Wouldn’t it be nice, the techno-utopian mind whispers dreamily to itself, if the world were as simple as a circuit-board.
“
I think this is headed to a false dichotomy. Either the world is a circuit board and we can figure it out and control the circuits. Or it is instead a phantasmagoria with rules not yet discovered nor ever discoverable by physics, as they are beyond our ken of possible understanding, even with infinite time and resources, it's just too mystical.
I think neither is likely. A charlatan realizes what might be possible long after they are dead (such as a nineteen century engineer imagining a robot that might beat a human at chess) and uses that to fool others via deceptive shortcuts (can't create actual robot so creates a puppet that has a small person inside the chess board's pedestal moving the pieces). A skeptic recognizes the charlatan's gambit (easily guesses there is a person inside the pedestal and demonstrates effectively how they are likely faking the moves). Do they try reason? Or do they do handwaving to convince the masses who cannot understand that the burden of proof is on the charlatan (handwaves that chess is simply too complex for a robot of any kind to do).
S is the Skeptic
C is the Charlatan
K is the 19th century King who is presented the “robot chessplayer”
Scenario 1 - no handwaving
S: There is very likely a person in that pedestal.
C: There is not.
S: Then open it.
C: There is delicate electronics! People might steal my invention!
S: Then move the chessboard.
C: I have an antitheft device that would explode if we aren't careful! You can't prove it's not a robot!
S: There is not sufficient technological progress today for a robot that can play chess.
C: That others know of! I am a genius that works in private.
S: Well explain how it works.
C: And have someone steal my idea?
S: The number of chess moves are more than the grains of sand on earth. No calculator on Earth can do more than a few simple arithmetic functions. How have you accomplished that!
C: Why should I tell you?! If some calculators can do a few, then who's to say I can't create something to do many!
S: Me! Because the odds are astronomical!
C: But not zero!
K: Skeptic, enough! You have proved nothing. Leave. I need to have this wonderful invention!
Scenario 2 - handwaving
S: You say a robot runs this thing? Wires and sparks? What about you, my king? Do you think a robot can do this?
K: He says so, he's very smart.
S: Yes but, now he says a bunch of wires is as smart as a human. Are you less smart than a bunch of wires?
K: Of course not!
S: The whole idea is impossible! I bet he has a small person inside of that pedestal!
K: Hmm… Let's open it.
C: No you can't!
K: Are you saying I am dumber than wires! Leave! And take your worthless box with you.
Handwaving is just easier. The fact that C would accomplish something on the level of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasaparov (or even Chessmaster 2000 running on an Apple IIe)–but more than a hundred years early, completely alone, and in secret–is preposterous. Because it is /insanely unlikely/. It might not be impossible, but it's close enough. For any rational person. And not all people are rational (particularly kings).
Frame it as impossible, by tapping into our human need to seem superior, and it's probably easier to persuade most people, even those of less rationality. After all, if we weren't superior to all non-human things could we continue to exploit all non-human things as much as we do and not consider ourselves bad? I suspect that's why this rhetoric works. But really you actually can accept the world is possibly a circuit board (which I interpret as completely free of mystical functionality) but of a complexity beyond any and all charlatans’ claims.
Another thing to note is technological breakthrough is possible without, say, allowing fascism. Deep Blue beat Garry Kasaparov. Now, someone pedantic could say IBM's earlier Nazi ties bootstrapped this later success, but seeing as there was about 50 years between events, that is a stretch to say Deep Blue was only possible by allowing fascism (especially as the Nazis ultimately lost). Does anyone think we wouldn't have aspirin if it weren't for Bayer? In that case the Nazism was after the invention, so that might not seem like an argument at all, but seeing as we're not in /full/ fascism yet, it seems fair to bring it up. My point is that correlation with fascism might happen, but it's not required for causation of technological advancement, in fact it's far more likely a hindrance.
