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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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There may be an equilibrium point, but it could easily be at a total population level of a billion or less given that rates are continuing to drop with no floor in sight. Wireheading and other tech induced sterilizers can outrun biology for a long time, possibly forever if the tech gets good enough.

There may be an equilibrium point, but it could easily be at a total population level of a billion or less given that rates are continuing to drop with no floor in sight.

That's about how many people there were in 1800; 1800-level civilization plus modern technology doesn't sound that bad?

It does if me or any of my prospective descendants aren't part of that billion or so.

The steps you would take to ensure this are probably going to be net beneficial for you and them regardless, soooo....

It is, my concern is if these weapons end up getting deployed as population control flypaper I'd (or my descendants would) end up swept into the chaff pile, which depending on how low the minimum human pop gets could be hard to beat.

1/8 is not exactly hard to beat, given the many actions you can take to load the dice in your favour vs. the teeming masses who will by and large do nothing.

1/8 is may be the idealistic high end estimate. The ruling class only needs so many shoe polishers and peons to be meatbags.

The ruling class can be safely ignored so long as they aren't engaged in active murder (which also requires a lot of meatbags) -- this is actually even easier with a smaller population.

By 'ruling class' I don't mean our current one, I mean whatever class of oligarchs/algo owners and so on end up at the top once the dust settles on this AI business.

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