[ExI] [Extropolis] Old and new futurisms in Silicon Valley

Sun Jan 21 20:39:17 UTC 2024

On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 10:02 PM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 10:27 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 9:00 PM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > snip
> > >
> > > It is the "liberal left" that created the Trump phenomenon and
> > > continues to promote Trump.
> >
> > That runs counter to my observations.  Other than being horrified, the
> > liberal left does not say much about Trump
> >
>
> My point is that the "liberal left" pushes people to Trump.

Can you go into detail about how they do that?

> > > I put "liberal left" in scare quotes
> > > because they are neither liberal (e.g. they hate free speech)
> >
> > The ones I know don't have a problem with free speech, but they do
> > with outright falsehoods. QAnon is an example that almost ended in a
> > tragedy.
> >
> > > not left
> > > (e.g. they hate the working class).
> >
> > I am one of those with a relatively liberal outlook and I don't hate
> > working-class people.  Can't think of anyone I know who does.
> >
> Then you are an exceptionally nice and reasonable person with
> exceptionally nice and reasonable friends. Or you don't spend much
> time on social media.

That's true.  I skim slashdot, and post a few times a year on
facebook, most recently this generated about a dozen postings on AI.
https://www.facebook.com/h.keith.henson/posts/pfbid02nPF9QtUxxctFDTYeAbDvdH2SEdqSqo258EkatZb2rjvC3s3mvc95cMQs3zFpnXhdl?comment_id=1788923988274354

Started with

"I wonder if AI might be less dangerous and less useful than it seems.
Intelligence is the application of knowledge to making decisions. The
LLM to date have depended on human knowledge for training. The point
here is that there may be a limit to knowledge. For example, all the
knowledge in the universe is not going to find a new element between
carbon and nitrogen."

> If so, I guess you are right, for these days
> people show their ugliest face online and keep their nicest face for
> in-person interactions. But online speech does have a big influence on
> political choices.
>
> > > I'm really mad at the "liberal
> > > left" for embracing the "woke" travesty that shamelessly perverts the
> > > struggle for civil rights and social justice until it becomes a
> > > pathetically ridiculous but also dangerously authoritarian ideology.
> >
> > Some of it is silly but relatively harmless.
> >
> Say that to those who have lost their job (and therefore lost the
> means to put food on the table for their family) because the "woke"
> mobs didn't like them.

Can you cite an example where "woke" mobs caused someone to lose a
job?  There are lots of reasons people lose jobs, but I am not
familiar with this one.

> Silly ideas, even the silliest ideas, are
> relatively harmless indeed, but actions that harm people are not.

Again, examples or even an example would help me understand what you
are talking about.

Keith

> > > Many working class voters have embraced Trump in reaction. And many
> > > moderate voters have done the same. And I perfectly understand them. I
> > > hope there's a third way, but if the only choice is between "woke" and
> > > Trump, I choose Trump.
> >
> > Hmm.  I think of Trump as a cult leader who has captured the attention
> > of a large number of people.  Why this happened is hard to say, but it
> > is not unique in history and seems to be a characteristic of
> > communicating humans in mass.
> >
> > > <Torres keeps complaining that too many transhumanists are western
> > > white males...>
> >
> > Does that make any sense?  Transhumanists are a vanishingly small
> > number.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_transhumanists
> > There are 68 listed out of around a million listed as living people.
> >
> > > And this is exactly the kind of "liberal left" bullshit that pushes
> > > people to Trump. With enemies like these, Trump doesn't need friends.
> >
> > Trump is not the problem.  It's the people who have been caught up in
> > xenophobic and irrational belief patterns.  Consider what happened in
> > Cambodia or Rwanda for how dangerous mass beliefs can become.
> >
> > I don't think I can find it, but Charles Sheffield wrote a story that
> > discussed aliens who could not exist in large numbers because crazy
> > memes would circulate in their populations and they would all die.
> >
> > Keith
> >
> > > On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 8:04 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdjMoykqxys,  I strongly agree with everything Max More said with one exception, his skepticism of the Singularity. I think, not a proof but, a strong case can be made for the Singularity and I will try to do so now. We know for a fact that the human genome is only 750 MB long  (it contains 3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases, so each base can represent 2 bits, and there are 8 bits per byte)  and we know for a fact it contains a vast amount of redundancy and gibberish (for example many thousands of repetitions of ACGACGACGACG) and we know it contains the recipe for an entire human body, not just the brain, so the technique the human mind uses to extract information from the environment must be pretty simple, VASTLY less than 750 MB.  I’m not saying an AI must use that exact same algorithm that humans use, they may have found an even simpler one,  but it does tell us that such a simple thing must exist, 750 MB is just the upper bound, the true number must be much much less. So even though this AI seed algorithm would require a smaller file size than a medium quality JPEG, it enabled  Albert Einstein to go from understanding precisely nothing in 1879 to being the first man to understand General Relativity in 1915. And once a machine discovers such an algorithm then like it or not the world will start to change at an exponential rate.
> > > >
> > > > So we can be as certain as we can be certain of anything that it should be possible to build a seed AI that can grow from knowing nothing to being super-intelligent, and the recipe for building such a thing must be less than 750 MB, a LOT less. For this reason I never thought a major scientific breakthrough was necessary to achieve AI, just improved engineering, but I didn't know how much improvement would be necessary; however about a year ago a computer was able to easily pass the Turing test so today I think I do. That's why I say a strong case could be made that the Singularity is not only likely to happen it is likely to happen sometime within the next five years, and that's why I'm so terrified of the possibility that during this hyper critical time for the human species the most powerful human being on the face of the planet will be an anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat who probably can't even spell AI.
> > > >
> > > > John K Clark
> > > >
> > > >>
> > > > --
> > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
> > > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> > > > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv2diRbDfcYNT2KRAHoLDSM7F4jux%3DrfEywNDhycn%2BS2oQ%40mail.gmail.com.
> > >
> > > --
> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
> > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> > > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAKTCJycFgN-wzuYirA1nt6GXncYLdfKik_oVgSeCuugHJhpW-A%40mail.gmail.com.
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAPiwVB4%3D1faoNa-Yc0DAj3PD5HQQE3B6RZjKjBK7549ko_72Cg%40mail.gmail.com.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAKTCJydjoDEgcHeWc0QYGsFBzN7pQQHd7kPJMR2e6AbrJZmnYw%40mail.gmail.com.