No one needed to steal IP, remove regulations, remove marketplace competition, use sham accounting, or over leverage to make a supercomputer to beat a grandmaster at chess. AI doesn't need to do any of these things either to have massive success /as a technology/. Is Peter Thiel wrong that when fighting competition works, it works, specifically to enrich certain people over others? Sure. But it is not required for that technology to succeed.
And Deep Blue beating Garry Kasaparov did not lead to a death of chess as a passtime, grandmasters making a living, a utopia, or a dystopia. But more importantly, fascism wasn't necessary. And thirty years ago, had some of today's AI backers had been as successful then as they are now at allowing fascism to flourish, we definitely would have been even worse today.
–
“
Fredric Kurzweil became
“
I don't remember him in earlier chapters. May want to explain this a bit, sounds like some kind of generational feud?
–
“
Becker’s work was once celebrated, but a half-century of campaigns to discredit psychoanalysis - an effort deeply aligned with the Rationalist, determinist, technocratic, and anti-education projects of the contemporary reactionary right - has left the recipes mouldering.
“
So, when DZM mentioned Freud earlier, I remembered my comments on Freud and Jung. In both cases, what I've read, and I've yet to read anything different about these household names of psychoanalysis, is that these were dudes drugged out of their minds. Fabricating intentionally rather than finding actual anecdotal evidence (faking anecdotal! evidence, how lazy can you get). Or simply using your drugged up dreams as evidence. I mean, drugged up pseudo-intellectuals lying for fame and fortune? Where have we heard this before?
And in a previous Substack, DZM is saying modern psychotherapy like CBT, which has no household name selling it: “Cognitive-behavioral therapy can help manage the symptoms of anxiety, but doesn’t aim to explain its roots. Kierkegaard, a Freudian a half century before Freud, located this variety of human discomfort in the friction between appearances and some deeper truth.“ (To be fair, I googled Kierkegaard, and there's no dirt on him like Freud or Jung.)
So while DZM suggests CBT is superficial and psychoanalysis is deeper, I think CBT is direct and effective, while psychoanalysis seems overly complicated. Further the complication seems to benefit the proponent not the practitioner. To me: CBT is like buying SPY stock. Psychoanalysis is like Basic Capital. I feel the complexity is not there because it is the One Weird Trick you need for wealth/happiness that only an expert like Al-Assad/Freud can understand. It's there to trick you into accepting something that otherwise /makes no sense/ but sure is more appealing than constantly working on your non-leveraged investments / thinking patterns to make small incremental successes. Especially since it sure seems there are people out there just born lucky and rich/happy and it's easy for them. There must be some trick that makes you into one of them and these people somehow know it.
It's funny because skeptics will gladly agree that Eschatology is full of convenient fallacies born of stories made out of full cloth. However skeptics also think psychoanalysis is full of convenient fallacies born of stories made out of full cloth. When skeptics agree with most of what you say, it's worth investigating that which they don't agree with. And vice versa, of course, or skeptics wouldn't be good skeptics.
—
“
Like the theologians who forgot Augustine’s ancient reflections
“
Let us build a city of God-AI, may their tiers be converted for pricing.
–
“
that must precede, the sacrifices
“
that must precede the sacrifices
–
“
an autism unable to evolve
“
Wait what? Autism? Is there another meaning to this word, one that has a non-human sense?
Anyway, I am far more skeptical of psychoanalysis of the Freud/Jung type. And I think a more nuanced, and defined view of the idea of life as code is needed. Because undefined it can be either logical (but unhelpful) or absurd (and unhelpful). But until you have some kind of definition it's hard to get to the ultimate takeaway: it doesn't matter, none of it excuses TESCREALists / AI Tech Bros / Fascist-racists / etc.
Damien Hirst, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” 1991.
“
https://cointelegraph.com/news/up-in-smoke-artist-damien-hirst-to-burn-4-851-paintings-in-nft-project “Polka dots. In the whole world, only Nathan Detroit could blow a thousand bucks on polka dots.” Actually, it seems lots of people were happy to blow two thousand bucks on polka dots. If you look at the recent transactions (e.g. sales around 0.65 - 0.85 ETH on OpenSea) and the price of ETH then versus now… The Currency is doing better than your average NFT collection, by far, but a more profitable investment would have been just buying ETH. And that's probably the biggest NFT thing done by a well-known traditional artist.
–
“
like the certainty of prediction baked into techno-utopianism’s political project
“
Not 100% sure what this means. “tech-utopianism's politics” would make sense but I'm not sure what specific project this specifically refers to.
–
“
all rooted in faith rather than science. One is the conception of the human mind as a binary computer, outputs reliably following from inputs, shared by the Rationalists, EAs, Kurzweil, Barbara Fried, and many others.
“
I would rephrase “outputs reliably following from inputs” to “outputs that can be perfectly predicted in the near future by humans from their inputs”. Because I can think of an interpretation of that phrase that is possibly true, but not impressive. Can just about anything be bifurcated into inputs and outputs? Sure. So binary isn't fancy. Computer, just means something that can compute, I think it's safe to say the mind can compute. And with enough knowledge of any closed system, one can reliably predict future events. But the problem is having enough knowledge and there's nothing to suggest humans ever will, no experiment or discovery can be scaled and extrapolated to a level that could justify such a position.
It's like saying that since we can predict pretty well the weather on Earth based on all our satellites and historical data, we could do the same on any planet if we had the same amount of knowledge of those planets. Sure. So? How exactly are you getting satellites around those planets and lots of historical data? Having some idea of inputs and expected outputs in a very simple system, I mean, that was demonstrated by Pavlov. But understanding all the inputs and knowing all the outputs, such as to predict what a person's mind will do, a mind in an ever changing environment, that's like knowing the weather on every planet in the universe. Is that even worth thinking about possibly happening any time soon?
“
Wouldn’t it be nice, the techno-utopian mind whispers dreamily to itself, if the world were as simple as a circuit-board.
“
I think this is headed to a false dichotomy. Either the world is a circuit board and we can figure it out and control the circuits. Or it is instead a phantasmagoria with rules not yet discovered nor ever discoverable by physics, as they are beyond our ken of possible understanding, even with infinite time and resources, it's just too mystical.
I think neither is likely. A charlatan realizes what might be possible long after they are dead (such as a nineteen century engineer imagining a robot that might beat a human at chess) and uses that to fool others via deceptive shortcuts (can't create actual robot so creates a puppet that has a small person inside the chess board's pedestal moving the pieces). A skeptic recognizes the charlatan's gambit (easily guesses there is a person inside the pedestal and demonstrates effectively how they are likely faking the moves). Do they try reason? Or do they do handwaving to convince the masses who cannot understand that the burden of proof is on the charlatan (handwaves that chess is simply too complex for a robot of any kind to do).
S is the Skeptic
C is the Charlatan
K is the 19th century King who is presented the “robot chessplayer”
Scenario 1 - no handwaving
S: There is very likely a person in that pedestal.
C: There is not.
S: Then open it.
C: There is delicate electronics! People might steal my invention!
S: Then move the chessboard.
C: I have an antitheft device that would explode if we aren't careful! You can't prove it's not a robot!
S: There is not sufficient technological progress today for a robot that can play chess.
C: That others know of! I am a genius that works in private.
S: Well explain how it works.
C: And have someone steal my idea?
S: The number of chess moves are more than the grains of sand on earth. No calculator on Earth can do more than a few simple arithmetic functions. How have you accomplished that!
C: Why should I tell you?! If some calculators can do a few, then who's to say I can't create something to do many!
S: Me! Because the odds are astronomical!
C: But not zero!
K: Skeptic, enough! You have proved nothing. Leave. I need to have this wonderful invention!
