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Re seeing the horror in the emptiness of the universe:

Horror isn’t exactly rational, so if you don’t have that one, it’s hard to explain. Let’s try: I think for the many, many who get it, the universe in respect to us is as an endless forest of lifted shoes to an ant. So many things that could squish us and neither care nor even notice. And not just the “things”, the very laws that govern the whole mess are full of spiky pits to stumble into, laid out without malice or even intention, but just as deadly.

Some people find that disconcerting.

And I understand perfectly well what the MIRI/LW crowd wants. I used to be a singularitarian. I also develop software & know the state of that art. The idea that any IT crowd can teach a God how to want before it has thought the whole thing through and come to its own conclusions is just so hubristic. I always say that the most likely way we’ll actually get an AI is by pure chance through unsafe languages & the passing of time. How’s that for horrorism: The C++thulhuists are waiting for the day when the stack smasheth right and men will be free and wild and caring only about performance and not correctness.

I don’t mind that much about you guys, though. So much of what we humans do is slipping into the gap between grasp and reach these days that something is gonna get us sooner or later. If your club of Kronoses is having fun building Zeuses (real nice ones, they promise!) it really doesn’t make much difference in the long run. AI is the escapism of the nerds, after all.

This is all meant in good spirits, as I said, I generally like you guys, you’re just another branch of the same tribe in my mind. Nothing will save any of us from the essential truth of nihilism though.

(BTW re: my misspelling of Yudkowsky, I’m sorry, misspelling names is normally a pet peeve of mine because it’s very disrespectful. I can assure you, however, that it’s just a combination from what my mother tongue is & not looking it up.)

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And the natural reaction to lack of objective meaning appears to be either an attempting to understand the universe, having fun or trying to improve things (based on what Greek philosophers who lacked objective meaning embrace).

“I also think that you, in radical contrast to Land, have a pretty good chance of immanetizing the eschaton; good luck building a God that will think that humanism is the way to go, I guess.”

I think you misunderstand what people who believe in the singularity want. It isn’t that they want to build a God for humanism as much as they want to do it before one makes a God that views humans as full of yummy building blocks. Or one that realizes it can “optimize” human values because they all break down to increasing amounts of pleasure chemicals in the brain. While having a God for humanism build a utopia is great, I think most members of Less Wrong would be fine with it “only” not killing people and preventing the existence of an AI that is different from itself.

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How he missed that the Cthulhu cultists are not exactly the good guys in Lovecraft is a different point, but I won’t fault him for it. In my book, horrorism is the natural reaction to the utter lack of objective meaning in the world.

I think that you guys are also barking up the wrong tree, based on some intellectual fixation and mind altering substances. Maybe I read too much similarities into that rather superficial parallelism, given that both fixation and substances are different.

I also think that you, in radical contrast to Land, have a pretty good chance of immanetizing the eschaton; good luck building a God that will think that humanism is the way to go, I guess.

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*Edit*

Yep, that’s the case:

“Pew Research surveys find that similar shares of Christians (29%) and Jews (31%) say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel. Among white evangelical Protestants, nearly half (46%) say that the U.S. is not providing enough support for Israel.
[…]
the share of white evangelicals saying that God gave Israel to the Jews (82%) is on par with the percentage of Orthodox Jews who believe this (84%).”

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/27/strong-support-for-israel-in-u-s-cuts-across-religious-lines/

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