Mapping the debate about desirable futures
We can map talk about desirable futures along several axes. Here are a few:
Axiology: partial or impartial (human prejudice vs view from nowhere).
Metaethics: naturalism vs non-naturalism (orthogonality thesis; alignment problem).
Evolution: fatalism or agency (inevitable vs contingent).
Rationality: ecological vs axiological (maxipok or maximise across the multiverse).
The philosophical questions above inform the more empirical debates about emerging technologies, such as:
Optimal rate of change: slow vs fast (or mixed).
Competition vs governance.
Convergence.
What are some other important axes? What are the most plausible combinations? Where do key thinkers land on these?
I find it surprisingly hard to name more than a handful of people who have written on all of the above in public.
But I’ll have a go at placing people on these axes in a forthcoming post.
For now I’ll just note that there’s too much complexity here. Ultimately we need to distill our views down into some rough rules of thumb and faint guiding stars, then just chart a path through the froth of uncertainty (with wonder, vigour and Yes-saying).
As part of this, we need a vibe. e/acc is naive. Safety-ism lacks charisma. “It’s time to build” is good, but tainted by association with Marc’s recent screed.
As usual I’m back to Tyler—“be a builder”:
Tyler Cowen: Uncertainty should not paralyze you. Try to do your best, pursue maximum expected value, and just avoid the moral nervousness. Be a little Straussian about it. Like here’s a rule, on average it’s a good rule, we’re all gonna follow it. Bravo, go on to the next thing. Be a builder.
Joe Walker: Get on with it?
Tyler Cowen: Yes. Because ultimately the nervous Nellies, they’re not philosophically sophisticated, they’re overindulging in their own neuroticism when you get right down to it. So it’s not like there’s some brute ‘let’s be a builder’ view and then in contrast there’s some deeper wisdom that the real philosophers pursue. It’s: you be a builder or you’re a nervous Nelly. Take your pick. I say be a builder.
Also: be a two-thirds utilitarian.
And: be a Yes-sayer.
Sometimes I think that “get on with it” is the push I need too. Why am I constantly pulled back to philosophy?
Flo Crivello on entrepreneurship in the present moment
At this point, if your startup’s vision doesn’t sound like hard sci fi, you’re probably not understanding what’s going on.
Richard Ngo on posthuman freedom
Just under the surface, joyful humans are granted miraculous powers: to soar through air and sea, to play games on the scale of planets, to morph their bodies as they please. Beneath them, you see a society that’s explored further, morphing not just their bodies, but also their minds—belief and desire and identity become as malleable as clay. Beneath them, you lose sight of individuals: at those depths minds merge and split and reform like currents in the ocean. And beneath even that? It’s hard for you to make sense of the impressions you’re getting—whatever is down there can’t be described in human terms. In the farthest reaches there are only alien algorithms, churning away on computers that stretch across galaxies, calculating the output of some function far beyond your comprehension.
And now you see the trap. Each step down makes so much sense, from the vantage point of the previous stage. But after you take any step, the next will soon be just as tempting. And once you’re in the water, there’s no line you can draw, no fence that can save you. You’ll just keep sinking deeper and deeper, with more and more of your current self stripped away—until eventually you’ll become one of the creatures that you can glimpse only hazily, one of the deep-dwelling monsters that has forsaken anything recognizably human.
So this is the line you decided to draw: here, and no further. You’ll live out your lives in a mundane world of baseline humans, with only a touch of magic at the edges—just enough to satisfy the wondering child in you. You’ll hold on to yourself, because what else is there to hold onto?
Sam Altman’s closing remarks at OpenAI DevDay
We hope that you’ll come back next year. What we launch today is going to look very quaint relative to what we’re busy creating for you now.
AI safety and the Last Man
Marc Andreessen, Wolf Tivvy and Nick Land all think that the AI safety crowd exhibit the fearfulness of Nietzsche’s Last Man in the face of “dangerous agency” (Wolf’s phrase) 1.
The Last Man dreams of a procedural utilitarian peace and security. He hopes that moral philosophy and rational decision theory might lead to an end of war.
By contrast: the Nietzschean, evolutionary thinkers valorise struggle, bravery and Great Men. For them, Darwinian competition continues forever.
But: key figures in the AI safety crowd are evolutionary thinkers, transhumanists. While Derek Parfit represents the Last Man, Nick Bostrom is a Nietzsche super-fan 2.
Parfit’s longtermism is that of the Last Man. Bostrom’s might just be Nietzschean, with greater pragmatism, and greater realism 3.
It’s tempting to write off pragmatists as Last Men, technocrats whose only dreams are nightmares. But I don’t think that’s right.
The Great Man is a pragmatist by necessity. Unlike the Last Man, he does not value comfort and security above all else—he accepts risk of death when it is called for. But he is not indifferent to risk—he wants to win, he wants to say “Yes”.
Two-thirds utilitarianism, conservative humanism and transhumanist dreams can fit together more easily than one might think.
So too would FT Marinetti.↩︎
“Superfan” is the word used by one of his research assistants, in private conversation. But this is low-key evident in his transhumanist writings and his recent paper on metaethics.↩︎
His concept of the Singleton (and its tacit recommendation) might seem deeply anti-Nietzschean. But he thinks of this as a likely outcome of evolutionary dynamics as we climb the technology tree.↩︎
“The Manifesto of Futurism“ by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
1 We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2 The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3 Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4 We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5 We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6 The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervour of the primordial elements.
7 Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8 We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9 We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10 We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11 We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multicoloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals; the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons; the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers; adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.Author’s note: It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries. Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.
