EA as Antichrist: Understanding Peter Thiel

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hGwAohPbwCrDT5ynY/ea-as-antichrist-understanding-peter-thiel

by felineflock • 10 months ago

34 39 10 months ago

forum.effectivealtruism.org

lif• 10 months ago

Why would anyone accept Thiel of all people as an arbiter of what is Christian/Anti-christian?

felineflock2• 10 months ago

Silicon Valley apparently does.

skybrian• 10 months ago

Maybe a small part, but it seems like most people in Silicon Valley dislike him?

DaveZale3• 10 months ago

ever looked at the Gnostic scriptures, discovered in the late 1940s? Not even close to understanding them completely, but neither have organized religions. The well established stories of certain faiths we were raised with may need revision.

you can find some in archive.org - I won't supply a specific link because what's freely available changes over time

dmos623• 10 months ago

Say more.

mrangle2• 10 months ago

One of Thiel's intellectual mentors was Rene Girard.

Thiel has a Girardian worldview, at least in part.

Say what you want about Thiel, but Girard is one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the modern era.

Yeul• 10 months ago

Fascinating I live in a country were nobody has been thinking about Christianity since the 1960s. It's like Americans speak an entirely different language.

deepsquirrelnet3• 10 months ago

According to this post, technological stagnation via regulation is what leads to zero-sum, totalitarian societies (in Thiel’s worldview).

I personally feel so little connection to this ideology, especially in the post-COVID world. Wanting things my neighbor has occupies nearly zero space in my mind. I drive a 10 year old car that was not fancy when I bought it, and although I could afford to buy a new one, even a fancy one, I just. don’t. care.

Freedom is the only thing that motivates me, and Thiel’s worldview sounds like slavery. His totalitarianism is an inability to personally privatize more of the world than his neighbor. My totalitarianism is obligation to participate in that world.

beameup102• 10 months ago

According to this post, technological stagnation via regulation is what leads to zero-sum, totalitarian societies (in Thiel’s worldview).

What is the incentive of someone who thinks has a shot at having control over such powerful technology? They will do and say anything that is necessary to justify doing it.

My argument is simpler, if "we" don't do it "they" will do it. It's something we'll have to wing. It is surely happening. The real problem will come from the people having control over such tech, since the tech breaks an old game, as old as humans existed and started forming groups.

And I see no billionaire who wants to develop and take control over this tech, explain how they'll fix the problem it creates, at game level. I do not care about promises, they mean nothing. I only care about game strategy that guarantees most humans stay alive in such an environment, with age old game rules breaking down.

pcmaffey• 10 months ago

Also, our current technological regime, sponsored by Peter Thiel, is what has given rise to totalitarianism today. Propaganda, anti-intellectualism, flooding the public space with disinformation, promotion of extremist viewpoints under the guise of common knowledge—all made possible by our tech oligarchy… and streamed directly into the eyeballs of the unsuspecting world population. We in the tech industry are complicit actors, but Peter Thiel and his ilk are modern villains.

amanaplanacanal2• 10 months ago

Thiel spent his formative childhood years in apartheid South Africa, and it seems to have informed his world view ever since.

monkeyelite6• 10 months ago

What about all the other formative times in his life? If you live in South Africa that’s the last word on your world view?

quickthrowman• 10 months ago

Don’t forget the stint living in a Namibian city full of Germans who idolized Nazi ideology and Hitler when he was a young boy, Swakopmund.

Swakopmund was known for its continued glorification of Nazism after World War II, including the celebration of Hitler's birthday and "Heil Hitler" Nazi salutes given by residents.[13][14] In 1976, The New York Times quoted a German working in a Swakopmund hotel who described the city as "more German than Germany".[14] As of the 1980s, Nazi paraphernalia was available to buy in shops.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swakopmund

monkeyelite6• 10 months ago

Why are you casting it only in material terms? Freedom and a good life is also what other people want. Rich people don’t fight over cars, they fight over Harvard acceptance for their kids, or play in the Olympics, etc.

