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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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I'll jump in on the side of your interlocutor and just say that while I have massive respect for your hardline consquentialist views (you really play it to the hilt!) I tend to agree that morality has to come first.

Would you not agree that as a technocratic consequentialist, you take on faith things like Scientific Objectivity and Technological Progress as goods? Or of course 'Utility,' although it's such a vaguely defined catchall I'd rather use something like 'virtue.'

you take on faith things like Scientific Objectivity and Technological Progress as goods?

"Faith"? What a queer word.

I observe an exponential or even super-exponential growth curve and its visible outcomes, and we're approaching the inflection point. I will cease having "faith" in it when the curves flatten out, our AI no longer improving, our medicine becoming stale.

Until then, I'm here for the ride.

To me the idea of Growth as something that can be judged by us is taken on faith as well. It's hard to articulate what I'm getting at, I'll come back to you once I've refined my understanding better.

In the meantime if we do achieve foom and you merge with the machines, I hope I've built up enough goodwill that you will take me in as the human serf to your machine feudal lord. And maybe some of my loved ones too ;)

Might make an interesting sci-fi premise, at least.

In the meantime if we do achieve foom and you merge with the machines, I hope I've built up enough goodwill that you will take me in as the human serf to your machine feudal lord. And maybe some of my loved ones too ;)

Nah you get a Von Neumann replicator just for you :*

Might make an interesting sci-fi premise, at least.

Two novels at a time is enough for me, right now. Maybe when I'm a proper cyborg haha