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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34971 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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Great, suffer then. That doesn't give you the right to impose suffering on others.

What about his children? Will you send men with guns to snatch them away from him to hook them into AI-fueled hypermodernity?

Good, complicated question. We are I think agreed that adults should (usually) be able to do whatever. We are probably also agreed that very young children should not have their life outcome dominated by whatever decision they hold at any given moment. I believe it is also uncontroversial that children in plainly abusive (violent/sexual) households should be removed. Between that, I think this worry is overstated - parenting is also a skill whose scarcity will be reduced by the singularity.

Maybe if his children want to leave for a month, they can; it is then his problem to avoid this. I don't know where the actual degree shakes out; I suspect the actual numbers will be relative to circumstances. Presumably an AI will be able to analyze if an intention to leave is temporary or stable; this should affect decisionmaking. (Imagine how uncontroversial trans would be if satisfaction and outcome could be perfectly forecast.) But in sum, I simply think we have a warped picture of the tradeoffs involved in liberty vs parenthood due to the fact that we live in a very broken world filled with people who are very bad at what they do.

I'd send whatever needed to be sent to hear from the children themselves, give them an informed opinion of the state of the wider world, and hand them a ticket to leave whatever Neo-Malthusian hellscape Panem wants them to dwell in.

It's completely up to them whether they want to leave, but I fully support their exit rights.

I'm sure there will be people insane enough to want to dwell in such places, and that's their prerogative, but the opinion of the father shouldn't override the desires of the son. Offer to wipe their memories of the outer world after they decline if the knowledge it's out there is so unpleasant.

What age? 2? 5? 15?

Age is unlikely to be a meaningful signifier of mental maturity at that point in the future.

If a baseline human, then I'd go with 16ish, otherwise when they can be reasonably expected to have the maturity of a baseline 16yo human.

Rumspringa rules, so 16 or 17? Seems the closet analogy for modern life : experience machine would be Amish : modern life.

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