My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

A UFC fight between Istela Nunes and Viktoria Dudakova ended in the first round when Nunes fell and dislocated her arm at the elbow.

https://youtube.com/shorts/g4xtqVAp9Zw?feature=share

The clip is remarkable because it reminds us how frail humans really are. A person in peak physical condition who is also largely inured to pain thanks to thousands of practice fights can still be disabled and turned into a screaming child in one move. We will have no chance in hand-to-hand combat against robots, since they'll have the strength and knowledge of human anatomy to inflict those kinds of crippling injuries on us while being able to shake off any damage we inflict on them.

I like the android attack scenes in the game Alien Isolation because they give some clue as to what it would really be like fighting a robot. The androids aren't faster than humans, but they are much stronger and can withstand more damage. Because they are so much stronger, they don't need to employ any kind of fighting style or special moves to kill you--they just grab a hold of you and hit you very hard with their other hand or throw you into a wall very hard.



Fights with robots will be simple, brutal and fast. If one of them could grab you, it could just squeeze to break the bones of whatever limb it was grasping and you'd end up on the ground like Istela Nunez.

This is what physical fights with androids will be like:


Instead of kicking, a machine could deliver the same amount of force using its fist. As soon as they close the distance with you and are able to make physical contact, you're incapacitated or dead after one or at most two attack moves from them.

You'd also have to worry about androids throwing objects at you. Thanks to their superhuman strength and coordination, they'd be able to pick up random objects within arm's reach (e.g. - rock, dinner plate, wrench, computer monitor) and throw them right into your face or kneecap with incredible force, and from relatively long distances. If that didn't kill you or knock you out, it would at least cause you pain and slow you down enough to make you unable to flee or defend yourself from the android's subsequent hand-to-hand attack.

[funkervogt]

Something that historian Yuval Noah Harari recently said on the Lex Fridman show caught my attention:

One of the things that happened in Israel over the last 10 years or so, Israel became much stronger than it was before, largely thanks to technological developments. And it feels that it no longer needs to compromise. That again, this is, there are many reasons for it, but some of them are technological.

Being one of the leading powers in cyber, in AI, in high tech, we have developed very sophisticated ways to more easily control the Palestinian population. In the early 2000s, it seemed that it is becoming impossible to control millions of people against their will. It took too much power, it spilled too much blood on both sides.

So there was an impression, oh, this is becoming untenable. And there were several reasons why it changed, but one of them was new technology. Israel developed very sophisticated surveillance technology that has made it much easier for Israeli security forces to control 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank against their will, with a lot less effort, less boots on the ground, also less blunt. And Israel is also now exporting this technology to many other regimes around the world.

Again, I heard Netanyahu speaking about all the wonderful things that Israel is exporting to the world. And it's true, we are exporting some nice things, water systems and new kinds of tomatoes. We are also exporting a lot of weapons and especially surveillance systems, sometimes to unsavory regimes, in order to control their populations.

I recommend starting at this point of the interview to gain context for the above quoted passage:

The broader lesson--that a government or leadership group will be disinclined to consider your interests if they gain the ability to control you through technology--is worth remembering.

[funkervogt]

Some wonder why advanced aliens don't intervene here on Earth to stop war, death and human suffering. After all, it should be easily within their means to do so considering their technology.

Maybe they're so advanced that they know there is an afterlife for all sentient life forms, whether it is reincarnation or going to a different plane of existence, and they have decided it would be unjust to interfere with the natural cycle by giving us the elixir of eternal life. They know that when humans die, we don't actually cease to exist. (Too bad we don't know it.)

[funkervogt]

Tortured artists like Sinead O'Connor, who channeled their torment into their creative works, and who would not have achieved their heights of expression and fame were it not for their pain, may seem like tragic people. But let's assume we are all actually in the Matrix, and have chosen to live arbitrary lives as some fact-finding exercise. Those of us who are selected by chance to be players like Sinead will have short lives of pain and productivity. When we die, we awake in the Real World and are cleansed of our mental problems, but the works of our temporary avatars endure.

[Vakanai]

Tortured artists like Sinead O'Connor, who channeled their torment into their creative works, and who would not have achieved their heights of expression and fame were it not for their pain, may seem like tragic people. But let's assume we are all actually in the Matrix, and have chosen to live arbitrary lives as some fact-finding exercise. Those of us who are selected by chance to be players like Sinead will have short lives of pain and productivity. When we die, we awake in the Real World and are cleansed of our mental problems, but the works of our temporary avatars endure.

Let's assume we don't live in the Matrix and just recognize the world needs to do better to help people like her deal with their mental/emotional health.

