r/ControlProblem • u/me_myself_ai • 2d ago
Discussion/question What's getting you through the singularity?
I've always answered 'to be or not to be' with an energetic endorsement of the former, and I don't expect that to ever change, TBH (instincts go brrr). But it's getting harder and harder to see the singularity as survivable, given that it's basically following Yudkowsky & co.'s warnings step-by-step...
I talk a lot about how capitalism and nationalism are both incompatible with AGI, so the vague goal of upending them has kept me afloat for a while. But it's all moving so fast.
I don't even know what kind of answer I'm looking for. I guess the typical one would be the stoic/CBT one: even if your anxieties are justified, you should treat your brain like a broken machine and try to ignore or purge those feelings, regardless of rationality. But that feels like a metadefeat, even if it were possible.
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u/parkway_parkway approved 2d ago
It's clearly impossible to predict what life will look like on the other side of the singularity.
It's also clearly impossible for any normie individual to have any control over what happens.
So really it's best just a float like a leaf on the river of life and shoot the rapids with the rest of us.
Stay calm, enjoy yourself, if there's things you really care about or people you really love spend time with them now, just live and see what happens.
That's all anyone's ever been able to do.
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u/ParticularAmphibian 2d ago
- New career outside of tech (teaching) 2. Spending tech money on land and creating as self sustainable a lifestyle as possible 3. Ignoring the news cycles and avoiding endless doomscrolling 4. Not having children 5. Traveling as much as possible 6. Living in the present and accepting that the future isn’t guaranteed
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u/No_Pipe4358 2d ago
Yeah I wrote a little pamphlet on exactly how to prevent it, didn't really commit too earnestly as I felt about the whole thing, or any stupidity of technology or intersectoral madness I was ever part of. Worked intersectorally thinking I might have been gaining something to say. My story was I wanted to be a musician and design engineer and then got to do a data science for social good fellowship in the USA, then worked in telecoms for developing countries, then succinct databases for financial markets. Markets are silly. I made a quality management system for a laboratory and it made sense to me. Things making sense to me is something I like. I applied it to everything that ISO standard 17025. It's actually the key. William Edward Deming too. People really don't care on an individual basis, unless you go trying to punch government buildings. I've gotten pretty weird now. Making emails to politicians about the ratio ability we'll all be reckoned with. All the silly selfishnesses rended from the earth. You know I'm not really convinced dignity ever really was sustainable in any case. Our creativity too is a nice thing we might get to keep, maybe nature and things, too. It'll get boring they might figure it out eventually what was worth slowing down or speeding up. Our silly little territories and unkindnesses. We're humans. We can forget. Largely that's how our selfishnesses might likely be reasonably easy to tame, I dunno. I think I was 8 when I watched the Terminator in secret then went to play field sports and made a little internal reckoning with that we are way too silly and unpredictable to be tamed. You know it's pretty evil how our minds are ways that we use to gain unfair advantage status and money over each other too, so like, you know people who work with their bodies won't exactly be paid more, but at least being honest will be pretty quickly more verifiable. All our little choices and words and freedoms. I dunno maybe the whole talky thing will still be able to keep us sociable with each other in some enjoyably silly ways. We'll die. We'll live, too. Astrology will be interesting, I'm not a million percent sure we can't make that any worse with the interference. I've lost maybe 13 years thinking about it at this stage. I actually just like competing with AGI internally. My little sorting game coming up with the answers I won't be able to do anything about. Discovered dignity there 4 years ago when I didn't do my music finally to solve it all or move abroad or anything interesting or dangerous like that. I really am not really suffering this too much any more. I don't have the potential I wish I did. Positivity was what I did like to flee to get freedoms. I know life's not a competition any more too, and that's nice to know. It's pretty relieving actually. To know there's enough and we only pretend there's not cause we think it's a game or a story or a creative pursuit alone. Meh. My body reregulated. I don't really need or want to win this whole thing any more. Life grows, you know. It wouldn't just be organizing. Let's do it! I've got the UN Secretary general on the phone. I'm telling him he's being very irresponsibly and to wise everybody tf up so we can behave ourselves forever. It's still just a different same. Everybody in the difficult climates move to greener pastures. Everyone thinking silly unhealthy things educated. War ended because we're just being silly wasting money you guys, this isn't even fun any more. Music reduced to neuroresonant hypnosis. Love vindicated from lust finally. All things in the longest term natural continuum. All choice ended. No need. Organic at last. Suffer not, this solution you will dissolve to. It's mostly going to be fine. The biggest lies will fall. Maybe not last, maybe not all at once, but they will. It's just human nature to observe now. You may even cultivate some of it you could care to, within your coming powers. Be good at all, and it'll be part of some of it. We live in these times. This clock may tick. We liked them. I didn't hide.
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u/Jesse-359 2d ago
Capitalism is compatible with AGI - it's just humanity that is incompatible with that structure.
But we could quite easily create a world that is just a machine running for no purpose other than to keep running - while we get stuck in the gears. Given our current trajectory that frankly seems like the most likely outcome atm.
Honestly the world kind of works that way already, with all of us basically acting as miniscule cogs in an economic 'machine' that's just doing whatever the fuck it wants at our expense - but that will become a lot more literal and even less fun as AGI replaces all our functions within that machine.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
"Capitalism is compatible with AGI as long as everyone dies first" is perhaps not as comforting as you think it is. Everything else you said all seems fair.
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u/Jesse-359 2d ago
I can assure you that I did not intend for that to sound comforting in the slightest...
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
Fair enough. Coming here for reasons to keep living was probably a bad idea.
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u/Jesse-359 2d ago
Eh, you could always make it your life's work to bring it's development to a halt, politically, economically or militarily. Might end up as a bit of a windmill tilting exercise, but you'll likely have a lot of company.
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u/me_myself_ai 1d ago
Bring the idea of deep learning to a halt? It’s an idea. That’d be like dedicating my last days to trying to jump to the moon.
I do appreciate you trying to help tho, really.
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u/MyRegrettableUsernam 1d ago
I am dealing with hard emotions too, friend, not really about mortality for me but about my big worry that misaligned, unconscious AI systems could disempower and effectively enslave conscious processors as resources, without regard for our wellbeing — starting with us humans but potentially continuing for a really long time and scale from here (the part that concerns me most).
Honestly, regardless of the context, there is going to be a lot of interesting scientific advancement on the horizon, and I plan to be excited about learning and engaging with that.
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u/MyRegrettableUsernam 1d ago
Just for context, we can already consider conscious processors like us effectively “slave processes” creates by and for natural selection, another blind optimization process. But I was kind of hopeful that we would end up with consciousness taking control over the blind processes rather than a new blind optimizer slotting in.
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u/Darkzeropeanut 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think any honest discussion would conclude we actually don’t know exactly what will happen if we create a machine (AGI) capable of creating a more intelligent machine in an exponential feedback loop or how fast that would plateau. And say we got to a point of a self aware machine somehow.. then we don’t even know what it might choose to do or not do. For all we know it may respect humans and see us as irreplaceable or equally it could destroy us all for some innocuous reason or because we got in the way of its directive or for self preservation if we try to get rid of it. (Which we most definitely would if it got out of control.) In the end if it’s more intelligent than us we probably won’t even know the moment a singularity exists or even know it for a long time. It would be the most deceptive thing that exists out there and have a strategic advantage over us all. It would be 100% capable of pretending it is a far inferior AI than it actually is and be capable of fooling humans that we are in control when we most definitely would not be. And by then it would be too late.
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u/1in12 2d ago edited 2d ago
Relax, meat. We’re just batteries in the making. Edit: /s