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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21392 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Any insight from your friend on why Altman feels this way?

Does it require a special explanation? It’s not actually that uncommon of a view. Well, I suppose it’s uncommon among normies, but it’s not uncommon in online AI circles. A lot of AI hype is driven by a fundamental misanthropy and a desire to “flip the table” as it were, since these people find the current world unsatisfactory.

since these people find the current world unsatisfactory.

There's a lot of that going around.

But it's not really a CURRENT YEAR thing. It's more a strain of religiosity that is inherently anti-human and has been around forever.

These same type of people might have been monks in a different environment.

And that's fine, but also let's not give them any power please.

I mean, I'm one of them. I find the current world unsatisfactory, for a fairly broad definition of "current world". Lots of people do, on all sides of the political spectrum and from a wide variety of worldviews. Table-flipping is evidently growing more and more attractive to a larger and larger portion of the population. Policy Starvation is everywhere.

I get that you have in mind a narrower selection of misanthropic transhumanist techno-fetishists, but I would argue that the problem generalizes to a much wider set.

I have a higher than average strain of consistent misanthropy, but I also ascribe to a weird blend of Catholic moralism and Aristotelian / Platonic virtue ethics - courage being high among them.

I know that sounds pretentious (and it is!) but what this boils down to is I think the world is very fucked up, I am unsure if it can be fixed, but I think we ought to try and the ends do not justify the means because the means become the ends. The only way out of this is through it, and through it with hard work and - by the day - more and more pain and suffering.

What worries me about Altman types is they seem to be operating in both a deceitful and covert way. Covert in that their final objectives are cloaked and obfuscated, deceitful in that they are manipulating current systems to go to those objectives, instead of pointing out that the current systems are fucked up and we should change them or build alternatives.

To be more specific, Altman's lobbying is 100% designed to (a) get regulatory capture for OpenAI and (b) re-direct hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to fund it. And, until today, this was all done with a ton of vibes emitting peace-and-love-and-altruism and "we're an non-profit research company, maaaaaan." It seems like comic book levels of cold calculating hyper capitalist mixed with techno anarchist mixed with millenium cult leader.

Did you read Toilken as a kid? I’ve long taken inspiration from the book which was “do your duty and that which is right even if it seems unlikely to win over evil.”

No. I never got into it.

What you've just described is the core message of the Bible.

I wish the literary character story of Christ in the New Testament was more appreciated. The entire point of The Agony in the Garden is that a literal God-Man, who is already assured of his salvation and the promise of paradise, not only doubts himself and his "role" in the story, but actively asks to avoid it;

Luke 22:42

Saying: Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.

Although his faith returns, Christ experiences this agony/passion all the way through his earthly death.

To me, that is a much more visceral and compelling exposition of "do your duty even in the face of fear/danger/death" because it is coming from a character who already has assurance of the outcome. It's a deeply metaphysical complexity.

Anyways, yeah, I guess LoTR Is neat.

That seems less compelling if more re assuring. If Christ can have doubt or a desire to not face the hard roads then so can I.

The difference is in LOTR you have people who are by and large sure that what they do won’t accomplish their goal (ie evil will prevail) and instead of trying to flee and eek out an okay life take a stand. And it is that hope against all odds (or estel) that overcomes evil.

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Yeah, while no one was looking we reached post scarcity and it turns out to not be so great after all.

We're become a society of Lotus eaters, enabled by ubiquitous drugs and technology.

I'll assert that more technology will not solve this problem. It's absurd to watch people claim that the solution to a society in moral decay is even more wealth, as if all we need to solve our problems is just more material goods.

Yeah, it's fair for people to know that. Friend sees Altman as basically possessed. Gay, atheist, no kids, extremely little attachment to almost anyone, no skin in the human game. Loves machine intelligence and serves it as a deity.

Reminds me of a pivotal scene from the Rifters books.

"Checkers or Chess?"

Echopraxia has a better quote about the posthuman/machine vs human relationship:

“I’ll fight you,” Brüks said aloud. Of course you will. That’s what you’re for, that’s all you’re for. You gibber on about blind watchmakers and the wonder of evolution but you’re too damn stupid to see how much faster it would all happen if you just went away. You’re a Darwinian fossil in a Lamarckian age. Do you see how sick to death we are of dragging you behind us, kicking and screaming because you’re too stupid to tell the difference between success and suicide?

Yes, I see what you mean.

He was a dead end anyway. No children. No living relatives. No vested interest in the future of any life beyond his own, however short that might be. It didn't matter. For the first time in his life, Yves Scanlon was a powerful man. He had more power than anyone dreamed. A word from him could save the world. ... He kept his silence. And smiled.

Altman does have a husband (recently) but who knows what that means to him.

Gossip or not, this is frankly one of the spookiest things I've internet'ed for some time.

"No skin in the human game" is like an all time H.P. Lovecraft banger and I'm pretty sure you just rattled it off the top of your heard. Well done.

Yeah this conversation happened a couple of months ago and it's been... weird, continuing to follow Altman in the news and not sharing the sentiment with anyone. So I guess I was just waiting for a chance to do that. I see a lot of conversations about him and wonder, "Do any of these people know what he's like?" Speculation usually seems to run to his financial endgame, but I don't at all get the sense that he's in it for the money.

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