[funkervogt]

The entire population of Yellowknife, Canada has been ordered to evacuate due to an approaching wildfire. The town could be destroyed within days.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/americas ... index.html

I think household robots and robot workers will be of great use protecting property from wildfires in the future. It might be hard to believe, but one person with a garden hose can be very effective protecting his house from a wildfire. Consider this case from Lahaina, where a man sprayed down his house with water before the now-infamous fire reached it. His was the only house on the block that survived.
https://news.yahoo.com/very-blessed-luc ... 09644.html

I can't find the hyperlink, but a few years ago, I read a news article about how wildfire suppression policy in Australia incorporated help from private property owners. They were encouraged to leave one, able-bodied person behind to aggressively patrol their yards and to use garden hoses to douse and embers that landed on the ground. It was effective. I don't think this could work in the U.S. owing to the litigiousness and incompetence of average people, but if everyone had a robot servant, they could stand in for humans.

Imagine a scenario set 30 years from now where a wildfire is approaching a town. The government uses its authority to order all humans to evacuate, but it also temporarily commandeers all robots in the town to fight the fire. Your robot butler would stay at your house, unspool your garden hose, and wait in the yard, ready to spray down the embers. Robots working at local restaurants and factories would do the same at those places.

[funkervogt]

Tortured artists like Sinead O'Connor, who channeled their torment into their creative works, and who would not have achieved their heights of expression and fame were it not for their pain, may seem like tragic people. But let's assume we are all actually in the Matrix, and have chosen to live arbitrary lives as some fact-finding exercise. Those of us who are selected by chance to be players like Sinead will have short lives of pain and productivity. When we die, we awake in the Real World and are cleansed of our mental problems, but the works of our temporary avatars endure.

Let's assume we don't live in the Matrix and just recognize the world needs to do better to help people like her deal with their mental/emotional health.

If we ARE in the Matrix, maybe we're doing an ancestor simulation to fill in the blanks in the historical record. Perhaps some of us volunteer to live the tormented lives of people like Sinead O'Connor for the sake of accuracy. Once we die in the simulation, we wake up in the Real World. Our mental and emotional traumas are neutralized using the radically advanced technologies of the future.

[wjfox]

Once we die in the simulation, we wake up in the Real World.

I've believed this for a long time now, however crazy it sounds. It's just too much of a coincidence to be living at this point in history.

[Vakanai]

Tortured artists like Sinead O'Connor, who channeled their torment into their creative works, and who would not have achieved their heights of expression and fame were it not for their pain, may seem like tragic people. But let's assume we are all actually in the Matrix, and have chosen to live arbitrary lives as some fact-finding exercise. Those of us who are selected by chance to be players like Sinead will have short lives of pain and productivity. When we die, we awake in the Real World and are cleansed of our mental problems, but the works of our temporary avatars endure.

Let's assume we don't live in the Matrix and just recognize the world needs to do better to help people like her deal with their mental/emotional health.

If we ARE in the Matrix, maybe we're doing an ancestor simulation to fill in the blanks in the historical record. Perhaps some of us volunteer to live the tormented lives of people like Sinead O'Connor for the sake of accuracy. Once we die in the simulation, we wake up in the Real World. Our mental and emotional traumas are neutralized using the radically advanced technologies of the future.

Again, without compelling evidence to argue that we are, let's assume we're not, and therefore base our thoughts on empathy for our fellow humans and show concern that people are hurting and try to help them before it gets so bad they take their own lives. Someone's suicide is not the time to speculate we're in the Matrix and they volunteered for that role.

[Vakanai]

Once we die in the simulation, we wake up in the Real World.

I've believed this for a long time now, however crazy it sounds. It's just too much of a coincidence to be living at this point in history.

Coincidence how? Some population had to live through this time in history, why not you and me?

[funkervogt]

AGI will probably destroy the ad industry and consumerism in the long run. Why? First, keep in mind that AGIs won't be beholden to the same cognitive limitations and emotions as humans are. They will have a sharp grasp of what their actual "needs" are as opposed to humans, who lack such understanding and also often conflate their "needs" with their "wants." For that reason, AGIs won't spend their scarce resources buying goods and services that don't actually benefit them. Humans have strong drives to improve their social status, and, less frequently, have compulsions to buy specific things again and again, which leads to a lot of spending on non-essential things. AGIs will lack those impulses.

Second, AGIs will be much smarter and able to remember things much better than humans, so they will be able to exhaustively research essential goods and services before buying one. Inferior providers will be identified quickly and driven out.

Here's a small example of how this will work: Imagine there are drain cleaning liquids made by two companies. "Brand A" has colorful, attention-grabbing packaging and is endorsed by a celebrity. "Brand B" has bland, gray packaging and is endorsed by no one. They are the same price.

Humans prefer to buy Brand A because of irrelevant factors like the colorful packaging (which the ad agency determined in lab tests is appealing to the human visual cortex) and the celebrity endorsement. AGIs prefer to buy Brand B because, in carefully conducted lab tests, it unclogged drains better than Brand A.

