5 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2023
    1. I don't know that we can assume that some point A Thousand Years in the future is going to have the same moral political economic or social priorities 00:41:36 as we do
      • Good insight on the absurdity of Longtermism from Mary Harrington
        • " I don't know that we can assume that some point a Thousand Years in the future
        • is going to have the same moral political economic or social priorities
        • as we do
        • It's very very clear even the most rudimentary grasp of history or literature
        • ought to make it clear that
          • people a thousand years ago didn't have the same priorities as us now and
          • if you can you can frame that difference as progress in our favor
          • or as decline in their favor
          • but it's it's very clear that Consciousness you've evolved and culture evolves over time and
          • there are there are threads of continuity and that's something that you and I both have in common
          • tracing some of those lines but
          • it's very clear that what how people think about what's important changes tremendously over over even a century,
          • let alone over a thousand years
          • so I I question the hubris of any movement which claims
          • to have a have any kind of handle on on what might matter in 25 000 years time
          • I just don't see how you can do that
          • it's absurd."
    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20230430194301/https://netzpolitik.org/2023/longtermism-an-odd-and-peculiar-ideology/ The EA/LT reasoning explained in this interview, in a way that allows easy outlining. Bit sad to see Jaan Tallinns existential risk path taking this shape, CSER seemed to be more balanced back in 2012/13 when I briefly met him in the context of TEDxTallinn, with climate change a key existential risk, not a speed bump on the road to advanced AI to provide future humanity.

  2. Sep 2022
    1. But we should resist surrendering to a destiny predefined by technological development. We urgently need to imagine a new world order and seize the opportunity provided by the meltdown to develop a strategy that opposes the relentless depoliticization and proletarianization driven by the transhumanist fantasy of superintelligence.

      Against longtermism

    1. This has roots in the work of Nick Bostrom, who founded the grandiosely named Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) in 2005, and Nick Beckstead, a research associate at FHI and a programme officer at Open Philanthropy. It has been defended most publicly by the FHI philosopher Toby Ord, author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (2020).
    1. Now consider a hypothetical from science fiction. William Gibson’s two most recent books (The Peripheral and Agency) occur in two time periods — one in the near-future, the other in the far-future. Gibson’s far future is a techno-optimist paradise. It is filled with the future tech that today’s most wild-eyed futurists only dream about. Heads-up displays! Working robots that you can pilot with full telepresence! Functional seasteads! It is a world of abundance and wealth and fantastical artistry. But it is also a world that is notably… empty.

      Using Gibson’s Jackpot as a thought experiment for evaluating longtermism