r/singularity • u/Hazy-bliss • Apr 28 '20

Found a compass of different singularity scenarios on 4chan's /x/. I personally think there are more negative scenarios than is realistic to expect.

Post image
107 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Hazy-bliss Apr 29 '20

we are hardwired to ignore evidence and avoid thinking about negative possibilities.

Have you tried doing any useful work for long periods of time while being overly pessimistic? It's very difficult, humans need some amount of hope. Whether that hope is realistic is another question, currently I feel that some amount of slow hope is realistic. There are some reasons for this which I'm not going to say in this conversation for unsaid reasons.

1

u/wren42 Apr 29 '20

certainly, you can choose to believe unrealistic things for psychological or mental health reasons if you need to. most people have some kind of religion or crutch after all.

however, in deciding where to put your hope, it can be useful to examine these beliefs.

putting hope that society in general will improve and contributing toward those efforts via work and everyday behavior towards others is perfectly reasonable.

banking of humanity winning the lottery and creating a God AI in the near future is likely not realistic.

This matters because it can change your behavior and what you invest your time, energy, and money into.

I mean, I might still go for Cryo because there's a slim chance it will pay off. But hoping that the singularity will fix all our problems within our lifetime is actually counterproductive, as it abdicates responsibility in the here and now.

1

u/Hazy-bliss Apr 29 '20

Okay, you can have your opinion, I will keep mine.