It's because of competition that we are in this situation. When the economic system and relationships between countries are based on competition, it's nearly impossible to avoid these races to the bottom. We need more systems based on cooperation instead of competition.

International systems are more organic than designed, but the problem with cooperation is that it's not a particularly stable arrangement without enforcement - sure, everybody is better off when everybody cooperates, but you can be even better off when you don't cooperate but everybody else does.

I'm not certain of the balance myself. I was thinking as a counterpoint of the band The Beatles where the two song writers (McCartney and Lennon) are seen in competition. There is a balance there between their competitiveness as song writers and their cooperation in the band.

I think it is one-sided to see any situation where we want to retain balance as being significantly affected by one of the sides exclusively. If one believes that there is a balance to be maintained between cooperation and competition, I don't immediately default to believing that any perceived imbalance is due to one and not the other.

> We need more systems based on cooperation instead of competition.

That requires dissolving the anarchy of the international system. Which requires an enforcer.

Isn't this the opposite? If you want competition then you need something like the WTO as a mechanism to prevent countries from putting up trade barriers etc.

If some countries want to collaborate on some CERN project they just... do that.

> If you want competition then you need something like the WTO as a mechanism to prevent countries from putting up trade barriers etc.

That's an enforcer. Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.

> If some countries want to collaborate on some CERN project they just... do that

CERN is about doing thing, not not doing things. You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.

> That's an enforcer. Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.

The mechanism in principle is pretty simple and largely works: You both agree not to tariff each other's exports and various other conditions and then if one of you breaks the deal the other one doesn't have to follow through on their end either, and maybe some extra leverage from being a multi-party organization because Country A breaking their deal with Country B means Country C can also apply sanctions to Country A.

Obviously it doesn't work if you don't actually do it.

> You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.

But that's also not about cooperation. The US has nuclear weapons and they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. What is Iran getting out of this? Cooperation is working together toward a common goal. "Don't do this thing it's otherwise in your interest to do" is either a bribe or a threat.

The closest you get to not doing something being cooperative would be something like, an agreement not to do gain of function research. But that's a judgement call about a tradeoff. If you do the research and it escapes from the lab you get a pandemic; if you don't do the research then you don't have the science when there is a natural pandemic. If countries agree that the tradeoff isn't worth it then you don't need an enforcement mechanism, they just refrain from doing it. If they don't agree, how do you even determine who is right? Or, if you somehow answer that question, you're back to the non-cooperative case where one country is forcing its will on another instead.

> You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.

Non-proliferation is, the US has nuclear weapons and doesn't want Iran to have them, so is going to apply some kind of bribe or threat. It's not cooperative.

The better example here is climate change. Everyone has a direct individual benefit from burning carbon but it's to our collective detriment, so how do you get anyone to stop, especially the countries with large oil and coal reserves?

In theory you could punish countries that don't stop burning carbon, but that appears to be hard and in practice what's doing the most good is making solar cheaper than burning coal and making electric cars people actually want, politics of infamous electric car man notwithstanding.

So what does that look like for making AI "safe, secure and trustworthy"? Maybe something like publishing state of the art models for free with full documentation of how they were created, so that people aren't sending their sensitive data to questionable third parties who do who knows what with it or using models with secret biases.

> Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.

That's a little misleading. What actually happened is summarized here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellate_Body

Since 2019, when the Donald Trump administration blocked appointments to the body, the Appellate Body has been unable to enforce WTO rules and punish violators of WTO rules. Subsequently, disregard for trade rules has increased, leading to more trade protectionist measures. The Joe Biden administration has maintained Trump's freeze on new appointments.

I’d nominate either the AGI people keep telling me is “right around the corner”, or the NHI that seem to keep popping up around nuclear installations.

Clearly humans aren’t able to do this task.

Competition is as old as time. There are single celled organisms on your skin right now competing for resources to live. There is nothing more innate to life than this.

Cooperation is as old as time. There are single celled organisms living symbiotically on your skin right now.

The mitochondria in my cells are also symbiotes but thats just because whatever ancestor ate then found they were hard to digest.

The naturalistic fallacy is still a fallacy.

The bacteria that are most related to mithocondria are intracelular parasits, so they were probably not eaten while roaming arround pacefully, they are probably nasty parasits that got lazy.

But humans aren't living in the "untamed wilds". We figured out that it's possible to cooperate, even in large numbers, in many-thousands-of-years-BC. Since then we're been scaling up the level of cooperation. The last century provides many examples of successful cooperation between even states -- e.g. various nuclear test ban treaties. Why pretend that now of all times it's somehow impossible for us to cooperate?

> if that means you will be uncompetitive in the new emerging world. (…) There is a difference between being careful and being fearful.

I’m so sick of that word. “You need to be competitive”, “you need to innovate”. Bullshit. You want to talk about fear? “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant. They’re not being competitive or innovative, they’re sucking you dry of as much value as they can. We all need to take a breath. Stop and think for a moment. You can literally eat food which grows from the ground and make a shelter with a handful of planks and nails. Humanity survived and thrived before all this unfettered consumption, we don’t need to kill ourselves for more.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

I live in a ruralish area. There is a lot of forested area and due to economic depression there are a lot of people living in the woods. Most live in tents but some actually cut down the trees and turn them into make-shift shacks. Using planks and nails like you suggest. They often drag propane burners into the woods which often leads to fires. Perhaps this is what you mean?

In reality, most people will continue to live the modern life where there are doctors, accountants, veterinarians, mechanics. We'll continue to enjoy food distribution and grocery stores. We'll all hope that North America gets its act together and build high speed rail so we can travel comfortably for long distances.

There was a time Canada was a big exporter of engineering technology. From mining to agriculture, satellites, and nuclear technology. I want Canada to be competitive in these ways, not making makeshift shacks out of planks and nails for junkies that have given up on life and live in the woods.

> They often drag propane burners into the woods which often leads to fires. Perhaps this is what you mean?

I believe you very well know it’s not, and are transparently arguing in bad faith.

> shacks (…) for junkies that have given up on life

The insults you’ve chosen are quite telling. Not everyone living in a way you disapprove of is an automatic junky.

> I believe you very well know it’s not, and are transparently arguing in bad faith.

That is actually what you are talking about; "uncompetitive" looks like something in the real world. There isn't an abstract dial that someone twiddles to set the efficiency of two otherwise identical outcomes - the competitive one will typically look more advanced and competently organised in observable ways.

To live in nice houses and have good food requires a competitive economy. The uncompetitive version was literally living in the forest with some meagre shelter and maybe having a wood fire to cook food (that was probably going to make someone very sick). The reason the word "competitive" turns up so much is people living in a competitive society get to have a more comfortable lifestyle. People literally starve to death if the food system isn't run with a competitive system that tends towards efficiency; that experiment has been run far too many times.

What the experiment has repeatedly shown is that people living in non-competitive systems starve to death when they get in the way of a system that has been optimized solely for ruthless economic efficiency.

The big one that leaps to mind was the famines with the communist experiments in the 20th century. But there are other, smaller examples that crop up disturbingly regularly. Sri Lanka's fertiliser ban was a jaw-dropper; Zimbabwe redistributing land away from whites was also interesting. There are probably a lot more though, messing with food logistics on the theory there are more important things than producing lots of food seems to be one of those things countries do from time to time.

People can argue about the moral and ideological sanity of these things, but the fact is tolerating economic inefficiencies into the food system can quickly leads to there not being enough food.

The big ones that leapt to my mind were the Great Irish famine the duration of which food exports to Great Britain were higher than food imports, Bengal famine (the Brits again), and starvation of Native Americans through targeted eradication of the bison.

You stated one ludicrous extreme (food comes out of the ground! shelter is planks and nails!) and I stated another ludicrous extreme. You can make my position look simplistic and I can make your position look simplistic. You can't then cry foul.

You are also assuming, in bad faith, an "all" where I did not place one. It is an undeniable fact with evidence beyond any reasonable doubt, including police reports and documented studies by the district, that the makeshift shacks in the rural woods near my house are made by drug addicts that are eschewing the readily available social housing for the specific reason that they can't go to that housing due to its explicit restrictions on drug use.

