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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Over the last few months, I've followed someone named Alexander Kruel on Substack. Every single day, he writes a post about 10 important things that happened that day - typically AI breakthroughs, but also other of his pet concerns including math, anti-wokeness, nuclear power, and the war in Ukraine. It's pretty amazing that he is able to unfailingly produce this content every day, and I'm in awe of his productivity.

Unfortunately, since I get this e-mail every morning, my information diet is becoming very dark.

The advances in AI in the last year have been staggering. Furthermore, it seems that there is almost no one pumping the breaks. We seemed doomed to an AI arms race, with corporations and states pursuing AI with no limits.

In today's email, Kruel quotes Elizier who says:

I've already done my crying, late at night in 2015…I think that we are hearing the last winds start to blow…I have no winning strategy

Elizier is ahead of the curve. Where Elizier was in 2015, I am now. AI will destroy the world we know. Nate Soares, director of MIRI, is similarly apocalyptic.

We've give up hope, but not the fight

What comes after Artificial General Intelligence? There are many predictions. But I expect things to develop in ways that no one expects. It truly will be a singularity, with very few trends continuing unaltered. I feel like a piece of plankton, caught in the swells of a giant sea. The choices and decisions I make today will likely have very little impact on what my life looks like in 20 years. Everything will be different then.

So, party until the lights go out? How do I deal with my AI-driven existential crisis?

Touch grass.

No, seriously. Unsubscribe from this guy. Take a step back from Eliezer-style doomscrolling and the Internet in general. You don’t have to literally go outside, but it helps.

If you have a hobby, delve into it. If not, get one. I have personally quite enjoyed learning the banjo. My girlfriend is allegedly writing the great American novel; I couldn’t say for sure, since she won’t let me read it.

Contrary to dril there is a difference between good things and bad things. Experiences matter. When yours come to an end, by Singularity or by the quiet repose that awaits us all, make sure yours have been good.

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Biden seems, on a deeply personal level, to hate the US military and its treatment of its men, due to his son Beau's death-by-burn-pit-carcinogens. In fact, I rather suspect the withdrawal from Afghanistan was so insanely rapid (foolishly, of course, but still) because Biden personally said "get our fucking troops out of there LITERALLY RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOU FUCKING PIGS KILLED MY SON." So I am heartened by his realization -- unlike so many of my country's insane leaders -- of the true cost of American military mobilization.

I've seen this come up a couple of times over my years here, and always meant to go dig up a quote I remembered from Obama's memoirs. Finally bothered to do it. For what it's worth, Obama's version of events regarding military leaders pushing for a troop surge in Afghanistan:

Among the principals, only Joe Biden voiced his misgivings. He had traveled to Kabul on my behalf during the transition, and what he saw and heard on the trip—particularly during a contentious meeting with Karzai—had convinced him that we needed to rethink our entire approach to Afghanistan. I knew Joe also still felt burned by having supported the Iraq invasion years earlier. Whatever the mix of reasons, he saw Afghanistan as a dangerous quagmire and urged me to delay a deployment, suggesting it would be easier to put troops in once we had a clear strategy as opposed to trying to pull troops out after we’d made a mess with a bad one.

Rather than deciding on the spot, I assigned Tom Donilon to convene the NSC deputies over the course of the following week to determine more precisely how additional troops would be used and whether deploying them by summer was even possible logistically. We’d revisit the issue, I said, once we had the answer. With the meeting adjourned, I headed out the door and was on my way up the stairs to the Oval when Joe caught up to me and gripped my arm. “Listen to me, boss,” he said. “Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He brought his face a few inches from mine and stage-whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.”

...

IN LATER ACCOUNTS of our Afghanistan deliberations, Gates and others would peg Biden as one of the ringleaders who poisoned relations between the White House and the Pentagon. The truth was that I considered Joe to be doing me a service by asking tough questions about the military’s plans. Having at least one contrarian in the room made us all think harder about the issues—and I noticed that everyone was a bit freer with their opinions when that contrarian wasn’t me.

...

In mid-February, Donilon reported that the deputies had scrubbed General McKiernan’s request and concluded that no more than seventeen thousand troops, along with four thousand military trainers, could be deployed in time to have a meaningful impact on the summer fighting season or Afghan election security. Although we were still a month away from completing our formal review, all the principals except Biden recommended that we deploy that number of troops immediately. I gave the order on February 17, the same day I signed the

Recovery Act, having determined that even the most conservative strategy we might come up with would need the additional manpower, and knowing that we still had ten thousand troops in reserve if circumstances required their deployment as well.

It was published mid-November 2020, so while events may have been spun one way or the other to make Biden look good, at least it wasn't done to boost him in the election.

I respected Biden for this particular part of his vice-presidency if Obama's memoirs were true.

Too bad after making the best decision of his presidency to get out of Afghanistan, we had to find another $100b/year war to fund within just a couple of months.

Oops. Dropping a post without bothering to see if the formatting worked is one way to make sure nobody reads it...

I wonder if I'm starting to get pooped enough from anxiety spirals already from the last few years that I can't really get into an AGI anxiety spiral mood, despite also following Kruel. I mean, I got into a Trump anxiety spiral for a bit when get got elected. Then I got into a Covid anxiety spiral. Then when the whole mandate thing got going (I got vaccinated, it just seemed momentously stupid) I got into an anxiety spiral about, oh God, maybe there really is a conspiracy? I also got into an UFO anxiety spiral at some point. Then I of course got into an Ukraine anxiety spiral, more than once, though I daresay there I had the good company of my entire nation at the same state, at the same time. Oh, and of course some personal life anxiety spirals as well.

After all of these just ended up kind of turning into shit and same-as-it-ever-was, I have to specifically keep telling myself that, yes, the AI is probably going to have large societal effects that aren't being discussed still enough expect in very limited circles, to not become even more cynical about AI than I've expressed here already a few times.

Wait, what?

I don’t think I’ve seen any evidence, rather than speculation, that Biden hates the military. His natsec policy has been a mixed bag, but in what I see as a fairly pedestrian Democrat way: treating it as a giant bank account to trim for other programs.

How does the Afghan withdrawal make any more sense as a punishment for the military? It is literally removing a decades-long foreign entanglement. If he hadn’t pulled out, would you be arguing that letting Americans continue to die for

Afghans is a sign of his spite?

opposition to American involvement in wars has shifted…to being coded right-wing

Again…what?

You’ve got to be more specific, because the interventionist/militarist/ColdWarrior mindset is alive and well.

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My view is that War Is Hell, whether you're on the offense or the defense, and I rather wish Eurasia had learned this lesson after they propelled the world into a trench war over literally nothing. I would suggest that the costs are too high, but of course that is not a choice for me to make

You're not being serious here, I take it ? You don't truly believe the only reason for the war was the murder, and you also don't truly believe a state* supported, politically motivated assassination of the heir to the throne is 'no big deal' ?

*well, the Serbian prime minister probably didn't know what his military intelligence was up to, but doesn't really exculpate Serbia.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I can definitely see how the chain of events would shake out. Especially in combination with CPAR’s quote.