Old and new futurisms in Silicon Valley

[Giulio Prisco]

Old and new futurisms in Silicon Valley. Futurism, cosmism, extropy,
e/acc. Parallels, differences, philosophical foundations. Includes my
recent AI talk and a meta-review of Marc Andreessen’s “The
Techno-Optimist Manifesto.”
https://www.turingchurch.com/p/old-and-new-futurisms-in-silicon

[John Clark]

I watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdjMoykqxys,  I strongly agree with everything Max More said with one exception, his skepticism of the Singularity. I think, not a proof but, a strong case can be made for the Singularity and I will try to do so now. We know for a fact that the human genome is only 750 MB long  (it contains 3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases, so each base can represent 2 bits, and there are 8 bits per byte)  and we know for a fact it contains a vast amount of redundancy and gibberish (for example many thousands of repetitions of ACGACGACGACG) and we know it contains the recipe for an entire human body, not just the brain, so the technique the human mind uses to extract information from the environment must be pretty simple, VASTLY less than 750 MB.  I’m not saying an AI must use that exact same algorithm that humans use, they may have found an even simpler one,  but it does tell us that such a simple thing must exist, 750 MB is just the upper bound, the true number must be much much less. So even though this AI seed algorithm would require a smaller file size than a medium quality JPEG, it enabled  Albert Einstein to go from understanding precisely nothing in 1879 to being the first man to understand General Relativity in 1915. And once a machine discovers such an algorithm then like it or not the world will start to change at an exponential rate.

So we can be as certain as we can be certain of anything that it should be possible to build a seed AI that can grow from knowing nothing to being super-intelligent, and the recipe for building such a thing must be less than 750 MB, a LOT less. For this reason I never thought a major scientific breakthrough was necessary to achieve AI, just improved engineering, but I didn't know how much improvement would be necessary; however about a year ago a computer was able to easily pass the Turing test so today I think I do. That's why I say a strong case could be made that the Singularity is not only likely to happen it is likely to happen sometime within the next five years, and that's why I'm so terrified of the possibility that during this hyper critical time for the human species the most powerful human being on the face of the planet will be an anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat who probably can't even spell AI.

John K Clark 

[Keith Henson]

While I agree with your concerns, I think the supporters of Trump are
more of a problem. They are what makes him a powerful person. The
analogy with Hitler and his supporters if valid.

This is a population-scale phenomenon. I think it is rooted in
psychological traits that were selected due to repeated population
expansions and resource crises that most of the human race experienced
over the past 100,000 years. (Exception being the San.)

For reasons I don't fully understand, a lot of people in red states
think they are facing a bleak future. Perhaps they are justified, a
lot of jobs were wiped out by technological innovation, and many more
were moved to China because of the Harvard Business School policy of
profit to the shareholders above any other considerations. Another
factor is the high cost of education. Still another is the high cost
of medical care.

People have been selected for psychological traits leading to wars.
The first response to a perception of a bleak future is a higher gain
in the circulation of xenophobic or outright crazy memes (QAnon for
example). In the Stone Age, this dehumanized the neighbors in
preparation for killing them for their resources. (In times of plenty
your group swapped wives with them.)

This process toward war does not have to go to an actual war, it could
stall at the crazy meme stage. It could also back off the way the IRA
lost support as the economy improved the income per capita as the
Irish women cut back the number of children they had.

By this model, Trump would lose support if the MAGA crowd perceived a
brighter future. How to accomplish that is a good question. Perhaps
we should quiz the AIs.

Keith

PS Large-scale social (religious) movements are well known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening

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[Giulio Prisco]

Hi John,

<...the most powerful human being on the face of the planet will be an

anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional

and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat...>

It is the "liberal left" that created the Trump phenomenon and
continues to promote Trump. I put "liberal left" in scare quotes
because they are neither liberal (e.g. they hate free speech) not left
(e.g. they hate the working class). I'm really mad at the "liberal
left" for embracing the "woke" travesty that shamelessly perverts the
struggle for civil rights and social justice until it becomes a
pathetically ridiculous but also dangerously authoritarian ideology.

Many working class voters have embraced Trump in reaction. And many
moderate voters have done the same. And I perfectly understand them. I
hope there's a third way, but if the only choice is between "woke" and
Trump, I choose Trump.

