site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I believe we've discovered all of the fundamental laws of nature low-hanging fruit and the higher hanging fruit just isn't so computationally reducible: to learn more about reality we'll have to simulate it, and this is going to require the marshaling of an enormous degree of computation resources. I'm thinking less on the scale of entire data-centers in The Dalles full of GPUs and more like something the size of the moon made of FPGAs.

Stated another way, what I think holds humanity back from doing more amazing stuff isn't that we've failed to think hard and deep and uncover more fundamental truths and we could do that if we were smarter. What holds us back are coordination issues and simply the big hill to climb to boot up being able to harness more and bigger sources of energy and mine progressively stronger and rarer materials.

Well what about 95% of the energy of the universe being unknown to us? We call it 'dark' as though that's some kind of explanation. Something is out there and it's far more important than everything we can see. Back in the late 19th century they thought they'd discovered all the laws of nature too. Newton got the job done, there were only a few weird puzzles about blackbody radiation and the orbit of Mercury being a bit odd. They got relativity, quantum physics, radio and so on. Our 'weird puzzle' is 95% of the universe being invisible! Either there's an immense amount of aliens or there's an extremely big secret we're missing.

Anyway, we haven't even left the tutorial stage of applying the physics we already know. No fusion, no 3D nanoscale engineering or nanorobotics. No quantum computing worth caring about. These are mostly engineering challenges that need optimization, AI can do that. It's already doing that. It's optimizing our chip layouts, it's used in controlling the plasma in fusion, it is necessary for understanding protein folding. AI is giving us the optimizing power to keep advancing in all these fields. These fields are immensely powerful! Mastering nanoscale robotics and fusion means you can start scaling your industrial base very quickly.

The reason I don't buy it is because we've been able to augment our intelligence with computers for some time now: by moving our thinking into computers we can hold more stuff in our head, evaluate enormous computations, have immediate recall, and go real fast. Sadly, the number of new game-changing fundamental laws of nature that have popped out of this have been approximately zero.

But the implementation is incredibly powerful. Look what the US did to Iraq - that's precision-guided weapons (computers), advanced fire-control (computers), night vision (computers), anti-radiation missiles (computers). Everything is using computer aided design, computers model how the armour holds up, computers let you command and control these powerful forces and bring firepower where it's needed, computers do the ballistics... The US didn't know some fundamental principle unknown to Iraq, it was only their implementation that was better.

If the AI has better implementation than us, we're fucked. It can use deceptive tactics to turn us against eachother, interfere with our command and control, snipe leaders with drones, weaponized mosquito-bots, smart mortars that pop out of vans. It can compromise people with blackmail, spy on our forces via satellite, bribe people. With fusion and nanotech, it can brute-force us directly, drowning us in robots.

Well what about 95% of the energy of the universe being unknown to us? We call it 'dark' as though that's some kind of explanation. Something is out there and it's far more important than everything we can see. Back in the late 19th century they thought they'd discovered all the laws of nature too. Newton got the job done, there were only a few weird puzzles about blackbody radiation and the orbit of Mercury being a bit odd. They got relativity, quantum physics, radio and so on. Our 'weird puzzle' is 95% of the universe being invisible! Either there's an immense amount of aliens or there's an extremely big secret we're missing.

Is your intuition that we're just totally missing a basic fundamental truth of the universe that fits on a cocktail napkin and if only we weren't such pathetic meat sacks we'd figure it out?

Because to me this screams "computationally irreducible" and we're not going to get traction without big simulations.

These are mostly engineering challenges that need optimization, AI can do that. It's already doing that. It's optimizing our chip layouts, it's used in controlling the plasma in fusion, it is necessary for understanding protein folding. AI is giving us the optimizing power to keep advancing in all these fields. These fields are immensely powerful! Mastering nanoscale robotics and fusion means you can start scaling your industrial base very quickly.

I believe I agree with you here? Is there a delta from your POV with my last paragraph? (Repeated below)

I recognize an AGI that was fast and coordinated and numerous could be a dangerous adversary too, but I'd like to only focus on why we think a massive increase in IQ (or rather, g) is the big x-risk.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats