American utopian experiments almost invariably turn into epic catastrophes and this particular one looks horrific. I don't know if these are #TESCREAL people but it'd almost certainly be a magnet for folks like that.
#OrganicMaps is here. Use it while offline and feel good about a #privacy-respecting app that doesn't suck you dry of your personal information. Based on #OpenStreetMap this app is gonna blow #Google#Maps out of the water (hopefully ;)
...type of leaks (#CambridgeAnalyticaSummit, ) probably apart from post-Dorsey #Twitter (#X,) soon to become the "everything app," like the state-surveillance tool #WeChat, if #Elmo continues to have his way and people are stupid enough to follow him down that rabbit hole (#TESCREAL.)
But this goes way beyond this convo.
#Longtermism#TESCREAL#AGI: "The warnings I articulated in 2019 and 2021 are no longer merely hypothetical. What we’re seeing now is exactly what I worried could happen in the years to come. It didn’t take long for my predictions to prove accurate. When leading TESCREALists argue that existential risks are the “one kind of catastrophe that must be avoided at any cost,” to quote Bostrom with italics added, one shouldn’t be surprised if members of the community start talking about the use of force, military strikes, or targeted killings to reduce the supposed “existential risk” of AGI.
I do not know how this ends, but what’s clear from history is that many utopian movements, embracing a kind of “utilitarian” reasoning, have left a trail of destruction behind them. Will this time be any different? It depends on whether the power and influence of the TESCREAL movement continues to grow, and right now, the trendlines are ominous."
"This is a Code Red Warning about TESCREALism. If Yudkowsky's words are taken seriously by our political leaders, or perhaps some lone wolves, we should be extremely worried about the harms that could result. Over and over again, history shows that the march to utopia can leave a trail of destruction in its wake. If the ends can justify the means, and the end is paradise, then what exactly is off the table for protecting and preserving this end?"
-- @xriskology
On that note though, fascism is rapidly reforming today into that of a technologist cult. #TESCREAL to put a finer point on it. And they'll present their engineering as education itself, which isn't true, and they'll masquerade as enlightened and highly intelligent. They aren't. But just goes further to show how readily adaptable fascism is.
"Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, with whom Musk has both worked and sparred, told me, “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”"
"It is difficult to say whether Musk’s interest in A.I. is driven by scientific wonder and altruism or by a desire to dominate a new and potentially powerful industry."
This article is completely missing Elmo's #TESCREAL ideologies.
I became interested in Musk less than a year ago + the first thing I stumbled upon were his alarming ideologies. I am baffled + irritated that Farrow has left out #tescreal.
Der im südafrikanischen #Apartheid-System in der Oberschicht grossgewordene #Musk ist Anhänger einer rassistischen, faschistoiden Filosophie (#Longtermism), die sehr viele finanzstarke Anhänger hat.
Sie gehört aus Forschersicht zum #TESCREAL-Gedankengut, wie es seit Neuestem abgekürzt wird.
Hier ein Thread von mir dazu, der dies näher erläutert:
It occurred to me today that the social value of the open-source work I do in my free time has probably been an order of magnitude more useful to the world than everything I've ever done as a paid employee. Needing to seek a wage almost certainly makes me a less productive member of society than I would otherwise be.
Yes, agreed. However, that raises the specter of "ideological incest," as I would call it, and here we are at a big other topic, #TESCREAL (I covered that yesterday in a repeat of some of my threads.)
I threatends the complete world order we have presently, and no, not in the way you would like it to move, but in to a complete #oligarchy. Fact.
It is not just that, alas, my post is in Germany (which I will put, regardless, afterwards,) here is a post in English about a NTY article about the unprecedented power Musk has amassed in satellite internet communications.
If you listen to the interview, @timnitGebru makes it very clear that except for one black swan, all tech billionaires in #SiliconValley are (chiefly white) males that (mostly?--don't recall) belief in #TESCREAL. #SciFi, in particular certain novels, that used to be nerd stuff, has become main stream.
These two threads emanate from the influential tech billionaires and VC funds. They replicate through funding other white males, indoctrinated by this (on the one hand) fascist thought.
When writing my #solarpunk essay to the Polish ZNAK magazine I was asked to write a section outlining the differences between the movement and #longtermism (together with #effectiveAltruism, #transhumanism and more).
I think it's important to understand what #TESCREAL (a term coined by Timnit Gebru) is and how it might be one of the dominating narratives on our future in the coming years.
I'm not saying that there aren't people conscious of more subtle consequences of technology and its shapes among the #TESCREAL followers (is it a good word?). I'm saying that the movement itself is a mask hiding a lot of models, assumptions, beliefs, calling them "objective" and "rational" only to discredit any dissenting points.
For me it was much easier to find someone to discuss critical design among hackers and anarchists, criticizing society as well - than among transhumanists.
We should see it when it subtly influences the narratives around us, when yet another #technoSolutionism preacher tells us that we need to give even more control to whoever is holding power over tech.
That's it's a technological, not a social problem.
At the end of the day, it might not be #cyberpunk 's nihilism versus #solarpunk 's utopia.
It might be #TESCREAL 's path to the stars, #longtermism 's view where each of us (and the planet) become expendable cogs, overseen by the rational ruling elites,
versus
#solarpunk , where we hope for federations of messy, anarchist, human-scale communities each deciding their own future in an suboptimal way, but without overlords.
This presentation by @timnitGebru, "Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through AGI", is a concentrated braindump that illustrates the path from centuries of racism and oppression to today's techbro mythology of a technological utopia.
It's also a reminder that people who talk-up "AGI" have ugly ideologies and don't know jack about AI.
Those of us trying to understand capitalism in the age of #billionaires need to pay attention to what besides profit itself is inspiring accumulation and shaping investments.
Fantasies and imagined futures are shaping billion-dollar flows of money.
>Intellectual historian Émile P. Torres @xriskology explains how Silicon Valley’s favorite ideas for changing the world for the better actually threaten to make it much, much worse.
At the library in the SF section and I found a book that looked promising and checks boxes for me (appears it isn't Heinlein wannabe pastiche; covers questions of autonomy, sentience and who counts as "people"; author is not a white straight cis anglophone dude*)
…but then it has a glowing blurb from Ray Kurzweil, and I just… put it back on the shelf.
No thank you.
I do read a few things by authors in this category, but I'm much less willing to give them* a try without recommendation
@timnitGebru@trochee I feel like I hear relatively little said about Ray Kurzweil despite his apparent role as the godfather of #TESCREAL. Am I getting that wrong? Didn't he basically invent this new religion, and the rest are just preaching different versions of his gospel? Or did it exist before him in some form?
True.
But you can’t beat physics with a bit of money.
I hope people sue him dry. #Dieselgate was bad, but the cars worked at least.
The only reason I would have ever bought a Tesla Pre-Twitter, R.I.P. was the phenomenonal driving range.