Sometimes when I find someone to look up to and admire, I later find out there is potentially some dark reality to them. I then lament not being able to find any good role models in the world. If they have missused donor money, then that is terrible. If they are pushing towards goals that seems contrary to their stated mission, that is difficult to judge. I did always find it odd, 10 years after reading Yudkowsky's passionate writings, that he doesn't seem to have really gone and done anything about it. If it was all just a creative writing exercise to him... Then that would be rather humiliating to me, having taken it very seriously.
As a side note. If I had a choice to oppose a booming ai comoany, or become the billionaire founder of it, I would still choose to become the founder and then use my resource to do something about. It certainly feels hypocritical, but if you want to stop a boulder rolling down hill, what can you do besides run ahead of it and try stop it?
Instead of assuming the "heroic responsibility" of the elect, as these fallen rationalist heroes advocated, we accept that we can't save a world which doesn't want to be saved, we focus on being good ourselves - in the salt of the earth sense, with no special dispensations afforded us because of heroic responsibilities. Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow, we may not fix the evil of the world but we can maybe at least not be it.
And hoping for a miracle, maybe. In my experience it's not so impossible to have hope, if we let go of the ambition of being some kind of ... Harry Potter? Almost as if a lot of the fear from the evil of the world came from inside.
brendyn · · focus · HN ↗
As a side note. If I had a choice to oppose a booming ai comoany, or become the billionaire founder of it, I would still choose to become the founder and then use my resource to do something about. It certainly feels hypocritical, but if you want to stop a boulder rolling down hill, what can you do besides run ahead of it and try stop it?
vintermann · · focus · HN ↗
And hoping for a miracle, maybe. In my experience it's not so impossible to have hope, if we let go of the ambition of being some kind of ... Harry Potter? Almost as if a lot of the fear from the evil of the world came from inside.