Scenario 2 - handwaving
S: You say a robot runs this thing? Wires and sparks? What about you, my king? Do you think a robot can do this?
K: He says so, he's very smart.
S: Yes but, now he says a bunch of wires is as smart as a human. Are you less smart than a bunch of wires?
K: Of course not!
S: The whole idea is impossible! I bet he has a small person inside of that pedestal!
K: Hmm… Let's open it.
C: No you can't!
K: Are you saying I am dumber than wires! Leave! And take your worthless box with you.
Handwaving is just easier. The fact that C would accomplish something on the level of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasaparov (or even Chessmaster 2000 running on an Apple IIe)–but more than a hundred years early, completely alone, and in secret–is preposterous. Because it is /insanely unlikely/. It might not be impossible, but it's close enough. For any rational person. And not all people are rational (particularly kings).
Frame it as impossible, by tapping into our human need to seem superior, and it's probably easier to persuade most people, even those of less rationality. After all, if we weren't superior to all non-human things could we continue to exploit all non-human things as much as we do and not consider ourselves bad? I suspect that's why this rhetoric works. But really you actually can accept the world is possibly a circuit board (which I interpret as completely free of mystical functionality) but of a complexity beyond any and all charlatans’ claims.
Another thing to note is technological breakthrough is possible without, say, allowing fascism. Deep Blue beat Garry Kasaparov. Now, someone pedantic could say IBM's earlier Nazi ties bootstrapped this later success, but seeing as there was about 50 years between events, that is a stretch to say Deep Blue was only possible by allowing fascism (especially as the Nazis ultimately lost). Does anyone think we wouldn't have aspirin if it weren't for Bayer? In that case the Nazism was after the invention, so that might not seem like an argument at all, but seeing as we're not in /full/ fascism yet, it seems fair to bring it up. My point is that correlation with fascism might happen, but it's not required for causation of technological advancement, in fact it's far more likely a hindrance.
No one needed to steal IP, remove regulations, remove marketplace competition, use sham accounting, or over leverage to make a supercomputer to beat a grandmaster at chess. AI doesn't need to do any of these things either to have massive success /as a technology/. Is Peter Thiel wrong that when fighting competition works, it works, specifically to enrich certain people over others? Sure. But it is not required for that technology to succeed.
And Deep Blue beating Garry Kasaparov did not lead to a death of chess as a passtime, grandmasters making a living, a utopia, or a dystopia. But more importantly, fascism wasn't necessary. And thirty years ago, had some of today's AI backers had been as successful then as they are now at allowing fascism to flourish, we definitely would have been even worse today.
–
“
Fredric Kurzweil became
“
I don't remember him in earlier chapters. May want to explain this a bit, sounds like some kind of generational feud?
–
“
Becker’s work was once celebrated, but a half-century of campaigns to discredit psychoanalysis - an effort deeply aligned with the Rationalist, determinist, technocratic, and anti-education projects of the contemporary reactionary right - has left the recipes mouldering.
“
So, when DZM mentioned Freud earlier, I remembered my comments on Freud and Jung. In both cases, what I've read, and I've yet to read anything different about these household names of psychoanalysis, is that these were dudes drugged out of their minds. Fabricating intentionally rather than finding actual anecdotal evidence (faking anecdotal! evidence, how lazy can you get). Or simply using your drugged up dreams as evidence. I mean, drugged up pseudo-intellectuals lying for fame and fortune? Where have we heard this before?
And in a previous Substack, DZM is saying modern psychotherapy like CBT, which has no household name selling it: “Cognitive-behavioral therapy can help manage the symptoms of anxiety, but doesn’t aim to explain its roots. Kierkegaard, a Freudian a half century before Freud, located this variety of human discomfort in the friction between appearances and some deeper truth.“ (To be fair, I googled Kierkegaard, and there's no dirt on him like Freud or Jung.)
