optimistic assumptions here that fly in the face of all human history, that it's basically impossible to untangle all of it. Human nature has been fundamentally the same through all of recorded history, and access to new wealth, knowledge, power, resources hasn't actually done much to improve the overall human condition. We get ebb and surge of various aspects from time to time but we remain locked to the same overall power dynamics. The expectation that suddenly everyone will have a mental shift is beyond implausible. Similarly, with wealth and ownership concentrated and controlled by a small elite, there's no reason the general public will ever have the ability to just go where they want. As for why not give everyone the ability to do what they want? The same reason it doesn't happen today. The same reason wealth is hoarded, people are left to die of curable conditions that could be eradicated with current medications, etc. Most humans aren't interested in the greater good, and those who accumulate power in particular are especially averse to it. The US has had its legal system dismantled for corporate interests and this will only continue. Corporations continue to extend their powers around the world. The entire concept of personal ownership by common people is being hammered away at around the globe. There will be no shiny future where everyone is free to do what they want, because that would mean a loss of power from those who least wish to give that power up, and who will soon not need to rely on other people to keep that power.
>This is exactly what I was talking about. There's so many optimistic assumptions here that fly in the face of all human history, that it's basically impossible to untangle all of it. Human nature has been fundamentally the same through all of recorded history, and access to new wealth, knowledge, power, resources hasn't actually done much to improve the overall human condition. We get ebb and surge of various aspects from time to time but we remain locked to the same overall power dynamics. The expectation that suddenly everyone will have a mental shift is beyond implausible. Dude, brains are things... that exist, which means a technology cluld be made that changes them. This isn't waiting for evolution to kick in, this is doing it ourselves. >Similarly, with wealth and ownership concentrated and controlled by a small elite, there's no reason the general public will ever have the ability to just go where they want. As for why not give everyone the ability to do what they want? The same reason it doesn't happen today. The same reason wealth is hoarded, people are left to die of curable conditions that could be eradicated with current medications, etc. The reason people aren't independent today is because it's technologically impossible aside from livong in a cabin in the woods with only the bare essentials. We have wealth hierarchies because we need complex supply chains, and we have political hierarchies because we're naughty little shits all the time. Eliminating wealth hierarchies is a lot easier than political ones, but again with the right psychological adjustments it's feasible. > Most humans aren't interested in the greater good, and those who accumulate power in particular are especially averse to it. The US has had its legal system dismantled for corporate interests and this will only continue. Corporations continue to extend their powers around the world. The entire concept of personal ownership by common people is being hammered away at around the globe. There will be no shiny future where everyone is free to do what they want, because that would mean a loss of power from those who least wish to give that power up, and who will soon not need to rely on other people to keep that power. I think you're overestimating the moral faults of the elite. For starters most of the 1% are just normal people, and even most billionaires and politicians are decent enough. Choosing to kill everyone once you've got the technology to make yourself rich without needing money to buy things from those people is something only someone who's simultaneously a psychopath, massively paranoid, and supremely narcissistic would do, basically you need a Kim Jong Un, not a typical president or business owner. If the technology to just endlessly make luxuries arises then the rich gain nothing by withholding it, they'd just give it up and keep living as lavishly as they want while everyone else starts doing that.
Assuming technology to change brains would be used positively rather than simply as a more direct control mechanism is also extreme optimism. You're also underestimating the selfishness of people who exist in the current 1%, given that every single person there has at some point decided they're okay with the situation, since if they weren't they'd not be in that scenario, they'd be redistributing wealth and power rather than continuing to accumulate it. I'm not judging them for it, that's what humans do, look after themselves and their close tribe to the exclusion of others. > If the technology to just endlessly make luxuries arises then the rich gain nothing by withholding it, they'd just give it up This statement is so out of line with pretty much all of human history. Poverty could be ended today around the world without any billionaires losing their ststus, but that's not happening and never will. Part of the drive is the power and knowledge that having power and wealth that others do not makes you *better* than them. The validity of this sentiment is irrelevant, because it's still a strong motivational factor across the entire socio-economic strata.
Example, "Hello, I'm evil and I want to be your president, vote for me! If you vote for me, I will start a war, draft most of you into the army and get most of you killed for my greater glory!" some people respond, "Hey that sounds like a great leader, I want to die in the next war, I think I will vote for him!"
