Here's Robin Hanson, a colleague of the longtermist William MacAskill at the Future of Humanity Institute, imagining what a world full of simulated people (or "ems" for "brain emulations") would be like. The word "elite ethnicities" is striking:
Citing Nick Bostrom, the Father of Longtermism, Hanson adds that biotech may enable us to create super-smart designer babies, who would be good candidates to have their brains scanned and uploaded to computers (to live in a virtual reality world full of ems).
Indeed, Hanson claims that ems would be highly intelligent, reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit, freedom, etc. of what he describes as the "smarter nations" (you know which ones he's talking about).
Many "female" ems might be lesbians, Hanson argues, but "disproportionally few male ems may be gay." You really can't make this stuff up:
I could go on, but that's plenty enough for today. These excerpts are from Robin Hanson's "The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth," published by Oxford University Press (@OUPAcademic). The point of the book is to try to picture what a world full of
uploaded minds would look like. It explores, in other words, the "world of digital people" possibility at the top of this image from Holden Karnofsky.
Note that MacAskill says in his book "What We Owe the Future" that Karnofsky's "influence on me is so thoroughgoing that it
permeates every chapter." These people are serious about such a future, and indeed many are eager to bring it about. #longtermism
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God damnit, @nytimes. I have been screaming about this for *years*. The TESCREAL ideologies are *pro-extinctionist*--they do not want our species to exist in the future. Here are just a few recent articles I wrote about this (below). Please take this seriously!
What is it about our present moment that has made pro-extinctionism so damn appealing? From the "Efilists" to the TESCREALists, VHEMT to e/acc, more and more people agree that Homo sapiens should soon expire. I wrote an article about this. A short 🧵:
It's important to note that there are many different kinds of pro-extinctionism. To understand this, consider two distinct scenarios of human extinction: one would occur if our species were to disappear entirely and forever, full stop. This is "terminal" extinction.
I'll write a Truthdig article about this soon, but for now it's worth (I think) introducing a distinction that will help make sense of the pro-extinctionism at the heart of the TESCREAL movement. This concerns what I call "terminal" and "final" human extinction. These refer to
two distinct extinction scenarios. The first--terminal extinction--would happen if our species were to disappear entirely and forever. The second--final extinction--adds an additional condition. It would happen if our species were to disappear entirely and forever *without* us
leaving behind any successors. Final extinction entails terminal extinction, but terminal extinction does not entail final extinction. Those are the only technical details that one needs to know to understand the stunning surge of pro-extinctionist views these days...
I can't stress enough that the whole push to build AGI & the TESCREAL worldview behind it is fundamentally pro-extinctionist. If there is one thing people need to understand, it's this. Here's a short 🧵explaining the idea, starting a this clip of Daniel Kokotajlo:
Here's Eliezer Yudkowsky, whose views on "AI safety" have greatly influenced people like Kokotajlo, saying that he's not worried about humanity being replaced with AI posthumans--he's worried that our replacements won't be "better."
In this clip, Yudkowsky says that in principle he'd be willing to "sacrifice" all of humanity to create superintelligent AI gods. We're not in any position to do this right now, but if we *were*, he'd push the big red button.
“If God manifested himself as a human in the form of Jesus Christ, then why not as a posthuman in the form of superintelligent AI?”
It's happening: Christianity and TESCREALism are merging in the MAGA movement -- or so I argue in my new article for @Truthdig. A 🧵on this👇
I note that there are two factions within the MAGA movement: traditionalists like Steve Bannon and transhumanists like Elon Musk. The first are Christians, and the second embrace a new religion called "transhumanism" (the "T" in "TESCREAL").
You might think that the ideologies of traditionalists and transhumanists are incompatible, but that's not the case. Already, these ideologies are merging: traditionalists are embracing key aspects of transhumanism while MAGA transhumanists are turning toward Christianity.