> ludicrous extreme

I don’t understand this. Are you not familiar with farming and houses? You know humans grow plants to eat (including in backyards and balconies in cities) and make cabins, chalets, houses, entire neighbourhoods (Sweden currently planning the largest) with wood, right?

You are making a caricature of modern lifestyle farming, not an argument for people literally living as they did in the past. Going to your local garden center and buying some seedlings and putting them on your balcony isn't demonstrative of a life like our ancestors lived. Living in one of the wealthiest countries to ever have existed and going to the hardware store to buy expensive hardwoods to decorate your house isn't the same as living as our ancestors did.

You don't realize the luxury you have and for some reason you assume that it is possible without that wealth. The reality of that lifestyle without tremendous wealth is more like subsistence farming in Africa and less like Swedish planned neighborhoods.

> (…) not an argument for people literally living as they did in the past. (…) isn't demonstrative of a life like our ancestors lived. (…) isn't the same as living as our ancestors did.

Correct. Nowhere did I defend or make an appeal to live life “as they did in the past” or “like our ancestor did”. We should (and don’t really have a choice but to) live forward, not backward. We should take the good things we learned and apply them positively to our lives in the present and future, and not strive for change and consumption for their own sakes.

You said: "Humanity survived and thrived before all this unfettered consumption, we don’t need to kill ourselves for more."

To deny that your juxtaposition of this claim with your point about growing seeds and nailing together planks doesn't pass my personal test of credibility. You say: "Stop and think for a moment. You can literally eat food which grows from the ground and make a shelter with a handful of planks and nails." but that isn't indicative of a thriving life as I demonstrated. You can do both of those things and still live in squalor, a condition I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

You then suggest that I don't understand farming or house construction to defend that point, as if the existence of backyard gardens or wood cabins proves the point that a modern comfortable life is possible with gardens and wood cabins. My point is that the wealth we have makes balcony gardens and wood cabins possible and you are reasoning backwards. To be clear, we get to enjoy the modern luxury of backyard gardens and wood cabins by being wealthy and we don't get to be wealthy by making backyard gardens and wood cabins.

> We should take the good things we learned and apply them positively to our lives in the present and future

Sure, and I can argue competitiveness could be a lesson we have learned that can be applied positively. The way it is used positively in team sports and many other aspects of society.

You, too, should read this and maybe try and tale it to heart:

https://crimethinc.com/2018/09/03/the-mythology-of-work-eigh...

This may resonate with you:

https://crimethinc.com/2018/09/03/the-mythology-of-work-eigh...

> “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant

If a society is okay accepting a lower standard of living and sovereign subservience, then sure, competition doesn't matter. But if America and China have AI and nukes and Europe doesn't, one side gets to call the shots and the other has to listen.

> a lower standard of living

We better start really defining what that means, because it has become quite clear that all this “progress” is not leading to better lives. We’re literally going to kill ourselves with climate change.

> AI and nukes

Those two things aren’t remotely comparable.

> it has become quite clear that all this “progress” is not leading to better lives

How do you think the average person under 50 would poll on being teleported to the 1950s? No phones, no internet, jet travel is only for the elite, oh nuclear war and MAD are new cultural concepts, yippee, and fuck you if you're black because the civil rights acts are still a decade out.

> two things aren’t remotely comparable

I'm assuming no AGI, just massive economic efficiencies. In that sense, nuclear weapons give strategic autonomy through military coercion and the ability to grant a security umbrella, which fosters e.g. trade ties. In the same way, the wealth from an AI-boosted economy fosters similar trade ties (and creates similar costs for disengaging). America doesn't influence Europe by threatening to nuke it, but by threatening not to nuke its enemies.

There's no objective definition of what progress even means so the guy is kinda right. We live in a postmodernist society where its not easy to find meaningfullness. All these debates have been discussed by philosophers like Nietzche and Hegel. The media and society shape our understanding and importance of whats popular, progressive and utilitarian.

> on being teleported to the 1950s?

That’s not the argument. At all. I argued we should rethink our attitude of unfettered consumption so we don’t continue on an path which is provably leading to destruction and death, and your take is going back in time to nuclear war and overt racism. That is frankly insane. I’m not fetishising “the old days”, I’m saying this attitude of “more more more” does not automatically translate to “better”.

