[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book

Sat Oct 4 13:21:13 UTC 2025

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Sent: Saturday, 4 October, 2025 5:07 AM
To: spike at rainier66.com
Cc: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:19 AM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

> The US government has already run out of other people’s money and is now having to borrow other people’s money

The very concept of "money" is about to be radically changed and so is the concept of "the US government"…

OK no worries.  When the concept of money radically changes and the concept of US government radically changes, then we talk about UBI.  At the state level.  We don’t trust a rapidly changing US government, being as it is rapidly changing.

 > By the time that fund is paid off in about 9 years....

9 years?! We are now living in the age of AI and 9 years is a virtual geological age…

Ja.  But that debt still needs to be repaid just the same.  Pensioners depend on it.

…

>…I take that back, I do feel comfortable making one economic prediction, in 9 years the total productivity of this planet will be ENORMOUSLY greater than it is now…

Good.  Then all our problems will be fading in the rear view mirror, solved by sheer productivity increases.

>…But I make no prediction about what will be controlling that astronomically huge newly generated wealth…

I can help you there.  I have some great plans on how I will control the part of that astronomically huge newly generated wealth.  It will be such fun.

>… I hope not but it's entirely possible that in 9 years events will have proven that Eliezer was right…

John, you know what is in that book, ja?  You are hoping for that?

> I live in a city which has a version of UBI: our local food bank is well stocked and sustained by volunteers.

>…I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about everybody automatically receiving enough money to have a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle…

Middle class?  With all that astronomically huge newly generated wealth?  

>… so if biological humans are to survive, what is the alternative to UBI?

John K Clark

I would take investing in hugely astronomical newly generated wealth.  

That outcome requires superhuman AI of course, since they will take over the jobs.  They will be smart enough to figure out how to get people all the UBI they need without having to take anything away from existing biological humans.  It will be GREAT!  We will love it in there at the data center.  We will wonder why we clung to our religions and guns and biological bodies. 

Until that time of course, we do the best we can with what we have. 

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20251004/c7f1edfc/attachment-0001.htm>