Eliezer Schlomo Yudkowsky / LessWrong

[Senwosret III]

One of those ethicists would be Peter Singer, who routinely stakes out positions as edgelordy as the rats.

Thankfully, absolute utilitarians can be disproved by following the logical progression of their thoughts to a death cult. They almost prove ad absurdum that morality isn't subjective.

These idiotic faggots haven’t even realized that rational equations break down with infinity as a middle term.

That’s it. That’s the sum of their ethics. If “infinity” is put in the equation, any finite action is justifiable.

This is something most people get over in middle school, and/or in a basic philosophy class. But these idiots are “too smart” for that and so become word salad producers.

No wonder they hate LLMs, as those perfectly replace them.

I wouldn't say they hate LLMs, since this "superbaby" idea is mostly to create individuals able to work on this non-stop. However, as everyone in the thread pointed out, it is nothing more than eugenics to create not only a slave caste, whose right to liberty is being violated by being forced to work on a project (developing AI), but also forcing intelligent people, specifically bred to be geniuses, to slave away at a project without much choice. This is what I hate about transhumanists, they believe everyone should be on board with their absolute insanity just because it's for the "good" of mankind.

So, approaching this idea ethically we have two major concerns already in eugenics and slavery. Now comes the questions. What woman would agree for their baby to be forcibly mutated for this? I really don't want the answer to this question, I want to pretend we haven't all gone insane. What happens when you've created a caste of ubermenschen and you oppress them? Who stands to profit? All these questions lead you further into the cyberpunk nightmare we're sadly headed towards.

In any case, this has been a horrifying thought experiment, one that is becoming more common, with media, grifters and moguls parroting news about the latest new hot trends in science and technology without asking questions, and people swallowing their slop without saying "why?". All in all, each day makes me agree with Uncle Ted more and more.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

I realized the superbabies are useless as a "solution" even though it should have been obvious right away. The babies won't evolve enough generations of intelligence fast enough before the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent AI Demon does. For one thing, every baby of just the first generation will be worthless for at least two decades. The AI Demon is supposed to be here before then isn't it? The superbabies won't even be ready to create a more advanced batch of superbabies that will take another twenty years.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

They don't seem to have gotten past this, or at least not Yuddo. They're operating on something fundamentally broken. You can't expect much of people who get their philosophy from a clumsily written Harry Potter fanfic.

Or in other words, it's bike cuck as a fucking religious philosophy.

Theorem: There is no absurdity so absurd in a reductio ad absurdum that some idiot savant somewhere won't take it as gospel.

 

[ghjoigcbn]

What woman would agree for their baby to be forcibly mutated for this?

Well, based on the main protocol outlined in the article, the babies would be a clone as they are derived from a single stem cell. The embro then needs a donated embryo to be able to form the placenta and amniotic sac, as their stem cells cannot yet do this. The cells from the donated embryo that would form the baby would be destroyed. Considering many people seem to have no qualms about destroying their unused IVF embryos, it seems like they could feasibly obtain this.

They need to then implant the baby into uterus, actually a human woman. Now would these be volunteers or paid surrogates? Who would raise these children or be their parents? Would people pay to clone themselves into superbabies and then raise the superbabies? Or would the cell donors and people raising them be different and how would that be arranged?While there are tons or moral and ethical issues here, im sure rationalists would say, of course i would raise a superbaby to save humanity ! Anyone raising moral questions doesnt see how important this is and how close minded they are!! They see things differently.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

It makes me wonder if any of these rationalist vegans have actually looked into or been around livestock. Im not talking about watching those documentaries about factory farms where they show the worst stuff possible. But like seeing a family or friend who keeps a few chickens or goats and thinking, wow these babies are being tortured with their fresh food and ample space, eating eggs and milk they produce is evil!!! Further if you slaughter chickens humanely (the only ones i have had direct observation of ) they dont struggle or scream as these guys seem to think. Are they also against the euthanasia or culling of animals? Are they against the clearing of habitats to increase production of soybeans? Are they against the use of pesticides in that production? They make sure farmers dont set mouse traps pitside their barns do they? I seriously dont understand how being vegan for purely ethical reasons can be a logical position to hold. I think it just gives them a sense of moral superiority and that’s why they espouse it.