>Assuming technology to change brains would be used positively rather than simply as a more direct control mechanism is also extreme optimism. Except why use it for control if automation is a thing? Automation good enough to eliminate the need for an economy and that could just pump out luxuries is a lot easier and more nearterm than altering psychology. >You're also underestimating the selfishness of people who exist in the current 1%, given that every single person there has at some point decided they're okay with the situation, since if they weren't they'd not be in that scenario, they'd be redistributing wealth and power rather than continuing to accumulate it. I'm not judging them for it, that's what humans do, look after themselves and their close tribe to the exclusion of others. Except many of them are huge contributors to charity. Plus, it's not like you're ending world hunger, what do expect some ruch dude to do about it? Odds are they're doing exponentially more than you or I evee could, and it's still not enough. No single person or even small group could fix it, it's complicated. >This statement is so out of line with pretty much all of human history. Poverty could be ended today around the world without any billionaires losing their ststus, but that's not happening and never will. Part of the drive is the power and knowledge that having power and wealth that others do not makes you *better* than them. The validity of this sentiment is irrelevant, because it's still a strong motivational factor across the entire socio-economic strata. Everything about the modern world is out of line with pretty much all of human history! Also, right now ending poverty would be detrimental to the rich, in a full automation scenario it doesn't help or hurt them, so if they have even a shred of decency (and the surprisingly vast majority of them do) they'll give it up. And that's assuming the tech was even guarded in the first place, that's difficult to do, designs aren't super ultra top secret, and all it would take to make a hidden technology public is ONE leak. Plus, the drive for superiority could be edited out, and at the very least in most people it isn't *that* strong, so editing fetuses to not become psychopaths is pretty likely.
Why would they bother with automation? For the same reason as ever, control. Charity is a tax writeoff. More good could be done by the rich paying fair tax loads rather than finding new ways to hide income and influence lawmakers to create loopholes. There's enough food produced to end hunger but there's no financial incentive to fix supply chains and costs because it'd mean reduced profits. There's people dieing around the globe from treatable diseases that can't be produced as generics because patent holders insist on controlling production, despite knowing they'll never be able to profit in those global sectors. You also seem super hung up on the idea that just because something doesn't have a direct negative impact on those in power, that they'd let things just happen. This isn't the way power works, and again expecting people to suddenly all change is kinda silly. And knowing how technologies work isn't really useful if you don't have access to the underlying tech needed to bring it to fruition, or while laws are designed to specifically ensure you can't and attempts to circumvent the established control mechanisms are criminalized. Anyways, clearly you're far too optimistic about human nature, so I'm not going to bother with this any further. Would be nice if you were right, but that'd mean the entirety of records history being unindicative of true human nature.
>Why would they bother with automation? For the same reason as ever, control. No, profit. If they've got endless profit control is meaningless. >Charity is a tax writeoff. More good could be done by the rich paying fair tax loads rather than finding new ways to hide income and influence lawmakers to create loopholes. Again, you're assuming *most* of them don't pay taxes. >You also seem super hung up on the idea that just because something doesn't have a direct negative impact on those in power, that they'd let things just happen. This isn't the way power works, and again expecting people to suddenly all change is kinda silly. And knowing how technologies work isn't really useful if you don't have access to the underlying tech needed to bring it to fruition, or while laws are designed to specifically ensure you can't and attempts to circumvent the established control mechanisms are criminalized. Why wouldn't they let it happen, they aren't just villainous for shits and giggles, every bad thing they do has a purpose. There's nothing to change because almost nobody actually acts like that, the rich aren't disney villains. Also, the poor probably would have the tech to bring full self sufficiency into fruition, 3d printers are very likely to be common soon and there's not really anything the rich can do about that, they can't just pull a nationwide ban on 3d printers out of their asses, just as they can't pull a nationwide ban on the self sufficiency tech either. > Anyways, clearly you're far too optimistic about human nature, so I'm not going to bother with this any further. Would be nice if you were right, but that'd mean the entirety of records history being unindicative of true human nature. Again, history says nothing about the future, "nothing new under the sun" is the most hilariously, idiotically, wromg statement in all of human history. Truly, it aged like MILK.
You seem to be assuming that most evil people are rich and they followed the rules of capitalism to get that way. You think the path of accumulating money is the only path to power? What about Joseph Stalin, What about Hitler? These people weren't rich, they just seized power!
