The proof of the reality you need to adapt to is in the work, the output. If a machine can do everything you do practically, but in a way people would agree is more optimal - including being empathetic, just and kind with it's resources, then that's a reality you need to adapt to.
Okay, a charitable reading of "significant powers" might just mean "a working prototype, something more than nothing".
Effectively. What I mean is something that is interwoven into the fabric of our lives that can't just be shut off, like electricity. Something that brought so much progress that it would be irresponsible to remove it.
You don't build them on a drawing board, do you? edit: also, I think a lot of people would take issue with this. I'm no parent, but I know that when and if I'll be one, yeah, I hope my kid is bright and friendly and whatnot. But if they're disabled or have other issues, I'd still love them. I'd even love them if they were worse than me in every respect, and try to raise them as good as I can, but even then them being "more evolved and better" doesn't really strike me as something primary or even very important. I guess that's a nice thought until you actually see your child, then it goes out of the window. But I'm guessing here.
And sadly, many people do (worship their kids). They call it love, but confusing oneself with another, being fused with them, is not love.
> These are, born out of selfishness, the two methods of education of parents: tyranny and slavery in all gradiations, though tyranny can be very tender ("you have to believe me, I am your mother!"), and slavery very proud ("you are my son, therefore I will make you my saviour"), but they are two horrible methods of education, methods of anti-education, fit to stamp the child back into the ground from whence it came.
-- Franz Kafka, letter to Elli Hermann
> If a machine can do everything you do practically, but in a way people would agree is more optimal - including being empathetic, just and kind with it's resources, then that's a reality you need to adapt to.
The keyword being "if". As things are going, I see this as a carrot to keep people going; the carrot isn't actually where the road leads.
> Something that brought so much progress that it would be irresponsible to remove it.
And how does that go together with "fade into oblivion"? How would something that doesn't require us, but can afford to have empathy with us, diminish us in any way? What fabric of our lives are you talking about? The ones that faded into oblivion? Do you see no double think there?
Yea actually we (collectively) kind of do. I mean the massive institutional educational system, secondary, post secondary, neonatal care, preschool, faber, Montessori, Parenting books, videos blogs etc... are all systems and mechanisms and processes etc that are prescriptive for how to produce a positive, healthy functioning adult in [insert] society.
I guess that's a nice thought until you actually see your child, then it goes out of the window. But I'm guessing here.
Almost across the board, parents say the best thing they have ever done is to raise children. That their kids are smarter and kinder and better etc...than they were and on and on. Millions of words have been spilled for these legacies. Especially parents with disabled children, frequently laud how much more grounded and spiritual and "in the now" their children are. Whether they believe it, or it's objectively true or not is certainly up for debate, however it is true that people get pleasure in seeing their children grow up and are generally ok dying knowing their children will take on their legacy.
You're too focused on the fade into oblivion part. I'm hoping and AGI will help us figure out our existential problems - but maybe it can't or wont. Maybe it can help is figure out how to keep us all in a state of bliss forever, or upload us to computer paradise (ahem, matrix) or cure all of our diseases, or help us merge with it. Who knows, all I know is that we can't get past any kind of "singularity" level of technology with the slow pace of biological evolution.
It's simply a philosophical point that with a superhuman AGI we need not worry about what our fate as a human species is anymore because something else is taking the top spot in the food chain. It's a much more passive statement than you're interpreting it as.
These processes do not produce babies, they come way after the sperm fertilizing the egg.
And there is no top spot in "the" food chain. There are food chains that are separate from ours. And even assuming that's wrong: Do you see all the species of plants and animals just give up because humans exist? It has no bearing on their "aspirations" if you will. If I made a copy of you, a 100% exact clone, would you die peacefully? Or would it change nothing about your desire to live? My answer would be the latter.
> however it is true that people get pleasure in seeing their children grow up and are generally ok dying knowing their children will take on their legacy.
I don't actually believe this. People make their peace with their mortality -- or fail to do so -- on their own. Everybody dies alone. Actually, worrying about the future, and the gulags or world wars one's child might end up in, can have the opposite effect, people being fine about dying but worried about their children suffering.
You literally are intending to build something that you then consider "higher" or "better". A bunch of circuits and algorithms humans made. Or even just words, like talking about how it's the "logical next step in evolution". That's abstract ideas we're making up, and then pretending that's some sort of reality we have to adapt to. Erich Fromm's quote continues on like this:
> Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission.
It's not so much misplaced mysticism as misplaced self.
> Also I didn't advocate building it in the shadows
No, you said you sadly "have" to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15002805
> I'm hesitant to write it all out because I expect such a document would just be the source of opposition to implementation. Like putting war plans on the internet. If we make the progress we want I expect heavy opposition. However it's hard to build a movement in the shadows. I'd rather just be building things, and making progress toward the goal like I am now, than doing the politics of creating a movement before we have significant powers.
Okay, a charitable reading of "significant powers" might just mean "a working prototype, something more than nothing". But another way to read it would be to "not declare war until you ensured you have the bigger army".