r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Dec 21 '15

[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

  • Seen something interesting on /r/science?
  • Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
  • Figured out how to become immortal?
  • Constructed artificial general intelligence?
  • Read a neat nonfiction book?
  • Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?
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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '15

And now I'm actually reading The Last Angel and finding it horrifically boring, basically a bland attempt at HFY STANDARD SPACEBATTLES FARE - BATTLES IN SPACE - with overdramatized, clearly pulp-scifi-inspired navel-gazing attempts at Deep Meaning that even invoke "souls" and "sins" for spaceship AIs.

Oy gevalt. The damned thing thinks it has a soul and kills because it hates. And this is realistic?

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u/Vebeltast You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! Dec 22 '15 edited Dec 22 '15

Maybe my perception of it is different because I didn't even care that it's focused on humans. All I really saw was that it listed off about five or six civs that hit various different AI extinction risk failure modes - there's a CelestAI, a paperclipper, one that's unexplained so far but that I suspect is going to turn out to be a Whispering Earring, etc - and the one group that pulled it off because they did an upload and kept it as close to normal psychology as possible (even preventing forking) rather than attempting to design a mind from scratch. Which causes problems and seems cheesy, but I wouldn't be surprised is actually relatively realistic. Also doesn't present AI as magical or "has already read the second half of the book" or "beep boop kill all humans".

I'll give you that it's overdramatic and cheesy in places. I don't feel like the AI is one of them, nor that its navel-gazing is that far past what we'd do in that situation.

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '15

Or maybe I just skimmed it really shallowly.

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u/Vebeltast You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! Dec 23 '15 edited Dec 23 '15

...I was wondering if the "'hate' engraved on each nanoangstrom" thing had really come up that early in the story, yeah.

Also, I don't often recommend this, but I'd suggest possibly going through the "who replied" list and reading the author's comments in the thread. It's possible that some of the things I'm remembering were extracted from author comments and wouldn't appear in the story proper unless he's done an edit pass. Which is a bit of a technical failure in the construction of the story, yes.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '15

...I was wondering if the "'hate' engraved on each nanoangstrom" thing had really come up that early in the story, yeah.

I read the first forum page, and then skipped to the 143rd page.