chaseadam17

Yeah, I agree. I meant spirituality in the wholesome sense, not the spiritual bypass or Christian bc the party that supports my company is Christian sense.

On one hand, VCs that fund thousands of early-stage startups are inevitably going to fund some bad stuff, even if they try hard to avoid it.

On the other, the older I get the more I worry about the decline of spirituality in the West. Especially in tech, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a hyper rational snowglobe of people optimizing a local maxima, not even considering (and often looking down on) the possibility that there are larger, more important games to play.

I’m a dad who has struggled with this too. I’ve also had the privilege of getting to know a relatively large number of highly successful people.

One thing I’ve noticed is that, yes, to make it into the history books you likely have to pursue your career at the cost of everything else (and be insanely lucky).

But right below that degree of one in a billion success is a much larger group of very successful people who manage to achieve admirable balance in their lives. Their spouses love them, their kids want to spend time with them, and rhey might even have a hobby or two.

The thing is, these people tend to be quieter - a few I know are downright secretive. They aren’t constantly online or in the press seeking validation because they have achieved fulfillment at home and work.

The barrier to change is not just regulation. Regulation is downstream of public opinion. Compare China and the US. In China, public sentiment around AI seems to be a hunger to use it for fear of being left behind. Whereas in America, it's an apathetic pessimism around inequality and safety.

China has seen much faster growth in recent decades, which incentivizes people to work hard and have faith it will yield results. In America, the average standard of living has not improved for a long time, so instead of a desire to change things, like cutting regulation to speed up drug discovery, most Americans are quiet quitting.

In this climate, the unfortunate reality is that we're unlikely to see a popular revolution to drastically change things one way or another. Instead, we're much more likely to see regulatory capture by a small number of wealthy, powerful, motivated people. And everyone else will complain on social media, but that's about it.

we're at the stage of the cycle where we know things are wrong but we don't care enough to do anything about them. unfortunately, it might not be until we live through the consequences that we can muster the energy to care enough again.

No one could ever predict anything and we're all going to die.

This article would be more convincing if it focused on debunking the conspiracy instead of spending all but one hand wavy paragraph presenting a new conspiracy.

The single debunking claim says there are 700k "US top secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce" so normal mortality rates should be higher.

Were these people all part of the normal workforce or a smaller category? Are those death rates total deaths or deaths under suspicious circumstances?

Anecdotally, Amy Eskridge went on a podcast and texted friends saying she was at risk and had no intention of killing herself before supposedly killing herself. Will McCasland and others disappeared under strange circumstances and Will was clearly not just part of a 700k person workforce, he was a general who directed a largely classified $4B annual research budget.

I'm not saying there is a broad conspiracy here but it's worth exploring. I miss real journalism. What a waste of an opportunity to write a good story.

Surprised how negative most of the comments are.

A lot of nonprofits could benefit from someone helping them implement AI and most are 1) competent enough to ensure the fellow hands off their projects before they leave, and 2) to decide if it’s worth continuing to pay for Claude or not.

It’s great the fellows are paid so they are at least somewhat accountable vs volunteers who are often unreliable.

All that said, I bet 80% of what these fellows end up doing is automating fundraising emails…

Haha yeah, we're in "who knows" territory. It could just be a foundational truth that all life has an innate unconscious will to survive.

However, it makes more sense to me that consciousness precedes the will to survive. And that doesn't mean the way a microbe experiences life is the same as us. E.g. the fact that we have so much control over our environment might mean we have a much more sensitive and reactive way of engaging with consciousness, whereas maybe a microbe is like an enlightened monk, just chillin because it can't do much about what it experiences anyways.

How would you determine “an optimal course of action” without consciousness?

Eg we optimize for survival but without the ability to experience things, why survive?

Why would that instinct or any other preference for a course of action emerge?

I'd argue we don't even know what "intelligence" or "self-awareness" mean.

Humans are conscious which means we experience things, then we develop preferences for certain experiences, then we develop skills for achieving those preferences.

Without consciousness, what is there to be aware of? And why would intelligence emerge and/or what end would it serve?

My guess is that you need consciousness in order to develop preferences for certain experiences, then that pushes us to develop skills to achieve those preferences. AI has something that looks like intelligence but not consciousness or agency.