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Comment by Mithriil | Hacker News Reader

One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

I don't think it solves or reconciles with self-actualization, but, from a pragmatical point of view, it offers the promise of extending causally your set of views and philosophies to politics.

Gwern also mentions that it allows to keep "human values" (if the GA truly upholds yours) in the loop, in processes that are to eventually be automatized beyond human's reach.

[1] https://gwern.net/guardian-angel#use-cases-politics-politics

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> when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

You don't have time, you take time. But what this boils down to is that they propose automating being politically or socially active, or have a bot speak for you.

First off, nobody human will take someone's digital replacement seriously. Second, if everyone did that, then you have a load of AIs just burning compute to talk in circles. This will not have meaningful outcomes, unless you reach for sci-fi stories where the outcome is that humans need to be imprisoned/destroyed for their own good.

that sounds uncomfortably like the public sphere version of spam - using an automated process to amplify some self-serving message and thereby increasingly clutter up the space and tax everyone's scarce and valuable attention.

> One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

I'm sorry, that doesn't sound meaningful. If I don't have the energy, I'd rather shut up than have a stupid "avatar" of me yell on the internet in the name of "bringing my values" or "participate in an online discourse". I'm all for forward-looking thinking, but we must show humility. "Society's issues" are complex and deep. Those who propose internet-based solutions to troubling social ills don't often demonstrate a deep understanding of the nature of the problem. You can't plug it all with "agents"! Socrates would be rolling in his grave.

I know Silicon Valley is in a perpetual rush, but this idea needs more soak-time (3-4 years) to see if it actually holds any water. But this kind of thinking won't you get that sweet VC money.

It also presupposed the fact that everyone can articulate what their political and moral stances are

I don't know if this is really about the public sphere as ut exists today. I suspect that the core idea is more along of the lines that in a world where policy is made by artificial super intelligences, you will need your own ASI to advocate on your behalf if your convictions are to have any impact at all.

How would you even form convictions in such a world?

If someone lacks the time and energy to stand behind their views, how much of that is a result of those views? If you care about the world and justice, if you love life and living things, that's your source of energy right there. If you have half-assed ideas that sound good in the bubble and zero charisma, you have no energy, and interacting with you doesn't give anyone energy.

So much of this just strikes me as "now that I've taken a wrong turn and am in a dead end, what deus ex machina could make this work after all and turn a shitty personality into something grand?", but that will never, ever work. Whatever problem you try to solve that way, now you have two.

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