This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I truly believe that God wants us to play God. We didn't get a paradise on earth. There are all kinds of blind chance BS that wrecks people - cancer, random accidents, horrible parasites from the rainforest, earthquakes and volcanoes. I don't think God is benevolent in an earthly, human sense and I lean towards Deism rather than Christianity. You don't leave your beloved children in the snake pit and watch as some inevitably get eaten by snakes, you wouldn't structure the universe that way - just don't make the snakes in the first place! You wouldn't send an earthquake against your devout Lisbon Christians on a feast day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
But we do have the tools to fix our problems, if we are determined and committed. There's no law of the universe that says cancer remains forever. If we're wise and efficient, we could cure it. Mole rats live without cancer, it's not impossible. For earthquakes, we could still the Earth's core or disassemble the planets and stars directly.
If God didn't want us to kill, he wouldn't have allowed for weapons, strangulation, bone-breaking... Our skin could be infinitely tough. If God didn't want us to live forever, he could have some mechanism that annihilates souls at a predetermined age. If God didn't want people to sin, he could send down legions of angels or lightning bolts. If God didn't want abortion, he could render fertilized embryos invulnerable.
In reality we have incredible freedom of action, the physical properties of the universe are very permissive. We are encouraged to advance down certain pathways, those who advance are rewarded with wealth and power while those who lag behind are rewarded with humiliation and expropriation. Some choices are of course dead ends - Aztec sacrifice was uncompetitive. These choices are where God's will is most apparent. Our role is to accept the challenge and choose wisely, we can't shrink away from the powers already within our control.
Abortion isn't going away, we can't uninvent the pill, retroactive action may be one of the few things that God really doesn't want. We need to choose how to use this technology such that it improves rather than detracts. You know that it can't be effectively banned, people don't want it, countries can't coordinate on this for a global and effective ban. US states can't even coordinate on banning it, it makes only a marginal difference in outcomes if it's legal in one state, illegal in another. Better to manipulate structures so that children are valued more, that people don't end up in situations where they want to abort, that the abortions that do take place get rid of antisocial or unhelpful people.
That is still more religion than I'm comfortable with, but I agree with your sentiments.
The putative Abrahamic God is god-awful at his job. Leaving aside it doesn't exist, we're better served by Man creating our own Gods in Our image.
One reason I'm so antitheistic is because it's a soporific musk that dulls people to very real pain and suffering and makes them attribute it all to a higher, inscrutable purpose.
What. The. Fuck.
Solve your damn problems. Only if all else fails is choosing to accept them the valid option.
As I've said before, Marx was correct in calling religion the opiate of the masses. I can't knock it on those grounds because I certainly prescribe my own share of opioids, but as always, our intent is to cure, and keeping someone in a morphine haze indefinitely is acceptable only when all efforts fail.
And we're working on that. An actual cure for cancer, aging and other diseases that have plagued us for all of history is in sight, I'd expect it to happen in my lifetime even in the counterfactual world where we weren't making our own superhuman deities that could (if they don't kill us) solve most of our problems. Efforts to make peace with that which should be put down with all the force we can muster is a crime against humanity itself. All the worse that this peace is built off the assumption that the torture and suffering we undergo is because of hidden benevolent meddling.
I'm doing my part. Are you?
The Gay Science, I.24:
More options
Context Copy link
I guess I'm more Deist-by-Simulation-Hypothesis, though I've been wrestling with what simulation means for our ability to understand reality.
In a literal sense, sure he's terrible as an omnibenevolent omnipotent being, as Lisbon discovered. But in a practical sense, He has His uses! A God that suppresses marriage between relatives, a God that demands monogamy, a God expected to uphold oaths and enforce pro-social behaviour via punishment in the afterlife, that deity has great power. We could easily list the flaws too. Like all other technologies, religion has pros and cons depending on how it's configured. Many Christians do good work in charity, others do bad work. The suppression of incest alone might have pushed up IQ a couple of points, an inestimable boon for the devout! Anyway, the Christian God is dying, other deities are emerging, including god-machines.
I think there might be some kind of conservation of religiosity going on. Religion is such a powerful entity. Traditionally people had religious feelings about celestial bodies, their dead ancestors and spiritual entities. Environmentalists have religious feelings about plants, animals and industry. Nationalists have religious feelings about their co-ethnics.
