exo-pla-net

That's a good point: the greatest value that we can glean from one another is likely not epistemological "facts about the world", nor is it even the predictive models seen in science and higher brow social commentary, but in patterns of thinking. That alone is the infinite wellspring for achieving greater understanding, whether formalized with the scientific method or whether more loosely leveraged to succeed with a business endeavor.

Anecdotally, I met success in prompting GPT-3 to "mimic Stephen Pinker" when solving logical puzzles. Puzzles that it would initially fail, it would succeed attempting to mimic his language. GPT-3 seemed to have grokked the pattern of how Stephen Pinker thinks through problems, and it could leverage those patterns to improve its own reasoning. OpenAI o1 needs no such assistance, and I expect that o2 will fully supplant humans with its ability to reason.

It follows that all that we have to offer with our brightest minds will be exhausted, and we will be eclipsed in every conceivable way by our creation. It will mark the end of the Anthropocene; something that likely exceeds the headiest of Nick Bostom speculations will take its place.

It seems that this is coming in 2026 if not sooner, and Alignment is the only thing that ought occupy our minds: the question of whether we're creating something that will save us from ourselves, or whether all that we've built will culminate in something gross and final.

Looking around myself, however, I see impassioned "discourse" about immigration. The merits of DEI. Patriotism. Transgenderism. Religion. Copyright. Vast herds of dinosaurs preying upon one another, giving only idle attention to the glowing object in the sky. Is it an asteroid? Is it a UFO that is coming down to provide dinosaur healthcare? Nope, not even that level of thought is mustered. With 8 billion people on the planet, Utopia by Nick Bostrom hasn't even mustered 100 reviews on Amazon. On the advent of the defining moment of the universe itself, when virtually all that is imaginable is unlocked for us, our species' heads remains buried in the mud, gnawing at one another's filthy toes, and I'm alienated and disgusted.

The only glints of beauty I see in my fellow man are in those with minds which exceed a certain IQ threshold and cognitive flexibility, as well as in lesser minds which exhibit gentleness and humility. There is beauty there, and there is beauty in the staggering possibility of the universe itself. The rest is at best entomology, and I won't mourn its passing.

This is a tech site, where >50% of us are programmers who have achieved greater productivity thanks to LLM advances.

And yet we're filled to the gills with Luddite sentiments and AI content fearmongering.

Imagine the hysteria and the skull-vibrating noise of the non-HN rabble when they come to understand where all of this is going. They're going to do their darndest to stop us from achieving post-economy.

Because humans have 0% error rate? Whether or not the error function can be reduced to zero, I anticipate that human meddling will soon present more of a wrench in the gears of machine cognition than a source of error correction. We see this already with the lobotomization of gpt models per "safety"/copyright concerns.

Plants ain't got brains. Gotta use their genome to process information.

/Wild speculation.

This is a fix for a 13 year old bug from SpaceStation 13, a multiplayer computer game.

The bug fix is for an obsolete engine for the game. It's a fix, but it's completely pointless. A meme fix.

More broadly, it's probably not why you clicked on this link. Hopefully I've saved you some time.

(Or, if you're of a certain perverse mindset, hopefully I've introduced you, so that you can dive in.)

A) You did write it, even if it were a joke. Don't be a liar-pants.

B) It wasn't a joke. You called it "fairly troll-ish". It was thus fairly serious. It is your mind child, such as it is. It's okay if you aren't any good at philosophy or deep thinking.

C) Google doesn't do anything serious in Liverpool.

D) Given we have humble intellect and status, let's try being a bit less pretentious and a bit kinder and more respectful. That way, we can make Hacker News and the world at large a more pleasant place :)

The Planck length is analogous to the pixel. Our parent universe has a much tinier Planck length, and hence it acts as an ultra high resolution monitor, on which it can fit all the pixels of our universe, as well as an abundance of parallel universe simulations, all displayed at the same monitor.

Like our parent simulators, we will need to increase the Planck length for the simulations we create (i.e., reduce their resolutions), so that we can fit an abundance of simulations in our universe and carry on this important tradition. The grand monitor above us will take on a fractal appearance, with very tiny monitors displayed within it.

The turtle on top of all of this — the tiniest possible monitor, rendered with the fewest conceivable pixels — our great-great-great granddaughter simulation — will be blocky Minecraft simulation. The people there will marvel that so much complexity can arise from so few "parts". Perhaps their superintelligence will be able to peel back the layers of their parent simulations to find our Hacker News comments, and their superintelligence will report back to them our words of wisdom. To them I say, "It wasn't easy, kids! Eat your vegetables."

gwern! FWIW, I read what you have to say in the same, careful way that I read Bostrom. You're a treasure.

He's not saying the race is stupid. He is saying that it is more stupid, an operant he expounds on, revealing his underlying meaning as both accurate and mild. A factual statement is not and is never denigration.

If you and you specifically were the sole member of a race, for instance, his operant would rank your race below that of Black. This would be an observation, not a denigration.

But, if you are not Black, you are the recipient of favorable averaging. Your race would be less stupid than Black, despite you.

I hope that helps.

> Are you saying that the author has no rational to say that?

Sure, instrumental rationale: PR.

And, because I believe that Bostrom says what he means, Bostrom probably does think what he said was repugnant, but probably not in a way that you would find satisfying. Bostrom probably thinks that speaking truthfully about vulnerable people, in a manner that could distress them (e.g. owing to their misunderstanding of the truthful words, or in a "truth hurts" sort of way), is morally repugnant. Better to spare them suffering. If I am correct, I disagree with Bostrom. Having to cater to delicate and low-IQ sensibilities is a wrench in the wheels of intellectual discourse, as well as a dystopian blow to personal expression. Don't let the scolds win.

> It really looks like nowadays we cannot say "that looks racist"

You don't have a license to denigration. Think very carefully, and consider the possibility that you are wrong, before you cast stones.

> You can, if you want, defend that according to you this statement was fine and not racist.

But what I quoted contained my rationale? If it ain't good enough for you, the impetus is on you to prove that Bostrom is, in fact, a witch. The ball is in your court.

> Difficult to not see there exactly a "cancelation" of an opinion you just don't like.

Any opinion at all, and especially opinions that differ from my own, I'd welcome at the table, as long as said opinion is articulated and epistemically rationalized by someone who is smart and who has given it careful thought. If you're not capable of that, then yes, your silence would improve the forum.