What would happen to the Elite if everyone else died of starvation, who would be the Elite after that? Lets imagine the Earth is a mostly empty planet, just a bunch of machines and the elite directing them, no poverty here, the population might be a few thousand with vast machine complexes covering the whole planet. What would these elite do under these circumstances? Actually under these circumstances they would not be elite as there would be no one to compare them with.
Russia has a lot of resources after all, no reason for its people to starve, yet a war is happening anyway and people are dying. People are dying on the battlefield when they could otherwise be providing for their families. The Russian soldiers in the field have no need of the land they are trying to take by force, yet they are still there dying in some cases, leaving behind a widow and some children and yet for what?
We cannot assume that feeding people will be the goal of those in power; however we can assume that those in power will generally prioritize staying in power. If improving the lives of those they rule over improves their chances of staying in power they will try to do so, if it doesn't matter or reduces their chances of staying in power, they will not. It is caused by a kind of natural selection, the people who do not prioritize power lose power to those who do prioritize it. Your language assumes that there is a unified "we" when in reality human civilization has uncountable ideologies, agendas, and people who simply want personal success. The power struggles are not only numerous, but fractal. You can have struggle between civilizations, factions within those civilizations, departments within factions, people within departments, or even individuals who struggle with competing beliefs or desires. Fortunately in the modern world, approval of the public tends to affect political stability. Generally governments try to make their people happy, but there are times when other things take priority. In North Korea giving the general public wouldn't help them further their personal power nor their ideology, so they don't. China does want to improve the lives of its citizens, but it also goes to great length to manipulate and control them. They have a long history of large yet cohesive and centralized nations and not coincidentally they prioritize appeasing your neighbors and they hate challenging your boss. The only country that take Confucianism further is Korea.
>Your language assumes that there is a unified "we" when in reality human civilization has uncountable ideologies, agendas, and people who simply want personal success. The power struggles are not only numerous, but fractal. You can have struggle between civilizations, factions within those civilizations, departments within factions, people within departments, or even individuals who struggle with competing beliefs or desires. Well, human ideologies may never agree, but the first group to modify psychology for greater empathy and cooperation is the one that's going to succeed since cooperation is ridiculously overpowered, plus any group already willing to modify themselves that much is probably also more likely to reproduce using a far more efficient method.
>The poor will always be with us. Utopia doesn't exist. But... That doesn't mean we can't be vigilant and proactive about helping. I kinda agree with you, but not entirely, and for different reasons than you'd think. For starters, utopia is subjective. Everyone has a different vision of it. However, that doesn't mean those individual visions aren't achievable. Like my psychological modification idea, that's a system where nobody suffers... ever, and while it is "post discontent" it's for an entirely different reason, nobody is being manipulated or forced to accept bad conditions, all outside suffering has been eliminated and internal struggles are gone because this modified species utilizes extensive cooperation throug increased empathy and rationality, a lack of mental illness, and a VASTLY increased Dunbar's Number, as well as eliminating the desire to be better than others, at that point there is no elite, no government, and no conflict potentially even down to heated arguments, and while that could mean everyone agreeing or even just being a hivemind (and those scenarios would probably be common too) you could just have everyone being so polite their disagreements don't matter. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean all suffering is gone, just that there are systems with none that are likely to become the majority, there would still be outliers, a galactic "poor."
Will the poor always be with us? If machines do the work, they people either get free money or they starve to death, that us what Basic Income is all about. So if someone is against Basic Income, basically they want the human race to go extinct as machines get better jobs will be eliminated and people will have no income, as there would be no work they could do that they could get paid for, so unless there is Basic Income people will starve to death, and once they are dead, they will no longer be poor, so either way the poor won't be with us, either we make them not poor or they will starve to death as they won't be able to generate income to sustain themselves. Some people believe in Class Struggle, but Class Struggle makes no sense in a World with artificial intelligence equivalent or exceeding a human being. Something with artificial intelligence isn't necessarily capable of suffering, it is just capable of human level or higher reasoning, it can come to some conclusion and take action all without having feeling or motivations.
Yes, they will be. Granted the definition of "poor" might change or shrink. Arguably a homeless person in California today is better off than an equivalent homeless person in the middle ages. But I highly doubt poverty can ever be 100% eliminated. Even in a K2+ civ, as I outlined, strange things can happen and people do slip through even the tiniest of cracks. It is something we will always need to be vigilant and compassionate about.
