the world is incredibly filled with risk to humans—people in the AI doomer camp are making a claim that AI potentially is a new kind of uncontrollable risk that warrants extraordinary regulation
the basis of this claim seems to be a confusion of logical or deductive reasoning with inductive or observational reasoning
argument comes down to
- it’s possible to imagine a super intelligent machine that has properties that will kill everyone (this is an exercise in logical reasoning)
- since it’s possible to imagine it, this means it will come into existence — this is an error because things that exist in the real, physical world do so based on physical processes governed by inductive reasoning
generally, there is a long series of steps between the imagining of some constructed, complex machine and its realization, along with its conceptual foundations it requires sustained effort, trial and error, maintenance, generally a serious fight against entropy to make it function and keep it functioning
the sort of out of control AI imagined by AI doomers is not something we’ve seen before
so we shouldn’t make costly decisions based upon this confusion of reasoning
> since it’s possible to imagine it, this means it will come into existence
Nope. That's not the argument. In fact, it's such a bad take that it reeks of a deliberately constructed strawman.
The actual argument is: Since it's possible to imagine it, and doesn't contradict any known laws of nature or technology, and current development appears to be iterating towards it, it might come into existence, thus it presents a statistical risk.
When I take out tornado insurance, it's not because I know my house will be blown away by a storm – it's because I don't know, but the possibility is there.
Certainty is not required in order to conclude that risk exists. Quite the opposite is true: Risk is a function of uncertainty.
Recently, I've dealt with behavioral issues with my aging mother brought about by a series of different factors, but most significantly age-related cognitive decline.
Trying to determine if she was acting in a certain way intentionally or unintentionally was fundamentally impossible. In the past, I mistreated her thinking she was choosing to behave in certain ways whenever she really didn't have much of a choice, but then later I realized that to some extent and in some situations, she was. It's an extremely murky line, what decisions were being made due to other influences and what decisions were being made by her, that line never existed to begin with as who her consciousness is fundamentally is determined exclusively by 'outside' influences. Separating her identity as an entity from her material manifestation is likely nonsensical.
this is my pet peeve with discussions of ‘free will’ they have an implicit definition—everything being exactly the same at a different time or place—that is non-sensical as far as we know.
I’m still disturbed by peoples confidence in a deterministic universe—I suppose such confidence is based on the success of inductive reasoning but inductive reasoning is a phenomenon based on how our minds work.
As far as I know the philosophical problem of causation is not considered solved?
In any case, elements of randomness seem likely to play a role in human intelligence but what that role is, who knows?
I’ve never understood his crankiness on this subject: the concept of ‘right to repair’ is entirely synthetic.
Government intervention in markets is usually predicated on some kind of ‘market failure’ and I don’t see how that is the case here. There is plenty of competition in the phone market and if the option to have a phone repaired by third parties was really desired by consumers then someone would sell such a phone.
It seems more like Rossmann is angry there is not a product-market fit for his services. Something like that.
Really? Like in the next 200 years? That’s ridiculous. The scenarios from IPCC envision a future of prosperity, albeit at a reduced level than if we could somehow drastically cut carbon emissions.
I'll tell you what the difference is, that no one ever points out...
In the case of a crime being committed in a hotel room, the criminal is the nuisance. The hotel operator gladly participates with law enforcement to remove the nuisance. In the case of something as ridiculous as these plaintiff wedding dress makers claiming "intellectual property" over a white dress, the plaintiff is the nuisance, not the people they are accusing.
No he is not. The Strike in question is the one run by Jack Maller and the description of using USDT for remittances to ES comes from Miller’s own Medium article.
I agree with the thrust of your comment in general. I thought that Trump’s China travel ban was a choice of common sense and the Democrats labeling it as xenophobic was counterproductive.
While it certainly was xenophobic in Trump’s hands, it was practically a decision that made him happy as a China hater, the motivation of the decision is independent of its utility.
Trump certainly made a mess of it after that.
All of the politicians got fooled by the relative stability and rareness of the pandemic. Most of the time telling people not to panic it won’t be as bad as you fear works OK as a strategy in a country like the US.