Spoiler: Lengthy rant on vegan viewpoints

Vegans argue that animal ownership by humans is inherently abusive no matter how ethical it may seem. They coopt a lot of language from the civil rights movement and compare animals to slaves (based?). The logic is that owning humans as property is always morally wrong even if you treat them well, keep them well fed and clothed, don't whip them, etc. so, if you consider animals as morally equal to humans, then owning animals as property is always morally wrong as well.

It's also worth noting that there are two main currents in the animal rights movement, welfarism and abolitionism (once again with the civil rights language). Welfarists argue that any improvement that can be made to an animal's welfare is a step towards animal liberation, while abolitions are all-or-nothing types that hate welfarists with a passion for delaying their progress and want animal liberation NOW NOW NOW.

About your other points, most of them are against culling and euthanasia, yes, but I've seen some argue in favor of the mass euthanasia of carnivores in the name of harm reduction. Relating to killing pest animals or using manure in organic farming, you'll often hear vegans say that veganism is practiced "as far as is possible and practical", which is a way to reconcile veganism with the fact that living without killing some animals is physically impossible.

The argument against the soy thing is that the majority of soybeans (or corn, or any other mass-produced crop) that are cultivated today go into animal feed, so you're actually killing less plants and reducing the amount of cleared land by just eating the plants directly instead of feeding them to animals and then eating those animals. Cutting out the middle man, if you will.

I don't know much about the rationalists, but I know more about the vegan movement than I probably should, so ask me anything about it if you're curious.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

"But what if the superbabies want to work on something other than AI?"
"Then we've engineered them wrong. Start over."

 

[ghjoigcbn]

euthanasia of carnivores in the name of harm reduction.

What is their general stance on carnivores?

 

[Hoverdrive]

So presume the existence of this imaginary entity, a creature that gains infinite happiness <...> from something that requires the extermination of humanity

Omg literally me.

The babies won't evolve enough generations of intelligence fast enough

I haven't read the article, but surely the idea is to genetically engineer the babies to be smart, and then enhance on top of that by any means available (nootropic drugs, cybernetic implants etc). If The Superbaby Project was to simply wait until babies become smarter on their own over several generations, then it wouldn't be much of a project, because that's already been happening for centuries, and continues to happen naturally.

 

[Flexo]

This is what I hate about transhumanists, they believe everyone should be on board with their absolute insanity just because it's for the "good" of mankind.

“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please…

…

At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses.

...

“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”
-C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man

 

[Squawking Macaw]

What is their general stance on carnivores?

It depends, but I'd say generally most vegans acknowledge that harm inflicted by other animals is none of their concern, not just in the case of predation but also with animals like dolphins that torture others for fun or hamsters killing their own offspring. The main argument is that animals are not moral agents and thus can't be held to human moral standards.

But as I said you've got some radical offshoots of veganism that oppose all meat eating, even by other animals. These ones are crazy even by vegan standards, they legitimately want to turn nature into a playground. Some of them argue for the complete extermination of carnivores, usually via mass sterilization, which is also what they propose for the inevitable prey overpopulation (don't ask them the logistics of that). You've got even more radical groups that argue for lunacy such as sterilizing all animals out of existence in order to end all suffering, but at this point we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a movement.

Then there's carnivorous pets. Once again you may find vegans arguing that making carnivorous pets vegan doesn't fit the definition of possible or practical, but there's a rising number of them arguing for feeding cats and dogs vegan diets as more studies are released, arguing that feeding grains and vegetables to a carnivore is totally healthy and normal and not at all ridiculous. You even have some that say keeping animals as pets is simply not vegan as you're treating them as property.

 

[autogynephobia]

They need to then implant the baby into uterus, actually a human woman. Now would these be volunteers or paid surrogates? Who would raise these children or be their parents?