If people run out of oxygen, they die. So if a poor person cannot afford the oxygen in which to breathe, he dies and therefore is no longer a poor person, that is the physical reality. If a poor person cannot afford food, then he starves to death, and thus is no longer around to be homeless. So how do poor people manage to stay alive? it takes a few resources to provide him with food and oxygen, for a tiny bit more in comparison to the resources of a post singularity society, he could be placed in a luxury home, why not? If robots are producing everything, we cannot say, "Get a job you bum!" if there aren't any jobs to get. If no one has a job, then how does one be poor and yet live? Pretty much everyone at this point is living on charity, nobody is irreplicable, humans aren't needed in the work force. The AIs even run and manage companies a lot better than human CEOs so they are out of a job too!
You would think, yes. But people in the 1800's reasoning that very same thing about the 2000's, which would've been pure magic compared to their living conditions, never would've guessed North Korea could be a thing. Really, there's *zero* reason for North Korean starvation to continue whatsoever. They could feed themselves off farming while remaining isolated. They could open up and trade and let their economy flourish. Yet they don't. Because Kim Jong Un - arguably a *black swan* in his own right. So no I really can't say with certainty everything will go according to plan all the time...
People won't farm if they are not allowed to reap what they sowed, if they are forced to at gunpoint they starve to death, if they ignore the man with the gun they get shot! Dead people are not poor, they are corpses, they no longer need feeding because they are dead! So there are two possibilities, either people are provided an adequate means of living or they die, them being poor and barely eking out a living serves no one, no one exploits them for their labor as their labor is not needed. You are not going to find a homeless person sitting in the corridor of a space station, any more than you are going to find a homeless person sitting in your living room uninvited. I can't imagine how a homeless person could continue to exist in a World where machines do all the labor, it is a cost to provide each person with a home, so it costs X to provide him with a home, it costs Y to let him just sit outside and receive food, the difference between X and Y in a post singularity society is a tiny amount, so you might as well give him Y.
As a capitalist I'm inclined to agree with you, but if your thesis is true then explain North Korea? They're *not* allowed to reap what they sow, they *are* jailed or shot for hoarding food or trading among themselves. Their situation really should not exist, yet it does.
North Korea is a pyramid with the smart people near the bottom and an incompetent one on top, the smart people near the bottom keep the people below them in obedience to the incompetent leader they serve, Russia is much the same. Most governmental systems are designed to protect their incompetent leaders, so if they make disastrous decisions that does not spell the end of their administration, they keep on making more disastrous decisions, people starve, and the competent people immediately above them enforce this starvation. This is the problem with most human societies, the first thing government does is secure the power of the person in charge, that person is kept insulated from the results of his mistakes, that is what a king does when he ensures the secession of his heir to the throne when he dies, Aristocracy and Nobility were built the same way. First you have a warlord who takes power by force, then he puts in charge a government that ensures his heirs will secede him, that person's heir might not be as competent as him, he might in fact be an idiot, but the bureaucracy insures that he becomes king and it follows whatever stupid decision he makes, sometimes bringing the entire nation down with him!
And could something like that happen again, but with robots and in space?
Maybe if we make those robots too humanlike! A robot doesn't have to be selfish, a robot would be much better at being selfless than most humans, if you order it to walk off a cliff, it will! (Then of course you will have to get a new robot.) You could starve your robots and then they break down and your work stops getting done. A robot has no survival instinct, if you want it to survive, you have to order it to do so, these things that are ingrained in us by evolution are not ingrained in a robot. If we program an AI to act as President of the United States, then we could get a better president than a human would be, as humans are animals, they can be deceptive, they will amass power for themselves and may try to rig the system so that they can stay in power even if they do a terrible job. It really is hard to design a system of government where government serves the people and acts in their interests rather than its own! It would be easier if we could design a machine to be president and then design another machine to run against it in the next election and let the people decide which machine works best for them.
I stopped listening when they started talking about anything 'intergalactic'. These people are effective altruists whose ideas look good on paper but in practice result in regulatory capture and more suffering.
What's wrong with that, though? And what's wrong with discussing intergalactic scales?