Initially, Brand A dominates the market because all plumbers are human, and they have human buying preferences. However, as machines take over plumbing work, Brand B comes to dominate. Eventually, there are so few human plumbers left that Brand A can't capitalize on economies of scale anymore, so it declares bankruptcy. Any remaining human plumbers are left with Brand B as the sole option for drain cleaner.

This same process will happen for enormous numbers of goods and services across the whole economy.

[funkervogt]

Imagine if brain implants allowed us to telepathically experience what other humans were experiencing. If you were ever feeling bad, you could mentally jump into another person's mind who, at that very moment in some part of the world, was having an amazing experience.

[TrueAnimationFan]

Imagine if brain implants allowed us to telepathically experience what other humans were experiencing. If you were ever feeling bad, you could mentally jump into another person's mind who, at that very moment in some part of the world, was having an amazing experience.

Then what are your neurons doing whilst you are “absent”? Keeping your body as still as a statue?

[Powers]

Imagine if brain implants allowed us to telepathically experience what other humans were experiencing. If you were ever feeling bad, you could mentally jump into another person's mind who, at that very moment in some part of the world, was having an amazing experience.

Then what are your neurons doing whilst you are “absent”? Keeping your body as still as a statue?

Autopilot.

[funkervogt]

In the future, once compatible animal organs or lab-grown human organs are mature technologies, human recipients will demand the very best organ for transplantation into their bodies. And since it probably requires the same resources to make an organ whose "quality level" is in the 99th percentile as it does to make one in the 50th percentile, the labs will only produce the highest-quality organs. They may even have superhuman levels of performance.

Organ replacement will become a way for average people to upgrade themselves, one part at a time, to being 99th percentile humans or even superhumans.

[funkervogt]

In the future, once compatible animal organs or lab-grown human organs are mature technologies, human recipients will demand the very best organ for transplantation into their bodies. And since it probably requires the same resources to make an organ whose "quality level" is in the 99th percentile as it does to make one in the 50th percentile, the labs will only produce the highest-quality organs. They may even have superhuman levels of performance.

Organ replacement will become a way for average people to upgrade themselves, one part at a time, to being 99th percentile humans or even superhumans.

On second thought, I can see how there could still be a market for "average" organs. Let's assume that cloning labs only try to make 99th percentile organs. However, in vitro conditions are not entirely under their control, so it's common for something to go slightly wrong in the growth process, resulting in organs that are still fully functional and healthy, but only in the 50th percentile of quality. Rather than throw them away, the organ companies sell them at a discount.

I heard this is why there are different grades of GPUs made by the same company.

[funkervogt]

I believe a "deep state" has existed in America for decades, and possibly centuries, though I also don't consider this to be a controversial or partisan-leaning thought. The Deep State is merely a collection of powerful, unelected members of the U.S. government bureaucracy (including the military and spy agencies) who have their own interests and have ways to advance them, even in the face of opposition from powerful elected politicians, including the President. Their tactics for doing this include withholding information, strategically leaking information to the media, and deliberately slowing down projects they don't agree with.

The Deep State's members aren't all aware of one other, their ranks are continuously changing, they don't all agree with each other, and they are not all-powerful. I suspect they form shifting alliances with one another and with people outside of the government (e.g. - rich capitalists from specific industries, heads of news media companies, influential celebrities) to accomplish their objectives. Other democratic countries have also long had their own Deep States.

Though our first instinct is to fear the Deep State and to want it eliminated, it serves as a useful check on the power of politicians. Once intelligent machines replace human bureaucrats, the Deep State will disappear, and extreme policies enacted by people like Trump will find less resistance to implementation.

[Powers]

I believe a "deep state" has existed in America for decades, and possibly centuries, though I also don't consider this to be a controversial or partisan-leaning thought. The Deep State is merely a collection of powerful, unelected members of the U.S. government bureaucracy (including the military and spy agencies) who have their own interests and have ways to advance them, even in the face of opposition from powerful elected politicians, including the President. Their tactics for doing this include withholding information, strategically leaking information to the media, and deliberately slowing down projects they don't agree with.

The Deep State's members aren't all aware of one other, their ranks are continuously changing, they don't all agree with each other, and they are not all-powerful. I suspect they form shifting alliances with one another and with people outside of the government (e.g. - rich capitalists from specific industries, heads of news media companies, influential celebrities) to accomplish their objectives. Other democratic countries have also long had their own Deep States.

Though our first instinct is to fear the Deep State and to want it eliminated, it serves as a useful check on the power of politicians. Once intelligent machines replace human bureaucrats, the Deep State will disappear, and extreme policies enacted by people like Trump will find less resistance to implementation.

Deep State = Elites

[Vakanai]

Once intelligent machines replace human bureaucrats, the Deep State will disappear, and extreme policies enacted by people like Trump will find less resistance to implementation.

Welp, that's the most terrifying thought of the month.

[funkervogt]

Inmate escapes prison by "crab walking" up the wall.


It will be easy for robots to do this kind of thing. Normal barriers to human movement will be much less effective against them.