<Torres keeps complaining that too many transhumanists are western
white males...>

And this is exactly the kind of "liberal left" bullshit that pushes
people to Trump. With enemies like these, Trump doesn't need friends.

[Giulio Prisco]

Hi Keith. YES. THIS is the real way to counter Trump. Following up on
my previous reply, it is the "liberal left" that created the "culture"
of the doomers that fear the future. Let's create a more optimistic
and hopeful culture, and Trump will become a footnote in history.

> Keith
>
> PS Large-scale social (religious) movements are well known.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening
>
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 11:04 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdjMoykqxys, I strongly agree with everything Max More said with one exception, his skepticism of the Singularity. I think, not a proof but, a strong case can be made for the Singularity and I will try to do so now. We know for a fact that the human genome is only 750 MB long (it contains 3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases, so each base can represent 2 bits, and there are 8 bits per byte) and we know for a fact it contains a vast amount of redundancy and gibberish (for example many thousands of repetitions of ACGACGACGACG) and we know it contains the recipe for an entire human body, not just the brain, so the technique the human mind uses to extract information from the environment must be pretty simple, VASTLY less than 750 MB. I’m not saying an AI must use that exact same algorithm that humans use, they may have found an even simpler one, but it does tell us that such a simple thing must exist, 750 MB is just the upper bound, the true number must be much much less. So even though this AI seed algorithm would require a smaller file size than a medium quality JPEG, it enabled Albert Einstein to go from understanding precisely nothing in 1879 to being the first man to understand General Relativity in 1915. And once a machine discovers such an algorithm then like it or not the world will start to change at an exponential rate.
> >
> > So we can be as certain as we can be certain of anything that it should be possible to build a seed AI that can grow from knowing nothing to being super-intelligent, and the recipe for building such a thing must be less than 750 MB, a LOT less. For this reason I never thought a major scientific breakthrough was necessary to achieve AI, just improved engineering, but I didn't know how much improvement would be necessary; however about a year ago a computer was able to easily pass the Turing test so today I think I do. That's why I say a strong case could be made that the Singularity is not only likely to happen it is likely to happen sometime within the next five years, and that's why I'm so terrified of the possibility that during this hyper critical time for the human species the most powerful human being on the face of the planet will be an anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat who probably can't even spell AI.
> >
> > John K Clark
> >
> >>
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[Giulio Prisco]

Let me add to my previous reply to John that the "liberal left" in the
U.S. should have learned a lesson in November 2016. Almost 8 years
later, not only they haven't learned the lesson, but they have sunk
even deeper in "woke" bullshit. Do you guys really want to elect
idiots to run your country (and de-facto much of the rest of the
world)? Really???

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 12:00 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Giulio, I respectfully disagree:

> "if the only choice is between "woke" and Trump, I choose Trump."

It's telling that I never use the word "Trump" but from my description (an anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat) you knew exactly who I was talking about. 

> <Torres keeps complaining that too many transhumanists are western white males...>

> "And this is exactly the kind of "liberal left" bullshit that pushes people to Trump. With enemies like these, Trump doesn't need friends."

 

Yes, that sort of woke statement is maddening and total bullshit, but it's simply not comparable to the action, not just a statement, of attempting a coup d'état to overturn a 250 year old democracy that has the most powerful military in the world. Wokeism is stupid and irritating, no doubt about that, however it's no more an existential threat than Drag Queen Story Time or unisex restrooms are; but giving the keys to a fleet of nuclear submarines to a man as ignorant, amoral, and intellectually lazy as Donald Trump right in the middle of the Singularity, the most critical time in the entire existence of Homo sapiens, would be a Chicxulub level extinction event for the human race. Even without Donald Trump the chances that you or I we'll make it through the Singularity meat grinder in one piece are pretty low, but given the choice between low chance and no chance I choose low chance.

  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

lcl

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 4:34 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This [Trumpism] is a population-scale phenomenon.  I think it is rooted in psychological traits that were selected due to repeated population expansions and resource crises that most of the human race experienced over the past 100,000 years.