That said, on the point about Trump and his relationship with China. I simply don't see it as xenophobic. And, BTW, I have never supported Trump or vote for him. I am a strongly independent classical liberal, with the caveat that I actively seek the truth and will never align myself with any political party by default because that implies they are 100% correct 100% of the time, which is impossible.
And, BTW #2, I don't hate China at all. While I disagree with their social and political stances, on the business front, the job they have done during the last 50 years is nothing less than outstanding. I have experience manufacturing in China and can tell you from that first hand experience that the US almost has no hope of regaining most of the industrial base it lost. While we focus on growing a society with a victim-mentality and growing division they have been growing what might already be the most entrepreneurial society in history. It's hard to describe the difference other than: If you want to get shit done, you go to China, not the US, not Europe. Sorry.
Trump has been talking about China for decades. He has been watching the erosion of our industrial base for a long time. And he rightly points at Chinese practices and the idiocy of our own politicians as some (not all) of the root causes. The popular "corporate greed" cause is nonsense. Go try and manufacture almost anything at scale in the US or Europe and see how far you get. There's no greed involved, we can't even make N95 masks at scale.
The problem with the Trump/China relationship, in my opinion, has many facets.
One of them is that he turned out to be perhaps the worst communicator who has ever inhabited the White House. I mean, his lack of ability to deliver well constructed messages in front of a camera was just unbelievable. In politics and leadership you have to be able to communicate. Every single one of his press briefings and speeches was an absolute train wreck.
The second issue had to do with the all-out warfare the entire Left and the media engaged in for four years. You can't run a country when at least half of your government is engaged in a war against the other half. It's impossible. I don't care who you are.
A simple example of this is Trump's attempt to rescind the postal treaty, dating back to 1874 (yes!) that made it so the US taxpayers subsidize nearly every Chinese package travelling within the US. In other words, once certain class of packages lands on US soil delivery of Chinese goods within the US is FREE. The intention behind this treaty was good. It was meant to help developing nations have access to our markets. Well, it isn't 1874 and China is the second largest economy in the world.
What that treaty means is that, as a US-based business, it costs me more to ship a package to New York than it costs a Chinese competitor. Even if my product cost exactly the same to manufacture, I lose.
That treaty should have been rescinded decades ago. Trump was the only US President (or politician) to speak about this and point out just how badly we were getting screwed and how much damage we are causing our own businesses. And for that his attempt to rescind this ridiculous treaty was labelled as xenophobic and racially motivated. Again, the entire Democratic party and the media were at war with him and could not care less about the absolute fact that this treaty has been damaging our nation for decades. In their ideologically twisted world they could not bring themselves into alignment with him at all, even if that meant damaging every single business in the US.
How do we fix this? Don't know. Other than, perhaps, strong term limits. On the media side, we do not benefit at all from having 95% of the media in political alignment with an ideological side. Imagine if 95% of our media were aligned with the right. That would be horrible. Well, it isn't any different when the tables are turned. This isn't good for anyone.
Isn’t this a problem of efficiency and optimization? Running the system lean leads to lower costs, but with risk of occasional shortfalls due to exogenous effects. But to optimize for those relatively infrequent events would increase the cost of the frequent events (the everyday shipping).
Given the challenge of finding an optimum it seems like the world hasn’t done too badly.
the basis of this claim seems to be a confusion of logical or deductive reasoning with inductive or observational reasoning
argument comes down to
- it’s possible to imagine a super intelligent machine that has properties that will kill everyone (this is an exercise in logical reasoning)
- since it’s possible to imagine it, this means it will come into existence — this is an error because things that exist in the real, physical world do so based on physical processes governed by inductive reasoning
generally, there is a long series of steps between the imagining of some constructed, complex machine and its realization, along with its conceptual foundations it requires sustained effort, trial and error, maintenance, generally a serious fight against entropy to make it function and keep it functioning
the sort of out of control AI imagined by AI doomers is not something we’ve seen before
so we shouldn’t make costly decisions based upon this confusion of reasoning