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Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

Is there anybody here who _doesn't_ like technical progress and doesn't want it to go faster?

We are still stuck on this little blue marble, with the entire Universe in our telescopes (hundreds of billions of galaxies, hundreds of billions stars in each), that we can see, but can't really visit. It almost maddens me.

If we meatbags are too fragile to travel to stars, let's build immortal AIs who'll do it for us. I am going to die on this planet, like every other human being. But I hope that we can create new minds and new non-carbon lifeforms, better than us, who might be able to escape.

I guess I am an accelerationist. But isn't it a natural attitude for any thinking mind?

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>Is there anybody here is who _doesn't_ like technical progress and doesn't want it to go faster?

Sure. I am quite glad we stopped iterating on nuclear weapon designs and I am quite fine with the state of the art not obliterating entire continents yet. I'm also quite happy we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too. I think you are too.

I like technical progress that ameliorates the human condition. Some of it does. Some of it doesn't.

Talking about the idea is difficult and complicated when you drill down beneath some trivial level, so people rarely bother, unless they, in one form or another, abstract that complexity away.

If you do that, you're left with "progress is good!" and forget all the times when it wasn't or the reverse. Neither position is particularly interesting.

> we stopped iterating on nuclear weapon designs

We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov.

> we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too.

We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them.

Say what you want about humanity, but 70+ years without a nuclear war is impressive, given our history. It became possible through continuous innovation in game theory, spy games, and yes, improving the deterrents. I think nuclear weapons will never be actually used in large-scale future wars, like chemical weapons weren't massively used in WW2.

Progress is good. Wars are part of the progress. Wars themselves are bad, though, so some of the progress is spent to keep wars at bay, to not interfere with the progress.

"Progress is good" is an implicative tautology -- the seeming obviousness of the statement relies on the fact that the term "progress" strongly implies "betterness." And it is, in fact, its applicability to any state of affairs a matter of betterness -- but betterness of very specific, and often unspoken, types. "Technology progress" may mean "better technology" -- but it does /not/ necessarily mean "technology that is better for people."

Yes, not necessarily. Progress, in my opinion, is increasing efficiency in the modes of operation. Scaling-out. Space programs are progress. Modern warfare is not progress, it is, at best, self-defence and status quo preservation.

I believe that intelligence rooted in biology is not the most efficient mode of operation.

How do you justify that definition of progress? And how do you draw a connection between "increasing efficiency in the modes of operation" and "good" (or even "desirable") -- if you do?

>We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov.

Relative investment and manpower on the issue has plummeted. I can't get into more specific details.

>We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them.

As the other commentator to the post makes very clear, the definition of 'progress' needs to be made clear. If it is increased understanding in a field of knowledge, then the statement I highlighted indicates you and I share the same viewpoint: maybe sometimes it is better to just stop learning more about a topic.

If the definition of progress is all increased understanding in a field of knowledge which is good, then progress is tautologically good.

Unfortunately, since the two definitions are similar, the term is very frequently used to launder advancements of their ethical consequences.

> Relative investment and manpower on the issue has plummeted. I can't get into more specific details.

I can. Of course it plummeted since the end of the Cold War, but it raised again in the last 3 years, for obvious reasons. The US is lagging behind (not for long), but other nuclear powers are frantically resuming relevant activities.

> maybe sometimes it is better to just stop learning more about a topic.

It isn't. Methods of learning might be unethical (and thus are not advisable to be pursued), but knowledge itself is beyond ethics.

I think that in any comprehensible time scale, accelerationism is an inevitable outcome rather than a desirable outcome.

I can see a conscious set of lifeforms that would prefer to burn slowly and enjoy existence in a relatively sustainable manner.

It does however seem inevitable that life will -- if it does not fail completely -- spill out of our planet into the universe as you say in the form of machines or 'AI', rather than meatbags. Life is a game with winners and losers and winning is selecting for superior reproduction, technology, and colonisation.

I personally don't care about any of that. I'm not sure what I'd need to "escape" from. There's infinitely more than enough on Earth -- even a minute slice of Earth -- for one human qua human.

Even the exploratory impulse you seem to be experiencing seems misaligned with your conclusion. There are places, people, cities, societies, continents, ocean floors, mountain peaks, unplumbed caves, blistered deserts, dark forests, that you haven't seen here -- what's so hot about Alpha Centauri?

Any place I can visit on Earth will be not so much different as a planet on Alpha Centauri. More unknowns. More information to process.

Another thing is potentiality. If I want, I can afford to go to any place on Earth (I have to save some money for, say, South Pole, but it is still possible). But I can't go beyond Solar System, ever. Maybe it is my character, but when I hear about something that I "can't" do, I become obsessed by it until I can, or at least I can chart a path to this, even potentially.

And it's not I am not trying. I lived (as a legal resident) in six different countries, and visited around 35 more. I saw dark forests, and volcanoes, and icebergs, and glaciers, and other natural wonders. I am not as proficient as some pro-grade travellers who visited every country on Earth, but I hope to see more.

I can appreciate that. I don't think that I'd agree with your conclusions, but I can understand the desire.

Here's another question: how does an immortal AI seeing Sirius thousands of years after your death help you with this at all? It seems entirely tangential to me.

I feel more and more as if people are optimizing for number of experiences per minute.

I don't know what the utility function of the universe can be, but I would hope for something deep rather than fast.

Reflection.

What do you mean by "the utility function of the universe"?

With that I mean a function that can be optimized. If acceleration is about the unrelentless strive to higher forms of intelligence, technology, or general progress, it can be seen as some form of compression.

Or less general. A smarter AI is able to compress more facts or thruths about the world than a dumber AI does. A smarter universe henceforth is able to compress more facts or truths about itself than a dumber universe.

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