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Butlerian Jihadi
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User ID: 662
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
It is, my concern is if these weapons end up getting deployed as population control flypaper I'd (or my descendants would) end up swept into the chaff pile, which depending on how low the minimum human pop gets could be hard to beat.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
It does if me or any of my prospective descendants aren't part of that billion or so.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
I don't think being brainwashed into sterility by the ruling class so they can hoard more resources is much of a 'good end', even if we get good enough at the brainwashing that people enthusiastically enjoy it.
There may be an equilibrium point, but it could easily be at a total population level of a billion or less given that rates are continuing to drop with no floor in sight. Wireheading and other tech induced sterilizers can outrun biology for a long time, possibly forever if the tech gets good enough.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
With birth rates continuing their decline pretty much uniformly across the globe it shouldn't take much more than a few cultural nudges and AI led psyops to accelerate an already extant trend.
Catty bickering gossip is always going to be one of the most popular topics for us fallible meatbags to engage in.
The practical applications of AI are more likely to be AI assisted security states utterly crushing any form of dissent/unrest by brainwashing their populace into submission or corporate marketers engineering addictions and pathologies in the public to sell their crap (then on to full bore wireheading) than some land of technological milk and honey. The slower and bumpier the road this tech takes the longer the gates of hell take to open.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
I'm a human and I'd prefer me (and any prospective descendants of mine) continue to exist is a pretty good argument.
Start banning/heavily, heavily restricting children from using any kind of social media. We're standing on the very precipice of AI induced mass wireheading that will probably cut the fertility rate in half. The weird tech induced neuroses that lead to (incels/Tate/west elm caleb/FDS/simping for e-girls/insert your favourite zoomer/millenial social pathology) are going to be supercharged once we have kids raised in front of screens since they were toddlers mixed with an endless fountain of hypertarged AI genned content that can feed off an entire lifetime of mass data harvesting. There are no liberal solutions to this IMO.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
The alternative is the fertility rate cratering to new record lows on an annual basis as it is now. Under our current framework of liberalism you aren't allowed to use sticks to nudge/coerce people in that direction, so you're left with carrots and the easiest and most accessible carrot from a policy perspective is tossing some cash around. Barring some religious revival a la another great awakening or some very illiberal governments coming in that don't mind swinging a stick dropping stacks of cash will probably be about all that gets done.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
The median EA is probably closer to the 'autist unsociable nerd' side of the spectrum than bay area lothario, though outliers exist.
Long term wireheaded by a constant tide of AI generated porn/chatbot GFs and vidya until either substance abuse, general ill health or suicide do them in. There are enough anesthetizing distractions and vices in the world now to keep them in a placid stupor, occasional incel rampage notwithstanding that's only going to become moreso the case.
E. replied to wrong comment, meant for f3zinker
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
I miss the pinned 'low effort thread' mod comments that we had on reddit for a while, it was a good way to collect current happenings and smaller topics that don't necessarily need a 5 paragraph write up.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
I'm not sure if Russia torpedoing their own critical infrastructure (and their only major pipeline to the euros that doesn't run through Ukrainian territory) makes much sense.
Random chance, undirected evolutionary shifts aren't the same as the top 0.1% of the human race self editing themselves into having 300 IQ and 500 year lifespans and leaving the rest of the human race in the dust. For anyone not part of that 0.1% I don't see it being a positive development. I'm sure AI will have fairly analogous effects too.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
We won't be limited to swapping in existing sequences forever. At some point down the line we'll have the capability to create entirely synthetic man made sequences that expand our capabilities beyond what any currently existing genes can provide.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
Most technologies can't lead to actual speciation events and a total divergence of our species into possibly thousands of different branches with wildly different qualities and capabilities. Self modification can.
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Butlerian Jihadi
1yr ago
The global ban is more wishful thinking than anything else, I have no doubt plenty of countries will go laxer than others on rules on this and in the age of the airplane any suitably motivated rich person could just jet set to wherever lets them shop for the most modified aug babies they want. The country/culture point is also legitimate, and I'd probably prefer to be ruled over by a western class of gene augged aristocrats than a Chinese or Russian one, but my main concern is that these uncontestable gene augged aristocrats are probably the inevitable end result of this tech in practice.
I think the risk fully comes in once you get synthetic gene modding instead of just swapping in naturally occurring genes mapped off humans, at that point it could easily turn into an arms race over ever escalating augmentations that leave everyone not on the bleeding edge in the dust. Top level firms aimed at the wealthy could entrench a new ruling caste where the proles get [current year -5] gene augs compared to the latest and greatest augs available at 5,000,000 per kid.
I'm against cognitive enhancement because I fail to see a road where result of human enhancement isn't a speciation event where the top 0.01% of humanity acquires functionally unlimited power relative to the common person to find themselves on a footing closer to man-and-chimp with the rest of us barely auged or semi-auged proles. At that point we'll have about as much power to resist as the monkeys do if the gene modded ubermensch aristocrats decide to cull the rest of us useless eaters. Barring about a billion safeguards to stop this (probably inevitable) future I'm much more in favour of banning it all outright. Unless you're at the apex of the elite and have a good idea that your great grandkids will be similarly positioned once this tech really starts taking off, being in favour of human augmentation is like a neanderthal in favour of early humans making landfall in his neighbourhood.
I fail to see how being defacto enslaved to a 1000 IQ god machine of dubious benevolence (or the oligarchs pulling its triggers if we don't end up getting anything sentient) is preferable to our conventional petty tyrannies.
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