You and I have vaguely religious feelings about trends in computing and scientific development. They provide eschatology. There will be semidivine beings soon capable of reading our thoughts and memories (plus trawling through our digital history), capable of vast cruelty or benevolence. We're actually right and have by far the strongest physical/technical forces on our side.
But most people find this laughably silly. I tried to convince some friends of mine about this stuff and they politely suggested I was mentally ill. I'll enjoy gloating to them later on. Most people don't think like we do, they're rooted in aesthetics. They see soy-looking techbros and are repulsed. It's like that cringey kid with the 'In this moment I am euphoric, I am enlightened by my own intelligence' quote that did such terrible damage to atheism. It had nothing to do with metaphysics, yet it was more powerful than 10,000 logical arguments. Even Marxism-Leninism has more pull than our AI-singularitarian beliefs have, it speaks to most people far better than we do. There's great power in these social forces that I wish understood.
I accept the premise that some people are more motivated by aesthetics than others, but I also think that many of those who claim to "not care about aesthetics" aren't as entirely free of of the grasp of aesthetics as they imagine themselves to be. If you resonate with this particular vision of infinite power, as opposed to all other competing visions of infinite power, then that clearly reveals an aesthetic preference on your part.
I experience the revulsion you noted quite strongly, so I'm happy to answer questions about it.
It's broadly caused by some combination of 1) the general smugness that often accompanies techno-optimism, and 2) the content of the beliefs themselves. I can tolerate somewhat more arrogance from people I already agree with, but even then there's a limit, and past that limit I start to sour quickly. You chose a fitting example - I'm an atheist, but if an atheist starts getting too euphoric in an internet argument then I absolutely start to root against him. I have an instinctual aversion to people who lack humility and I imagine I'm not alone in that.
When Sam Altman styles himself as being at the center of the most important events in human history, all I can think is... dear God, please don't let these people win. Don't let reality be like that.
As for the actual object-level issues, opinions will vary widely, but you should at least be aware that not everyone will find your personal vision of utopia to be very utopian.
The key thing is that there are no other competing visions of immense power, not in the material physical sense.
I can appreciate the aesthetics of other scenarios and yet I know they won't come about just because I find them cool and superior. I said this before and I'll say it again, the tradbros who say stuff like 'Cool story Roko but your vision of an earth populated by trillions of bugmen has no relevance - the good life is best achieved by an aristocratic band of horseback warriors riding out on the plains'. There is a certain aesthetic quality to the trad lifestyle. I believe it fits human needs quite well. But if it goes up against self_made_human's vision, it gets smashed into paste and trivialized to the point of being pathetic, surviving only on reservations if that. Hey, it already got smashed into paste by 19th century armies.
Imagine the Qing courtier who deeply resented the foreign devils, bringing disharmony with their weird gadgets and disrespectful mercantile practices. Surely China knew better, with all the millennia of philosophy? Well, no they didn't. They fell behind and suffered severely for it. China learnt a very valuable lesson that I fear we've neglected.
Humility and subjective ideas of moral virtue can't save you from superior firepower. I think the greatest kind of humility is respecting the structure of the universe. If the universe favours the cruel, brutish, horseback archer to the hard-working, peaceful peasant - there's nothing we can do about it, the rules hold. If the regimented, robotic columns of riflemen beat the noble, free horsemen, then so be it. If swarms of tiny robots overmatch the manly courage and patriotic zeal of all human warriors, that's that. There can be change on the margins (who gets uploaded, what distribution of resources happens) and these changes are supremely important! But we still go through the phase-change even if we think it's ugly and depraved that clusters of jumped-up graphics cards become so powerful.
A literal god wouldn't have to engage in deep space exploration, if he didn't want to. He could furnish himself whatever sort of environment he wanted, for whatever activities he wanted. That's what I meant by competing visions.
The preoccupation with planets and supernovae and immense distances reveals, as I said, an aesthetic preference.
Your use of this sort of language may be related to why your ideas aren't "speaking to people" the way you want them to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not directly related to your post but this part made me think of one of my favorite blog posts (about small pox eradication): 500 million but not a single one more.
Is that Jaibot? Did they move away from their own blog and onto Substack?
It is! I suspect so. I recall the original link I had to the article on their blog went dead some time ago but I found the link to the substack via an EA forum post.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link