I was reading something that suggested that trauma "tries" to spread itself. ie that the reason why intergenerational trauma is a thing is that the traumatized part in a parent will take action to recreate that trauma in the child.
More like, "here's a story for how this could work.")
Why on earth would trauma be agenty, in that way? It sounds like too much to swallow.
If some traumas try to replicate them selves in other minds, but most don't pretty soon the world will be awash in the replicator type.
Its unclear how high the fidelity of transmission is.
Thinking through this has given me a new appreciation of what @DavidDeutschOxf calls "anti-rational memes". I think he might be on to something that they are more-or-less at the core of all our problems on earth.
More from Eli Tyre
I started by simply stating that I thought that the arguments that I had heard so far don't hold up, and seeing if anyone was interested in going into it in depth with
CritRats!
— Eli Tyre (@EpistemicHope) December 26, 2020
I think AI risk is a real existential concern, and I claim that the CritRat counterarguments that I've heard so far (keywords: universality, person, moral knowledge, education, etc.) don't hold up.
Anyone want to hash this out with me?https://t.co/Sdm4SSfQZv
So far, a few people have engaged pretty extensively with me, for instance, scheduling video calls to talk about some of the stuff, or long private chats.
(Links to some of those that are public at the bottom of the thread.)
But in addition to that, there has been a much more sprawling conversation happening on twitter, involving a much larger number of people.
Having talked to a number of people, I then offered a paraphrase of the basic counter that I was hearing from people of the Crit Rat persuasion.
ELI'S PARAPHRASE OF THE CRIT RAT STORY ABOUT AGI AND AI RISK
— Eli Tyre (@EpistemicHope) January 5, 2021
There are two things that you might call "AI".
The first is non-general AI, which is a program that follows some pre-set algorithm to solve a pre-set problem. This includes modern ML.
I think AI risk is a real existential concern, and I claim that the CritRat counterarguments that I've heard so far (keywords: universality, person, moral knowledge, education, etc.) don't hold up.
Anyone want to hash this out with
In general, I am super up for short (1 to 10 hour) adversarial collaborations.
— Eli Tyre (@EpistemicHope) December 23, 2020
If you think I'm wrong about something, and want to dig into the topic with me to find out what's up / prove me wrong, DM me.
For instance, while I heartily agree with lots of what is said in this video, I don't think that the conclusion about how to prevent (the bad kind of) human extinction, with regard to AGI, follows.
There are a number of reasons to think that AGI will be more dangerous than most people are, despite both people and AGIs being qualitatively the same sort of thing (explanatory knowledge-creating entities).
And, I maintain, that because of practical/quantitative (not fundamental/qualitative) differences, the development of AGI / TAI is very likely to destroy the world, by default.
(I'm not clear on exactly how much disagreement there is. In the video above, Deutsch says "Building an AGI with perverse emotions that lead it to immoral actions would be a crime."
More from Culture
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
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Flat Earth conference attendees explain how they have been brainwashed by YouTube and Infowarshttps://t.co/gqZwGXPOoc
— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 18, 2018
This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/
A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/
https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/
https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/