[ExI] AI thoughts

Thu Nov 23 17:00:19 UTC 2023

Well, most of us do OK with rage and lust, but many don't.  Some redirect
those and don't hurt some blameless victims.   Getting control over
emotions is a lifelong task and none of us do it perfectly, meditation or
not.

Rage can take place in fantasies no one ever knows about, as one
displacement.  Kick the dog - (no, not the other).

So, sometimes choosing a displacement can make the frustration even worse.

If in your fantasies you commit atrocities, is that OK?

bill w

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 8:45 AM <efc at swisscows.email> wrote:

> But I have heard of many people who through meditation and therapy have
> overcome rage and lust.
>
> Granted, it is a fuzzy subject, so it could be that I misunderstand your
> point.
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
>
> On Thu, 23 Nov 2023, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote:
>
> > Good luck telling the unconscious what to do.  Haidt, I think, thought
> of ourselves as riding an elephant - the rider being the ego
> > and the elephant being the unconscious.  The elephant can take over at
> any point and overwhelm the ego, like a mad elephant doing
> > exactly what it wants and the Hell with the rider.  No suggestions on
> how to alter this.  Rage or lust comes to mind.  Even hunger.
> >
> > bill w
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 4:40 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >       Hello Jason,
> >
> >       On Wed, 22 Nov 2023, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote:
> >
> >       >       > then humans would no longer be in control, even if
> individual LLMs are no smarter than human engineers).
> >       >
> >       >       I don't think humans have been in control for a long time,
> certainly
> >       >       not individual humans, and I just don't believe in
> "elders" or any
> >       >       other group that is exerting control.  Every single human
> is like a
> >       >       wood chip on a river.
> >       >
> >       > I appreciate this analogy very much. I have sometimes thought
> similar things as well, that the greatest and scariest
> >       conspiracy
> >       > theory of all is that no one is in control.
> >
> >       This reminds me of daoist poetry where we are floating on the
> river.
> >       Best thing we can do is to adapt to the current, instead of tring
> to
> >       swim against it all our lives.
> >
> >       In terms of conspiracies, I am a firm believer in there being no
> global
> >       conspiracies. Just like you, I believ in large scale moves and
> trends,
> >       and I also believe that groups of people try to take advantage of
> them.
> >       They do not control the trends (as individuals) but try and divert
> small
> >       currents here and there.
> >
> >       Another reason I do not beleive in global, unified conspiracies is
> that
> >       people talk. It would be, in my opinion, impossible, to keep such
> things
> >       secret.
> >
> >       > But the river analogy adds another dimension which I think is
> more correct. We are subject to overarching trends and
> >       laws of
> >       > evolution,  technological development, economics, etc. and we
> individual humans are like cells in this greater
> >       organism, all in the
> >       > end replaceable cogs whose presence or absence might make a
> small difference as to when some inevitable discovery might
> >       happen, but
> >       > will not prevent it entirely.
> >
> >       Enter "psycho-history"! ;) I agree. There are fundamental laws that
> >       govern how we work, and this of course influences us as a species.
> I
> >       always thought about if some kind of law of "unification" or
> >       "centralization" can be verbalized or formalized? It seems, through
> >       history, that we have an innate tendency to try at unify our
> knowledge,
> >       and that our societies keep getting more and more centralized
> compared
> >       with individual families or groups on the savannah hundreds of
> thousands
> >       of year ago.
> >
> >       Then you also have the mystical psycho-analysts who argue that
> until we
> >       consciously realize and take control over our unconscious drives
> and
> >       desires, we'll keep making the same mistakes as we always do.
> >
> >       >       > I think depth of reasoning may be one area where the
> best humans are currently dominant, but a small tweak,
> >       such as
> >       >       giving LLMs a working memory and recursion, as well as
> tightening up their ability to make multiple deductive
> >       logical
> >       >       steps/leaps, could quickly change this.
> >       >
> >       >       Can you make a case that it would be worse than the
> current situation?
> >       >
> >       > I don't believe it will, but if tasked to make the case, I would
> say the greatest present danger is that it amplifies
> >       the agency of
> >       > any user. So that ill-willed people might become more
> destructively capable than they otherwise would (e.g. the common
> >       example of a
> >       > lone terrorist leveraging the AI's expertise in biotechnology to
> make a new pathogen) but the Internet has already done
> >       this to a
> >       > lesser extent. I think agency amplification applies to everyone,
> and since there are more good-intentioned people than
> >       > ill-intentioned ones, any generally-available amplification
> technology tends to be a net positive for humanity.
> >
> >       I think it is very interesting to think about what current LLMs and
> >       video generation capabilities are doing to drive down the cost of
> >       producing fake news. It will cost next to nothing and flood
> everything.
> >
> >       Open AI and "containing AI" is just a mirage and every single
> powerful
> >       nation are likely trying their best to come up with the best AI in
> order
> >       to out compete the rivals.
> >
> >       I wonder if we'll have some kind of cold war type situation where
> the
> >       most powerful nations have their own AI:s and the rest of the
> world then
> >       has to align themselves with them taking one side or the other?
> >
> >       Best regards,
> >       Daniel
> >
> >
> >       >
> >       > Jason
> >       >
> >       >_______________________________________________
> >       extropy-chat mailing list
> >       extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> >       http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >
> >
> >
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