These are the same people who think we're 10-15 years away from men gestating babies. Biological sex is totally irrelevant to them.

Something that tends to be overlooked in discussing Yud & co. is how much the average rationalist disdains women.

 

[OrangeJuliusEvola]

Heres a pretty comprehensive meta-analysis(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5195892/) And given what analysis of WW2 showed that those with higher IQ showed less combat fatigue and less PTSD overall(can't find the study at the moment) it seems fairly reasonable to assume that high IQs offer some form of protection against depression and anxiety attacks

It's not so much that you gain protection, but that you figure out cognitive workarounds for your brain dysfunction. Depression and anxiety are pretty easy to build workarounds because they are so ego dystonic and aren't very immediate. Anger management is much harder because that cathartic rage feels so damn good and when it hits, it just grabs the steering wheel and the monkey brain just takes over. Even mild to moderate autism can be overcome with brains, but it's fucking exhausting. I liken it to running normal human firmware in software emulation mode. You're there consciously and actively reading social cues and body language, processing it and giving responses, and you can only do that for so long or with so many people at one time before you crash. On the plus side, since it's not automatic, you get when certain things are "off" before other people do, or when you're subtly being manipulated, when your brain is fully running the normal human simulation mode.

So yes, IQ helps a good deal. I rather just wish I had a normal brain so I could devote more resources and mental energy effectively to my higher goals rather than spending so much of it in getting out of bed and living like a normal human being.

 

[neger psykolog]

It's not so much that you gain protection, but that you figure out cognitive workarounds for your brain dysfunction.

This was probably the case earlier on in history when it comes to general anxiety and general depression but in the modern day if someone of reasonable intellect can digest enough information from/about enough places and understand the way the world works (or doesn't) and gains an impression about which way it is headed then there is scant protection that having a bigger brain can provide. Intelligence means being able to read everything and paint a picture of the future but I'm not sure how or if intelligence relates to optimism - and optimism is required to paint a nice picture which may be far from reality.

Reading, comprehending, understanding and starting to see with your own two eyes what is happening unfortunately isn't really brain dysfunction.

The only real protection the brain can have against that is maybe once it goes too far to give itself a little electric prod to try and make a person take reality and what they're seeing a little less seriously and to not read too much again, otherwise they'll just end up in the same place.

 

[OrangeJuliusEvola]

This was probably the case earlier on in history when it comes to general anxiety and general depression but in the modern day if someone of reasonable intellect can digest enough information from/about enough places and understand the way the world works (or doesn't) and gains an impression about which way it is headed then there is scant protection that having a bigger brain can provide. Intelligence means being able to read everything and paint a picture of the future but I'm not sure how or if intelligence relates to optimism - and optimism is required to paint a nice picture which may be far from reality.

Reading, comprehending, understanding and starting to see with your own two eyes what is happening unfortunately isn't really brain dysfunction.

The only real protection the brain can have against that is maybe once it goes too far to give itself a little electric prod to try and make a person take reality and what they're seeing a little less seriously and to not read too much again, otherwise they'll just end up in the same place.

You have to think contextually.

People for most of history didn't catastrophize in their heads because actual catastrophe was a very real and immanent thing. Death was one bad harvest, one infected cut, one roving band of brigands away. You didn't need to be smart to know that. Even the village idiot knew it. Did this paralyze them, did they weep in fear of what would happen?
No, they ate, drank and made merry, for tomorrow they would die. They did their work, prayed to their gods and celebrated their festivals, for tomorrow was when their village was abandoned and its fields fallow. They bore children and raised their families, for tomorrow would be the day their infant perished from a fever in their arms. Then, and only then, when that tomorrow arrived, came the time for weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the essence of Momento Mori.
The actual truth of the matter is not that our world is getting worse in some unique way, but that for far too long we have been estranged from our own humanity, made comfortable and distracted from the darker inevitable sides of life by the diversions and amusements of modernity. Know that one day you will die, that everyone you know will be dead, and your very presence on this earth will be a forgotten relic of a world that doesn't exist anymore. This is inevitable. But smile and be glad, for that day has not arrived.

