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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36583 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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I think there's zero chance humanity survives this century. Just think about AI, how diabolical and complex the challenge is, dealing with alignment issues AND the prospect of rogue actors in the tech or military/intelligence sectors.

Then consider that we knew COVID was an airborne virus. We knew that because of the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships, where they sprayed everything down but people got sick. It must've been coming in through the air-filtration systems. Yet people were still spraying down surfaces for about a year! A relative of mine, who intensely trusts the media, was spraying down groceries and her own shoes. Someone spread some totally pointless hysteria (hopefully it was Big Spray looking for customers rather than a genuine case of random error) and nobody managed to correct this. And then there's the whole 'masks don't work but actually we changed our minds and they're compulsory' thing, there's the gain-of-function research that continues up to this day, despite a very high chance that it was to blame for the virus.

We got outwitted by a virus, something that's not even technically alive, let alone sapient, let alone superintelligent! If we can't prevent or at least secure dangerous GoF research, how can we do anything for AI? AI is immensely more important, more profitable, more omni-present, it's a key area of competition between the US and China. We've failed the tutorial-tier technological crisis and we failed badly. There are going to be more technological crises, devious and lethal crises. We are clearly not capable of handling them.

Spraying things down is understandable, even after it was shown to have little effect. The cost of being wrong was much higher than the gains of being right.

Put another way: COVID was framed as a deadly disease from the outset. Most people (health ministers included) still believed this more than a year in. So a few minutes & a few milliliters of sanitizer meant little if it could reduce the likelihood of infection by even 1%.

If the health ministers believed in high death rates against all evidence, they blatantly and openly failed their duty. What could their excuse be - we just didn't bother reading the worldometer death statistics for a year? It's their responsibility to know what they're doing and distribute accurate, useful information.

I was told to spray and wipe down my table after I'd eaten a communal meal 3 times a day for about 3-4 months. If there was such a great danger, it would've been better to have us not eat together! It was an airborne virus! How could they not know whether it was an airborne virus or not? The most farcical part of it was that we were all grabbing the same handle of the spray can, touching the same thing. You don't usually touch the table with your hands that much at a meal, let alone other people's sections of table (naturally all segmented up with tape). The spraying itself was probably the number one source of surface contact between people. It doesn't even help under its own incorrect logic.

Why not get some kind of air processor/freshener/UV-devirus machine and plug it into an outlet in the corner? That might have done something. Ventilation actually helps but people treated it like an optional extra to the all-important security theater.

If we can't prevent or at least secure dangerous GoF research, how can we do anything for AI?

Expanding brain meme goes here

Microbrain: "Yay! We're safe because the smart people are in charge"

Brain: "The "smart people" can't even figure out how to avoid endangering civilization with fumbled virus research"

Megabrain: "So they definitely won't be able to figure out how to avoid endangering humanity with fumbled AI research"

Galaxy brain: "Yay! Wiping out civilization first with viruses will prevent us from wiping out humanity with AI"

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