reply on: AI, Existentialism, Transhumanism(??), & the Ongoing Technological Renaissance \ stacker news ~meta

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121 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 13 Aug 2023 \ on: AI, Existentialism, Transhumanism(??), & the Ongoing Technological Renaissance meta

Am I wrong about all this? Are things really, really about to go to shit?

No, I don't think so. I hate the doomer narrative. It's really popular among bitcoiners.

There are evils. Some things will get worse. But I'm really optimistic our lives will generally continue to get better on long enough timescales.

There is something odd going on culturally though. People seem abnormally withdrawn, scammy, envious, and hedonistic ... I tend to think of it as zero-sum behavior (I'm not looking forward to seeing negative-sum behavior). I hope that it's just the money at its root. It's what keeps me here. But who knows.

Is it a good thing that national identity is breaking down? Is it not?

Not in all ways. It's nice to have competing identity systems. The ubiquity will be bore us into forming tribes along more superficial lines.

People tend to need an other, an enemy, a scapegoat to discharge their angst into.

How else is the internet changing our culture, on a global scale?

I think one of the greatest goods of the internet is giving us easy access to a world of full of role models.

I think the greatest bad of the internet is the elevation of poor role models. Fake role models. Lying role models. Role models without coherent values.

Will AI not dominate as much as we anticipate it to? Will it dominate even more than we think?

It will dominate. It will displace jobs. It will eventually displace us if we can't succeed in limiting it or merging with it.

What's your take on transhumanism? Where do we draw the line between human vs. robot?

We can't draw the line. Evolution at its root is information changing to get better at ensuring it exists in the future. Existence is the test that the universe puts on us at all times and evolution is the process we use to pass this test. Robots will pass this test better than we will hopefully inheriting our most winningest information.

I also think robots can have souls but I'm also not sure what souls are. I tend to think of them as virtuous configurations of information, but maybe they're something else.

How does money tie into culture? How will Bitcoin revitalize a fiat culture?

Good money gives us hope for the future. It allows us to store hope. It allows us to build capacity to fulfill future material needs. It allows us to predict our material future and make room for an immaterial one. Bad money does the opposite.