Parker C

Economists have observed

a longstanding pattern in reform movements of this kind. The actors within movements like these fall into two categories – “Baptists” and “Bootleggers” – drawing on the historical example of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920’s:

Baptists

“Baptists” are the true believer social reformers who legitimate... See more

Historically, every new

technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic – a social contagion that convinces people the new technology is going to destroy the world, or society, or both. The fine folks at Pessimists Archive have documented these technology-driven moral panics over the... See more

The emotional stickiness

of conversational bots raises the question of manipulation. After all, the people making the bots have an incentive to keep people chatting for as long as possible, so they do things to make the bots as addictive as possible.

Attention is all we have. According to philosopher Simone Weil, it is sacred — the rarest form of generosity:

“Attention alone, that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears, is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it onto that which cannot be conceived.”

As it happens,

this was a central claim of Marxism, that the owners of the means of production – the bourgeoisie – would inevitably steal all societal wealth from the people who do the actual work – the proletariat. This is another fallacy that simply will not die no matter how often it’s disproved by reality. But let’s drive a stake through its hea... See more

The tipoff to

the nature of the AI societal risk claim is its own term, “AI alignment”. Alignment with what? Human values. Whose human values? Ah, that’s where things get tricky.

When's the last time you watched something other than a screen for that long without checking your phone?