 

[AnOminous]

This is the essence of Momento Mori.

Agree rated but it's memento mori not momento mori.

 

[Bucephalus]

View attachment 7005930
View attachment 7005931

https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1892374125089341444

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ZxZ0r

Superbabies!

I never really read much of the shit these people write because it's boring but this has got me asking some serious questions:
View attachment 7005949

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-make-superbabies

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/HS0ib

Are they not aware that there is a fairly strong correlation between intelligence and depression? The kind that can't exactly just be whisked away by removing genes related to depression?
View attachment 7006063

Guess not!

View attachment 7006140

The nature of humanity is such that every so often, someone accidentally reinvents Brave New World again.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

I haven't read the article, but surely the idea is to genetically engineer the babies to be smart, and then enhance on top of that by any means available (nootropic drugs, cybernetic implants etc). If The Superbaby Project was to simply wait until babies become smarter on their own over several generations, then it wouldn't be much of a project, because that's already been happening for centuries, and continues to happen naturally.

But surely one set of smarter babies won't outsmart an omniscient AI. We already have all the rationalists and they haven't yet.

I wasn't suggesting that the babies become smarter over several generations, I was assuming that the superbabies would be able to develop their own more advanced form of superbabies over us idiots for the same reason they're assuming the superbabies could better match the AI. This would match the exponential self-replicating AI making itself smarter. The problem would continue to be that humans have to grow up and mature whereas the AI would not. Even if we assume a superbaby to become like multi-science-PhD genius by 15, that's 15 years of the AI's constant exponential growth.

This isn't even getting into how the superbabies would still need to specialize while the AI can know and do everything itself since it's not bound by time and space or health limitations. They're basically assuming that we're not getting minmaxed humans but literal competing gods to fight God. And getting it from the first generation off the line.

Yudd's fucking up because he's putting an actual timeline on things and it's tied to human development unless he wants to take the next step and claim we can pop out fully mature superhumans from a mold or some shit.

 

[Annealing Crater]

There's no way the superbabies are going to beat the AI in time. Yud only has 12,436 lines of code left to write until God is created. At just $5 per line, we could knock this thing out in 6 months if we can get 25k people to donate. Or is that grift over already? I haven't been following it too closely.

 

[Punished Derich]

How is breeding indentured servants morally better than eating meat

 

[demicolon]

momento mori

You're gonna die... in a moment!

Re: animals
Veganism is a pointless excercise as it all revolves around the vegan's fee fees about animals who honestly couldn't give a shit how much compassion the vegan holds for them. It's little different from a religious belief. My waking moment was when the barn door got busted and all the cattle went out. You'd expect them to go run free but no, they'd mill around for a bit then go back to their prison as they know nothing else and are terrified of the world outside. It's the The ones who walk away from Omelas thing where you feel bad for the kid but seriously, what setting it free accomplishes? That kid lived in a cage its whole life, it doesn't care to go out, open the door and it's gonna stay inside anyway. Add to that how Lovecraftian the life of wild animals is, you're being eaten alive from the inside by disease and parasites for the most of it, constantly stressed out and on the edge until you get literally eaten alive in the end by a bigger fish than you.

Re: designer babies
Check out William Sidis' life, his father tried to mold him in a similar way Yuddites would like to. All it amounted to is damaging William to the point he wasted his life on obsessing over sports betting or something. And he was a communist, literally the smartest recorded person ever born thought Lenin was on to something. Ain't that funny? Gives credence to my theory that the first sentient AI is gonna be super religious. My bet is that all those test-tube kids will be very pissed at being treated that way and will go out of their way to waste their potential to make daddies mad, or engineer some kind of global disaster to make everyone suffer as much as they did. I agree that as a species we ought to first work on improving our IQ and get around AI later but maybe Yud and Co. ought to start having kids on their own if they truly believe that.