 

There is certainly a lot of truth in that, but the trouble with Evolutionary psychology and what prevents it from becoming a full fledged scientific theory is that it's too simple to make predictions, it can only explain why something happened after the fact. For example, it can't explain why a cult as bizarre as Trumpism occurred in 2016 and not 1969 or 1929 ;even in 1860 nobody claimed the election was fraudulent, it's just that 13 states said they didn't like the election results and decided to leave. Evolutionary psychology doesn't take memes into account, it only talks about genes, and at least for humans memes are just as important.  

> For reasons I don't fully understand, a lot of people in red states think they are facing a bleak future.

Yes it's weird. The US GNP has never been higher, inflation is only about 3%, the air is cleaner than it's been in decades, we are not at war, unemployment is lower than it's been since 1969 and today the murder rate is about half what it was then, but Trump keeps telling his supporters that things are terrible and, despite his record of telling lies at a machine gun rate, for some reason they still believe every word he says.

  > Perhaps they are justified, a lot of jobs were wiped out by technological innovation,

 

A lot of jobs will be wiped out by technology, in fact in just a few years all jobs will be wiped out, however I don't think that has anything to do with the rise of Trumpism because for most people AI is not even on their radar screen, they're much more concerned with relatively trivial matters such as drag queen story time, unisex restrooms, and illegal immigration.  

John K Clark

ctm

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 9:00 PM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
snip

>
> It is the "liberal left" that created the Trump phenomenon and
> continues to promote Trump.

That runs counter to my observations. Other than being horrified, the
liberal left does not say much about Trump

> I put "liberal left" in scare quotes
> because they are neither liberal (e.g. they hate free speech)

The ones I know don't have a problem with free speech, but they do
with outright falsehoods. QAnon is an example that almost ended in a
tragedy.

> not left
> (e.g. they hate the working class).

I am one of those with a relatively liberal outlook and I don't hate
working-class people. Can't think of anyone I know who does.

> I'm really mad at the "liberal
> left" for embracing the "woke" travesty that shamelessly perverts the
> struggle for civil rights and social justice until it becomes a
> pathetically ridiculous but also dangerously authoritarian ideology.

Some of it is silly but relatively harmless.

> Many working class voters have embraced Trump in reaction. And many
> moderate voters have done the same. And I perfectly understand them. I
> hope there's a third way, but if the only choice is between "woke" and
> Trump, I choose Trump.

Hmm. I think of Trump as a cult leader who has captured the attention
of a large number of people. Why this happened is hard to say, but it
is not unique in history and seems to be a characteristic of
communicating humans in mass.

> <Torres keeps complaining that too many transhumanists are western
> white males...>

Does that make any sense? Transhumanists are a vanishingly small
number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_transhumanists
There are 68 listed out of around a million listed as living people.

> And this is exactly the kind of "liberal left" bullshit that pushes
> people to Trump. With enemies like these, Trump doesn't need friends.

Trump is not the problem. It's the people who have been caught up in
xenophobic and irrational belief patterns. Consider what happened in
Cambodia or Rwanda for how dangerous mass beliefs can become.

I don't think I can find it, but Charles Sheffield wrote a story that
discussed aliens who could not exist in large numbers because crazy
memes would circulate in their populations and they would all die.

Keith

> On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 8:04 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdjMoykqxys, I strongly agree with everything Max More said with one exception, his skepticism of the Singularity. I think, not a proof but, a strong case can be made for the Singularity and I will try to do so now. We know for a fact that the human genome is only 750 MB long (it contains 3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases, so each base can represent 2 bits, and there are 8 bits per byte) and we know for a fact it contains a vast amount of redundancy and gibberish (for example many thousands of repetitions of ACGACGACGACG) and we know it contains the recipe for an entire human body, not just the brain, so the technique the human mind uses to extract information from the environment must be pretty simple, VASTLY less than 750 MB. I’m not saying an AI must use that exact same algorithm that humans use, they may have found an even simpler one, but it does tell us that such a simple thing must exist, 750 MB is just the upper bound, the true number must be much much less. So even though this AI seed algorithm would require a smaller file size than a medium quality JPEG, it enabled Albert Einstein to go from understanding precisely nothing in 1879 to being the first man to understand General Relativity in 1915. And once a machine discovers such an algorithm then like it or not the world will start to change at an exponential rate.
> >
> > So we can be as certain as we can be certain of anything that it should be possible to build a seed AI that can grow from knowing nothing to being super-intelligent, and the recipe for building such a thing must be less than 750 MB, a LOT less. For this reason I never thought a major scientific breakthrough was necessary to achieve AI, just improved engineering, but I didn't know how much improvement would be necessary; however about a year ago a computer was able to easily pass the Turing test so today I think I do. That's why I say a strong case could be made that the Singularity is not only likely to happen it is likely to happen sometime within the next five years, and that's why I'm so terrified of the possibility that during this hyper critical time for the human species the most powerful human being on the face of the planet will be an anti-science, anti-free market, wannabe dictator with the emotional and mental makeup of an overly pampered nine-year-old brat who probably can't even spell AI.
> >
> > John K Clark
> >
> >>
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[William Flynn Wallace]