So while DZM suggests CBT is superficial and psychoanalysis is deeper, I think CBT is direct and effective, while psychoanalysis seems overly complicated. Further the complication seems to benefit the proponent not the practitioner. To me: CBT is like buying SPY stock. Psychoanalysis is like Basic Capital. I feel the complexity is not there because it is the One Weird Trick you need for wealth/happiness that only an expert like Al-Assad/Freud can understand. It's there to trick you into accepting something that otherwise /makes no sense/ but sure is more appealing than constantly working on your non-leveraged investments / thinking patterns to make small incremental successes. Especially since it sure seems there are people out there just born lucky and rich/happy and it's easy for them. There must be some trick that makes you into one of them and these people somehow know it.
It's funny because skeptics will gladly agree that Eschatology is full of convenient fallacies born of stories made out of full cloth. However skeptics also think psychoanalysis is full of convenient fallacies born of stories made out of full cloth. When skeptics agree with most of what you say, it's worth investigating that which they don't agree with. And vice versa, of course, or skeptics wouldn't be good skeptics.
—
“
Like the theologians who forgot Augustine’s ancient reflections
“
Let us build a city of God-AI, may their tiers be converted for pricing.
–
“
that must precede, the sacrifices
“
that must precede the sacrifices
–
“
an autism unable to evolve
“
Wait what? Autism? Is there another meaning to this word, one that has a non-human sense?
Anyway, I am far more skeptical of psychoanalysis of the Freud/Jung type. And I think a more nuanced, and defined view of the idea of life as code is needed. Because undefined it can be either logical (but unhelpful) or absurd (and unhelpful). But until you have some kind of definition it's hard to get to the ultimate takeaway: it doesn't matter, none of it excuses TESCREALists / AI Tech Bros / Fascist-racists / etc.
“
Damien Hirst, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” 1991.
“
https://cointelegraph.com/news/up-in-smoke-artist-damien-hirst-to-burn-4-851-paintings-in-nft-project “Polka dots. In the whole world, only Nathan Detroit could blow a thousand bucks on polka dots.” Actually, it seems lots of people were happy to blow two thousand bucks on polka dots. If you look at the recent transactions (e.g. sales around 0.65 - 0.85 ETH on OpenSea) and the price of ETH then versus now… The Currency is doing better than your average NFT collection, by far, but a more profitable investment would have been just buying ETH. And that's probably the biggest NFT thing done by a well-known traditional artist.
–
“
like the certainty of prediction baked into techno-utopianism’s political project
“
Not 100% sure what this means. “tech-utopianism's politics” would make sense but I'm not sure what specific project this specifically refers to.
–
“
all rooted in faith rather than science. One is the conception of the human mind as a binary computer, outputs reliably following from inputs, shared by the Rationalists, EAs, Kurzweil, Barbara Fried, and many others.
“
I would rephrase “outputs reliably following from inputs” to “outputs that can be perfectly predicted in the near future by humans from their inputs”. Because I can think of an interpretation of that phrase that is possibly true, but not impressive. Can just about anything be bifurcated into inputs and outputs? Sure. So binary isn't fancy. Computer, just means something that can compute, I think it's safe to say the mind can compute. And with enough knowledge of any closed system, one can reliably predict future events. But the problem is having enough knowledge and there's nothing to suggest humans ever will, no experiment or discovery can be scaled and extrapolated to a level that could justify such a position.
It's like saying that since we can predict pretty well the weather on Earth based on all our satellites and historical data, we could do the same on any planet if we had the same amount of knowledge of those planets. Sure. So? How exactly are you getting satellites around those planets and lots of historical data? Having some idea of inputs and expected outputs in a very simple system, I mean, that was demonstrated by Pavlov. But understanding all the inputs and knowing all the outputs, such as to predict what a person's mind will do, a mind in an ever changing environment, that's like knowing the weather on every planet in the universe. Is that even worth thinking about possibly happening any time soon?
–