You said "all this 'progress' is not leading to better lives." That implies lives were better or at least as good before "all this 'progress'."

If you say Room A is not better than Room B, then you should be, at the very least, indifferent to swapping between them. If you're against it, then Room A is better than Room B. Our lives are better--civically, militarily and materially--than they were before. Complaining about unfettered consumerism by falsely claiming our lives are worse today than they were before doesn't support your argument. (It's further undercut by the falling material and energy intensity of GDP in the rich world. We're able to produce more value for less input resource-wise.)

> You said "all this 'progress' is not leading to better lives." That implies lives were better or at least as good before "all this 'progress'."

No. There is a reason I put the word in quotes. We are on a thread, the conversation follows from what came before. My original post was explicit about words used to bullshit us. I was specifically referring to what the “unscrupulous people at the top” call “progress”, which doesn’t truly progress humanity or enhances the lives of most people, only theirs.

There are many people claiming many things. Not sure which "top" you are referring to, but everybody at the end of a chain (most rich, most political powerful, most popular), generally are selected for being unscrupulous. So not sure why you should ever trust what they say... If you agree, just ignore what most of what those say and find other people to listen to for interesting things.

To give a tech example, not many people were listening to Stallman and Linus and they still managed to change a lot for the better.

To be honest, the 1950s become more appealing by the year.

I'd like to see a poll if the average person would like to be teleported 75 years into the future to 2100.

When does that competitiveness and innovation stop though? If they stopped 100 years ago where would we be today as a species and is that better or worse than today? How about 1000 years ago?

We face issues (like we always have), but I'd argue quite strongly that the competitiveness in our history and drive to invent and innovate has led to where we are today and it's a good thing.

> You don't want to be stuck in a country that outlaws AI

Just as you don't want to be stuck in the only town that outlaws murder...

I am not a religious person, but I can see the value in promoting shared taboos. The question is, how do we do this in the modern world? We had some success with nuclear weapons. I don't think it's any coincidence that contemporary leaders (and possibly populations) seem to have forgotten how bloody dangerous they are and how utterly stupid it is to engage in brinkmanship with so much on the line.

This is a good point, and it is the reason why communists argued that the only way communism could work is if it happened globally simultaneously. You don't want to be the only non-capitalist country in a world of capitalists. Of course, when the world-wide revolution didn't happen they were forced to change their tune and adjust.

As for nuclear weapons, I mean it does kind of suck in today's age to be a country without nuclear weapons, right? Like, certain well known countries would really like to have them so they wouldn't feel bullied by the ones that have them. So, I actually think that example works against you. And we very well may end up in a similar circumstance where a few countries get super powerful AGIs and then use their advantage to prevent any other country from getting it as well. Therefore my point stands: I don't want to be in one of the countries that doesn't get to be in that exclusive club.

Frankly, in the event of nuclear war, I'd rather be in a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons than in one that does. Australia and New Zealand will probably come out of such a scenario ~fine; India and Pakistan will not, the US and Russia will not, neither China, nor France, nor the UK will either. For Nigeria (e.g.) to build nuclear weapons today would certainly give them some level of international sway (though it could also result in the destruction of their economy thanks to international sanctions), but it would also put them on the map where they had not been before.

"one hand behind our back"? We're talking about who's going to be the first to build the thing that might kill all of humanity. Or, even in many of the happier scenarios, the thing which will impoverish and immiserate the vast majority of the population, rendering them permanently subject to the whims of the capital-owning few.

Why is it "our" back? The people who will own these machines do not consider you one of them. The people leading the countries that will use these machines to kill each other's civilians do not consider you one of them. You have far more in common with a Chinese worker than you do with Sam Altman or Jeff Bezos.

And frankly? I think choosing a (say, conservatively, just going off of the estimates Altman and Amodei have made in the past) 20% chance of killing everyone as our first resort is just morally unacceptable. If the US made an effort to halt research and China still kept at it, sure, I won't complain I suppose, but we haven't, and pretending that China is the problem when it's our labs pushing the edge on capabilities -- it's just comedic.