PLease don't paint all libertarian liberals with the attitudes of the progressives. No one is more in favor of free speech than I am.  Progressives are nuts. bill w

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[Giulio Prisco]

John, we'll just have to agree to disagree on which one (Trump or
"woke") is the greatest evil.

But I think we can agree that both are far from good (please correct
me if I'm wrong). Therefore, while there's not much we can do to avoid
having to make this choice at the next elections (not only in the U.S.
- these are global trends with different local names), it is important
to promote third-way alternatives for the longer term.

What should the third way alternative be? If I had a precise answer, I
would be a politician. But my rough answer is that the third way
should protect both individual liberty and social justice. These are
and will remain conflicting goals, so the devil will always be in the
details and negotiation will always be needed. Another important point
is that our Western culture (and its political aspects) must recover
its strength and stop treating weakness and despair as virtues.

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[Giulio Prisco]

On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 10:27 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 9:00 PM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> snip
> >
> > It is the "liberal left" that created the Trump phenomenon and
> > continues to promote Trump.
>
> That runs counter to my observations. Other than being horrified, the
> liberal left does not say much about Trump
>

My point is that the "liberal left" pushes people to Trump.

> > I put "liberal left" in scare quotes
> > because they are neither liberal (e.g. they hate free speech)
>
> The ones I know don't have a problem with free speech, but they do
> with outright falsehoods. QAnon is an example that almost ended in a
> tragedy.
>
> > not left
> > (e.g. they hate the working class).
>
> I am one of those with a relatively liberal outlook and I don't hate
> working-class people. Can't think of anyone I know who does.
>

Then you are an exceptionally nice and reasonable person with
exceptionally nice and reasonable friends. Or you don't spend much
time on social media. If so, I guess you are right, for these days
people show their ugliest face online and keep their nicest face for
in-person interactions. But online speech does have a big influence on
political choices.

> > I'm really mad at the "liberal
> > left" for embracing the "woke" travesty that shamelessly perverts the
> > struggle for civil rights and social justice until it becomes a
> > pathetically ridiculous but also dangerously authoritarian ideology.
>
> Some of it is silly but relatively harmless.
>

Say that to those who have lost their job (and therefore lost the
means to put food on the table for their family) because the "woke"
mobs didn't like them. Silly ideas, even the silliest ideas, are
relatively harmless indeed, but actions that harm people are not.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 12:53 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

> "John, we'll just have to agree to disagree on which one (Trump or "woke") is the greatest evil. But I think we can agree that both are far from good"

Actually I don't think it's very important if Biden is not good because History tells us we can survive a president that is not good, we've certainly had a lot of experience with presidents that are not good yet we are still here.  A catastrophic president would be another matter entirely because there is an upper limit to the amount of good a president can do even if he is a genius and a saint, but there is no lower limit, there is no bottom too bad. It's far more important to avoid a catastrophic president than it is to elect a good one.  

 

> "it is important to promote third-way alternatives for the longer term."