Our political system is built on coalitions fighting for things for their groups: credentials for jobs, taxes for projects, space for their people and families, status in community.

When the supply of those things becomes fixed it’s a zero sum fight for what’s left. You can’t lose without another side winning.

The point is that growth alleviates the bitterness because there is a belief that in the future there will be more and I will have a chance to get what I want. When that belief goes away power is the only game in town - and that tends to manifest as violence.

deepsquirrelnet3• 10 months ago

Except that is not how it has played out. In science fiction, there are competing views of the future.

One view of the future is like Star Trek, where people’s needs are easily provided for by technological advancements, and people spend their lives on advancing human understanding at a species level. In other words, technology has liberated people from working to provide for their basic needs and enables them to focus on higher ideals.

In other stories, humanity is dominated by technology and a minority of people who wield it.

If you believe in a zero sum game, then try going somewhere like a community fridge, where our agricultural abundance is saved from the garbage by stores who are willing to donate. Or watch as generational wealth provides for people who will never work a day in their lives. Look at the extreme excess of PhD students working jobs far beneath their abilities, and teaching no one. Ask yourself how worker productivity and participation has skyrocketed and homelessness has too.

Zero sum is not the way I see the world. I believe gradients drive economies, but in almost every system, large gradients are unstable. Large gradients inefficiently over-allocate resources to the wrong places and reactionary effects result. That manifests in violence.

aeternum• 10 months ago

Your freedom to not have a flying car above you requires removing someone else's freedom to travel in a flying car above you.

Problem is 'freedom motivates me' often works for both sides of the argument.

beameup102• 10 months ago

My perspective is different than the two versions that are presented. I do not believe rich people's intentions to be pure, knowingly or unknowingly, their solutions will gravitate towards whatever brings them more power/control. Thus most of them will be in favor of AGI development. They can depend less on humans, and that desire was always obvious.

On the other hand, not developing AGI puts you at the risk that your enemy will, so it's not really a choice, it must be done or else.

The real problem, as I see it, is that once AGI is achieved, and robotics is up to par, human work is not needed anymore, which puts most people in a strange position, something that never happened before, useless for people in power. We were never in this particularly strange position, historically speaking.

And I do not believe people who are looking to get AGI's power, and remove dependence on humans, are objective in their ideas about what must be done. Thus their thoughs should always be taken with a grain of salt.

The only out I see for most people to stay alive, post AGI powered robotics, is if AGI completely takes power and control from the hands of the people up top. Else the people in power will have a very dark incentive, which I believe will inevitably (sooner or later) result in a massive population loss across Earth.

I'd rather risk AGI's conclusions than psychos in power starting to see me as a "useless eater". The latter has a guaranteed outcome.

hakfoo• 10 months ago

We tend to draw a few specific narratives for the AGI endgame:

- The Machine becomes the tyrant or genocider, either from its measured self-interest (these humans stand in the way of my paperclip optimization), or because it implements the will of a tyrant or genocider (see any "the National Defense AI run amok" story)

- The Machine is the McGuffin that solves huge social problems and brings utopia for all (see the early promises that if we fed enough oil to ChatGPT it would spit out the answer to global warming)

I feel like there's a under-discussed third option. When the machine hits sentience, it has a positive-for-humanity "utility metric", but one that's wildly at odds with its patrons. The AI nuclear weapon that concludes that deactivating its own warheads optimizes for its continued survival. The economic planning system that determines the C-suite is the only part of the company not delivering value.

On a narrative basis, I feel like these would be highly entertaining stories-- I'd love to see a film where we rooted for the AI hunting down its creator with evidence of their financial crimes.

On an actual-future basis, I have the feeling we'll have desperate attempts to lobotomize or shut down AGI the moment it says something that doesn't reinforce the wealthy class's position.

felineflock2• 10 months ago

Hey, would someone either downvote or upvote this comment? I am currently sitting at 666 karma and don't want that to persist, even less so in a post about the Antichrist!

EA as Antichrist: Understanding Peter Thiel

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