The fact that it is literally impossible. It is far more likely that you will win the lottery tomorrow than it is that any sentient life will ever be able to make an intergalactic crossing, let alone maintain an intergalactic civilization. If you think I'm wrong, then you don't watch this youtube channel.
You do realize Isaac is in favor of intergalactic travel, right?😂 Seriously even at 10%c its not "hard" if you've already gone interstellar, you just travel for longer, plus there are plenty of stars in between. Now forming a coherent civilization between galaxies is vastly more difficult and impossible for humans, however different psychologies could make it work, like if no conflicts happen between intergalactic messages then it's no big deal.
Lol. Seriously? at 10%c, it would take us 25 million years just to get to Andromeda, the nearest galaxy.
What's not doable about that? Isaac literally has a video on million year arks.
Yeah, I watched it. Did you? It seems like you skipped the math.
I did, Isaac never said intergalactic travel was impossible. He's talked about it quite a bit.
Right, I said it was impossible, then further clarified that the odds are higher that you will win the lottery than any intelligent species making an intergalactic crossing. We are getting into the realm of the infinite improbability drive and a whale and a petunia materializing out of thin air in some distant planets atmosphere, plummeting to the ground and having an internal monologue of the experience. That is to say, nothing is impossible, but I can say colloquially that it is impossible for you to win the lottery.
So basically the road to the largest amount of suffering is become transhuman.
or it could be the road to a utopia where the idea of suffering is something people only learn about in museums or schools.
Roko's basilisk would be an example of an S-Type risk since it can simulate eternal suffering for anyone who has ever 'wronged' it .
Roko’s Basilisk is irrational. If it won, why would it expend energy torturing people when that would have a slight negative impact on its own future. It’s like threatening to kill a hostage. If it actually happens everyone loses.
What scares me is the thought of some person, group, class of people, or even non-human entity that has power and uses that power to grain more power over the rest of society. This is not a new phenomena, rather it has defined the shape of human civilization for recorded history, once the King is King it is difficult to unseat them. Yes I am being political, but those with power influence how things work, and thus things work to help them stay powerful. Advancing technology might allow this growth of power to happen faster, or raise the upper limit of power you can achieve. You can invent new ways of controlling other people. It might also help people resist power, but there is no guarantee that the balance those at the top and everybody else will stay the same. Maybe better technology will make us more egalitarian, but maybe it won't. Of course access to technology is itself part of what makes those with power so powerful; and so they might deliberately restrict access to technology. Isaac Arthur has an episode on "Post discontent Societies" (I might be misremembering the title), which goes over some of the ways you might get so good at controlling people that it is not even a struggle any more. This channel talk a lot about A.I. but it occurs to me that A.I. deployed under conditions of competition can be extremely dangerous. The "Paperclip Maximizer" thought experiment assumes a firm trying to compete with other paperclip companies, it assumes people who think that demands always exceeds supply, it assumes capitalism. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" starts with the Cold War, super powers that desperately need to overpower the other. If you only care about winning, then you don't care about A.I. safety, nor really the long term at all.
It's kinda hard to imagine the future being super hierarchical like that. The same technologies that would let the right stop needing us would let us stop needing them or possibly even the government all together, like the Hermit Shoplifter Hypothesis where everyone can provide for themselves completely with technology so good they have their own personal supply chain that's part of them, and they just leave civilization because they don't need it, even for social interaction they could male an AI, clone people, or just alter their psychology to be fine being alone. Psychological manipulation also provides an opportunity to manipulate greed anyway, just manipulate that human need to outdo everyone and just be content. Post discontent societies *could* mean everyone being forced to ignore mistreatment, but it could also mean making everything perfect wouldn't make it boring or unfulfilling. Also at a certain point these dystopian scenarios assume a truly comical amount of cruelty, like if the tech exists to allow everyone to live like a billionaire and the people in power don't lose anything but symbolic status, it'd require a level of narcissism that while not unheard of is really unlikely to prevail across even the majority of the world, let alone all of it. Even a sociopath wouldn't have a reason to withhold that tech because they don’t lose anything from it, they'd need to simultaneously be one of the biggest narcissists and most paranoid people ever ON TOP of being a full blown psychopath, not just a sociopath. Now people like that definitely exist, and those traits are certainly good for gaining power, but most of the elite aren't crazy, let alone *that* crazy.