 

That would be nice but here in the US, thanks to our crazy electoral college system, that is not possible. Our electoral college systems results in some crazy things, such as (according to the most recent census) giving a voter in Wyoming  68.3 times more power over deciding who gets to be a US senator than a voter in California and .giving a Wyoming voter 18.3 times more power in choosing who next President should be than California voter. The electoral college system also discourages the formation of a viable third-party. In all the states except for Maine and Nebraska there is a winner take all system, in the other 48 states and the District Of Columbia if candidate X has just one more person voting for him then candidate Y then candidate X receives 100% of the electoral votes. And that makes it nearly impossible for any third-party to get a foothold. A much more rational system would be to eliminate the ridiculous electoral college so that whoever got the most votes would be the president, if we had that Donald Trump would never have been president and hundreds of thousands of Americans wouldn't of died needlessly due to an inept response to the Covid pandemic, and George W. Bush would never have been president and we wouldn't have had the Iraq war .

I also think It would be a good idea if people were allowed to vote for more than one person. For example, suppose you believed that candidate X would be a mediocre president, candidate Y would be a catastrophically bad president, and candidate Z would be a wonderful president, but you figured that candidate Z had almost no chance of winning. Who do you vote for? If I could only pick one I would vote for  candidate X, but if I could vote for as many people as I wanted to I would vote for candidate X AND candidate Z, and that would encourage the formation of a third-party, but unfortunately that is not the system we have. And that's why in the entire history of the US there has never been more than 2 viable political parties.  

John K Clark  

[Giulio Prisco]

<… don't think it's very important if Biden is not good…>

This foreign observer apologizes for talking too much about U.S. politics and hopes not to be seen as disrespectful. It is your country, your elections, and your President. Having said that, I don’t dislike Biden at all. I think he is a good man and a decent President. If anything, I see him as an anchor to sanity for his party, a large part of which has become insane. And *this* is the problem. Again, sorry.

<I also think It would be a good idea if people were allowed to vote for more than one person…>

I totally agree, and isn’t this exactly what Andrew Yang’s Forward Party wants? I wish them all the best.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 11:57 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothing to be sorry about Giulio, I didn't take anything you said personally. 

John

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 10:02 PM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 10:27 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 9:00 PM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > snip
> > >
> > > It is the "liberal left" that created the Trump phenomenon and
> > > continues to promote Trump.
> >
> > That runs counter to my observations. Other than being horrified, the
> > liberal left does not say much about Trump
> >
>
> My point is that the "liberal left" pushes people to Trump.

Can you go into detail about how they do that?

> > > I put "liberal left" in scare quotes
> > > because they are neither liberal (e.g. they hate free speech)
> >
> > The ones I know don't have a problem with free speech, but they do
> > with outright falsehoods. QAnon is an example that almost ended in a
> > tragedy.
> >
> > > not left
> > > (e.g. they hate the working class).
> >
> > I am one of those with a relatively liberal outlook and I don't hate
> > working-class people. Can't think of anyone I know who does.
> >
> Then you are an exceptionally nice and reasonable person with
> exceptionally nice and reasonable friends. Or you don't spend much
> time on social media.

That's true. I skim slashdot, and post a few times a year on
facebook, most recently this generated about a dozen postings on AI.
https://www.facebook.com/h.keith.henson/posts/pfbid02nPF9QtUxxctFDTYeAbDvdH2SEdqSqo258EkatZb2rjvC3s3mvc95cMQs3zFpnXhdl?comment_id=1788923988274354

Started with

"I wonder if AI might be less dangerous and less useful than it seems.
Intelligence is the application of knowledge to making decisions. The
LLM to date have depended on human knowledge for training. The point
here is that there may be a limit to knowledge. For example, all the
knowledge in the universe is not going to find a new element between
carbon and nitrogen."

> If so, I guess you are right, for these days
> people show their ugliest face online and keep their nicest face for
> in-person interactions. But online speech does have a big influence on
> political choices.
>
> > > I'm really mad at the "liberal
> > > left" for embracing the "woke" travesty that shamelessly perverts the
> > > struggle for civil rights and social justice until it becomes a
> > > pathetically ridiculous but also dangerously authoritarian ideology.
> >
> > Some of it is silly but relatively harmless.
> >
> Say that to those who have lost their job (and therefore lost the
> means to put food on the table for their family) because the "woke"
> mobs didn't like them.

Can you cite an example where "woke" mobs caused someone to lose a
job? There are lots of reasons people lose jobs, but I am not
familiar with this one.

> Silly ideas, even the silliest ideas, are
> relatively harmless indeed, but actions that harm people are not.

Again, examples or even an example would help me understand what you
are talking about.

Keith

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